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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Filigree Ball, by Anna Katherine 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 Filigree Ball
+
+Author: Anna Katherine Green
+
+Posting Date: March 1, 2009 [EBook #2371]
+Release Date: October, 2000
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FILIGREE BALL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer. HTML
+version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FILIGREE BALL
+
+
+by
+
+Anna Katherine Green
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+BOOK I
+
+CHAPTER
+
+  I      "THE MOORE HOUSE?"
+  II     I ENTER
+  III    I REMAIN
+  IV     SIGNED, VERONICA
+  V      MASTER AND DOG
+  VI     GOSSIP
+  VII    SLY WORK
+  VIII   SLYER WORK
+  IX     JINNY
+  X      FRANCIS JEFFREY
+
+BOOK II
+
+  XI     DETAILS
+  XII    THRUST AND PARRY
+  XIII   CHIEFLY THRUST
+  XIV    "LET US HAVE TALLMAN!"
+  XV     WHITE BOW AND PINK
+  XVI    AN EGOTIST OF THE FIRST WATER
+  XVII   A FRESH START
+  XVIII  IN THE GRASS
+
+BOOK III
+
+  XIX    IN TAMPA
+  XX     "THE COLONEL'S OWN"
+  XXI    THE HEART OF THE PUZZLE
+  XXII   A THREAD IN HAND
+  XXIII  WORDS IN THE NIGHT
+  XXIV   TANTALIZING TACTICS
+  XXV    "WHO WILL TELL THE MAN!"
+  XXVI   RUDGE
+  XXVII  "YOU HAVE COME!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+THE FORBIDDEN ROOM
+
+
+
+
+THE FILIGREE BALL
+
+
+I
+
+"THE MOORE HOUSE?  ARE YOU SPEAKING OF THE MOORE HOUSE?"
+
+
+For a detective whose talents, had not been recognized at
+headquarters, I possessed an ambition which, fortunately for my
+standing with the lieutenant of the precinct, had not yet been
+expressed in words.  Though I had small reason for expecting great
+things of myself, I had always cherished the hope that if a big
+case came my way I should be found able to do something with it
+something more, that is, than I had seen accomplished by the
+police of the District of Columbia since I had had the honor of
+being one of their number.  Therefore, when I found myself plunged,
+almost without my own volition, into the Jeffrey Moore affair, I
+believed that the opportunity had come whereby I might distinguish
+myself.
+
+It had complications, this Jeffrey-Moore affair; greater ones than
+the public ever knew, keen as the interest in it ran both in and
+out of Washington.  This is why I propose to tell the story of this
+great tragedy from my own standpoint, even if in so doing I risk
+the charge of attempting to exploit my own connection with this
+celebrated case.  In its course I encountered as many disappointments
+as triumphs, and brought out of the affair a heart as sore as it was
+satisfied; for I am a lover of women and--
+
+But I am keeping you from the story itself.
+
+I was at the station-house the night Uncle David came in.  He was
+always called Uncle David, even by the urchins who followed him in
+the street; so I am showing him no disrespect, gentleman though he
+is, by giving him a title which as completely characterized him in
+those days, as did his moody ways, his quaint attire and the
+persistence with which he kept at his side his great mastiff, Rudge.
+I had long since heard of the old gentleman as one of the most
+interesting residents of the precinct.  I had even seen him more
+than once on the avenue, but I had never before been brought face
+to face with him, and consequently had much too superficial a
+knowledge of his countenance to determine offhand whether the
+uneasy light in his small gray eyes was natural to them, or simply
+the result of present excitement.  But when he began to talk I
+detected an unmistakable tremor in his tones, and decided that he
+was in a state of suppressed agitation; though he appeared to have
+nothing more alarming to impart than the fact that he had seen a
+light burning in some house presumably empty.
+
+It was all so trivial that I gave him but scant attention till he
+let a name fall which caused me to prick up my ears and even to
+put in a word.  "The Moore house," he had said.
+
+"The Moore house?" I repeated in amazement.  "Are you speaking of
+the Moore house?"
+
+A thousand recollections came with the name.
+
+"What other?" he grumbled, directing toward me a look as keen as it
+was impatient.  "Do you think that I would bother myself long about
+a house I had no interest in, or drag Rudge from his warm rug to
+save some ungrateful neighbor from a possible burglary?  No, it is
+my house which some rogue has chosen to enter.  That is," he suavely
+corrected, as he saw surprise in every eye, "the house which the law
+will give me, if anything ever happens to that chit of a girl whom
+my brother left behind him."
+
+Growling some words at the dog, who showed a decided inclination to
+lie down where he was, the old man made for the door and in another
+moment would have been in the street, if I had not stepped after him.
+
+"You are a Moore and live in or near that old house?" I asked.
+
+The surprise with which he met this question daunted me a little.
+
+"How long have you been in Washington, I should like to ask?" was
+his acrid retort.
+
+"Oh, some five months."
+
+His good nature, or what passed for such in this irascible old man,
+returned in an instant; and he curtly but not unkindly remarked:
+
+"You haven't learned much in that time."  Then, with a nod more
+ceremonious than many another man's bow, he added, with sudden
+dignity: "I am of the elder branch an live in the cottage fronting
+the old place.  I am the only resident on the block.  When you have
+lived here longer you will know why that especial neighborhood is
+not a favorite one with those who can not boast of the Moore blood.
+For the present, let us attribute the bad name that it holds
+to--malaria."  And with a significant hitch of his lean shoulders
+which set in undulating motion every fold of the old-fashioned
+cloak he wore, he started again for the door.
+
+But my curiosity was by this time roused to fever heat.  I knew
+more about this house than he gave me credit for.  No one who had
+read the papers of late, much less a man connected with the police,
+could help being well informed in all the details of its remarkable
+history.  What I had failed to know was his close relationship to
+the family whose name for the last two weeks had been in every mouth.
+
+"Wait!" I called out.  "You say that you live opposite the Moore
+house.  You can then tell me--"
+
+But he had no mind to stop for any gossip.
+
+"It was all in the papers," he called back.  "Read them.  But first
+be sure to find out who has struck a light in the house that we all
+know has not even a caretaker in it."
+
+It was good advice.  My duty and my curiosity both led me to follow
+it.
+
+Perhaps you have heard of the distinguishing feature of this house;
+if so, you do not need my explanations.  But if, for any reason,
+you are ignorant of the facts which within a very short time have
+set a final seal of horror upon this old, historic dwelling, then
+you will be glad to read what has made and will continue to make the
+Moore house in Washington one to be pointed at in daylight and
+shunned after dark, not only by superstitious colored folk, but by
+all who are susceptible to the most ordinary emotions of fear and
+dread.
+
+It was standing when Washington was a village.  It antedates the
+Capitol and the White House.  Built by a man of wealth, it bears to
+this day the impress of the large ideas and quiet elegance of
+colonial times; but the shadow which speedily fell across it made
+it a marked place even in those early days.  While it has always
+escaped the hackneyed epithet of "haunted," families that have moved
+in have as quickly moved out, giving as their excuse that no
+happiness was to be found there and that sleep was impossible under
+its roof.  That there was some reason for this lack of rest within
+walls which were not without their tragic reminiscences, all must
+acknowledge.  Death had often occurred there, and while this fact
+can be stated in regard to most old houses, it is not often that
+one can say, as in this case, that it was invariably sudden and
+invariably of one character.  A lifeless man, lying outstretched on
+a certain hearthstone, might be found once in a house and awaken no
+special comment; but when this same discovery has been made twice,
+if not thrice, during the history of a single dwelling, one might
+surely be pardoned a distrust of its seemingly home-like
+appointments, and discern in its slowly darkening walls the
+presence of an evil which if left to itself might perish in the
+natural decay of the e place, but which, if met and challenged,
+might strike again and make another blot on its thrice-crimsoned
+hearthstone.
+
+But these are old fables which I should hardly, presume to mention,
+had it not been for the recent occurrence which has recalled them
+to all men's minds and given to this long empty and slowly crumbling
+building an importance which has spread its fame from one end of
+the country to the other.  I refer to the tragedy attending the
+wedding lately celebrated there.
+
+Veronica Moore, rich, pretty and wilful, had long cherished a
+strange liking for this frowning old home of her ancestors, and,
+at the most critical time of her life, conceived the idea of proving
+to herself and to society at large that no real ban lay upon it save
+in the imagination of the superstitious.  So, being about to marry
+the choice of her young heart, she caused this house to be opened
+for the wedding ceremony; with what result, you know.
+
+Though the occasion was a joyous one and accompanied by all that
+could give cheer to such a function, it had not escaped the
+old-time shadow.  One of the guests straying into the room of
+ancient and unhallowed memory, the one room which had not been
+thrown open to the crowd, had been found within five minutes of
+the ceremony lying on its dolorous hearthstone, dead; and though
+the bride was spared a knowledge of the dreadful fact till the
+holy words were said, a panic had seized the guests and emptied
+the houses suddenly and completely as though the plague had been
+discovered there.
+
+This is why I hastened to follow Uncle David when he told me that
+all was not right in this house of tragic memories.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+I ENTER
+
+
+Though past seventy, Uncle David was a brisk walker, and on this
+night in particular he sped along so fast that he was half-way down
+H Street by the time I had turned the corner at New Hampshire Avenue.
+
+His gaunt but not ungraceful figure, merged in that of the dog
+trotting closely at his heels, was the only moving object in the
+dreary vista of this the most desolate block in Washington.  As I
+neared the building, I was so impressed by the surrounding stillness
+that I was ready to vow that the shadows were denser here than
+elsewhere and that the few gas lamps, which flickered at intervals
+down the street, shone with a more feeble ray than in any other equal
+length of street in Washington.
+
+Meanwhile, the shadow of Uncle David had vanished from the pavement.
+He had paused beside a fence which, hung with vines, surrounded and
+nearly hid from sight the little cottage he had mentioned as the
+only house on the block with the exception of the great Moore place;
+in other words, his own home.
+
+As I came abreast of him I heard him muttering, not to his dog as
+was his custom, but to himself.  In fact, the dog was not to be seen,
+and this desertion on the part of his constant companion seemed to
+add to his disturbance and affect him beyond all reason.  I could
+distinguish these words amongst the many he directed toward the
+unseen animal:
+
+"You're a knowing one, too knowing!  You see that loosened shutter
+over the way as plainly as I do; but you're a coward to slink away
+from it.  I don't.  I face the thing, and what's more, I'll show
+you yet what I think of a dog that can't stand his ground and help
+his old master out with some show of courage.  Creaks, does it?
+Well, let it creak!  I don't mind its creaking, glad as I should be
+to know whose hand--Halloo!  You've come, have you?"  This to me.
+I had just stepped up to him.
+
+"Yes, I've come.  Now what is the matter with the Moore house?"
+
+He must have expected the question, yet his answer was a long time
+coming.  His voice, too, sounded strained, and was pitched quite
+too high to be natural.  But he evidently did not expect me to show
+surprise at his manner.
+
+"Look at that window over there!" he cried at last.  "That one with
+the slightly open shutter!  Watch and you will see that shutter move.
+There!  it creaked; didn't you hear it?"
+
+A growl--it was more like a moan--came from the porch behind us.
+Instantly the old gentleman turned and with a gesture as fierce as
+it was instinctive, shouted out:
+
+"Be still there!  If you haven't the courage to face a blowing
+shutter, keep your jaws shut and don't let every fellow who happens
+along know what a fool you are.  I declare," he maundered on, half
+to himself and half to me, "that dog is getting old.  He can't be
+trusted any more.  He forsakes his master just when--"  The rest was
+lost in his throat which rattled with something more than impatient
+anger.
+
+Meanwhile I had been attentively scrutinizing the house thus
+pointedly brought to my notice.
+
+I had seen it many times before, but, as it happened, had never
+stopped to look at it when the huge trees surrounding it were
+shrouded in darkness.  The black hollow of its disused portal looked
+out from shadows which acquired some of their somberness from the
+tragic memories connected with its empty void.
+
+Its aspect was scarcely reassuring.  Not that superstition lent its
+terrors to the lonely scene, but that through the blank panes of the
+window, alternately appearing and disappearing from view as the
+shutter pointed out by Uncle David blew to and fro in the wind, I
+saw, or was persuaded that I saw, a beam of light which argued an
+unknown presence within walls which had so lately been declared
+unfit for any man's habitation.
+
+"You are right," I now remarked to the uneasy figure at my side.
+"Some one is prowling through the house yonder.  Can it possibly be
+Mrs. Jeffrey or her husband?"
+
+"At night and with no gas in the house?  Hardly."
+
+The words were natural, but the voice was not.  Neither was his
+manner quite suited to the occasion.  Giving him another sly glance,
+and marking how uneasily he edged away from me in the darkness, I
+cried out more cheerily than he possibly expected:
+
+"I will summon another officer and we three will just slip across
+and investigate."
+
+"Not I!" was his violent rejoinder, as he swung open a gate concealed
+in the vines behind him.  "The Jeffreys would resent my intrusion if
+they ever happened to hear of it."
+
+"Indeed!" I laughed, sounding my whistle; then, soberly enough, for
+I was more than a little struck by the oddity of his behavior and
+thought him as well worth investigation as the house in which he
+showed such an interest:  "You shouldn't let that count.  Come and
+see what's up in the house you are so ready to call yours."
+
+But he only drew farther into the shade.
+
+"I have no business over there," he objected.  "Veronica and I have
+never been on good terms.  I was not even invited to her wedding
+though I live within a stone's throw of the door.  No; I have done
+my duty in calling attention to that light, and whether it's the
+bull's-eye of a burglar--perhaps you don't know that there are
+rare treasures on the book shelves of the great library--or whether
+it is the fantastic illumination which frightens fool-folks and some
+fool-dogs, I'm done with it and done with you, too, for to-night."
+
+As he said this, he mounted to his door and disappeared under the
+vines, hanging like a shroud over the front of the house.  In another
+moment the rich peal of an organ sounded from within, followed by
+the prolonged howling of Rudge, who, either from a too keen
+appreciation of his master's music or in utter disapproval of
+it,--no one, I believe, has ever been able to make out which,--was
+accustomed to add this undesirable accompaniment to every strain
+from the old man's hand.  The playing did not cease because of these
+outrageous discords.  On the contrary, it increased in force and
+volume, causing Rudge's expression of pain or pleasure to increase
+also.  The result can be imagined.  As I listened to the intolerable
+howls of the dog cutting clean through the exquisite harmonies of
+his master, I wondered if the shadows cast by the frowning structure
+of the great Moore house were alone to blame for Uncle David's lack
+of neighbors.
+
+Meantime, Hibbard, who was the first to hear my signal, came running
+down the block.  As he joined me, the light, or what we chose to
+call a light, appeared again in the window toward which my attention
+had been directed.
+
+"Some one's in the Moore house!" I declared, in as matter of-fact
+tones as I could command.
+
+Hibbard is a big fellow, the biggest fellow on the force, and so far
+as my own experience with him had gone, as stolid and imperturbable
+as the best of us.  But after a quick glance at the towering walls
+of the lonely building, he showed decided embarrassment and seemed
+in no haste to cross the street.
+
+With difficulty I concealed my disgust.
+
+"Come," I cried, stepping down from the curb, "let's go over and
+investigate.  The property is valuable, the furnishings handsome,
+and there is no end of costly books on the library shelves.  You
+have matches and a revolver?"
+
+He nodded, quietly showing me first the one, then the other; then
+with a sheepish air which he endeavored to carry of with a laugh, he
+cried:
+
+"Have you use for 'em?  If so, I'm quite willing, to part with 'em
+for a half-hour."
+
+I was more than amazed at this evidence of weakness in one I had
+always considered as tough and impenetrable as flint rock.  Thrusting
+back the hand with which he had half drawn into view the weapon I
+had mentioned, I put on my sternest sir and led the way across the
+street.  As I did so, tossed back the words:
+
+"We may come upon a gang.  You do not wish me to face some half-dozen
+men alone?"
+
+"You won't find any half-dozen men there," was his muttered reply.
+Nevertheless he followed me, though with less spirit than I liked,
+considering that my own manner was in a measure assumed and that I
+was not without sympathy--well, let me, say, for a dog who
+preferred howling a dismal accompaniment to his master's music, to
+keeping open watch over a neighborhood dominated by the unhallowed
+structure I now propose to enter.
+
+The house is too well known for me to attempt a minute description
+of it.  The illustrations which have appeared in all the papers have
+already acquainted the general public with its simple facade and rows
+upon rows of shuttered windows.  Even the great square porch with
+its bench for negro attendants has been photographed for the million.
+Those who have seen the picture in which the wedding-guests are
+shown flying from its yawning doorway, will not be especially
+interested in the quiet, almost solemn aspect it presented as I
+passed up the low steps and laid my hand upon the knob of the
+old-fashioned front door.
+
+Not that I expected to win an entrance thereby, but because it is
+my nature to approach everything in a common-sense way.  Conceive
+then my astonishment when at the first touch the door yielded.  It
+was not even latched.
+
+"So!  so!" thought I.  "This is no fool's job; some one is in the
+house."
+
+I had provided myself with an ordinary pocket-lantern, and, when I
+had convinced Hibbard that I fully meant to enter the house and
+discover for myself who had taken advantage of the popular prejudice
+against it to make a secret refuge or rendezvous of its decayed old
+rooms, I took out this lantern and held it in readiness.
+
+"We may strike a hornets' nest," I explained to Hibbard, whose feet
+seemed very heavy even for a man of his size.  "But I'm going in and
+so are you.  Only, let me suggest that we first take off our shoes.
+We can hide them in these bushes."
+
+"I always catch cold when I walk barefooted," mumbled my brave
+companion; but receiving no reply he drew off his shoes and dropped
+them beside mine in the cluster of stark bushes which figure so
+prominently in the illustrations that I have just mentioned.  Then
+he took out his revolver, and cocking it, stood waiting, while I
+gave a cautious push to the door.
+
+Darkness!  silence!
+
+Rather had I confronted a light and heard some noise, even if it
+had been the ominous click to which eve are so well accustomed.
+Hibbard seemed to share my feelings, though from an entirely
+different cause.
+
+"Pistols and lanterns are no good here," he grumbled.  "What we want
+at this blessed minute is a priest with a sprinkling of holy water;
+and I for one--"
+
+He was actually sliding off.
+
+With a smothered oath I drew him back.
+
+"See here!" I cried, "you're not a babe in arms.  Come on or--  Well,
+what now?"
+
+He had clenched my arm and was pointing to the door which was slowly
+swaying to behind us.
+
+"Notice that," he whispered.  "No key in the lock!  Men use keys but--"
+
+My patience could stand no more.  With a shake I rid myself of his
+clutch, muttering:
+
+"There, go!  You're too much of a fool for me.  I'm in for it alone."
+And in proof of my determination, I turned the slide of the lantern
+and flashed the light through the house.
+
+The effect was ghostly; but while the fellow at my side breathed hard
+he did not take advantage of my words to make his escape, as I half
+expected him to.  Perhaps, like myself, he was fascinated by the
+dreary spectacle of long shadowy walls and an equally shadowy
+staircase emerging from a darkness which a minute before had seemed
+impenetrable.  Perhaps he was simply ashamed.  At all events he stood
+his ground, scrutinizing with rolling eyes that portion of the hall
+where two columns, with gilded Corinthian capitals, marked the door
+of the room which no man entered without purpose or passed without
+dread.  Doubtless he was thinking of that which had so frequently
+been carried out between those columns.  I know that I was; and when,
+in the sudden draft made by the open door, some open draperies
+hanging near those columns blew out with a sudden swoop and shiver,
+I was not at all astonished to see him lose what little courage had
+remained in him.  The truth is, I was startled myself, but I was
+able to hide the fact and to whisper back to him, fiercely:
+
+"Don't be an idiot.  That curtain hides nothing worse than some
+sneaking political refugee or a gang of counterfeiters."
+
+"Maybe.  I'd just like to put my hand on Upson and--"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+I had just heard something.
+
+For a moment we stood breathless, but as the sound was not repeated
+I concluded that it was the creaking of that far-away shutter.
+Certainly there was nothing moving near us.
+
+"Shall we go upstairs?" whispered Hibbard.
+
+"Not till we have made sure that all is right down here"
+
+A door stood slightly ajar on our left.
+
+Pushing it open, we looked in.  A well furnished parlor was before
+us.
+
+"Here's where the wedding took place," remarked Hibbard, straining
+his head over my shoulder.
+
+There were signs of this wedding on every side.  Walls and ceilings
+had been hung with garlands, and these still clung to the mantelpiece
+and over and around the various doorways.  Torn-off branches and the
+remnants of old bouquets, dropped from the hands of flying guests,
+littered the carpet, adding to the general confusion of overturned
+chairs and tables.  Everywhere were evidences of the haste with which
+the place had been vacated as well as the superstitious dread which
+had prevented it being re-entered for the commonplace purpose of
+cleaning.  Even the piano had not been shut, and under it lay some
+scattered sheets of music which had been left where they fell, to
+the probable loss of some poor musician.  The clock occupying the
+center of the mantelpiece alone gave evidence of life.  It had been
+wound for the wedding and had not yet run down.  Its tick-tick came
+faint enough, however, through the darkness, as if it too had lost
+heart and would soon lapse into the deadly quiet of its ghostly
+surroundings.
+
+"It's it's funeral-like," chattered Hibbard.
+
+He was right; I felt as if I were shutting the lid of a coffin when
+I finally closed the door.
+
+Our next steps took us into the rear where we found little to detain
+us, and then, with a certain dread fully justified by the event, we
+made for the door defined by the two Corinthian columns.
+
+It was ajar like the rest, and, call me coward or call me fool--I
+have called Hibbard both, you will remember--I found that it cost me
+an effort to lay my hand on its mahogany panels.  Danger, if danger
+there was, lurked here; and while I had never known myself to quail
+before any ordinary antagonist, I, like others of my kind, have no
+especial fondness for unseen and mysterious perils.
+
+Hibbard, who up to this point had followed me almost too closely,
+now accorded me all the room that was necessary.  It was with a sense
+of entering alone upon the scene that I finally thrust wide the door
+and crossed the threshold of this redoubtable room where, but two
+short weeks before, a fresh victim had been added to the list of
+those who had by some unheard-of, unimaginable means found their
+death within its recesses.
+
+My first glance showed me little save the ponderous outlines of an
+old settle, which jutted from the corner of the fireplace half way
+out into the room.  As it was seemingly from this seat that the men,
+who at various times had been found lying here, had fallen to their
+doom, a thrill passed over me as I noted its unwieldy bulk and the
+deep shadow it threw on the ancient and dishonored hearthstone.  To
+escape the ghastly memories it evoked and also to satisfy myself
+that the room was really as empty as it seemed, I took another step
+forward.  This caused the light from the lantern I carried to spread
+beyond the point on which it had hitherto been so effectively
+concentrated; but the result was to emphasize rather than detract
+from the extreme desolation of the great room.  The settle was a
+fixture, as I afterwards found, and was almost the only article of
+furniture to be seen on the wide expanse of uncarpeted floor.  There
+was a table or two in hiding somewhere amid the shadows at the other
+end from where I stood, and possibly some kind of stool or settee;
+but the general impression made upon me was that of a completely
+dismantled place given over to moth and rust.
+
+I do not include the walls.  They were not bare like the floor, but
+covered with books from floor to ceiling.  These books were not the
+books of to-day; they had stood so long in their places unnoted and
+untouched, that they had acquired the color of fungus, and smelt--
+Well, there is no use adding to the picture.  Every one knows the
+spirit of sickening desolation pervading rooms which have been shut
+up for an indefinite length of time from air and sunshine.
+
+The elegance of the heavily stuccoed ceiling, admitted to be one of
+the finest specimens of its kind in Washington, as well as the
+richness of the carvings ornamenting the mantel of Italian marble
+rising above the accursed hearthstone, only served to make more
+evident the extreme neglect into which the rest of the room had sunk.
+Being anything but anxious to subject myself further to its unhappy
+influence and quite convinced that the place was indeed as empty as
+it looked, I turned to leave, when my eyes fell upon something so
+unexpected and so extraordinary, seen as it was under the influence
+of the old tragedies with which my mind was necessarily full, that
+I paused, balked in my advance, and well-nigh uncertain whether I
+looked upon a real thing or on some strange and terrible fantasy of
+my aroused imagination.
+
+A form lay before me, outstretched on that portion of the floor
+which had hitherto been hidden from me by the half-open door--a
+woman's form, which even in that first casual look impressed itself
+upon me as one of aerial delicacy and extreme refinement; and this
+form lay as only the dead lie; the dead!  And I had been looking at
+the hearthstone for just such a picture!  No, not just such a
+picture, for this woman lay face uppermost, and, on the floor beside
+her was blood.
+
+A hand had plucked my sleeve.  It was Hibbard's.  Startled by my
+immobility and silence, he had stepped in with quaking members,
+expecting he hardly knew what.  But no sooner did his eyes fall on
+the prostrate form which held me spellbound, than an unforeseen
+change took place in him.  What had unnerved me, restored him to
+full self-possession.  Death in this shape was familiar to him.  He
+had no fear of blood.  He did not show surprise at encountering it,
+but only at the effect it appeared to produce on me.
+
+"Shot!" was his laconic comment as he bent over the prostrate body.
+"Shot through the heart!  She must have died before she fell."
+
+Shot!
+
+That was a new experience for this room.  No wound had ever before
+disfigured those who had fallen here, nor had any of the previous
+victims been found lying on any other spot than the one over which
+that huge settle kept guard.  As these thoughts crossed my mind, I
+instinctively glanced again toward the fireplace for what I almost
+refused to believe lay outstretched at my feet.  When nothing more
+appeared there than that old seat of sinister memory, I experienced
+a thrill which poorly prepared me for the cry which I now heard
+raised by Hibbard.
+
+"Look here!  What do you make of this?"
+
+He was pointing to what, upon closer inspection, proved to be a
+strip of white satin ribbon running from one of the delicate wrists
+of the girl before us to the handle of a pistol which had fallen
+not far away from her side.  "It looks as if the pistol was attached
+to her.  That is something new in my experience.  What do you think
+it means?"
+
+Alas!  there was but one thing it could mean.  The shot to which she
+had succumbed had been delivered by herself.  This fair and delicate
+creature was a suicide.
+
+But suicide in this place!  How could we account for that?  Had the
+story of this room's ill-acquired fame acted hypnotically on her, or
+had she stumbled upon the open door in front and been glad of any
+refuge where her misery might find a solitary termination?  Closely
+scanning her upturned face, I sought an answer to this question, and
+while thus seeking received a fresh shock which I did not hesitate
+to communicate to my now none-too-sensitive companion.
+
+"Look at these features," I cried.  "I seem to know them, do you?"
+
+He growled out a dissent, but stooped at my bidding and gave the
+pitiful young face a pro longed stare.  When he looked up again it
+was with a puzzled contraction of his eyebrows.
+
+"I've certainly seen it somewhere," he hesitatingly admitted, edging
+slowly away toward the door.  "Perhaps in the papers.  Isn't she
+like--?"
+
+"Like!" I interrupted, "it is Veronica Moore herself; the owner of
+this house and she who was married here two weeks since to Mr. Jeffrey.
+Evidently her reason was unseated by the tragedy which threw so deep
+a gloom over her wedding."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+I REMAIN
+
+Not for an instant did I doubt the correctness of this identification.
+All the pictures I had seen of this well-known society belle had
+been marked by an individuality of expression which fixed her face
+in the memory and which I now saw repeated in the lifeless features
+before me.
+
+Greatly startled by the discovery, but quite convinced that this was
+but the dreadful sequel of an already sufficiently dark tragedy, I
+proceeded to take such steps as are common in these cases.  Having
+sent the too-willing Hibbard to notify headquarters, I was on the
+point of making a memorandum of such details as seemed important,
+when my lantern suddenly went out, leaving me in total darkness.
+
+This was far from pleasant, but the effect it produced upon my mind
+was not without its result.  For no sooner did I find myself alone
+and in the unrelieved darkness of this grave-like room, than I became
+convinced that no woman, however frenzied, would make her plunge
+into an unknown existence from the midst of a darkness only too
+suggestive of the tomb to which she was hastening.  It was not in
+nature, not in woman's nature, at all events.  Either she had
+committed the final act before such daylight as could filter through
+the shutters of this closed-up room had quite disappeared,--an
+hypothesis instantly destroyed by the warmth which still lingered
+in certain portions of her body,--or else the light which had been
+burning when she pulled the fatal trigger had since been carried
+elsewhere or extinguished.
+
+Recalling the uncertain gleams which we had seen flashing from one
+of the upper windows, I was inclined to give some credence to the
+former theory, but was disposed to be fair to both.  So after
+relighting my lamp, I turned on one of the gas cocks of the massive
+chandelier over my head and applied a match.  The result was just
+what I anticipated; no gas in the pipes.  A meter had not been put
+in for the wedding.  This the papers had repeatedly stated in
+dwelling upon the garish effect of the daylight on the elaborate
+costumes worn by the ladies.  Candles had not even been provided--ah,
+candles!  What, then, was it that I saw glittering on a small
+table at the other end of the room?  Surely a candlestick, or
+rather an old-fashioned candelabrum with a half-burned candle in
+one of its sockets.  Hastily crossing to it, I felt of the
+candlewick.  It was quite stiff and hard.  But not considering this
+a satisfactory proof that it had not been lately burning--the tip
+of a wick soon dries after the flame is blown out--I took out my
+penknife and attacked the wick at what might be called its root;
+whereupon I found that where the threads had been protected by the
+wax they were comparatively soft and penetrable.  The conclusion was
+obvious.  True to my instinct in this matter the woman had not
+lifted her weapon in darkness; this candle had been burning.  But
+here my thoughts received a fresh shock.  If burning, then by whom
+had it since been blown out?  Not by her; her wound was too fatally
+sure for that.  The steps taken between the table where the
+candelabrum stood and the place where she lay, were taken, if taken
+at all by her, before that shot was fired.  Some one else--some one
+whose breath still lingered in the air about me--had extinguished
+this candle-flame after she fell, and the death I looked down upon
+was not a suicide, but a murder.
+
+The excitement which this discovery caused to tingle through my
+every nerve had its birth in the ambitious feeling referred to in
+the opening paragraph of this narrative.  I believed that my
+long-sought-for opportunity had come; that with the start given me
+by the conviction just stated, I should be enabled to collect such
+clues and establish such facts as would lead to the acceptance of
+this new theory instead of the apparent one of suicide embraced by
+Hibbard and about to be promulgated at police headquarters.  If so,
+what a triumph would be mine; and what a debt I should owe to the
+crabbed old gentleman whose seemingly fantastic fears had first
+drawn me to this place!
+
+Realizing the value of the opportunity afforded me by the few
+minutes I was likely to spend alone on this scene of crime, I
+proceeded to my task with that directness and method which I had
+always promised myself should characterize my first success in
+detective work.
+
+First, then, for another look at the fair young victim herself!
+What a line of misery on the brow!  What dark hollows disfiguring
+cheeks otherwise as delicate as the petals of a rose!  An interesting,
+if not absolutely beautiful face, it told me something I could hardly
+put into words; so that it was like leaving a fascinating but
+unsolved mystery when I finally turned from it to study the hands,
+each of which presented a separate problem.  That offered by the
+right wrist you already know--the long white ribbon connecting it
+with the discharged pistol.  But the secret concealed by the left,
+while less startling, was perhaps fully as significant.  All the
+rings were gone, even the wedding ring which had been placed there
+such a short time before.  Had she been robbed?  There were no signs
+of violence visible nor even such disturbances as usually follow
+despoliation by a criminal's hand.  The boa of delicate black net
+which encircled her neck rose fresh and intact to her chin; nor did
+the heavy folds of her rich broadcloth gown betray that any
+disturbance had taken place in her figure after its fall.  If a jewel
+had flashed at her throat, or earrings adorned her ears, they had
+been removed by a careful, if not a loving, hand.  But I was rather
+inclined to think that she had entered upon the scene of her death
+without ornaments,--such severe simplicity marked her whole attire.
+Her hat, which was as plain and also as elegant as the rest of her
+clothing, lay near her on the floor.  It had been taken off and
+thrown down, manifestly by an impatient hand.  That this hand was
+her own was evident from a small but very significant fact.  The
+pin which had held it to her hair had been thrust again into the hat.
+No hand but hers would have taken this precaution.  A man would have
+flung it aside just as he would have flung the hat.
+
+Question:
+
+Did this argue a natural expectation on her part of resuming her
+hat?  Or was the action the result of an unconscious habit?
+
+Having thus noted all that was possible concerning her without
+infringing on the rights of the coroner, I next proceeded to cast
+about for clues to the identity of the person whom I considered
+responsible for the extinguished candle.  But here a great
+disappointment awaited me.  I could find nothing expressive of a
+second person's presence save a pile of cigar ashes scattered
+near the legs of a common kitchen chair which stood face to face
+with the book shelves in that part of the room where the
+candelabrum rested on a small table.  But these ashes looked old,
+nor could I detect any evidence of tobacco smoke in the general
+mustiness pervading the place.  Was the man who died here a
+fortnight since accountable for these ashes?  If so, his unfinished
+cigar must be within sight.  Should I search for it?  No, for this
+would take me to the hearth and that was quite too deadly a place
+to be heedlessly approached.
+
+Besides, I was not yet finished with the spot where I then stood.
+If I could gather nothing satisfactory from the ashes, perhaps I
+could from the chair or the shelves before which it had been placed.
+Some one with an interest in books had sat there; some one who
+expected to spend sufficient time over these old tomes to feel the
+need of a chair.  Had this interest been a general one or had it
+centered in a particular volume?  I ran my eye over the shelves
+within reach, possibly with an idea of settling this question, and
+though my knowledge of books is limited I could see that these were
+what one might call rarities.  Some of them contained specimens of
+black letter, all moldy and smothered in dust; in others I saw
+dates of publication which placed them among volumes dear to a
+collector's heart.  But none of them, so far as I could see, gave
+any evidence of having been lately handled; and anxious to waste no
+time on puerile details, I hastily quitted my chair, and was
+proceeding to turn my attention elsewhere, when I noticed on an
+upper shelf, a book projecting slightly beyond the others.  Instantly
+my foot was on the chair and the book in my hand.  Did I find it of
+interest?  Yes, but not on account of its contents, for they were
+pure Greek to me; but because it lacked the dust on its upper edge
+which had marked every other volume I had handled.  This, then, was
+what had attracted the unknown to these shelves, this--let me see
+if I can remember its title--Disquisition upon Old Coastlines.
+Pshaw!  I was wasting my time.  What had such a dry compendium as
+this to do with the body lying in its blood a few steps behind me,
+or with the hand which had put out the candle upon this dreadful
+deed?  Nothing.  I replaced the book, but not so hastily as to push
+it one inch beyond the position in which I found it.  For, if it
+had a tale to tell, then was it my business to leave that tale to
+be read by those who understood books better than I did.
+
+My next move was toward the little table holding the candelabrum
+with the glittering pendants.  This table was one of a nest standing
+against a near-by wall.  Investigation proved that it had been
+lifted from the others and brought to its present position within a
+very short space of time.  For the dust lying thick on its top was
+almost entirely lacking from the one which had been nested under it.
+Neither had the candelabrum been standing there long, dust being
+found under as well as around it.  Had her hand brought it there?
+Hardly, if it came from the top of the mantel toward which I now
+turned in my course of investigation.
+
+I have already mentioned this mantel more than once.  This I could
+hardly avoid, since in and about it lay the heart of the mystery for
+which the room was remarkable.  But though I have thus freely spoken
+of it, and though it was not absent from my thoughts for a moment,
+I had not ventured to approach it beyond a certain safe radius.  Now,
+in looking to see if I might not lessen this radius, I experienced
+that sudden and overwhelming interest in its every feature which
+attaches to all objects peculiarly associated with danger.
+
+I even took a step toward it, holding up my lamp so that a stray ray
+struck the faded surface of an old engraving hanging over the
+fireplace.
+
+It was the well-known one--in Washington at least--of Benjamin
+Franklin at the Court of France; interesting no doubt in a general
+way, but scarcely calculated to hold the eye at so critical an
+instant.  Neither did the shelf below call for more than momentary
+attention, for it was absolutely bare.  So was the time-worn, if not
+blood-stained hearth, save for the impenetrable shadow cast over it
+by the huge bulk of the great settle standing at its edge.
+
+I have already described the impression made on me at my first
+entrance by this ancient and characteristic article of furniture.
+
+It was intensified now as my eye ran over the clumsy carving which
+added to the discomfort of its high straight back and as I smelt the
+smell of its moldy and possibly mouse-haunted cushions.  A crawling
+sense of dread took the place of my first instinctive repugnance;
+not because superstition had as yet laid its grip upon me, although
+the place, the hour and the near and veritable presence of death
+were enough to rouse the imagination past the bounds of the actual,
+but because of a discovery I had made--a discovery which emphasized
+the tradition that all who had been found dead under the mantel had
+fallen as if from the end of this monstrous and patriarchal bench.
+Do you ask what this discovery was?  It can be told in a word.  This
+one end and only this end had been made comfortable for the sitter.
+For a space scarcely wide enough for one, the seat and back at this
+special point had been upholstered with leather, fastened to the
+wood with heavy wrought nails.  The remaining portion stretched out
+bare, hard and inexpressibly forbidding to one who sought ease there,
+or even a moment of casual rest.  The natural inference was that the
+owner of this quaint piece of furniture had been a very selfish man
+who thought only of his own comfort.  But might he not have had some
+other reason for his apparent niggardliness?  As I asked myself this
+question and noted how the long and embracing arm which guarded this
+cushioned retreat was flattened on top for the convenient holding of
+decanter and glass, feelings to which I can give no name and which I
+had fondly believed myself proof against, began to take the place of
+judgment and reason.  Before I realized the nature of my own impulse
+or to what it was driving me, I found myself moving slowly and
+steadily toward this formidable seat, under an irresistible desire
+to fling myself down upon these old cushions and--
+
+But here the creaking of some far-off shutter--possibly the one I
+had seen swaying from the opposite side of the street--recalled me
+to the duties of the hour, and, remembering that my investigations
+were but half completed and that I might be interrupted any moment
+by detectives from headquarters, I broke from the accursed charm,
+which horrified me the moment I escaped it, and quitting the room
+by a door at the farther end, sought to find in some of the adjacent
+rooms the definite traces I had failed to discover on this, the
+actual scene of the crime.
+
+It was a dismal search, revealing at every turn the almost maddened
+haste with which the house had been abandoned.  The dining-room
+especially roused feelings which were far from pleasant.  The table,
+evidently set for the wedding breakfast, had been denuded in such
+breathless hurry that the food had been tossed from the dishes and
+now lay in moldering heaps on the floor.  The wedding cake, which
+some one had dropped, possibly in the effort to save it, had been
+stepped on; and broken glass, crumpled napery and withered flowers
+made all the corners unsightly and rendered stepping over the
+unwholesome floors at once disgusting and dangerous.  The pantries
+opening out of this room were in no better case.  Shrinking from the
+sights and smells I found there, I passed out into the kitchen and
+so on by a close and narrow passage to the negro quarters clustered
+in the rear.
+
+Here I made a discovery.  One of the windows in this long disused
+portion of the house was not only unlocked but partly open.  But as
+I came upon no marks showing that this outlet had been used by the
+escaping murderer, I made my way back to the front of the house and
+thus to the stairs communicating with the upper floor.
+
+It was on the rug lying at the foot of these stairs that I came upon
+the first of a dozen or more burned matches which lay in a distinct
+trail up the staircase and along the floors of the upper halls.  As
+these matches were all burned as short as fingers could hold them,
+it was evident that they had been used to light the steps of some
+one seeking refuge above, possibly in the very room where we had
+seen the light which had first drawn us to this house.  How then?
+Should I proceed or await the coming of the "boys" before pushing
+in upon a possible murderer?  I decided to proceed, fascinated, I
+think, by the nicety of the trail which lay before me.
+
+But when, after a careful following in the steps of him who had so
+lately preceded me, I came upon a tightly closed door at the end
+of aside passage, I own that I stopped a moment before lifting hand
+to it.  So much may lie behind a tightly closed door!  But my
+hesitation, if hesitation it was, lasted but a moment.  My natural
+impatience and the promptings of my vanity overcame the dictates
+of my judgment, and, reckless of consequences, perhaps disdainful
+of them, I soon had the knob in my grasp.  I gave a slight push to
+the door and, on seeing a crack of light leap into life along the
+jamb, pushed the door wider and wider till the whole room stood
+revealed.
+
+The instantaneous banging of a shutter in one of its windows proved
+the room to be the very one which we had seen lighted from below.
+Otherwise all was still; nor was I able to detect, in my first
+hurried glance, any other token of human presence than a candle
+sputtering in its own grease at the bottom of a tumbler placed on
+one corner of, an old-fashioned dressing table.  This, the one
+touch of incongruity in a room otherwise rich if not stately in
+its appointments, was loud in its suggestion of some hidden
+presence given to expedients and reckless of consequences; but of
+this presence nothing was to be seen.
+
+Not satisfied with this short survey,-a survey which had given me
+the impression of a spacious old-fashioned chamber, fully furnished
+but breathing of the by-gone rather than of the present--and
+resolved to know the worst, or, rather, to dare the worst and be
+done with it, I strode straight into the center of the room and
+cast about me quickly a comprehensive glance which spared nothing,
+not even the shadows lurking in the corners.  But no low-lying
+figure started up from those corners, nor did any crouching head
+rise into sight from beyond the leaves of the big screen behind
+which I was careful to look.
+
+Greatly reassured, and indeed quite convinced that wherever the
+criminal lurked at that moment he was not in the same room with me,
+I turned my attention to my surroundings, which had many points of
+interest.  Foremost among these was the big four-poster which
+occupied a large space at my right.  I had never seen its like in
+use before, and I was greatly attracted by its size and the air of
+mystery imparted to it by its closely drawn curtains of faded
+brocade.  In fact, this bed, whether from its appearance or some
+occult influence inherent in it, had a fascination for me.  I
+hesitated to approach it, yet could not forbear surveying it long
+and earnestly.  Could it be possible that those curtains concealed
+some one in hiding behind them?  Strange to say I did not feel
+quite ready to lay hand on them and see.
+
+A dressing table laden with woman's fixings and various articles of
+the toilet, all of an unexpected value and richness, occupied the
+space between the two windows; and on the floor, immediately in
+front of a high mahogany mantel, there lay, amid a number of empty
+boxes, an overturned chair.  This chair and the conjectures its
+position awakened led me to look up at the mantel with which it
+seemed to be in some way connected, and thus I became aware of a
+wan old drawing hanging on the wall above it.  Why this picture,
+which was a totally uninteresting sketch of a simpering girl face,
+should have held my eye after the first glance, I can not say even
+now.  It had no beauty even of the sentimental kind and very little,
+if any, meaning.  Its lines, weak at the best, were nearly
+obliterated and in some places quite faded out.  Yet I not only
+paused to look at it, but in looking at it forgot myself and
+well-nigh my errand.  Yet there was no apparent reason for the spell
+it exerted over me, nor could I account in any way for the really
+superstitious dread which from this moment seized me, making my
+head move slowly round with shrinking backward looks as that swaying
+shutter creaked or some of the fitful noises, which grow out of
+silence in answer to our inner expectancy, drew my attention or
+appalled my sense.
+
+To all appearance there was less here than below to affect a man's
+courage.  No inanimate body with the mark of the slayer upon it lent
+horror to these walls; yet sensations which I had easily overcome in
+the library below clung with strange insistence to me here, making
+it an effort for me to move, and giving to the unexpected reflection
+of my own image in the mirror I chanced to pass, a power to shock my
+nerves which has never been repeated in my experience.
+
+It may seem both unnecessary and out of character for a man of my
+calling to acknowledge these chance sensations, but only by doing so
+can I account for the minutes which elapsed before I summoned
+sufficient self-possession to draw aside the closed curtains of the
+bed and take the quick look inside which my present doubtful position
+demanded.  But once I had broken the spell and taken the look just
+mentioned, I found my manhood return and with it my old ardor for
+clues.  The bed held no gaping, chattering criminal; yet was it not
+quite empty.  Something lay there, and this something, while
+commonplace in itself, was enough out of keeping with the place and
+hour to rouse my interest and awaken my conjectures.  It was a lady's
+wrap so rich in quality and of such a festive appearance that it was
+astonishing to find it lying in a neglected state in this crumbling
+old house.  Though I know little of the cost of women's garments, I
+do know the value of lace, and this garment was covered with it.
+
+Interesting as was this find, it was followed by one still more so.
+Nestled in the folds of the cloak, lay the withered remains of what
+could only have been the bridal bouquet.  Unsightly now and
+scentless, it was once a beautiful specimen of the florist's art.
+As I noted how the main bunch of roses and lilies was connected by
+long satin ribbons to the lesser clusters which hung from it, I
+recalled with conceivable horror the use to which a similar ribbon
+had been put in the room below.  In the shudder called up by this
+coincidence I forgot to speculate how a bouquet carried by the
+bride could have found its way back to this upstairs room when, as
+all accounts agree, she had fled from the parlor below without
+speaking or staying foot the moment she was told of the catastrophe
+which had taken place in the library.  That her wrap should be lying
+here was not strange, but that the wedding bouquet--
+
+That it really was the wedding bouquet and that this was the room
+in which the bride had dressed for the ceremony was apparent to the
+most casual observer.  But it became an established fact when in my
+further course about the room I chanced on a handkerchief with the
+name Veronica embroidered in one corner.
+
+This handkerchief had an interest apart from the name on it.  It was
+of dainty texture and quite in keeping, so far as value went, with
+the other belongings of its fastidious owner.  But it was not clean.
+Indeed it was strangely soiled, and this soil was of a nature I did
+not readily understand.  A woman would doubtless have comprehended
+immediately the cause of the brown streaks I found on it, but it took
+me several minutes to realize that this bit of cambric, delicate as
+a cobweb, had been used to remove dust.  To remove dust!  Dust from
+what?  From the mantel-shelf probably, upon one end of which I found
+it.  But no!  one look along the polished boards convinced me that
+whatever else had been dusted in this room this shelf had not.  The
+accumulation of days, if not of months, was visible from one end to
+the other of its unrelieved surface save where the handkerchief had
+lain, and--the greatest discovery yet--where five clear spots just
+to the left of the center showed where some man's finger-tips had
+rested.  Nothing but the pressure of fingertips could have caused
+just the appearance presented by these spots.  By scrutinizing them
+closely I could even tell where the thumb had rested, and at once
+foresaw the possibility of determining by means of these marks both
+the size and shape of the hand which had left behind it so neat and
+unmistakable a clue.
+
+Wonderful!  but what did it all mean?  Why should a man rest his
+finger-tips on this out-of-the-way shelf?  Had he done so in an
+effort to balance himself for a look up the chimney?  No; for then
+the marks made by his fingers would have extended to the edge of the
+shelf, whereas these were in the middle of it.  Their shape, too,
+was round, not oblong; hence, the pressure had come from above
+and--ah!  I had it, these impressions in the dust of the shelf were just
+such as would be made by a person steadying himself for a close look
+at the old picture.  And this accounted also for the overturned
+chair, and for the handkerchief used as a duster.  Some one's
+interest in this picture had been greater than mine; some one who
+was either very near-sighted or whose temperament was such that only
+the closest inspection would satisfy an aroused curiosity.
+
+This gave me an idea, or rather impressed upon me the necessity of
+preserving the outline of these tell-tale marks while they were
+still plain to the eye.  Taking out my penknife, I lightly ran the
+point of my sharpest blade around each separate impression till I
+had fixed them for all time in the well worn varnish of the mahogany.
+
+This done, my thoughts recurred to the question already raised.  What
+was there in this old picture to arouse such curiosity in one bent on
+evil if not fresh from a hideous crime?  I have said before that the
+picture as a picture was worthless, a mere faded sketch fit only for
+lumbering up some old garret.  Then wherein lay its charm,--a charm
+which I myself had felt, though not to this extent?  It was useless
+to conjecture.  A fresh difficulty had been added to my task by this
+puzzling discovery, but difficulties only increased my interest.  It
+was with an odd feeling of elation that, in a further examination of
+this room, I came upon two additional facts equally odd and
+irreconcilable.
+
+One was the presence of a penknife with the file blade open, on a
+small table under the window marked by the loosened shutter.
+Scattered about it were some filings which shone as the light from
+my lantern fell upon them, but which were so fine as to call for a
+magnifying-glass to make them out.  The other was in connection with
+a closet not far from the great bed.  It was an empty closet so far
+as the hooks went and the two great drawers which I found standing
+half open at its back; but in the middle of the floor lay an
+overturned candelabrum similar to the one below, but with its prisms
+scattered and its one candle crushed and battered out of all shape
+on the blackened boards.  If upset while alight, the foot which had
+stamped upon it in a wild endeavor to put out the flames had been a
+frenzied one.  Now, by whom had this frenzy been shown, and when?
+Within the hour?  I could detect no smell of smoke.  At some former
+time, then?  say on the day of the bridal?
+
+Glancing from the broken candle at my feet to the one giving its last
+sputter in the tumbler on the dressing table, I owned myself perplexed.
+
+Surely, no ordinary explanation fitted these extraordinary and
+seemingly contradictory circumstances.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+SIGNED, VERONICA
+
+
+I am in some ways hypersensitive.  Among my other weaknesses I have
+a wholesome dread of ridicule, and this is probably why I failed to
+press my theory on the captain when he appeared, and even forbore
+to mention the various small matters which had so attracted my
+attention.  If he and the experienced men who came with him saw
+suicide and nothing but suicide in this lamentable shooting of a
+bride of two weeks, then it was not for me to suggest a deeper
+crime, especially as one of the latter eyed me with open scorn when
+I proposed to accompany them upstairs into the room where the light
+had been seen burning.  No, I would keep my discoveries to myself
+or, at least, forbear to mention them till I found the captain
+alone, asking nothing at this juncture but permission to remain in
+the house till Mr. Jeffrey arrived.
+
+I had been told that an officer had gone for this gentleman, and
+when I heard the sound of wheels in front I made a rush for the
+door, in my anxiety to catch a glimpse of him.  But it was a woman
+who alighted.
+
+As this woman was in a state of great agitation, one of the men
+hastened down to offer his arm.  As she took it, I asked Hibbard,
+who had suddenly reappeared upon the scene, who she was.
+
+He said that she was probably the sister of the woman who lay
+inside.  Upon which I remembered that this lady, under the name of
+Miss Tuttle--she was but half-sister to Miss Moore--had been
+repeatedly mentioned by the reporters, in the accounts of the
+wedding before mentioned, as a person of superior attainments and
+magnificent beauty.
+
+This did not take from my interest, and flinging decorum to the
+winds, I approached as near as possible to the threshold which she
+must soon cross.  As I did so I was astonished to hear the strains
+of Uncle David's organ still pealing from the opposite side of the
+way.  This at a moment so serious and while matters of apparent
+consequence were taking place in the house to which he had himself
+directed the attention of the police, struck me as carrying stoicism
+to the extreme.  Not very favorably impressed by this display of
+open if not insulting indifference on the part of the sole remaining
+Moore,--an indifference which did not appear quite natural even in
+a man of his morbid eccentricity,--I resolved to know more of this
+old man and, above all, to make myself fully acquainted with the
+exact relations which had existed between him and his unhappy niece.
+
+Meanwhile Miss Tuttle had stepped within the circle of light cast
+by our lanterns.
+
+I have never seen a finer woman, nor one whose features displayed
+a more heart-rending emotion.  This called for respect, and I, for
+one, endeavored to show it by withdrawing into the background.  But
+I soon stepped forward again.  My desire to understand her was too
+great, the impression made by her bearing too complex, to be passed
+over lightly by one on the lookout for a key to the remarkable
+tragedy before us.
+
+Meanwhile her lips had opened with the cry:
+
+"My sister!  Where is my sister?"
+
+The captain made a hurried movement toward the rear and then with
+the laudable intention, doubtless, of preparing her for the ghastly
+sight which awaited her, returned and opened a way for her into the
+drawing-room.  But she was not to be turned aside from her course.
+Passing him by, she made directly for the library which she entered
+with a bound.  Struck by her daring, we all crowded up behind her,
+and, curious brutes that we were, grouped ourselves in a semicircle
+about the doorway as she faltered toward her sister's outstretched
+form and fell on her knees beside it.  Her involuntary shriek and
+the fierce recoil she made as her eyes fell on the long white ribbon
+trailing over the floor from her sister's wrist, struck me as voicing
+the utmost horror of which the human soul is capable.  It was as
+though her very soul were pierced.  Something in the fact itself,
+something in the appearance of this snowy ribbon tied to the scarce
+whiter wrist, seemed to pluck at the very root of her being; and
+when her glance, in traveling its length, lighted on the death dealing
+weapon at its end, she cringed in such apparent anguish that we
+looked to see her fall in a swoon or break out into delirium.  We
+were correspondingly startled when she suddenly burst forth with
+this word of stern command:
+
+"Untie that knot!  Why do you leave that dreadful thing fast to her?
+Untie it, I say, it is killing me; I can not bear the sight."  And
+from trembling she passed to shuddering till her whole body shook
+convulsively.
+
+The captain, with much consideration, drew back the hand he had
+impulsively stretched toward the ribbon.
+
+"No, no," he protested; "we can not do that; we can do nothing till
+the coroner comes.  It is necessary that he should see her just as
+she was found.  Besides, Mr. Jeffrey has a right to the same
+privilege.  We expect him any moment."
+
+The beautiful head of the woman before us shook involuntarily, but
+her lips made no protest.  I doubt if she possessed the power of
+speech at that moment.  A change, subtle, but quite perceptible,
+had taken place in her emotions at mention of her sister's husband,
+and, though she exerted herself to remain calm, the effort seemed
+too much for her strength.  Anxious to hide this evidence of weakness,
+she rose impetuously; and then we saw how tall she was, how the long
+lines of her cloak became her, and what a glorious creature she was
+altogether.
+
+"It will kill him," she groaned in a deep inward voice.  Then, with
+a certain forced haste and in a tone of surprise which to my ear had
+not quite a natural ring, she called aloud on her who could no longer
+either listen or answer:
+
+"Oh, Veronica, Veronica!  What cause had you for death?  And why do
+we find you lying here in a spot you so feared and detested?"
+
+"Don't you know?" insinuated the captain, with a mild persuasiveness,
+such as he was seldom heard to use.  "Do you mean that you can not
+account for your sister's violent end, you, who have lived with
+her--or so I have been told-ever since her marriage with Mr. Jeffrey?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Keen and clear the word rang out, fierce in its keenness and almost
+too clear to be in keeping with the half choked tones with which she
+added: "I know that she was not happy, that she never has been happy
+since the shadow which this room suggests fell upon her marriage.
+But how could I so much as dream that her dread of the past or her
+fear of the future would drive her to suicide, and in this place of
+all places!  Had I done so--had I imagined in the least degree that
+she was affected to this extent--do you think that I would have
+left her for one instant alone?  None of us knew that she contemplated
+death.  She had no appearance of it; she laughed when I--"
+
+What had she been about to say?  The captain seemed to wonder, and
+after waiting in vain for the completion of her sentence, he quietly
+suggested:
+
+"You have not finished what you had to say, Miss Tuttle."
+
+She started and seemed to come back from some remote region of
+thought into which she had wandered.  "I don't know--I forget," she
+stammered, with a heart-broken sigh.  "Poor Veronica!  Wretched
+Veronica!  How shall I ever tell him!  How, how, can we ever prepare
+him!"
+
+The captain took advantage of this reference to Mr. Jeffrey to ask
+where that gentleman was.  The young lady did not seem eager to
+reply, but when pressed, answered, though somewhat mechanically,
+that it was impossible for her to say; Mr. Jeffrey had many friends
+with any one of whom he might be enjoying a social evening.
+
+"But it is far past midnight now," remarked the captain.  "Is he in
+the habit of remaining out late?"
+
+"Sometimes," she faintly admitted.  "Two or three times since his
+marriage he has been out till one."
+
+Were there other causes for the young bride's evident disappointment
+and misery besides the one intimated?  There certainly was some
+excuse for thinking so.
+
+Possibly some one of as may have shown his doubts in this regard,
+for the woman before us suddenly broke forth with this vehement
+assertion:
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey was a loving husband to my sister.  A very loving
+husband," she emphasized.  Then, growing desperately pale, she added,
+"I have never known a better man," and stopped.
+
+Some hidden anguish in this cry, some self-consciousness in this
+pause, suggested to me a possibility which I was glad to see ignored
+by the captain in his next question.
+
+"When did you see your sister last?" he asked.  "Were you at home
+when she left her husband's house?"
+
+"Alas!" she murmured.  Then seeing that a more direct answer was
+expected of her, she added with as little appearance of effort as
+possible: "I was at home and I heard her go out.  But I had no idea
+that it was for any purpose other than to join some social gathering."
+
+"Dressed this way?"
+
+The captain pointed to the floor and her eyes followed.  Certainly
+Mrs. Jeffrey was not appareled for an evening company.  As Miss
+Tuttle realized the trap into which she had been betrayed, her words
+rushed forth and tripped each other up.
+
+"I did not notice.  She often wore black--it became her.  My sister
+was eccentric."
+
+Worse, worse than useless.  Some slips can not be explained away.
+Miss Tuttle seemed to realize that this was one of them, for she
+paused abruptly, with the words half finished on her tongue.  Yet
+her attitude commanded respect, and I for one was ready to accord
+it to her.
+
+Certainly, such a woman was not to be seen every day, and if her
+replies lacked candor, there was a nobility in her presence which
+gave the lie to any doubt.  At least, that was the effect she
+produced on me.  Whether or not her interrogator shared my feeling
+I could not so readily determine, for his attention as well as mine
+was suddenly diverted by the cry which now escaped her lips.
+
+"Her watch!  Where is her watch?  It is gone!  I saw it on her
+breast and it's gone.  It hung just--just where--"
+
+"Wait!" cried one of the men who had been peering about the floor.
+"Is this it?"
+
+He held aloft a small object blazing with jewels.
+
+"Yes," she gasped, trying to take it.
+
+But the officer gave it to the captain instead.
+
+"It must have slipped from her as she fell," remarked the latter,
+after a cursory examination of the glittering trinket.  "The pin by
+which she attached it to her dress must have been insecurely
+fastened."  Then quickly and with a sharp look at Miss Tuttle: "Do
+you know if this was considered an accurate timepiece?"
+
+"Yes.  Why do you ask?  Is it--"
+
+"Look!"  He held it up with the face toward us.  The hands stood at
+thirteen minutes past seven.  "The hour and the moment when it struck
+the floor," he declared.  "And consequently the hour and the moment
+when Mrs. Jeffrey fell," finished Durbin.
+
+Miss Tuttle said nothing, only gasped.
+
+"Valuable evidence," quoth the captain, putting the watch in his
+pocket.  Then, with a kind look at her, called forth by the sight
+of her misery:
+
+"Does this hour agree with the time of her leaving the house?"
+
+"I can not say.  I think so.  It was some time before or after seven.
+I don't remember the exact minute."
+
+"It would take fifteen for her to walk here.  Did she walk?"
+
+"I do not know.  I didn't see her leave.  My room is at the back of
+the house."
+
+"You can say if she left alone or in the company of her husband?"
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey was not with her?"
+
+"Was Mr. Jeffrey in the house?"
+
+"He was not."
+
+This last negative was faintly spoken.
+
+The captain noticed this and ventured upon interrogating her further.
+
+"How long had he been gone?"
+
+Her lips parted; she was deeply agitated; but when she spoke it was
+coldly and with studied precision.
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey was not at home to-night at all.  He has not been in
+all day."
+
+"Not at home?  Did his wife know that he was going to dine out?"
+
+"She said nothing about it."
+
+The captain cut short his questions and in another moment I
+understood why.  A gentleman was standing in the doorway, whose face
+once seen, was enough to stop the words on any man's lips.  Miss
+Tuttle saw this gentleman almost as quickly as we did and sank with
+an involuntary moan to her knees.
+
+It was Francis Jeffrey come to look upon his dead bride.
+
+I have been present at many tragic scenes and have beheld men under
+almost every aspect of grief, terror and remorse; but there was
+something in the face of this man at this dreadful moment that was
+quite new to me, and, as I judge, equally new to the other hardy
+officials about me.  To be sure he was a gentleman and a very
+high-bred one at that; and it is but seldom we have to do with any
+of his ilk.
+
+Breathlessly we awaited his first words.
+
+Not that he showed frenzy or made any display of the grief or
+surprise natural to the occasion.  On the contrary, he was the
+quietest person present, and among all the emotions his white face
+mirrored I saw no signs of what might be called sorrow.  Yet his
+appearance was one to wring the heart and rouse the most
+contradictory conjectures as to just what chord in his evidently
+highly strung nature throbbed most acutely to the horror and
+astonishment of this appalling end of so short a married life.
+
+His eye, which was fixed on the prostrate body of his bride, did
+not yield up its secret.  When he moved and came to where she lay
+and caught his first sight of the ribbon and the pistol attached to
+it, the most experienced among us were baffled as to the nature of
+his feelings and thoughts.  One thing alone was patent to all.  He
+had no wish to touch this woman whom he had so lately sworn to
+cherish.  His eyes devoured her, he shuddered and strove several
+times to speak, and though kneeling by her side, he did not reach
+forth his hand nor did he let a tear fall on the appealing features
+so pathetically turned upward as if to meet his look.
+
+Suddenly he leaped to his feet.
+
+"Must she stay here?" he demanded, looking about for the person most
+in authority.
+
+The captain answered by a question:
+
+"How do you account for her being here at all?  What explanation
+have you, as her husband, to give for this strange suicide of your
+wife?"
+
+For reply, Mr. Jeffrey, who was an exceptionally handsome man, drew
+forth a small slip of crumpled paper, which he immediately handed
+over to the speaker.
+
+"Let her own words explain," said he.  "I found this scrap of
+writing in our upstairs room when I returned home to-night.  She
+must have written it just before--before--"
+
+A smothered groan filled up the break, but it did not come from his
+lips, which were fixed and set, but from those of the woman who
+crouched amongst us.  Did he catch this expression of sorrow from
+one whose presence he as yet had given no token of recognizing?  He
+did not seem to.  His eye was on the captain, who was slowly reading,
+by the light of a lantern held in a detective's hand, the almost
+illegible words which Mr. Jeffrey had just said were his wife's last
+communication.
+
+Will they seem as pathetic to the eye as they did to the ear in that
+room of awesome memories and present death?
+
+"I find that I do not love you as I thought I did.  I can not live,
+knowing this to be so.  I pray God that you may forgive me.
+
+VERONICA"
+
+
+A gasp from the figure in the corner; then silence.  We were glad to
+hear the captain's voice again.
+
+"A woman's heart is a great mystery," he remarked, with a short
+glance at Mr. Jeffrey.
+
+It was a sentiment we could all echo; for he, to whom she had alluded
+in these few lines as one she could not love, was a man whom most
+women would consider the embodiment of all that was admirable and
+attractive.
+
+That one woman so regarded him was apparent to all.  If ever the
+heart spoke in a human face, it spoke in that of Miss Tuttle as she
+watched her sister's husband struggling for composure above the
+prostrate form of her who but a few hours previous had been the
+envy of all the fashionable young women in Washington.  I found it
+hard to fix my attention on the next question, interesting and
+valuable as every small detail was likely to prove in case my theory
+of this crime should ever come to be looked on as the true one.
+
+"How came you to search here for the wife who had written you this
+vague and far from satisfactory farewell?  I see no hint in these
+lines of the place where she intended to take her life."
+
+"No!  no!"  Even this strong man shrank from this idea and showed a
+very natural recoil as his glances flew about the ill-omened room
+and finally rested on the fireside over which so repellent a mystery
+hung in impenetrable shadow.  "She said nothing of her intentions;
+nothing!  But the man who came for me told me where she was to be
+found.  He was waiting at the door of my house.  He had been on a
+search for me up and down the town.  We met on the stoop."
+
+The captain accepted this explanation without cavil.  I was glad he
+did.  But to me the affair showed inconsistencies which I secretly
+felt it to be my especial duty to unravel.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+MASTER AND DOG
+
+
+No further opportunity was afforded me that night for studying the
+three leading characters in the remarkable drama I saw unfolding
+before me.  A task was assigned me by the captain which took me from
+the house, and I missed the next scene--the arrival of the coroner.
+But I repaid myself for this loss in a way I thought justified by
+the importance of my own theory and the evident necessity there was
+of collecting each and every point of evidence which could give
+coloring to the charge, in the event of this crime coming to be
+looked on at headquarters as one of murder.
+
+Observing that a light was still burning in Uncle David's domicile,
+I crossed to his door and rang the bell.  I was answered by the deep
+and prolonged howl of a dog, soon cut short by his master's amiable
+greeting.  This latter was a surprise to me.  I had heard so often
+of Mr. Moore's churlishness as a host that I had expected some
+rebuff.  But I encountered no such tokens of hostility.  His brow
+was smooth and his smile cheerfully condescending.  Indeed, he
+appeared anxious to have me enter, and cast an indulgent look at
+Rudge, whose irrepressible joy at this break in the monotony of his
+existence was tinged with a very evident dread of offending his
+master.  Interested anew, I followed this man of contradictory
+impulses into the room toward which he led me.
+
+The time has now come for a more careful description of this peculiar
+man.  Mr. Moore was tall and of that refined spareness of shape which
+suggests the scholar.  Yet he had not the scholar's eye.  On the
+contrary, his regard was quick, if not alert, and while it did not
+convey actual malice or ill-will, it roused in the spectator an
+uncomfortable feeling, not altogether easy to analyze.  He wore his
+iron gray locks quite long, and to this distinguishing idiosyncrasy,
+as well as to his invariable custom of taking his dog with him
+wherever he went, was due the interest always shown in him by street
+urchins.  On account of his whimsicalities, he had acquired the
+epithet of Uncle David among them, despite his aristocratic
+connections and his gentlemanlike bearing.  His clothes formed no
+exception to the general air of individuality which marked him.  They
+were of different cut from those of other men, and in this as in many
+other ways he was a law to himself; notably so in the following
+instance:  He kept one day of the year religiously, and kept it
+always in the same way.  Long years before, he had been blessed with
+a wife who both understood and loved him.  He had never forgotten
+this fact, and once a year, presumably on the anniversary of her
+death, it was his custom to go to the cemetery where she lay and to
+spend the whole day under the shadow of the stone he had raised to
+her memory.  No matter what the weather, no matter what the condition
+of his own health, he was always to be seen in this spot, at the hour
+of seven, leaning against the shaft on which his wife's name was
+written, eating his supper in the company of his dog.  It was a
+custom he had never omitted.  So well known was it to the boys and
+certain other curious individuals in the neighborhood that he never
+lacked an audience, though woe betide the daring foot that presumed
+to invade the precincts of the lot he called his, or the venturesome
+voice which offered to raise itself in gibe or jeer.  He had but to
+cast a glance at Rudge and an avenging rush scattered the crowd in
+a twinkling.  But he seldom had occasion to resort to this extreme
+measure for preserving the peace and quiet of his solemn watch.  As
+a rule he was allowed to eat his meal undisturbed, and to pass out
+unmolested even by ridicule, though his teeth might still be busy
+over some final tidbit.  Often the great tears might be seen hanging
+undried upon his withered cheeks.
+
+So much for one oddity which may stand as a sample of many others.
+
+One glance at the room into which he ushered me showed why he
+cherished so marked a dislike for visitors.  It was bare to the
+point of discomfort, and had it not been for a certain quaintness
+in the shape of the few articles to be seen there, I should have
+experienced a decided feeling of repulsion, so pronounced was the
+contrast between this poverty-stricken interior and the polished
+bearing of its owner.  He, I am sure, could have shown no more
+elevated manners if he had been doing the honors of a palace.  The
+organ, with the marks of home construction upon it, was the only
+object visible which spoke of luxury or even comfort.
+
+But enough of these possibly uninteresting details.  I did not dwell
+on them myself, except in a vague way and while waiting for him to
+open the conversation.  This he did as soon as he saw that I had no
+intention of speaking first.
+
+"And did you find any one in the old house?" he asked.
+
+Keeping him well under my eye, I replied with intentional brusqueness:
+
+"She has gone there once too often!"
+
+The stare he gave me was that of an actor who feels that some
+expression of surprise is expected from him.
+
+"She?" he repeated.  "Whom can you possibly mean by she?"
+
+The surprise I expressed at this bold attempt at ingenuousness was
+better simulated than his, I hope.
+
+"You don't know!" I exclaimed.  "Can you live directly opposite a
+place of such remarkable associations and not interest yourself in
+who goes in and out of its deserted doors?"
+
+"I don't sit in my front window," he peevishly returned.
+
+I let my eye roam toward a chair standing suspiciously near the
+very window he had designated.
+
+"But you saw the light?" I suggested.
+
+"I saw that from the door-step when I went out to give Rudge his
+usual five minutes' breathing spell on the stoop.  But you have not
+answered my question; whom do you mean by she?"
+
+"Veronica Jeffrey," I replied.  "She who was Veronica Moore.  She
+has visited this haunted house of hers for the last time."
+
+"Last time!"  Either he could not or would not understand me.
+
+"What has happened to my niece?" he cried, rising with an energy
+that displaced the great dog and sent him, with hanging head and
+trailing tail, to his own special sleeping-place under the table.
+"Has she run upon a ghost in those dismal apartments?  You interest
+me greatly.  I did not think she would ever have the pluck to visit
+this house again after what happened at her wedding."
+
+"She has had the pluck," I assured him; "and what is more, she has
+had enough of it not only to reenter the house, but to reenter it
+alone.  At least, such is the present inference.  Had you been
+blessed with more curiosity and made more frequent use of the chair
+so conveniently placed for viewing the opposite house, you might
+have been in a position to correct this inference.  It would help
+the police materially to know positively that she had no companion
+in her fatal visit."
+
+"Fatal?" he repeated, running his finger inside his neckband, which
+suddenly seemed to have grown too tight for comfort.  "Can it be
+that my niece has been frightened to death in that old place?  You
+alarm me."
+
+He did not look alarmed, but then he was not of an impressible
+nature.  Yet he was of the same human clay as the rest of us, and,
+if he knew no more of this occurrence than he tried to make out,
+could not be altogether impervious to what I had to say next.
+
+"You have a right to be alarmed," I assented.  "She was not
+frightened to death, yet is she lying dead on the library floor."
+Then, with a glance at the windows about me, I added lightly: "I
+take it that a pistol-shot delivered over there could not be heard
+in this room."
+
+He sank rather melodramatically into his seat, yet his face and
+form did not lose that sudden assumption of dignity which I had
+observed in him ever since my entrance into the house.
+
+"I am overwhelmed by this news," he remarked.  "She has shot
+herself?  Why?"
+
+"I did not say that she had shot herself," I carefully repeated.
+"Yet the facts point that way and Mr. Jeffrey accepts the suicide
+theory without question."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Jeffrey is there!"
+
+"Most certainly; he was sent for at once."
+
+"And Miss Tuttle?  She came with him of course?"
+
+"She came, but not with him.  She is very fond of her sister."
+
+"I must go over at once," he cried, leaping again to his feet and
+looking about for his hat.  "It is my duty to make them feel at
+home; in short, to--to put the house at their disposal."  Here he
+found his hat and placed it on his head.  "The property is mine now,
+you know," he politely explained, turning, with a keen light in his
+gray eye, full upon me and overwhelming me with the grand air of a
+man who has come unexpectedly into his own.  "Mrs. Jeffrey's father
+was my younger brother--the story is an old and long one--and the
+property, which in all justice should have been divided between us,
+went entirely to him.  But he was a good fellow in the main and saw
+the injustice of his father's will as clearly as I did, and years
+ago made one on his own account bequeathing me the whole estate in
+case he left no issue, or that issue died.  Veronica was his only
+child; Veronica has died; therefore the old house is mine and all
+that goes with it, all that goes with it."
+
+There was the miser's gloating in this repetition of a phrase
+sufficiently expressive in itself, or rather the gloating of a man
+who sees himself suddenly rich after a life of poverty.  There was
+likewise a callousness as regarded his niece's surprising death
+which I considered myself to have some excuse for noticing.
+
+"You accept her death very calmly," I remarked.  "Probably you
+knew her to be possessed of an erratic mind."
+
+He was about to bestow an admonitory kick on his dog, who had been
+indiscreet enough to rise at his master's first move, but his foot
+stopped in mid air, in his anxiety to concentrate all his attention
+on his answer.
+
+"I am a man of few sentimentalities," he coldly averred.  "I have
+loved but one person in my whole life.  Why then should I be expected
+to mourn over a niece who did not care enough for me to invite me
+to her wedding?  It would be an affectation unworthy the man who has
+at last come to fill his rightful position in this community as the
+owner of the great Moore estate.  For great it shall be," he
+emphatically continued.  "In three years you will not know the house
+over yonder.  Despite its fancied ghosts and death-dealing fireplace,
+it will stand A Number One in Washington.  I, David Moore, promise you
+this; and I am not a man to utter fatuous prophecies.  But I must be
+missed over there."  Here he gave the mastiff the long delayed kick.
+"Rudge, stay here!  The vestibule opposite is icy.  Besides, your
+howls are not wanted in those old walls tonight even if you would go
+with me, which I doubt.  He has never been willing to cross to that
+side of the street," the old gentleman went on to complain, with his
+first show of irritation.  "But he'll have to overcome that prejudice
+soon, even if I have to tear up the old hearthstone and reconstruct
+the walls.  I can't live without Rudge, and I will not live in any
+other place than in the old home of my ancestors."
+
+I was by this time following him out.
+
+"You have failed to answer the suggestion I made you a minute
+since," I hazarded.  "Will you pardon me if I put it now as a
+question?  Your niece, Mrs. Jeffrey, seemed to have everything in
+the world to make her happy, yet she took her life.  Was there a
+taint of insanity in her blood, or was her nature so impulsive that
+her astonishing death in so revolting a place should awaken in you
+so little wonder?"
+
+A gleam of what had made him more or less feared by the very urchins
+who dogged his steps and made sport of him at a respectful distance
+shot from his eye as he glowered back at me from the open door.  But
+he hastily suppressed this sign of displeasure and replied with the
+faintest tinge of sarcasm:
+
+"There!  you are expecting from me feelings which belong to youth or
+to men of much more heart than understanding.  I tell you that I
+have no feelings.  My niece may have developed insanity or she may
+simply have drunk her cup of pleasure dry at twenty-two and come to
+its dregs prematurely.  I do not know and I do not care.  What
+concerns me is that the responsibility of a large fortune has fallen
+upon me most unexpectedly and that I have pride enough to wish to
+show myself capable of sustaining the burden.  Besides, they may be
+tempted to do some mischief to the walls or floors over there.  The
+police respect no man's property.  But I am determined they shall
+respect mine.  No rippings up or tearings down will I allow unless I
+stand by to supervise the job.  I am master of the old homestead now
+and I mean to show it."  And with a last glance at the dog, who
+uttered the most mournful of protests in reply, he shut the front
+door and betook himself to the other side of the street.
+
+As I noticed his assured bearing as he disappeared within the
+forbidding portal which, according to his own story, had for so long
+a time been shut against him, I asked myself if the candle which I
+had noticed lying on his mantel-shelf was of the same make and size
+as those I had found in my late investigations in the house he was
+then entering.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+GOSSIP
+
+
+Next morning the city was in a blaze of excitement.  All the burning
+questions of the hour--the rapid mobilization of the army and the
+prospect of a speedy advance on Cuba--were forgotten in the one
+engrossing topic of young Mrs. Jeffrey's death and the awful
+circumstances surrounding it.  Nothing else was in any one's mouth
+and but little else in any one's heart.  Her youth, her prominence,
+her union with a man of such marked attractions as Mr. Jeffrey, the
+tragedy connected with her marriage, thrown now into shadow by the
+still more poignant tragedy which had so suddenly terminated her
+own life, gave to the affair an interest which for those first
+twenty-four hours did not call for any further heightening by a
+premature suggestion of murder.
+
+Though I was the hero of the hour and, as such, subjected to an
+infinite number of questions, I followed the lead of my superiors
+in this regard and carefully refrained from advancing any theories
+beyond the obvious one of suicide.  The moment for self-exploitation
+was not ripe; I did not stand high enough in the confidence of the
+major, or, I may say, of the lieutenant of my own precinct, to risk
+the triumph I anticipated ultimately by a premature expression of
+opinion.
+
+I had an enemy at headquarters; or, rather, one of the men there
+had always appeared peculiarly interested in showing me up in the
+worst light.  The name of this man was Durbin, and it was he who
+had uttered something like a slighting remark when on that first
+night I endeavored to call the captain's attention to some of the
+small matters which had offered themselves to me in the light of
+clues.  Perhaps it was the prospect of surprising him some day
+which made me so wary now as well as so alert to fill my mind with
+all known facts concerning the Jeffreys.  One of my first acts was
+to turn over the files of the Star and reread the following account
+of the great wedding.  As it is a sensational description of a
+sensational event, I shall make no apology for the headlines which
+startled all Washington the night they appeared.
+
+
+"STARTLING TERMINATION OF THE JEFFREY-MOORE WEDDING.
+
+THE TRADITIONAL DOOM FOLLOWS THE OPENING OF
+THE OLD HOUSE ON WAVERLEY AVENUE.
+
+ONE OF THE GUESTS FOUND LYING DEAD ON THE LIBRARY HEARTHSTONE.
+
+LETTERS IN HIS POCKET SHOW HIM TO HAVE BEEN ONE W. PFEIFFER OF DENVER.
+
+NO INTERRUPTION TO THE CEREMONY FOLLOWS THIS GHASTLY DISCOVERY,
+BUT THE GUESTS FLY IN ALL DIRECTIONS AS SOON AS THE NUPTIAL KNOT IS TIED.
+
+"The festivities attendant upon the wedding of Miss Veronica Moore to
+Mr. Francis Jeffrey of this city met with a startling check to-day.
+As most of our readers know, the long-closed house on Waverley Avenue,
+which for nearly a century has been in possession of the bride's
+family, was opened for the occasion at the express wish of the bride.
+For a week the preparations for this great function have been going
+on.  When at an early hour this morning a line of carriages drew up
+in front of the historic mansion and the bridal party entered under
+its once gloomy but now seemingly triumphant portal, the crowds,
+which blocked the street from curb to curb, testified to the interest
+felt by the citizens of Washington in this daring attempt to brave
+the traditions which have marked this house out as solitary, and by
+a scene of joyous festivity make the past forgotten and restore
+again to usefulness the decayed grandeurs of an earlier time.  As
+Miss Moore is one of Washington's most charming women, and as this
+romantic effort naturally lent an extraordinary interest to the
+ceremony of her marriage, a  large number of our representative
+people assembled to witness it, and by high noon the scene was one
+of unusual brilliancy.
+
+"Halls which had moldered away in an unbroken silence for years
+echoed again with laughter and palpitated to the choicest strains
+of the Marine Band.  All doors were open save those of the library--an
+exception which added a pleasing excitement to the occasion--and
+when by chance some of the more youthful guests were caught
+peering behind the two Corinthian pillars guarding these forbidden
+precincts the memories thus evoked were momentary and the shadow
+soon passed.
+
+"The wedding had been set for high noon, and as the clock in the
+drawing-room struck the hour every head was craned to catch the
+first glimpse of the bride coming down the old-fashioned staircase.
+But five minutes, ten minutes, a half-hour, passed without this
+expectation being gratified.  The crowd above and below was growing
+restless, when suddenly a cry was heard from beyond the gilded
+pillars framing the library door, and a young lady was seen rushing
+from the forbidden quarter, trembling with dismay and white with
+horror.  It was Miss Abbott of Stratford Circle, who in the interim
+of waiting had allowed her curiosity to master her dread, and by one
+peep into the room, which seemed to exercise over her the
+fascination of a Bluebeard's chamber, discovered the outstretched
+form of a man lying senseless and apparently dead on the edge of the
+hearthstone.  The terror which instantly spread amongst the guests
+shows the hold which superstition has upon all classes of humanity.
+Happily, however, an unseemly panic was averted, by the necessity
+which all felt of preserving some sort of composure till the ceremony
+for which they had assembled had been performed.  For simultaneously
+with this discovery of death in the library there had come from above
+the sound of the approaching bridal procession, and cries were hushed,
+and beating hearts restrained, as Miss Moore's charming face and
+exquisite figure appeared between the rows of flowering plants with
+which the staircase was lined.  No need for the murmur to go about,
+'Spare the bride!  Let nothing but cheer surround her till she is
+Jeffrey's wife!'  The look of joy which irradiated her countenance,
+and gave a fairy-like aspect to her whole exquisite person would
+have deterred the most careless and self-centered person there from
+casting a shadow across her pathway one minute sooner than necessity
+demanded.  The richness of the ancestral veil which covered her
+features and the natural timidity which prevents a bride from lifting
+her eyes from the floor she traverses saved her from observing the
+strange looks by which her presence was hailed.  She was consequently
+enabled to go through the ceremony in happy unconsciousness of the
+forced restraint which held that surging mass together.
+
+"But the bridesmaids were not so happy.  Miss Tuttle especially held
+herself upright simply by the exercise of her will; and though
+resplendent in `beauty, suffered so much in her anxiety for the
+bride that it was a matter of small surprise when she fainted at the
+conclusion of the ceremony.
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey showed more composure, but the inward excitement under
+which he was laboring made him trip more than once in his responses,
+as many there noted whose minds were not fixed too strongly on flight.
+
+"Only Doctor Auchincloss was quite himself, and by means of the
+solemnity with which he invested his words kept the hubbub down,
+which was already making itself heard on the outskirts of the crowd.
+But even his influence did not prevail beyond the moment devoted to
+the benediction.  Once the sacred words were said, such a stampede
+followed that the bride showed much alarm, and it was left for Mr.
+Jeffrey to explain to her the cause of this astonishing conduct on
+the part of her guests.  She bore the disclosure well, all things
+considered, and once she was fully assured that the unhappy man
+whose sudden death had thus interrupted the festivities was an
+intruder upon the scene, and quite unknown, not only to herself but
+to her newly-made husband, she brightened perceptibly, though, like
+every one around her, she seemed anxious to leave the house, and,
+indeed, did so as soon as Miss Tuttle's condition warranted it.
+
+"The fact that the bride went through the ceremony without her bridal
+bouquet is looked upon by many as an unfavorable omen.  In her
+anxiety not to impose any longer upon the patience of her guests, she
+had descended without it.
+
+"As to the deceased, but little is known of him.  Letters found on
+his person prove his name to be W. Pfeiffer, and his residence Denver.
+His presence in Miss Moores house at a time so inopportune is
+unexplained.  No such name is on the list of wedding guests, nor was
+he recognized as one of Miss Moore's friends either by Mr. Jeffrey
+or by such of her relatives and acquaintances as had the courage to
+enter the library to see him.
+
+"With the exception of the discolored mark on his temple, showing
+where his head had come in contact with the hearthstone, his body
+presents an appearance of natural robustness, which makes his sudden
+end seem all the more shocking.
+
+"His name has been found registered at the National Hotel."
+
+Turning over the files, I next came upon the following despatch from
+Denver:
+
+"The sudden death in Washington of Wallace Pfeiffer, one of our best
+known and most respected citizens, is deeply deplored by all who
+knew him and his unfortunate mother.  He is the last of her three
+sons, all of whom have died within the year.  The demise of Wallace
+leaves her entirely unprovided for.  It was not known here that Mr.
+Pfeiffer intended to visit Washington.  He was supposed to go in
+quite the opposite direction, having said to more than one that he
+had business in San Francisco.  His intrusion into the house of
+Miss Moore during the celebration of a marriage in which he could
+have taken no personal interest is explained in the following
+manner by such as knew his mental peculiarities:  Though a merchant
+by trade and latterly a miner in the Klondike, he had great
+interest in the occult and was a strong believer in all kinds of
+supernatural manifestations.  He may have heard of the unhappy
+reputation attaching to the Moore house in Washington and,
+fascinated by the mystery involved, embraced the opportunity
+afforded by open doors and the general confusion incident to so
+large a gathering to enter the interesting old place and investigate
+for himself the fatal library.  The fact of his having been found
+secluded in this very room, at a moment when every other person in
+the house was pushing forward to see the bride, lends color to this
+supposition; and his sudden death under circumstances tending to
+rouse the imagination shows the extreme sensitiveness of his nature.
+
+"He will be buried here."
+
+The next paragraph was short.  Fresher events were already crowding
+this three-days-old wonder to the wall.
+
+"Verdict in the case of Wallace Pfeiffer, found lying dead on the
+hearthstone of the old Moore house library.
+
+"Concussion of the brain, preceded by mental shock or heart failure.
+
+"The body went on to Denver to=day."
+
+And below, separated by the narrowest of spaces:
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Francis Jeffrey have decided to give up their wedding
+tour and spend their honeymoon in Washington.  They will occupy the
+Ransome house on K Street."
+
+The last paragraph brought me back to the question then troubling
+my mind.  Was it in the household of this newly married pair and in
+the possible secret passions underlying their union that one should
+look for the cause of the murderous crime I secretly imagined to be
+hidden behind this seeming suicide?  Or were these parties innocent
+and old David Moore the one motive power in precipitating a tragedy,
+the result of which had been to enrich him and impoverish them?
+Certainly, a most serious and important question, and one which any
+man might be pardoned for attempting to answer, especially if that
+man was a young detective lamenting his obscurity and dreaming of a
+recognition which would yield him fame and the wherewithal to marry
+a certain clever but mischievous little minx of whom you are
+destined to hear more.
+
+But how was that same young detective, hampered as he was, and held
+in thrall by a fear of ridicule and a total lack of record, to get
+the chance to push an inquiry requiring opportunities which could
+only come by special favor?  This was what I continually asked
+myself, and always without result.
+
+True, I might approach the captain or the major with my story of
+the tell-tale marks I had discovered in the dust covering the
+southwest chamber mantel-shelf, and, if fortunate enough to find
+that these had been passed over by the other detectives, seek to
+gain a hearing thereby and secure for myself the privileges I so
+earnestly desired.  But my egotism was such that I wished to be
+sure of the hand which had made these marks before I parted with
+a secret which, once told, would make or mar me.  Yet to obtain
+the slight concession of an interview with any of the principals
+connected with this crime would be difficult without the aid of
+one or both of my superiors.  Even to enter the house again where
+but a few hours before I had made myself so thoroughly at home
+would require a certain amount of pluck; for Durbin had been
+installed there, and Durbin was a watch-dog whose bite as well as
+his bark I regarded with considerable respect.  Yet into that
+house I must sooner or later go, if only to determine whether or
+not I had been alone in my recognition of certain clues pointing
+plainly toward murder.  Should I trust my lucky star and remain
+for the nonce quiescent?  This seemed a wise suggestion and I
+decided to adopt it, comforting myself with the thought that if
+after a day or two of modest waiting I failed in obtaining what I
+wished, I could then appeal to the lieutenant of my own precinct.
+He, I had sometimes felt assured, did not regard me with an
+altogether unfavorable eye.
+
+Meantime I spent all my available time in loitering around newspaper
+offices and picking up such stray bits of gossip as were offered.
+As no question had yet been raised of any more serious crime than
+suicide, these mostly related to the idiosyncrasies of the Moore
+family and the solitary position into which Miss Tuttle had been
+plunged by this sudden death of her only relative.  As this beautiful
+and distinguished young woman had been and still was a great belle
+in her special circle, her present homeless, if not penniless,
+position led to many surmises.  Would she marry, and, if so, to
+which of the many wealthy or prominent men who had openly courted
+her would she accord her hand?  In the present egotistic state of
+my mind I secretly flattered myself that I was right in concluding
+that she would say yes to no man's entreaty till a certain newly-made
+widower's year of mourning had expired.
+
+But this opinion received something of a check when in a quiet talk
+with a reporter I learned that it was openly stated by those who
+had courage to speak that the tie which had certainly existed at one
+time between Mr. Jeffrey and the handsome Miss Tuttle had been
+entirely of her own weaving, and that the person of Veronica Moore,
+rather than the large income she commanded, had been the attractive
+power which had led him away from the older sister.  This seemed
+improbable; for the charms of the poor little bride were not to be
+compared with those of her maturer sister.  Yet, as we all know,
+there are other attractions than those offered by beauty.  I have
+since heard it broadly stated that the peculiar twitch of the lip
+observable in all the Moores had proved an irresistible charm in
+the unfortunate Veronica, making her a radiant image when she
+laughed.  This was by no means a rare occurrence, so they said,
+before the fancy took her to be married in the ill-starred home of
+her ancestors.
+
+The few lines of attempted explanation which she had left behind
+for her husband seemed to impose on no one.  To those who knew the
+young couple well it was an open proof of her insanity; to those
+who knew them slightly, as well as to the public at large, it was
+a woman's way of expressing the disappointment she felt in her
+husband.
+
+That I might the more readily determine which of these two theories
+had the firmest basis in fact, I took advantage of an afternoon
+off and slipped away to Alexandria, where, I had been told, Mr.
+Jeffrey had courted his bride.  I wanted a taste of local gossip,
+you see, and I got it.  The air was fully charged with it, and being
+careful not to rouse antagonism by announcing myself a detective, I
+readily picked up many small facts.  Brought into shape and arranged
+in the form of a narrative, the result was as follows:
+
+John Judson Moore, the father of Veronica, had fewer oddities than
+the other members of this eccentric family.  It was thought, however,
+that he had shown some strain of the peculiar independence of his
+race when, in selecting a wife, he let his choice fall on a widow
+who was not only encumbered with a child, but who was generally
+regarded as the plainest woman in Virginia--he who might have had
+the pick of Southern beauty.  But when in the course of time this
+despised woman proved to be the possessor of those virtues and
+social graces which eminently fitted her to conduct the large
+establishment of which she had been made mistress, he was forgiven
+his lack of taste.  Little more was said of his peculiarities until,
+his wife having died and his child proved weakly, he made the will
+in his brother's favor which has since given that gentleman such
+deep satisfaction.
+
+Why this proceeding should have been so displeasing to their friends
+report says not; but that it was so, is evident from the fact that
+great rejoicing took place on all sides when Veronica suddenly
+developed into a healthy child and the probability of David Moore's
+inheriting the coveted estate decreased to a minimum.  It was not a
+long rejoicing, however, for John Judson followed his wife to the
+grave before Veronica had reached her tenth year, leaving her and
+her half-sister, Cora, to the guardianship of a crabbed old bachelor
+who had been his father's lawyer.  This lawyer was morose and
+peevish, but he was never positively unkind.  For two years the
+sisters seemed happy enough when, suddenly and somewhat peremptorily,
+they were separated, Veronica being sent to a western school, where
+she remained, seemingly without a single visit east, till she was
+seventeen.  During this long absence Miss Tuttle resided in
+Washington, developing under masters into an accomplished woman.
+Veronica's guardian, severe in his treatment of the youthful owner
+of the large fortune of which he had been made sole executor, was
+unexpectedly generous to the penniless sister, hoping, perhaps, in
+his close, peevish old heart, that the charms and acquired graces
+of this lovely woman would soon win for her a husband in the
+brilliant set in which she naturally found herself.
+
+But Cora Tuttle was not easy to please, and the first men of
+Washington came and went before her eyes without awakening in her
+any special interest till she met Francis Jeffrey, who stole her
+heart with a look.
+
+Those who remember her that winter say that under his influence
+she developed from a handsome woman into a lovely one.  Yet no
+engagement was announced, and society was wondering what held
+Francis Jeffrey back from so great a prize, when Veronica Moore
+came home, and the question was forever answered.
+
+Veronica was now nearly eighteen, and during her absence had
+blossomed into womanhood.  She was not as beautiful as her sister,
+but she had a bright and pleasing expression with enough spice in
+her temperament to rob her girlish features of insipidity and make
+her conversation witty, if not brilliant.  Yet when Francis Jeffrey
+turned his attentions from Miss Tuttle and fixed them without
+reserve, or seeming shame, upon this pretty butterfly, but one
+term could be found to characterize the proceeding, and that was,
+fortune hunting.  Of small but settled income, he had hitherto shown
+a certain contentment with his condition calculated to inspire
+respect and make his attentions to Miss Tuttle seem both consistent
+and appropriate.  But no sooner did Veronica's bright eyes appear
+than he fell at the young heiress' feet and pressed his suit so
+close and fast that in two months they were engaged and at the end
+of the half-year, married--with the disastrous consequences just
+made known.
+
+So much for the general gossip of the town.  Now for the special.
+
+A certain gentleman, whom it is unnecessary to name, had been present
+at one critical instant in the lives of these three persons.  He was
+not a scandalmonger, and if everything had gone on happily, if
+Veronica had lived and Cora settled down into matrimony, he would
+never have mentioned what he heard and saw one night in the great
+drawing-room of a hotel in Atlantic City.
+
+It was at the time when the engagement was first announced between
+Jeffrey and the young heiress.  This and his previous attentions to
+Cora had made much talk, both in Washington and elsewhere, and there
+were not lacking those who had openly twitted him for his seeming
+inconstancy.  This had been over the cups of course, and Jeffrey
+had borne it well enough from his so-called friends and intimates.
+But when, on a certain evening in the parlor of one of the large
+hotels in Atlantic City, a fellow whom nobody knew and nobody liked
+accused him of knowing on which side his bread was buttered, and
+that certainly it was not on the side of beauty and superior
+attainments, Jeffrey got angry.  Heedless of who might be within
+hearing, he spoke up very plainly in these words: "You are all of a
+kind, rank money-worshipers and self-seeker, or you would not be so
+ready to see greed in my admiration for Miss Moore.  Disagreeable
+as I find it to air my sentiments in this public manner, yet since
+you provoke me to it, I will say once and for all, that I am deeply
+in love with Miss Moore, and that it is for this reason only I am
+going to marry her.  Were she the penniless girl her sister is, and
+Miss Tuttle the proud possessor of the wealth which, in your eyes,
+confers such distinction upon Miss Moore, you would still see me at
+the latter's feet, and at hers only.  Miss Tuttle's charms are not
+potent enough to hold the heart which has once been fixed by her
+sister's smile."
+
+This was pointed enough, certainly, but when at the conclusion of
+his words a tall figure rose from a year corner and Cora Tuttle
+passed the amazed group with a bow, I dare warrant that not one of
+the men composing it but wished himself a hundred miles away.
+
+Jeffrey himself was chagrined, and made a move to follow the woman
+he had so publicly scorned, but the look she cast back at him was
+one to remember, and he hesitated.  What was there left for him to
+say, or even to do?  The avowal had been made in all its bald
+frankness and nothing could alter it.  As for her, she behaved
+beautifully, and by no word or look, so far as the world knew, ever
+showed that her woman's pride, if not her heart, had been cut to
+the quick, by the one man she adored.
+
+With this incident filling my mind, I returned to Washington.  I
+had acquainted myself with the open facts of this family's history;
+but what of its inner life?  Who knew it?  Did any one?  Even the
+man who confided to me the contretemps in the hotel parlor could not
+be sure what underlay Mr. Jeffrey's warm advocacy of the woman he
+had elected to marry.  He could not even be certain that he had
+really understood the feeling shown by Cora Tuttle when she heard
+the man, who had once lavished attentions on her, express in this
+public manner a preference for her sister.  A woman has great
+aptness in concealing a mortal hurt, and, from what I had seen of
+this one, I thought it highly improbable that all was quiet in her
+passionate breast because she had turned an impassive front to the
+world.
+
+I was becoming confused in the maze of my own imaginings.  To escape
+the results of this confusion, I determined to drop theory and
+confine myself to facts.
+
+And thus passed the first few days succeeding the tragic discovery
+in the Moore house.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SLY WORK
+
+
+The next morning my duty led me directly in the way of that little
+friend of mine whom I have already mentioned.  It is strange how
+often my duty did lead me in her way.
+
+She is a demure little creature, with wits as bright as her eyes,
+which is saying a great deal; and while, in the course of our long
+friendship, I had admired without making use of the special abilities
+I saw in her, I felt that the time had now come when they might
+prove of inestimable value to me.
+
+Greeting her with pardonable abruptness, I expressed my wishes in
+these possibly alarming words:
+
+"Jinny, you can do something for me.  Find out--I know you can,
+and that, too, without arousing suspicion or compromising either of
+us--where Mr. Moore, of Waverley Avenue, buys his groceries, and
+when you have done that, whether or not he has lately resupplied
+himself with candles."
+
+The surprise which she showed had a touch of naivete in it which
+was very encouraging.
+
+"Mr. Moore?" she cried, "the uncle of her who--who--"
+
+"The very same," I responded, and waited for her questions without
+adding a single word in way of explanation.
+
+She gave me a look--oh, what a look! It was as encouraging to the
+detective as it was welcome to the lover; after which she nodded,
+once in doubt, once in question and once in frank and laughing
+consent, and darted off.
+
+I thanked Providence for such a self-contained little aide-decamp
+and proceeded on my way, in a state of great self-satisfaction.
+
+An hour later I came upon her again.  It is really extraordinary
+how frequently the paths of some people cross.
+
+"Well?" I asked.
+
+"Mr. Moore deals with Simpkins, just two blocks away from his house;
+and only a week ago he bought some candles there."
+
+I rewarded her with a smile which summoned into view the most
+exasperating of dimples.
+
+"You had better patronize Simpkins yourself for a little while," I
+suggested; and by the arch glance with which my words were received,
+I perceived that my meaning was fully understood.
+
+Experiencing from this moment an increased confidence, not only in
+the powers of my little friend, but in the line of investigation
+thus happily established, I cast about for means of settling the
+one great question which was a necessary preliminary to all future
+action:  Whether the marks detected by me in the dust of the mantel
+in the southwest chamber had been made by the hand of him who had
+lately felt the need of candles, albeit his house appeared to be
+fully lighted by gas?
+
+The subterfuge by which, notwithstanding my many disadvantages, I
+was finally enabled to obtain unmistakable answer to this query was
+the fruit of much hard thought.  Perhaps I was too proud of it.
+Perhaps I should have mistrusted myself more from the start.  But
+I was a great egotist in those days, and reckoned quite above their
+inherent worth any bright ideas which I could safely call my own.
+
+The point aimed at was this: to obtain without Moore's knowledge an
+accurate impression of his finger-tips.
+
+The task presented difficulties, but these served duly to increase
+my ardor.
+
+Confiding to the lieutenant of the precinct my great interest in
+the mysterious house with whose suggestive interior I had made
+myself acquainted under such tragic circumstances, I asked  him as
+a personal favor to obtain for me an opportunity of spending another
+night there.
+
+He was evidently surprised by the request, not cherishing, as I
+suppose, any great longings himself in this direction; but
+recognizing that for some reason I set great store on this
+questionable privilege,--I do not think that he suspected in the
+least what that reason was,--and being, as I have intimated,
+favorably disposed to me, he exerted himself to such good effect
+that I was formally detailed to assist in keeping watch over the
+premises that very night.
+
+I think that it was at this point I began to reckon on the success
+which, after many failures and some mischances, was yet to reward
+my efforts.
+
+As I prepared to enter the old house at nightfall, I allowed myself
+one short glance across the way to see if my approach had been
+observed by the man whose secret, if secret he had, I was laying
+plans to surprise.  I was met by a sight I had not expected.  Pausing
+on the pavement in front of me stood a handsome elderly gentleman
+whose appearance was so fashionable and thoroughly up to date, that
+I should have failed to recognize him if my glance had not taken in
+at the same instant the figure of Rudge crouching obstinately on the
+edge of the curb where he had evidently posted himself in distinct
+refusal to come any farther.  In vain his master,--for the
+well-dressed man before me was no less a personage than the whilom
+butt of all the boys between the Capitol and the Treasury
+building,--signaled and commanded him to cross to his side; nothing
+could induce the mastiff to budge from that quarter of the street
+where he felt himself safe.
+
+Mr. Moore, glorying in the prospect of unlimited wealth, presented
+a startling contrast in more ways than one to the poverty-stricken
+old man whose curious garb and lonely habits had made him an object
+of ridicule to half the town.  I own that I was half amused and
+half awed by the condescending bow with which he greeted my offhand
+nod and the affable way in which he remarked:
+
+"You are making use of your prerogatives as a member of the police,
+I see."
+
+The words came as easily from his lips as if his practice in
+affability had been of the very longest.
+
+"I wonder how the old place enjoys its present distinction," he
+went on, running his eye over the dilapidated walls under which we
+stood, with very evident pride in their vast proportions and the air
+of gloomy grandeur which signalized them.  "If it partakes in the
+slightest degree of the feelings of its owner, I can vouch for its
+impatience at the free use which is made of its time-worn rooms and
+halls.  Are these intrusions necessary?  Now that Mrs. Jeffrey's
+body has been removed, do you feel that the scene of her demise need
+hold the attention of the police any longer?"
+
+"That is a question to put to the superintendent and not to me," was
+my deprecatory reply.  "The major has issued no orders for the watch
+to be taken off, so we men have no choice.  I am sorry if it offends
+you.  Doubtless a few days will end the matter and the keys will be
+given into your hand.  I suppose you are anxious to move in?"
+
+He cast a glance behind him at his dog, gave a whistle which passed
+unheeded, and replied with dignity, if but little heart:
+
+"When a man has passed his seventh decade he is not apt to be so
+patient with delay as when he has a prospect of many years before
+him.  I am anxious to enter my own house, yes; I have much to do
+there."
+
+I came very near asking him what, but feared to seem too familiar,
+in case he was the cold but upright man he would fain appear, and
+too interested and inquiring if he were the whited sepulcher I
+secretly considered him.  So with a nod a trifle more pronounced
+than if I had been unaffected by either hypothesis, I remounted the
+steps, carelessly remarking:
+
+"I'll see you again after taking a turn through the house.  If I
+discover anything--ghost marks or human marks which might be of
+interest to you--I'll let you know."
+
+Something like a growl answered me.  But whether it came from master
+or dog, I did not stop to inquire.  I had serious work before me;
+very serious, considering that it was to be done on my own
+responsibility and without the knowledge of my superiors.  But I
+was sustained by the thought that no whisper of murder had as yet
+been heard abroad or at headquarters, and that consequently I was
+interfering in no great case; merely trying to formulate one.
+
+It was necessary, for the success of my plan, that some time should
+elapse before I reapproached Mr. Moore.  I therefore kept my word to
+him and satisfied my own curiosity by taking a fresh tour through the
+house.  Naturally, in doing this, I visited the library.  Here all
+was dark.  The faint twilight still illuminating the streets failed
+to penetrate here.  I was obliged to light my lantern.
+
+My first glance was toward the fireplace.  Venturesome hands had
+been there.  Not only had, the fender been drawn out and the grate
+set aside, but the huge settle had been wrenched free from the mantel
+and dragged into the center of the room.  Rather pleased at this
+change, for with all my apparent bravado I did not enjoy too close a
+proximity to the cruel hearthstone, I stopped to give this settle a
+thorough investigation.  The result was disappointing.  To all
+appearance and I did not spare it the experiment of many a thump and
+knock--it was a perfectly innocuous piece of furniture, clumsy of
+build, but solid and absolutely devoid of anything that could explain
+the tragedies which had occurred so near it.  I even sat down on its
+musty old cushion and shut my eyes, but was unrewarded by alarming
+visions, or disturbance of any sort.  Nor did the floor where it had
+stood yield any better results to the inquiring eye.  Nothing was to
+be seen there but the marks left by the removal of its base from the
+blackened boards.
+
+Disgusted with myself, if not with this object of my present
+disappointment, I left that portion of the room in which it stood
+and crossed to where I had found the little table on the night of
+Mrs. Jeffrey's death.  It was no longer there.  It had been set back
+against the wall where it properly belonged, and the candelabrum
+removed.  Nor was the kitchen chair any longer to be seen near the
+book shelves.  This fact, small as it was, caused me an instant of
+chagrin.  I had intended to look again at the book which I had
+examined with such unsatisfactory results the time before.  A glance
+showed me that this book had been pushed back level with the others;
+but I remembered its title, and, had the means of reaching it been
+at hand, I should certainly have stolen another peep at it.
+
+Upstairs I found the same signs of police interference.  The shutter
+had been fastened in the southwest room, and the bouquet and wrap
+taken away from the bed.  The handkerchief, also, was missing from
+the mantel where I had left it, and when I opened the closet door,
+it was to find the floor bare and the second candelabrum and candle
+removed.
+
+"All gone," thought I; "each and every clue."
+
+But I was mistaken.  In another moment I came upon the minute filings
+I had before observed scattered over a small stand.  Concluding from
+this that they had been passed over by Durbin and his associates as
+valueless, I swept them, together with the dust in which they lay,
+into an old envelope I happily found in my pocket.  Then I crossed to
+the mantel and made a close inspection of its now empty shelf.  The
+scratches which I had made there were visible enough, but the
+impressions for which they stood had vanished in the handling which
+everything in the house had undergone.  Regarding with great
+thankfulness the result of my own foresight, I made haste to leave
+the room.  I then proceeded to take my first steps in the ticklish
+experiment by which I hoped to determine whether Uncle David had had
+any share in the fatal business which had rendered the two rooms I
+had just visited so memorable.
+
+First, satisfying myself by a peep through the front drawing-room
+window that he was positively at watch behind the vines, I went
+directly to the kitchen, procured a chair and carried it into the
+library, where I put it to a use that, to an onlooker's eye, would
+have appeared very peculiar.  Planting it squarely on the
+hearthstone,--not without some secret perturbation as to what the
+results might be to myself,--I mounted it and took down the engraving
+which I have already described as hanging over this mantelpiece.
+
+Setting it on end against one of the jambs of the fireplace, I
+mounted the chair once more and carefully sifted over the high shelf
+the contents of a little package which I had brought with me for this
+purpose.
+
+Then, leaving the chair where it was, I betook myself out of the front
+door, ostentatiously stopping to lock it and to put the key in my
+pocket.
+
+Crossing immediately to Mr. Moore's side of the street, I encountered
+him as I had expected to do, at his own gateway.
+
+"Well, what now?" he inquired, with the same exaggerated courtesy I
+had noticed in him on a previous occasion.  "You have the air of a
+man bringing news.  Has anything fresh happened in the old house?"
+
+I assumed a frankness which seemed to impose on him.
+
+"Do you know," I sententiously informed him, "I have a wonderful
+interest in that old hearthstone; or rather in the seemingly innocent
+engraving hanging over it, of Benjamin Franklin at the Court of
+France.  I tell you frankly that I had no idea of what would be found
+behind the picture."
+
+I saw, by his quick look, that I had stirred up a hornets' nest.
+This was just what I had calculated to do.
+
+"Behind it!" he repeated.  "There is nothing behind it."
+
+I laughed, shrugged my shoulders, and backed slowly toward the door.
+
+"Of course, you should know," I retorted, with some condescension.
+Then, as if struck by a sudden remembrance: "Oh, by the way, have
+you been told that there is a window on that lower floor which does
+not stay fastened?  I speak of it that you may have it repaired as
+soon as the police vacate.  It's the last one in the hall leading
+to the negro quarters.  If you shake it hard enough, the catch falls
+back and any one can raise it even from the outside."
+
+"I will see to it," he replied, dropping his eyes, possibly to hide
+their curious twinkle.  "But what do you mean about finding something
+in the wall behind that old picture?  I've never heard--"
+
+But though he spoke quickly and shouted the last words after me at
+the top of his voice, I was by this time too far away to respond
+save by a dubious smile and a semi-patronizing wave of the hand.  Not
+until I was nearly out of earshot did I venture to shout back the
+following words:
+
+"I'll be back in an hour.  If anything happens--if the boys annoy
+you, or any one attempts to enter the old house, telephone to the
+station or summon the officer at the corner.  I don't believe any
+harm will come from leaving the place to itself for a while."  Then
+I walked around the block.
+
+When I arrived in front again it was quite dark.  So was the house;
+but there was light in the library.  I felt assured that I should
+find Uncle David there, and I did.  When, after a noiseless entrance
+and a careful advance through the hall, I threw open the door beyond
+the gilded pillars, it was to see the tall figure of this old man
+mounted upon the chair I had left there, peering up at the nail from
+which I had so lately lifted the picture.  He started as I presented
+myself and almost fell from the chair.  But the careless laugh I
+uttered assured him of the little importance I placed upon this
+evidence of his daring and unappeasable curiosity, and he confronted
+me with an enviable air of dignity; whereupon I managed to say:
+
+"Really, Mr. Moore, I'm glad to see you here.  It is quite natural
+for you to wish to learn by any means in your power what that picture
+concealed.  I came back, because I suddenly remembered that I had
+forgotten to rehang it."
+
+Involuntarily he glanced again at the wall overhead, which was as
+bare as his hand, save for the nail he had already examined.
+
+"It has concealed nothing," he retorted.  "You can see yourself that
+the wall is bare and that it rings as sound as any chimneypiece ever
+made."  Here he struck it heavily with his fist.  "What did you
+imagine that you had found?"
+
+I smiled, shrugged my shoulders in tantalizing repetition of my
+former action upon a like occasion and then answered brusquely:
+
+"I did not come back to betray police secrets, but to restore this
+picture to its place.  Or perhaps you prefer to have it down rather
+than up?  It isn't much of an ornament."
+
+He scrutinized me darkly from over his shoulder, a wary gleam showing
+itself in his shrewd old eyes; and the idea crossed me that the
+moment might possess more significance than appeared.  But I did not
+step backward, nor give evidence in any way that I had even thought
+of danger.  I simply laid my hand on the picture and looked up at him
+for orders.
+
+He promptly signified that he wished it hung, adding as I hesitated
+these words: "The pictures in this house are supposed to stay on the
+walls where they belong.  There is a traditional superstition against
+removing them."
+
+I immediately lifted the print from the floor.  No doubt he had me
+at a disadvantage, if evil was in his heart, and my position on the
+hearth was as dangerous as previous events had proved it to be.  But
+it would not do to show the white feather at a moment when his fate,
+if not my own, hung in the balance; so motioning him to step down,
+I put foot on the chair and raised the picture aloft to hang it.  As
+I did so, he moved over to the huge settle of his ancestors, and,
+crossing his arms over its back, surveyed me with a smile I rather
+imagined than saw.
+
+Suddenly, as I strained to put the cord over the nail he called out:
+
+"Look out! you'll fall."
+
+If he had intended to give me a start in payment for my previous
+rebuff he did not succeed; for my nerves had grown steady and my arm
+firm at the glimpse I had caught of the shelf below me.  The fine
+brown powder I had scattered there had been displaced in five distinct
+spots, and not by my fingers.  I had preferred to risk the loss of my
+balance, rather than rest my hand on the shelf, but he had taken no
+such precaution.  The clue I so anxiously desired and for which I had
+so recklessly worked, was obtained.
+
+But when half an hour later I found an opportunity of measuring these
+marks and comparing them with those upstairs, I did not enjoy the full
+triumph I had promised myself.  For the two impressions utterly failed
+to coincide, thus proving that whoever the person was who had been in
+this house with Mrs. Jeffrey on the evening she died, it was not her
+uncle David.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+SLYER WOES
+
+
+Let me repeat.  The person who had left the marks of his presence
+in the upper chamber of the Moore house was not the man popularly
+known as Uncle David.  Who, then, had it been?  But one name
+suggested itself to me,--Mr. Jeffrey.
+
+It was not so easy for me to reach this man as it had been for me
+to reach his singular and unimaginative uncle.  In the first place,
+his door had been closed to every one since his wife's death.
+Neither friends nor strangers could gain admittance there unless
+they came vested with authority from the coroner.  And this, even
+if I could manage to obtain it, would not answer in my case.  What
+I had to say and do would better follow a chance encounter.  But
+no chance encounter with this gentleman seemed likely to fall to
+my lot, and finally I swallowed my pride and asked another favor
+of the lieutenant.  Would he see that I was given an opportunity
+for carrying some message, or of doing some errand which would lead
+to my having an interview with Mr. Jeffrey?  If he would, I stood
+ready to promise that my curiosity should stop at this point and
+that I would cease to make a nuisance of myself.
+
+I think he suspected me by this time; but he made no remark, and in
+a day or so I was summoned to carry a note to the house in K Street.
+
+Mrs. Jeffrey's funeral had taken place the day before and the house
+looked deserted.  But my summons speedily brought a neat-looking,
+but very nervous maid to the door, whose eyes took on an unmistakable
+expression of resistance when I announced my errand and asked to see
+Mr. Jeffrey.  The expression would not have struck me as peculiar
+if she had raised any objection to the interview I had solicited.
+But she did not.  Her fear and antipathy, consequently, sprang from
+some other source than her interest in the man most threatened by
+my visit.  Was it-could it be, on her own account?  Recalling what
+I had heard whispered about the station concerning a maid of the
+Jeffreys who always seemed on the point of saying something which
+never really left her lips, I stopped her as she was about to slip
+upstairs and quietly asked:
+
+"Are you Loretta?"
+
+The way she turned, the way she looked at me as she gave me a short
+affirmative, and then quickly proceeded on her way, convinced me
+that my colleagues were right as to her being a woman who had some
+cause for dreading police interference.  I instantly made up my mind
+that here was a mine to be worked and that I knew just the demure
+little soul best equipped to act the part of miner.
+
+In a moment she came back, and I had a chance to note again her
+pretty but expressionless features, among which the restless eyes
+alone bespoke character or decision.
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey is in the back room upstairs," she announced.  "He
+says for you to come up."
+
+"Is it the room Mrs. Jeffrey used to occupy?" I asked with open
+curiosity, as I passed her.
+
+An involuntary shudder proved that she was not without feeling.
+So did the quick disclaimer:
+
+"No, no!  Those rooms are closed.  He occupies the one Miss Tuttle
+had before she went away."
+
+"Oh, then, Miss Tuttle is gone?"
+
+Loretta disdained to answer.  She had already said enough to cause
+her to bite her lip as she disappeared down the basement stair.
+Decidedly the boys were right.  An uneasy feeling followed any
+conversation with this girl.  Yet, while there was slyness in her
+manner, there was a certain frank honesty visible in it too, which
+caused me to think that if she could ever be made to speak, her
+evidence could be relied on.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey was sitting with his back to the door when I entered,
+but turned as I spoke his name and held out his hand for the note
+I carried.  I had no expectation of his remembering me as one of
+the men who had stood about that night in the Moore house, and I
+was not disappointed.  To him I was merely a messenger, or common
+policeman; and he consequently paid me no attention, while I
+bestowed upon him the most concentrated scrutiny of my whole life.
+Till now I had seen him only in half lights, or under circumstances
+precluding my getting a very accurate idea of him as a man and a
+gentleman.  Now he sat with the broad daylight on his face, and I
+had every opportunity for noting both his features and expression.
+He was of a distinguished type; but the cloud enshrouding him was
+as heavy as any I had ever seen darkening about a man of his
+position and character.  His manner, fettered though it was by
+gloomy thoughts, was not just the manner I had expected to encounter.
+
+He had a large, clear eye, but the veil which hid the brightness of
+his regard was misty with suspicion, not with tears.  He appeared
+to shrink from observation, and shifted uneasily as long as I stood
+in front of him, though he said nothing and did not lift his eyes
+from the letter he was perusing till he heard me step back to the
+door I had purposely left open and softly close it.  Then he glanced
+up, with a keen, if not an alarmed look, which seemed an exaggerated
+one for the occasion,--that is, if he had no secret to keep.
+
+"Do you suffer so from drafts?" he asked, rising in a way which in
+itself was a dismissal.
+
+I smiled an amused denial, then with the simple directness I thought
+most likely to win me his confidence, entered straight upon my
+business in these plain words:
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Jeffrey, I have something to say which is not exactly
+fitted for the ears of servants."  Then, as he pushed his chair
+suddenly back, I added reassuringly: "It is not a police matter, sir,
+but an entirely personal one.  It may strike you as important, and it
+may not.  Mr. Jeffrey, I was the man who made the unhappy discovery in
+the Moore mansion, which has plunged this house into mourning."
+
+This announcement startled him and produced a visible change in his
+manner.  His eyes flew first to one door and then to another, as if
+it were he who feared intrusion now.
+
+"I beg your pardon for speaking on so painful a topic," I went on,
+as soon as I saw he was ready to listen to me.  "My excuse is that
+I came upon a little thing that same night which I have not thought
+of sufficient importance to mention to any one else, but which it
+may interest you to hear about."
+
+Here I took from a book I held, a piece of blotting-paper.  It was
+white on one side and blue on the other.  The white side I had
+thickly chalked, though this was not apparent.  Laying down this
+piece of blotting-paper, chalked side up, on the end of a large table
+near which we were standing, I took out an envelope from my pocket,
+and, shaking it gently to and fro, remarked:
+
+"In an upper room of the Moore house--you remember the southwest
+chamber, sir?"
+
+Ali! didn't he!  There was no misdoubting the quick emotion--the
+shrinking and the alarm with which he heard this room mentioned.
+
+"It was in that room that I found these."
+
+Tipping up the envelope, I scattered over the face of the blotter
+a few of the glistening particles I had collected from the place
+mentioned.
+
+He bent over them, astonished.  Then, as was natural, brushed them
+together in a heap with the tips of his fingers, and leaned to look
+again, just as I breathed a heavy sigh which scattered them far and
+wide.
+
+Instinctively, he withdrew his hand; whereupon I embraced the
+opportunity of turning the blotter over, uttering meanwhile the
+most profuse apologies.  Then, as if anxious not to repeat my
+misadventure, I let the blotter lie where it was, and pouring out
+the few remaining particles into my palm, I held them toward the
+light in such a way that he was compelled to lean across the table
+in order to see them.  Naturally, for I had planned the distance
+well, his finger-tips, white with the chalk he had unconsciously
+handled, touched the blue surface of the blotter now lying uppermost
+and left their marks there.
+
+I could have shouted in my elation at the success of this risky
+maneuver, but managed to suppress my emotion, and to stand quite
+still while he took a good look at the filings.  They seemed to have
+great and unusual interest for him and it was with no ordinary
+emotion that he finally asked:
+
+"What do you make out of these, and why do you bring them here?"
+
+My answer was written under his hand; but this it was far from my
+policy to impart.  So putting on my friendliest air, I returned,
+with suitable respect:
+
+"I don't know what to make of them.  They look like gold; but that
+is for you to decide.  Do you want them, sir?"
+
+"No," he replied, starting erect and withdrawing his hand from the
+blotter.  "It's but a trifle, not worth our attention.  But I
+thank you just the same for bringing it to my notice."
+
+And again his manner became a plain dismissal.
+
+This time I accepted it as such without question.  Carelessly
+restoring the piece of blotting-paper to the book from which I had
+taken it, I made a bow and withdrew toward the door.  He seemed to
+be thinking, and the deep furrows which I am sure had been lacking
+from his brow a week previous, became startlingly visible.  Finally
+he observed:
+
+"Mrs. Jeffrey was not in her right mind when she so unhappily took
+her life.  I see now that the change in her dates back to her
+wedding day, consequently any little peculiarity she may have shown
+at that time is not to be wondered at."
+
+"Certainly not," I boldly ventured; "if such peculiarities were
+shown after the fright given her by the catastrophe which took place
+in the library."
+
+His eyes, which were fixed on mine, flashed, and his hands closed
+convulsively.
+
+"We will not consider the subject," he muttered, reseating himself
+in the chair from which he had risen.
+
+I bowed again and went out.  I did not dwell on the interview in my
+own mind nor did I allow myself to draw any conclusions from it,
+till I had carried the blotter into the southwest chamber of the
+Moore house and carefully compared the impressions made on it with
+the marks I had scratched on the surface of the mantel-shelf.  This
+I did by laying the one over the other, after having made holes
+where his finger-tips had touched the blotter.
+
+The holes in the blotter and the marks outlined upon the shelf
+coincided exactly.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+JINNY
+
+
+I have already mentioned the man whom I secretly looked upon as
+standing between me and all preferment.  He was a good-looking
+fellow, but he wore a natural sneer which for some reason I felt to
+be always directed toward myself.  This sneer grew pronounced about
+this time, and that was the reason, no doubt, why I continued to
+work as long as I did in secret.  I dreaded the open laugh of this
+man, a laugh which always seemed hovering on his lips and which was
+only held in restraint by the awe we all felt of the major.
+
+Notwithstanding, I made one slight move.  Encountering the
+deputy-coroner, I ventured to ask if he was quite satisfied with
+the evidence collected in the Jeffrey case.
+
+His surprise did not prevent him from asking my reasons for this
+question.
+
+I replied to this effect:
+
+"Because I have a little friend, winsome enough and subtle enough
+to worm the truth out of the devil.  I hear that the girl Loretta
+is suspected of knowing more about this unfortunate tragedy than
+she is willing to impart.  If you wish this little friend of mine
+to talk to her, I will see that she does so and does so with effect."
+
+The deputy-coroner looked interested.
+
+"Whom do you mean by `little friend' and what is her name?"
+
+"I will send her to you."
+
+And I did.
+
+The next day I was standing on the corner of Vermont Avenue when I
+saw Jinny advancing from the house in K Street.  She was chipper,
+and she was smiling in a way which made me say to myself:
+
+"It is fortunate that Durbin is not here."
+
+For Jinny's one weakness is her lack of power to hide the
+satisfaction she takes in any detective work that comes her way.
+I had told her of this and had more than once tried to impress
+upon her that her smile was a complete give-away, but I noticed
+that if she kept it from her lips, it forced its way out of her
+eyes, and if she kept it out of her eyes, it beamed like an inner
+radiance from her whole face.  So I gave up the task of making her
+perfect and let her go on smiling, glad that she had such frequent
+cause for it.
+
+This morning her smile had a touch of pride in it as well as of
+delight, and noting this, I remarked:
+
+"You have made Loretta talk."
+
+Her head went up and a demure dimple appeared in her cheek.
+
+"What did she say?" I urged.  "What has she been keeping back?"
+
+"You will have to ask the coroner.  My orders were strict to bring
+the results of my interview immediately to him."
+
+"Does that include Durbin?"
+
+"Does it include you?"
+
+"I am afraid not."
+
+"You are right; but why shouldn't it include you?"
+
+"What do you mean, Jinny?"
+
+"Why do you keep your own counsel so long?  You have ideas about
+this crime, I know.  Why not mention them?"
+
+"Jinny!"
+
+"A word to the wise is sufficient;" she laughed and turned her
+pretty face toward the coroner's once.  But she was a woman and
+could not help glancing back, and, meeting my dubious look, she
+broke into an arch smile and naively added this remark: "Loretta
+is a busybody ashamed of her own curiosity.  So much there can be
+no harm in telling you.  When one's knowledge has been gained by
+lingering behind doors and peeping through cracks, one is not so
+ready to say what one has seen and heard.  Loretta is in that box,
+and being more than a little scared of the police, was glad to let
+her anxiety and her fears overflow into a sympathizing ear.  Won't
+she be surprised when she is called up some fine day by the coroner!
+I wonder if she will blame me for it?"
+
+"She will never think of doing so," I basely assured my little
+friend, with an appreciative glance at her sparkling eye and dimpled
+cheek.
+
+The arch little creature started to move off again.  As she did so,
+she cried: "Be good, and don't let Durbin cut in on you;" but stopped
+for the second time when half across the street, and when, obedient
+to her look, I hastily rejoined her, she whispered demurely: "Oh, I
+forgot to tell you something that I heard this morning, and which
+nobody but yourself has any right to know.  I was following your
+commands and buying groceries at Simpkins', when just as I was coming
+out with my arms full, I heard old Mr. Simpkins mention Mr. Jeffrey's
+name and with such interest that I naturally wanted to hear what he
+had to say.  Having no real excuse for staying, I poked my finger
+into a bag of sugar I was carrying, till the sugar ran out and I had
+to wait till it was put up again.  This did not take long, but it
+took long enough for me to hear the old grocer say that he knew Mr.
+Jeffrey, and that that gentleman had come into his shop only a day
+or two before his wife's death, to buy--candles!"
+
+The archness with which this was said, together with the fact itself,
+made me her slave forever.  As her small figure faded from sight
+down the avenue, I decided to take her advice and follow up whatever
+communication she had to make to the coroner by a confession of my
+own suspicions and what they had led me into.  If he laughed--well,
+I could stand it.  It was not the coroner's laugh, nor even the
+major's, that I feared; it was Durbin's.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+FRANCIS JEFFREY
+
+Jinny had not been gone an hour from the coroner's office when an
+opportunity was afforded for me to approach that gentleman myself.
+
+With few apologies and no preamble, I immediately entered upon my
+story which I made as concise and as much to the point as possible.
+I did not expect praise from him, but I did look for some slight
+show of astonishment at the nature of my news.  I was therefore
+greatly disappointed, when, after a moment's quiet consideration,
+he carelessly remarked:
+
+"Very good!  very good!  The one point you make is excellent and
+may prove of use to us.  We had reached the same conclusion, but
+by another road.  You ask, 'Who blew out the candle?'  We, 'Who
+tied the pistol to Mrs. Jeffrey's arm?'  It could not have been
+tied by herself.  Who was her accessory then?  Ah, you didn't think
+of that."
+
+I flushed as if a pail of hot water had been dashed suddenly over
+me.  He was right.  The conclusion he spoke of had failed to strike
+me.  Why?  It was a perfectly obvious one, as obvious as that the
+candle had been blown out by another breath than hers; yet,
+absorbed in my own train of thought, I had completely overlooked
+it.  The coroner observing my embarrassment, smiled, and my
+humiliation was complete or would have been had Durbin been there,
+but fortunately he was not.
+
+"I am a fool," I cried.  "I thought I had discovered something.  I
+might have known that there were keener minds than mine in this
+office--"
+
+"Easy!  easy!" was the good-natured interruption.  "You have done
+well.  If I did not think so, I would not keep you here a minute.
+As it is, I am disposed to let you see that in a case like this,
+one man must not expect to monopolize all the honors.  This matter
+of the bow of ribbon would strike any old and experienced official.
+I only wonder that we have not seen it openly discussed in the
+papers."
+
+Taking a box from his desk, he opened it and held it out toward me.
+A coil of white ribbon surmounted by a crisp and dainty bow met my
+eyes.
+
+"You recognize it?" he asked.
+
+Indeed I did.
+
+"It was cut from her wrist by my deputy.  Miss Tuttle wished him to
+untie it, but he preferred to leave the bow intact.  Now lift it out.
+Careful, man, don't soil it; you will see why in a minute."
+
+As I held the ribbon up, he pointed to some spots on its fresh white
+surface.  "Do you see those?" he asked.  "Those are dust-marks, and
+they were made as truly by some one's fingers, as the impressions
+you noted on the mantel-shelf in the upper chamber.  This pistol was
+tied to her wrist after the deed; possibly by that same hand."
+
+It was my own conclusion but it did not sound as welcome to me from
+his lips as I had expected.  Either my nature is narrow, or my
+inordinate jealousy lays me open to the most astonishing
+inconsistencies; for no sooner had he spoken these words than I
+experienced a sudden revulsion against my own theory and the
+suspicions which it threw upon the man whom an hour before I was
+eager to proclaim a criminal.
+
+But Coroner Z. gave me no chance for making such a fool of myself.
+Rescuing the ribbon from my hands, which no doubt were running a
+little too freely over its snowy surface, he smiled with the
+indulgence proper from such a man to a novice like myself, and
+observed quite frankly:
+
+"You will consider these observations as confidential.  You know
+how to hold your tongue; that you have proved.  Hold it then a
+little longer.  The case is not yet ripe.  Mr. Jeffrey is a man
+of high standing, with a hitherto unblemished reputation.  It won't
+do, my boy, to throw the doubt of so hideous a crime upon so fine
+a gentleman without ample reason.  That no such mistake may be made
+and that he may have every opportunity for clearing himself, I am
+going to have a confidential talk with him.  Do you want to be
+present?"
+
+I flushed again; but this time from extreme satisfaction.
+
+"I am obliged for your confidence," said I; then, with a burst of
+courage born of his good nature, I inquired with due respect if my
+little friend had answered his expectations.  "Was she as clever as
+I said?" I asked.
+
+"Your little friend is a trump," was his blunt reply.  "With what
+we have learned through her and now through you, we can approach Mr.
+Jeffrey to some purpose.  It appears that, before leaving the house
+on that Tuesday morning, he had an interview with his wife which
+ought in some way to account for this tragedy.  Perhaps he will tell
+us about it, and perhaps he will explain how he came to wander
+through the Moore house while his wife lay dying below.  At all
+events we will give him the opportunity to do so and, if possible,
+to clear up mysteries which provoke the worst kind of conjecture.
+It is time.  The ideas advanced by the papers foster superstition;
+and superstition is the devil.  Go and tell my man out there that
+I am going to K Street.  You may say 'we' if you like," he added
+with a humor more welcome to me than any serious concession.
+
+Did I feel set up by this?  Rather.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey was expecting us.  This was evident from his first look,
+though the attempt he made at surprise was instantaneous and very
+well feigned.  Indeed, I think he was in a constant state of
+apprehension during these days and that no inroad of the police
+would have astonished him.  But expectation does not preclude dread;
+indeed it tends to foster it, and dread was in his heart.  This he
+had no power to conceal.
+
+"To what am I indebted for this second visit from you?" he asked of
+Coroner Z., with an admirable presence of mind.  "Are you not yet
+satisfied with what we have been able to tell you of my poor wife's
+unhappy end?"
+
+"We are not," was the plain response.  "There are some things you
+have not attempted to explain, Mr. Jeffrey.  For instance, why you
+went to the Moore house previous to your being called there by the
+death of your wife."
+
+It was a shot that told; an arrow which found its mark.  Mr.
+Jeffrey flushed, then turned pale, rallied and again lost himself
+in a maze of conflicting emotions from which he only emerged to say:
+
+"How do you know that I was there?  Have I said so; or do those old
+walls babble in their sleep?"
+
+"Old walls have been known to do this," was the grave reply.
+"Whether they had anything to say in this case is at present quite
+immaterial.  That you were where I charge you with being is evident
+from your own manner.  May I then ask if you have anything to say
+about this visit.  When a person has died under such peculiar
+circumstances as Mrs. Jeffrey, everything bearing upon the case is
+of interest to the coroner."
+
+I was sorry he added that last sentence; sorry that he felt obliged
+to qualify his action by anything savoring of apology; for the time
+spent in its utterance afforded his agitated hearer an opportunity
+not only of collecting himself but of preparing an answer for which
+he would not have been ready an instant before.
+
+"Mrs. Jeffrey's death was a strange one," her husband admitted with
+tardy self-control.  "I find myself as much at a loss to understand
+it as you do, and am therefore quite ready to answer the question
+you have so openly broached.  Not that my answer has any bearing upon
+the point you wish to make, but because it is your due and my
+pleasure.  I did visit the Moore house, as I certainly had every
+right to do.  The property was my wife's, and it was for my interest
+to learn, if I could, the secret of its many crimes."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey looked quickly up.  "You think that an odd thing for me
+to do?"
+
+"At night.  Yes."
+
+"Night is the time for such work.  I did not care to be seen
+pottering around there in daylight."
+
+"No?  Yet it would have been so much easier.  You would not have
+had to buy candles or carry a pistol or--"
+
+"I did not carry a pistol.  The only pistol carried there was the
+one with which my demented wife chose to take her life.  I do not
+understand this allusion."
+
+"It grew out of a misunderstanding of the situation, Mr. Jeffrey;
+excuse me if I supposed you would be likely to provide yourself
+with some means of defense in venturing alone upon the scene of
+so many mysterious deaths."
+
+"I took no precaution."
+
+"And needed none, I suppose."
+
+"And needed none."
+
+"When was this visit paid, Mr. Jeffrey?  Before or after your wife
+pulled the trigger which ended her life?  You need not hesitate to
+answer."
+
+"I do not." The elegant gentleman before us had acquired a certain
+fierceness.  "Why should I?  Certainly, you don't think that I was
+there at the same time she was.  It was not on the same night, even.
+So much the walls should have told you and probably did, or my
+wife's uncle, Mr. David Moore.  Was he not your informant?"
+
+"No; Mr. Moore has failed to call our attention to this fact.  Did
+you meet Mr. Moore during the course of your visit to a neighborhood
+over which he seems to hold absolute sway?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge.  But his house is directly opposite, and as
+he has little to do but amuse himself with what he can see from his
+front window, I concluded that he might have observed me going in."
+
+"You entered by the front door, then?"
+
+"How else?"
+
+"And on what night?"
+
+
+Mr. Jeffrey made an effort.  These questions were visibly harassing
+him.
+
+"The night before the one--the one which ended all my earthly
+happiness," he added in a low voice.
+
+Coroner Z. cast a glance at me.  I remembered the lack of dust on
+the nest of little tables from which the upper one had been drawn
+forward to hold the candelabrum, and gently shook my head.  The
+coroner's eyebrows went up, but none of his disbelief crept into
+his voice as he made this additional statement.
+
+"The night on which you failed to return to your own house."
+
+Instantly Mr. Jeffrey betrayed by a nervous action, which was quite
+involuntary, that his outward calm was slowly giving way under a
+fire of questions for which he had no ready reply.
+
+"It was odd, your not going home that night," the coroner coldly
+pursued.  "The misunderstanding you had with your wife immediately
+after breakfast must have been a very serious one; more serious
+than you have hitherto acknowledged."
+
+"I had rather not discuss the subject," protested Mr. Jeffrey.
+Then as if he suddenly recognized the official character of his
+interlocutor, he hastily added: "Unless you positively request me
+to do so; in which case I must."
+
+"I am afraid that I must insist upon it," returned the other.  "You
+will find that it will be insisted upon at the inquest, and if you
+do not wish to subject yourself to much unnecessary unpleasantness,
+you had better make clear to us to-day the cause of that
+special quarrel which to all intents and purposes led to your wife's
+death."
+
+"I will try to do so," returned Mr. Jeffrey, rising and pacing the
+room in his intense restlessness.  "We did have some words; her
+conduct the night before had not pleased me.  I am naturally
+jealous, vilely jealous, and I thought she was a little frivolous
+at the German ambassador's ball.  But I had no idea she would take
+my sharp speeches so much to heart.  I had no idea that she would
+care so much or that I should care so much.  A little jealousy is
+certainly pardonable in a bridegroom, and if her mind had not
+already been upset, she would have remembered how I loved her and
+hopefully waited for a reconciliation."
+
+"You did love your wife, then?  It was you and not she who had a
+right to be jealous?  I have heard the contrary stated.  It is a
+matter of public gossip that you loved another woman previous to
+your acquaintance with Miss Moore; a woman whom your wife regarded
+with sisterly affection and subsequently took into her new home."
+
+"Miss Tuttle?"  Mr. Jeffrey stopped in his walk to fling out this
+ejaculation.  "I admire and respect Miss Tuttle," he went on to
+declare, "but I never loved her.  Not as I did my wife," he finished,
+but with a certain hard accent, apparent enough to a sensitive ear.
+
+"Pardon me; it is as difficult for me to put these questions as it
+is for you to hear them.  Were you and Miss Tuttle ever engaged?"
+
+I started.  This was a question which half of Washington had been
+asking itself for the last three months.
+
+Would Mr. Jeffrey answer it?  or, remembering that these questions
+were rather friendly than official, refuse to satisfy a curiosity
+which he might well consider intrusive?  The set aspect of his
+features promised little in the way of information, and we were
+both surprised when a moment later he responded with a grim
+emphasis hardly to be expected from one of his impulsive temperament:
+
+"Unhappily, no.  My attentions never went so far."
+
+Instantly the coroner pounced on the one weak word which Mr.
+Jeffrey had let fall.
+
+"Unhappily?" he repeated.  "Why do you say, unhappily?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey flushed and seemed to come out of some dream.
+
+"Did I say unhappily?" he inquired.  "Well, I repeat it; Miss Tuttle
+would never have given me any cause for jealousy."
+
+The coroner bowed and for the present dropped her name out of the
+conversation.
+
+"You speak again of the jealousy aroused in you by your wife's
+impetuosities.  Was this increased or diminished by the tone of
+the few lines she left behind her?"
+
+The response was long in coming.  It was hard for this man to lie.
+The struggle he made at it was pitiful.  As I noted what it cost
+him, I began to have new and curious thoughts concerning him and
+the whole matter under discussion.
+
+"I shall never overcome the remorse roused in me by those few
+lines," he finally rejoined.  "She showed a consideration for me--"
+
+"What!"
+
+The coroner's exclamation showed all the surprise he felt.  Mr.
+Jeffrey tottered under it, then grew slowly pale as if only through
+our amazed looks he had come to realize the charge of inconsistency
+to which he had laid himself open.
+
+"I mean--" he endeavored to explain, "that Mrs. Jeffrey showed an
+unexpected tenderness toward me by taking all the blame of our
+misunderstanding upon herself.  It was generous of her and will
+do much toward making my memory of her a gentle one."
+
+He was forgetting himself again.  Indeed, his manner and attempted
+explanations were full of contradictions.  To emphasize this fact
+Coroner Z. exclaimed,
+
+"I should think so!  She paid a heavy penalty for her professed
+lack of love.  You believe that her mind was unseated?"
+
+"Does not her action show it?"
+
+"Unseated by the mishap occurring at her marriage?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You really think that?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"By anything that passed between you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"May I ask you to tell us what passed between you on this point?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He had uttered the monosyllable so often it seemed to come
+unconsciously from his lips.  But he recognized almost as soon as
+we did that it was not a natural reply to the last question, and,
+making a gesture of apology, he added, with the same monotony of
+tone which had characterized these replies:
+
+"She spoke of her strange guest's unaccountable death more than
+once, and whenever she did so, it was with an unnatural excitement
+and in an unbalanced way.  This was so noticeable to us all that
+the subject presently was tabooed amongst us; but though she
+henceforth spared us all allusion to it, she continued to talk
+about the house itself and of the previous deaths which had occurred
+there till we were forced to forbid that topic also.  She was never
+really herself after crossing the threshold of this desolate house
+to be married.  The shadow which lurks within its walls fell at that
+instant upon her life.  May God have mercy--"
+
+The prayer remained unfinished.  His head which had fallen on his
+breast sank lower.
+
+He presented the aspect of one who is quite done with life, even
+its sorrows.
+
+But men in the position of Coroner Z. can not afford to be
+compassionate.  Everything the bereaved man said deepened the
+impression that he was acting a part.  To make sure that this was
+really so, the coroner, with just the slightest touch of sarcasm,
+quietly observed:
+
+"And to ease your wife's mind--the wife you were so deeply angered
+with--you visited this house, and, at an hour which you should have
+spent in reconciliation with her, went through its ancient rooms in
+the hope--of what?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey could not answer.  The words which came from his lips
+were mere ejaculations.
+
+"I was restless--mad--I found this adventure diverting.  I had
+no real purpose in mind."
+
+"Not when you looked at the old picture?"
+
+"The old picture?  What old picture?"
+
+"The old picture in the southwest chamber.  You took a look at that,
+didn't you?  Got up on a chair on purpose to do so?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey winced.  But he made a direct reply.
+
+"Yes, I gave a look at that old picture; got up, as you say, on a
+chair to do so.  Wasn't that the freak of an idle man, wandering, he
+hardly knows why, from room to room in an old and deserted house?"
+
+His tormentor did not answer.  Probably his mind was on his next
+line of inquiry.  But Mr. Jeffrey did not take his silence with the
+calmness he had shown prior to the last attack.  As no word came
+from his unwelcome guest, he paused in his rapid pacing and,
+casting aside with one impulsive gesture his hitherto imperfectly
+held restraint, he cried out sharply:
+
+"Why do you ask me these questions in tones of such suspicion?  Is
+it not plain enough that my wife took her own life under a
+misapprehension of my state of mind toward her, that you should feel
+it necessary to rake up these personal matters, which, however
+interesting to the world at large, are of a painful nature to me?"
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey," retorted the other, with a sudden grave assumption of
+dignity not without its effect in a case of such serious import, "we
+do nothing without purpose.  We ask these questions and show this
+interest because the charge of suicide which has hitherto been made
+against your wife is not entirely sustained by the facts.  At least
+she was not alone when she took her life.  Some one was in the house
+with her."
+
+It was startling to observe the effect of this declaration upon him.
+
+"Impossible!" he cried out in a protest as forcible as it was
+agonized.  "You are playing with my misery.  She could have had no
+one there; she would not.  There is not a man living before whom she
+would have fired that deadly shot; unless it was myself,--unless it
+was my own wretched, miserable self."
+
+The remorseful whisper in which those final words were uttered
+carried them to my heart, which for some strange and unaccountable
+reason had been gradually turning toward this man.  But my less
+easily affected companion, seeing his opportunity and possibly
+considering that it was this gentleman's right to know in what a
+doubtful light he stood before the law, remarked with as light a
+touch of irony as was possible:
+
+"You should know better than we in whose presence she would choose
+to die--if she did so choose.  Also who would be likely to tie the
+pistol to her wrist and blow out the candle when the dreadful deed
+was over."
+
+The laugh which seemed to be the only means of violent expression
+remaining to this miserable man was kept down by some amazing thought
+which seemed to paralyze him.  Without making any attempt to refute
+a suggestion that fell just short of a personal accusation, he sank
+down in the first chair he came to and became, as it were, lost in
+the vision of that ghastly ribbon-tying and the solitary blowing out
+of the candle upon this scene of mournful death.  Then with a
+struggling sense of having heard something which called for answer,
+he rose blindly to his feet and managed to let fall these words:
+
+"You are mistaken--no one was there, or if any one was--it was not
+I.  There is a man in this city who can prove it."
+
+But when Mr. Jeffrey was asked to give the name of this man, he
+showed confusion and presently was obliged to admit that he could
+neither recall his name nor remember anything about him, but that
+he was some one whom he knew well, and who knew him well.  He
+affirmed that the two had met and spoken near Soldiers' Home
+shortly after the sun went down, and that the man would be sure
+to remember this meeting if we could only find him.
+
+As Soldiers' Home was several miles from the Moore house and quite
+out of the way of all his accustomed haunts, Coroner Z. asked him
+how he came to be there.  He replied that he had just come from Rock
+Creek Cemetery.  That he had been in a wretched state of mind all
+day, and possibly being influenced by what he had heard of the
+yearly vigils Mr. Moore was in the habit of keeping there, had taken
+a notion to stroll among the graves, in search of the rest and peace
+of mind he had failed to find in his aimless walks about the city.
+At least, that was the way he chose to account for the meeting he
+mentioned.  Falling into reverie again, he seemed to be trying to
+recall the name which at this moment was of such importance to him.
+But it was without avail, as he presently acknowledged.
+
+"I can not remember who it was.  My brain is whirling, and I can
+recollect nothing but that this man and myself left the cemetery
+together on the night mentioned, just as the gate was being closed.
+As it closes at sundown, the hour can be fixed to a minute.  It was
+somewhere near seven, I believe; near enough, I am sure, for it to
+have been impossible for me to be at the Moore house at the time my
+unhappy wife is supposed to have taken her life.  There is no doubt
+about your believing this?" he demanded with sudden haughtiness, as,
+rising to his feet, he confronted us in all the pride of his
+exceptionally handsome person.
+
+"We wish to believe it," assented the coroner, rising in his turn.
+"That our belief may become certainty, will you let us know, the
+instant you recall the name of the man you talked with at the
+cemetery gate?  His testimony, far more than any word of yours, will
+settle this question which otherwise may prove a vexed one."
+
+Mr. Jeffrey's hand went up to his head.  Was he acting a part or
+did he really forget just what it was for his own best welfare to
+remember?  If he had forgotten, it argued that he was in a state of
+greater disturbance on that night than would naturally be occasioned
+by a mere lover's quarrel with his wife.
+
+Did the same thought strike my companion?  I can not say; I can only
+give you his next words.
+
+"You have said that your wife would not be likely to end her life
+in presence of any one but yourself.  Yet you must see that some one
+was with her.  How do you propose to reconcile your assertions with
+a fact so undeniable?"
+
+"I can not reconcile them.  It would madden me to try.  If I thought
+any one was with her at that moment--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey's eyes fell; and a startling change passed over him.
+But before either of us could make out just what this change
+betokened he recovered his aspect of fixed melancholy and quietly
+remarked:
+
+"It is dreadful to think of her standing there alone, aiming a pistol
+at her young, passionate heart; but it is worse to picture her doing
+this under the gaze of unsympathizing eyes.  I can not and will not
+so picture her.  You have been misled by appearances or what in
+police parlance is called a clue."
+
+Evidently he did not mean to admit the possibility of the pistol
+having been fired by any other hand than her own.  This the coroner
+noted.  Bowing with the respect he showed every man before a jury
+had decided upon his guilt, he turned toward the door out of which
+I had already hurried.
+
+"We hope to hear from you in the morning," he called back
+significantly, as he stepped down the stairs.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey did not answer; he was having his first struggle with
+the new and terrible prospect awaiting him at the approaching inquest.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE LAW AND ITS VICTIM
+
+
+
+XI
+
+DETAILS
+
+
+The days of my obscurity were over.  Henceforth, I was regarded as
+a decided factor in this case--a case which from this time on,
+assumed another aspect both at headquarters and in the minds of
+people at large.  The reporters, whom we had hitherto managed to
+hold in check, now overflowed both the coroner's office and police
+headquarters, and articles appeared in all the daily papers with
+just enough suggestion in them to fire the public mind and make me,
+for one, anticipate an immediate word from Mr. Jeffrey calculated
+to establish the alibi he had failed to make out on the day we
+talked with him.  But no such word came.  His memory still played
+him false, and no alternative was left but to pursue the official
+inquiry in the line suggested by the interview just recounted.
+
+No proceeding in which I had ever been engaged interested me as did
+this inquest.  In the first place, the spectators were of a very
+different character from the ordinary.  As I wormed myself along to
+the seat accorded to such witnesses as myself, I brushed by men of
+the very highest station and a few of the lowest; and bent my head
+more than once in response to the inquiring gaze of some fashionable
+lady who never before, I warrant, had found herself in such a scene.
+By the time I reached my place all the others were seated and the
+coroner rapped for order.
+
+I was first to take the stand.  What I said has already been fully
+amplified in the foregoing pages.  Of course, my evidence was
+confined to facts, but some of these facts were new to most of the
+persons there.  It was evident that a considerable effect was
+produced by them, not only on the spectators, but upon the
+witnesses themselves.  For instance, it was the first time that the
+marks on the mantel-shelf had been heard of outside the major's
+office, or the story so told as to make it evident that Mrs. Jeffrey
+could not have been alone in the house at the time of her death.
+
+A photograph had been taken of those marks, and my identification
+of this photograph closed my testimony.
+
+As I returned to my seat I stole a look toward a certain corner
+where, with face bent down upon his hand, Francis Jeffrey sat
+between Uncle David and the heavily-veiled figure of Miss Tuttle.
+Had there dawned upon him as my testimony was given any suspicion of
+the trick by which he had been proved responsible for those marks?
+It was impossible to tell.  From the way Miss Tuttle's head was
+turned toward him, one might judge him to be laboring under an
+emotion of no ordinary character, though he sat like a statue and
+hardly seemed to realize how many eyes were at that moment riveted
+upon his face.
+
+I was followed by other detectives who had been present at the time
+and who corroborated my statement as to the appearance of this
+unhappy woman and the way the pistol had been tied to her arm.  Then
+the doctor who had acted under the coroner was called.  After a long
+and no doubt learned description of the bullet wound which had ended
+the life of this unhappy lady,--a wound which he insisted, with a
+marked display of learning, must have made that end instantaneous or
+at least too immediate for her to move foot or hand after it,--he
+was asked if the body showed any other mark of violence.
+
+To this he replied
+
+"There was a minute wound at the base of one of her fingers, the one
+which is popularly called the wedding finger."
+
+This statement made all the women present start with renewed interest;
+nor was it altogether without point for the men, especially when the
+doctor went on to say:
+
+"The hands were entirely without rings.  As Mrs. Jeffrey had been
+married with a ring, I noticed their absence."
+
+"Was this wound which you characterize as minute a recent one?"
+
+"It had bled a little.  It was an abrasion such as would be made if
+the ring she usually wore there had been drawn off with a jerk.
+That was the impression I received from its appearance.  I do not
+state that it was so made."
+
+A little thrill which went over the audience at the picture this
+evoked communicated itself to Miss Tuttle, who trembled violently.
+It even produced a slight display of emotion in Mr. Jeffrey, whose
+hand shook where he pressed it against his forehead.  But neither
+uttered a sound, nor looked up when the next witness was summoned.
+
+This witness proved to be Loretta, who, on hearing her name called,
+evinced great reluctance to come forward.  But after two or three
+words uttered in her ear by the friendly Jinny, who had been given
+a seat next her, she stepped into the place assigned her with a
+suddenly assumed air of great boldness, which sat upon her with
+scant grace.  She had need of all the boldness at her command, for
+the eyes of all in the room were fixed on her, with the exception
+of the two persons most interested in her testimony.  Scrutiny of
+any kind did not appear to be acceptable to her, if one could read
+the trepidation visible in the short, quick upheavals of the broad
+collar which covered her uneasy breast.  Was this shrinking on her
+part due to natural timidity, or had she failings to avow which,
+while not vitiating her testimony, would certainly cause her shame
+in the presence of so many men and women?  I was not able to decide
+this question immediately; for after the coroner had elicited her
+name and the position she held in Mr. Jeffrey's household he asked
+whether her duties took her into Mrs. Jeffrey's room; upon her
+replying that they did, he further inquired if she knew Mrs.
+Jeffrey's rings, and could say whether they were all to be found
+on that lady's toilet-table after the police came in with news of
+her death.  The answer was decisive.  They were all there, her
+rings and all the other ornaments she was in the daily habit of
+wearing, with the exception of her watch.  That was not there.
+
+"Did you take up those rings?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Did you see any one else take them up?"
+
+"No, sir; not till the officer did so."
+
+"Very well, Loretta, sit down again till we hear what Durbin has to
+say about these rings."
+
+And then the man I hated came forward, and though I shrank from
+acknowledging it even to myself, I could but observe how strong
+and quiet and self-possessed he seemed and how decisive was his
+testimony.  But it was equally brief.  He had taken up the rings
+and he had looked at them; and on one, the wedding-ring, he had
+detected a slight stain of blood.  He had called Mr. Jeffrey's
+attention to it, but that gentleman had made no comment.  This
+remark had the effect of concentrating general attention upon Mr.
+Jeffrey.  But he seemed quite oblivious of it; his attitude remained
+unchanged, and only from the quick stretching out and withdrawal of
+Miss Tuttle's hand could it be seen that anything had been said
+calculated to touch or arouse this man.  The coroner cast an uneasy
+glance in his direction; then he motioned Durbin aside and recalled
+Loretta.
+
+And now I began to be sorry for the girl.  It is hard to have one's
+weaknesses exposed, especially if one is more foolish than wicked.
+But there was no way of letting this girl off without sacrificing
+certain necessary points, and the coroner went relentlessly to work.
+
+"How long have you been in this house?"
+
+"Three weeks.  Ever since Mrs. Jeffrey's wedding day, sir."
+
+"Were you there when she first came as a bride from the Moore house?"
+
+"I was, sir."
+
+"And saw her then for the first time?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How did she look and act that first day?"
+
+"I thought her the gayest bride I had ever seen, then I thought
+her the saddest, and then I did not know what to think.  She was so
+merry one minute and so frightened the next, so full of talk when
+she came running up the steps and so struck with silence the minute
+she got into the parlor, that I set her down as a queer one till
+some one whispered in my ear that she was suffering from a dreadful
+shock; that ill-luck had attended her marriage and much more about
+what had happened from time to time at the Moore house."
+
+"And you believed what was told you?"
+
+"Believed?"
+
+"Believed it well enough to keep a watch on your young mistress to
+see if she were happy or not?"
+
+"Oh, sir!"
+
+"It was but natural," the coroner suavely observed.  "Every one felt
+interested in this marriage.  You watched her of course.  Now what
+was the result?  Did you consider her well and happy?"
+
+The girl's voice sank and she cast a glance at her master which he
+did not lift his head to meet.
+
+"I did not think her happy.  She laughed and sang and was always in
+and out of the rooms like a butterfly, but she did not wear a happy
+look, except now and then when she was seated with Mr. Jeffrey alone.
+Then I have seen her flush in a way to make the heart ache; it was
+such a contrast, sir, to other times when she was by herself or--"
+
+"Or what?"
+
+"Or just with her sister, sir."
+
+The defiance with which this was said added point to what otherwise
+might have been an unimportant admission.  Those who had already
+scrutinized Miss Tuttle with the curiosity of an ill-defined suspicion
+now scrutinized her with a more palpable one, and those who had
+hitherto seen nothing in this heavily-veiled woman but the bereaved
+sister of an irresponsible suicide allowed their looks to dwell
+piercingly on that concealing veil, as if they would be glad to
+penetrate its folds and read in those beautiful features the meaning
+of an allusion uttered with such a sting in the tone.
+
+"You refer to Miss Tuttle?" observed the coroner.
+
+"Mrs. Jeffrey's sister?  Yes, sir."  The menace was gone from the
+voice now, but no one could forget that it had been there.
+
+"Miss Tuttle lived in the house with her sister, did she not?"
+
+"Yes, sir; till that sister died and was buried; then she went away."
+
+The coroner did not pursue this topic, preferring to return to the
+former one.
+
+"So you say that Mrs. Jeffrey showed uneasiness ever since her
+wedding day.  Can you give me any instance of this; mention, I mean,
+any conversations overheard by you which would show us just what you
+mean?"
+
+"I don't like to repeat things I hear.  But if you say that I must,
+I can remember once passing Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey in the hall, just
+as he was saying: 'You take it too much to heart!  I expected a
+happy honeymoon.  Somehow, we have failed--'  That was all I heard,
+sir.  But what made me remember his words was that she was dressed
+for some afternoon reception and looked so charming and so--and so,
+as if she ought to be happier."
+
+"Just so.  Now, when was this?  How long before her death?"
+
+"Oh, a week or so.  It was very soon after the wedding day."
+
+"And did matters seem to improve after that? Did she appear any
+better satisfied or more composed?"
+
+"I think she endeavored to.  But there was something on her mind,
+something which she tried to laugh off; something that annoyed Mr.
+Jeffrey and worried Miss Tuttle; something which caused a cloud in
+the house, for all the dances and dinners and goings and comings.
+I am sorry to speak of it, but it was so."
+
+"Something that showed an unsettled mind?"
+
+"Almost.  The glitter in her eye was not natural; neither was the
+way she looked at her sister and sometimes at her husband."
+
+"Did she talk much about the catastrophe which attended her wedding?
+Did her mind seem to run on that?"
+
+"Incessantly at first; but afterward not so much.  I think Mr.
+Jeffrey frowned on that subject."
+
+"Did he ever frown on her?"
+
+"No, sir--not--not when they were alone or with no one by but me.
+He seemed to love her then very much."
+
+"What do you mean by that, Loretta; that he lost patience with her
+when other people were present--Miss Tuttle, for instance?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  He used to change very much when--when--when Miss
+Tuttle came into the room."
+
+"Change toward his wife?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How?"
+
+"He grew more distant, much more distant; got up quite fretfully
+from his seat, if he were sitting beside her, and took up some
+book or paper."
+
+"And Miss Tuttle?"
+
+"She never seemed to notice but"
+
+"But--?"
+
+"She did not come in very often after this had happened once or
+twice; I mean into the room upstairs where they used to sit."
+
+"Loretta, I regret to put this question, but after your replies I
+owe it to the jury, if not to the parties themselves, to make Miss
+Tuttle's position in this household thoroughly understood.  Do you
+think she was a welcome visitor in this house?"
+
+The girl pursed up her lips, glanced at the lady and gentleman
+whose feelings she was supposed to pass comment on, and seemed to
+lose heart.  Then, as they failed to respond to her look of appeal,
+she strove to get the better of her sense of shame and, with a
+somewhat injured air, replied:
+
+"I can only repeat what I once heard said about this by Mr.
+Jeffrey himself.  Miss Tuttle had just left the diningroom and Mrs.
+Jeffrey was standing in one of her black moods, with her hand on
+the top of her chair, ready to go but forgetting to do so.  I was
+there, but neither of them noticed me; he was staring at her, and
+she was looking down.  Neither seemed at ease.  Suddenly he spoke
+and asked, 'Why must Cora remain with us?'  She started and her
+look grew strange and frightened.  'Because I want her to,' she
+cried.  'I can not live without Cora."'
+
+These words, so different from what we were expecting, caused a
+sensation in the room and consequently a stir.  As the noise of
+shifting feet and moving heads began to be heard in all directions,
+Miss Tuttle's head drooped a little, but Francis Jeffrey did not
+betray any sign of feeling or even of attention.  The coroner,
+embarrassed, perhaps, by this exhibition of silent misery so near
+him, hesitated a little before he put his next question.  Loretta,
+on the contrary, had gathered courage with every word she spoke and
+now looked ready for anything.
+
+"It was Mrs. Jeffrey, then, who clung most determinedly to her
+sister?" the coroner finally suggested.
+
+"I have told you what she said."
+
+"Yet these sisters spent but little time together?"
+
+"Very little; as little as two persons could who lived together
+in one house."
+
+This statement, which seemed such a contradiction to her former one,
+increased the interest; and much disappointment was covertly shown
+when the coroner veered off from this topic and brusquely inquired
+"Did you ever know Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey to have any open rupture?"
+
+The answer was a decided one.
+
+"Yes.  On Tuesday morning preceding her death they had a long and
+angry talk in their own room, after which Mrs. Jeffrey made no
+further effort to conceal her wretchedness.  Indeed, one may say
+she began to die from that hour."
+
+Mrs. Jeffrey's death had occurred on Wednesday evening.
+
+"Let us hear what you have to say about this quarrel and what
+happened after it."
+
+The girl, with a renewed flush, cast a deprecatory look at the mass
+of faces before her, and, meeting on all sides but one look of
+intense and growing interest, drew up her neat figure with a
+relieved air and began a story which I will proceed to transcribe
+for you in the fewest possible words.
+
+Tuesday morning's breakfast had been a silent one.  There had been a
+ball the night before at some great place on Massachusetts Avenue;
+but no one spoke of it.  Miss Tuttle made some remark about a friend
+she had met there, but as no one listened to her, she soon stopped
+and in a little while left the table.  Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey sat on,
+but neither said anything.  Finally Mr. Jeffrey rose and, speaking in
+a voice hardly recognizable, remarked that he had something to say to
+her, and led the way to their room.  Mrs. Jeffrey looked frightened
+as she followed him; so frightened that it was evident that something
+very serious had occurred or was about to occur between them.  As
+nothing of this kind had ever happened before, Loretta could not
+help waiting about till Mr. Jeffrey reappeared; and when he did so
+and she saw no signs of relief in his face or manner, she watched,
+with the silly interest of a girl who had nothing else to occupy her
+mind, to see if he would leave the house in such a mood, and without
+making peace with his young bride.  To her surprise, he did not go
+out at the usual time, but went to Miss Tuttle's room, where for a
+full half-hour he remained closeted with his sister-in-law, talking
+in excited and unnatural tones.  Then he went back for a few minutes
+to where he had left his wife, in her own boudoir.  But he could not
+have had much to say to her this time, for he presently came out
+again and ran hastily downstairs and out, almost without stopping
+to catch up his hat.
+
+As it was Mary's business, and not the witness', to make Mrs.
+Jeffrey's bed in the morning, Loretta could think of no excuse for
+approaching her mistress' room at this moment; but later, when
+letters came, followed by various messages and some visitors, she
+went more than a dozen times to Mrs. Jeffrey's door.  She was not
+admitted, nor were her appeals answered, except by a sharp "Go
+away!"
+
+Nor was Miss Tuttle received any better, though she tried more than
+once to see her sister, especially as night came on and the hour
+approached for Mr. Jeffrey's return.  Mrs. Jeffrey was simply
+determined to remain alone; and when dinner time arrived, and no
+Mr. Jeffrey, she could be induced to open her door only wide enough
+to take in the cup of tea which Miss Tuttle insisted upon sending
+her.
+
+The witness here confessed that she had been very much excited by
+these unusual proceedings and by the effect which they seemed to
+have on the lady just mentioned; so she was ready to notice that
+Mrs. Jeffrey's hand shook like that of an old and palsied woman when
+she reached out for the tray.
+
+Gladly would Loretta have caught one glimpse of her face, but it
+was hidden by the door; nor did Mrs. Jeffrey answer a single one of
+her questions.  She simply closed her door and kept it so till
+toward midnight, when Miss Tuttle, coming into the hall, ordered the
+house to be closed for the night.  Then the long-shut door softly
+swung open, but before any one could reach it, it was again pulled to
+and locked.
+
+The next day brought no relief.  Miss Tuttle, who had changed greatly
+during this unhappy day and night, succeeded no better than before in
+getting access to her sister, nor could Loretta gain the least word
+from her mistress till toward the latter part of the afternoon, when
+that lady, ringing her bell, gave her first order.
+
+"A substantial dinner," she cried; and when Loretta, greatly relieved,
+brought up the required meal she was astonished to find the door open
+and herself bidden to enter.  The sight which met her eyes staggered
+her.  From one end of the room to the other were signs of great
+nervous unrest and of terrible suffering.  The chairs were pushed
+into corners as if the wretched bride had tramped the floor in an
+agony of excitement.  Curtains were torn and the piano-cover was
+hanging half on and half off the open upright, as if she had clutched
+at it to keep herself from falling.  On the floor beneath lay several
+pieces of broken china,--vases of whose value Mrs. Jeffrey had often
+spoken, but which, jerked off with the cover, had been left where
+they fell; while immediately in front of the fireplace lay one of
+the rugs tossed into a heap, as if she had rolled in it on the floor
+or used it to smother her cries of pain or anger.
+
+So much for the state in which the witness found the boudoir.  The
+adjoining bed-room was not in much better case, though it was evident
+that the bed itself had not been lain in since it was made up the
+day before at breakfast time.  By this token Mrs. Jeffrey had not
+slept the night before, or if she had laid her head anywhere it had
+been on the rug already spoken of.
+
+These signs of extreme mental suffering, so much more extreme than
+any Loretta had ever before witnessed, frightened her so that the
+tray shook in her hand as she set it down on the table among the
+countless objects Mrs. Jeffrey always had about her.  The noise
+seemed to startle her mistress, who had walked to the window after
+opening the door, for she wheeled impetuously about and Loretta saw
+her face.  It was as if a blight had passed over it.  Once gay and
+animated beyond the power of any one to describe, it had become in
+twenty-four hours a ghost's face, with the glare of some awful
+resolve on it.  Or so it would appear from the way Loretta described
+it.  But such girls do not always see correctly, and perhaps all
+that can be safely stated is that Mrs. Jeffrey was unnaturally pale
+and had lost her butterfly-like way of incessant movement.
+
+Loretta, who was evidently accustomed to seeing her mistress arrayed
+in brilliant colors and much begemmed, laid great stress on the fact
+that, though it was on the verge of evening and she was evidently
+going out, she was dressed in black cloth and without even a diamond
+or a flower to relieve its severe simplicity.  Her hair, too, which
+was always her pride, was piled in a careless mass upon her head as
+if she had tried to arrange it herself and had forgotten what she
+was doing while her fingers were but half through their work.  There
+was a cloak lying on a chair near which she was standing, and she
+held a hat in her band; but Loretta saw no gloves.  As the maid's
+glance and that of her mistress crossed, Mrs. Jeffrey spoke, and the
+effort she made in doing so naturally frightened the girl still
+more.  "I am going out," were her words.  "I may not be home till
+late--What are you looking at?"
+
+Loretta declared that the words took her by surprise and that she
+did not know what to say, but managed to cover up her embarrassment
+by intimating that if her mistress would let her touch up her hair
+a bit she would make her look more natural.
+
+At this suggestion, Mrs. Jeffrey cast a glance in the glass and
+impetuously declared, "It doesn't matter."  But she seemed to think
+better of it the next minute; for, throwing herself in a chair, she
+bade the girl to bring a comb, and sat quiet enough, though evidently
+in a great tremor of haste and impatience, while Loretta combed her
+hair and put it up in the old way.
+
+But the old way was not as becoming as usual, and Loretta was
+wondering if she ought to call in Miss Tuttle, when Mrs. Jeffrey
+jumped to her feet and went over to the table and began to eat with
+the feverish haste of one who forces himself to take food in spite
+of hurry and distaste.
+
+This was the moment for Loretta to leave the room; but she did not
+know how to do so.  She felt herself fixed to the spot and stood
+watching Mrs. Jeffrey till that lady, suddenly becoming conscious
+of the girl's presence, turned, and in the midst of the moans which
+broke unconsciously from her lips, said with a pitiable effort at
+her old manner:
+
+"Go away, Loretta; I am ill; have been ill for two days.  I don't
+like people to look at me like that!"  Then, as the girl shrank
+back, added in a breaking voice: "When Mr. Jeffrey comes home--" and
+said no more for several minutes, during which she clutched her
+throat with both hands and struggled with herself till she got her
+voice back and found herself able to repeat: "When Mr. Jeffrey
+comes,--if he does come,--tell him that I was right about the way that
+novel ended.  Remember that you are to say to him the moment you
+see him that I was right about the novel, and that he is to look and
+see if it did not end as I said it would.  And Loretta--" here she
+rose and approached the speaker with a sweet, appealing look which
+brought tears to the impressionable girl's eyes, "don't go gossiping
+about me downstairs.  I sha'n't be sick long.  I am going to be
+better soon, very soon.  By the time you see me here again I shall
+be quite like my old self.  Forget how--how"--and Loretta said she
+seemed to have difficulty in finding the right word here--"how
+childish I have been."
+
+Of course Loretta promised, but she is not sure that she would have
+had the courage to keep all this to herself if she had not heard
+Mrs. Jeffrey stop in Miss Tuttle's room on her way out.  That
+relieved her, and enabled her to go downstairs to her own supper
+with more appetite than she had thought ever to have again.  Alas!
+it was the last good meal she was able to eat for days.  In three
+hours afterward a man came from the station house with the news of
+Mrs. Jeffrey's suicide in the horrible old house in which she had
+been married only two weeks before.
+
+As this had been a continuous narrative and concisely told, the
+coroner had not interrupted her.  When at this point a little gasp
+escaped Miss Tuttle and a groan broke from Francis Jeffrey's
+hitherto sealed lips, the feelings of the whole assemblage seemed
+to find utterance.  A young wife's misery culminating in death on
+the very spot where she had been so lately married!  What could be
+more thrilling, or appeal more closely to the general heart of
+humanity?  But the cause of that misery!  This was what every one
+present was eager to have explained.  This is what we now expected
+the coroner to bring out.  But instead of continuing on the line he
+had opened up, he proceeded to ask:
+
+"Where were you when this officer brought the news you mention?"
+
+"In the hall, sir.  I opened the door for him."
+
+"And to whom did he first mention his errand?"
+
+"To Miss Tuttle.  She had come in just before him and was standing
+at the foot of the stairs."
+
+"What!  Was Miss Tuttle out that evening?"
+
+"Yes; she went out very soon after Mrs. Jeffrey left.  When she
+came in she said that she had been around the block, but she must
+have gone around it more than once, for she was absent two hours."
+
+"Did you let her in?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And she said she had been around the block?"
+
+"Yes, sir"
+
+"Did she say anything else?"
+
+"She asked if Mr. Jeffrey had come in"
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"Then if Mrs. Jeffrey had returned."
+
+"To both of which questions you answered--"
+
+"A plain 'No.'"
+
+"Now tell us about the officer."
+
+"He rang the bell almost immediately after she did.  Thinking she
+would want to slip upstairs before I admitted any one, I waited a
+minute for her to go, but she did not do so, and when the officer
+stepped in she--"
+
+"Well!"
+
+"She shrieked."
+
+"What!  before he spoke?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Just at sight of him?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Did he wear his badge in plain view?"
+
+"Yes, on his breast."
+
+"So that you knew him to be a police officer?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And Miss Tuttle shrieked at seeing a police officer?"
+
+"Yes, and sprang forward."
+
+"Did she say anything?"
+
+"Not then."
+
+"What did she do?"
+
+"Waited for him to speak."
+
+"Which he did?"
+
+"At once, and very brutally.  He asked if she was Mrs. Jeffrey's
+sister, and when she nodded and gasped 'Yes,' he blurted out that
+Mrs. Jeffrey was dead; that he had just come from the old house in
+Waverley Avenue, where she had just been found."
+
+"And Miss Tuttle?"
+
+"Didn't know what to say; just hid her face.  She was leaning
+against the newel-post, so it was easy for her to do so.  I remember
+that the man stared at her for taking it so quietly and asking no
+questions."
+
+"And did she speak at all?"
+
+"Oh, yes, afterwards.  Her face was wrapped in the folds of her
+cloak, but I heard her whisper, as if to herself: 'No!  no!  That
+old hearth is not a lodestone.  She can not have fallen there.'
+And then she looked up quite wildly and cried: 'There is something
+more!  Something which you have not told me.' 'She shot herself,
+if that's what you mean.'  Miss Tuttle's arms went straight up over
+her head.  It was awful to see her.  'Shot herself?' she gasped.
+'Oh, Veronica, Veronica!'  'With a pistol,' he went on--I suppose
+he was going to say, 'tied to her wrist,' but he never got it out,
+for Miss Tuttle, at the word 'pistol' clapped her hands to her ears
+and for a moment looked quite distracted, so that he thought better
+of worrying her any more and only demanded to know if Mr. Jeffrey
+kept any such weapon.  Miss Tuttle's face grew very strange at this.
+'Mr. Jeffrey!  was he there?' she asked.  The man looked surprised.
+'They are searching for Mr. Jeffrey,' he replied.  'Isn't he here?
+'No,' came both from her lips and mine.  The man acted very
+impertinently.  'You haven't told me whether a pistol was kept here
+or not,' said he.  Miss Tuttle tried to compose herself, but I saw
+that I should have to speak if any one did, so I told him that Mr.
+Jeffrey did have a pistol, which he kept in one of his bureau
+drawers.  But when the officer wanted Miss Tuttle to go up and see
+if it was there, she shook her head and made for the front door,
+saying that she must be taken directly to her sister."
+
+"And did no one go up?  Was no attempt made to see if the pistol
+was or was not in the drawer?"
+
+"Yes; the officer went up with me.  I pointed out the place where
+it was kept, and he rummaged all through it, but found no pistol.
+I didn't expect him to--"  Here the witness paused and bit her lip,
+adding confusedly: "Mrs. Jeffrey had taken it, you see."
+
+The jurors, who sat very much in the shadow, had up to this point
+attracted but little attention.  But now they began to make their
+presence felt, perhaps because the break in the witness' words had
+been accompanied by a sly look at Jinny.  Possibly warned by this
+that something lay back of this hitherto timid witness' sudden
+volubility, one of them now spoke up.
+
+"In what room did you say this pistol was kept?"
+
+"In Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey's bed-room, sir; the room opening out of
+the sitting-room where Mrs. Jeffrey had kept herself shut up all
+day."
+
+"Does this bed-room of which you speak communicate with the hall as
+well as with the sitting room?"
+
+"No, sir; it is the defect of the house.  Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey often
+spoke of it as a great annoyance.  You had to pass through the little
+boudoir in order to reach it."
+
+The juryman sank back, evidently satisfied with her replies, but we
+who marked the visible excitement with which the witness had answered
+this seemingly unimportant question, wondered what special interest
+surrounded that room and the pistol to warrant the heightened color
+with which the girl answered this new interlocutor.  We were not
+destined to know at this time, for the coroner, when he spoke again,
+pursued a different subject.
+
+"How long was this before Mr. Jeffrey came in."
+
+"Only a few minutes.  I was terribly frightened at being left there
+alone and was on my way to ask one of the other girls to come up and
+stay with me, when I heard his key in the lock and came back.  He had
+entered the house and was standing near the door talking to an
+officer, who had evidently come in with him.  It was a different
+officer from the one who had gone away with Miss Tuttle.  Mr. Jeffrey
+was saying, 'What's that?  My wife hurt!' 'Dead, sir!' blurted out
+the man.  I had expected to see Mr. Jeffrey terribly shocked, but
+not in so awful a way.  It really frightened me to see him and I
+turned to run, but found that I couldn't and that I had to stand
+still and look whether I wanted to or not.  Yet he didn't say a word
+or ask a question."
+
+"What did he do, Loretta?"
+
+"I can not say; he was on his knees and was white--Oh, how white!
+Yet he looked up when the man described how and where Mrs. Jeffrey,
+had been found and even turned toward me when I said something
+about his wife having left a message for him when she went out.
+This message, which I almost hesitated to give after the awful news
+of her death, was about the ending of some story, as you remember,
+and it seemed heartless to speak of it at a moment like this, but
+as she had told me to, I didn't dare to disobey her.  So, with the
+man listening to my every word, and Mr. Jeffrey looking as if he
+would fall to the ground before I could finish, I repeated her
+words to him and was surprised enough when he suddenly started
+upright and went flying upstairs.  But I was more surprised yet
+when, at the top of the first flight, he stopped and, looking over
+the balustrade, asked in a very strange voice where Miss Tuttle
+was.  For he seemed just then to want her more than anything else
+in the world and looked beaten and wild when I told him that she
+was already gone to Waverley Avenue.  But he recovered himself
+before the man could draw near enough to see his face, and rushed
+into the sitting-room above and shut the door behind him, leaving
+the officer and me standing down by the front door.  As I didn't
+know what to say to a man like him, and he didn't know what to
+say to me, the time seemed long, but it couldn't have been very
+many minutes before Mr. Jeffrey came back with a slip of paper
+in his hand and a very much relieved look on his face.  'The deed
+was premeditated,' he cried.  'My unfortunate wife has misunderstood
+my affection for her.'  And from being a very much broken-down man,
+he stood up straight and tall and prepared himself very quietly to
+go to the Moore house.  That is all I can tell about the way the
+news was received by him."
+
+Were these details necessary?  Many appeared to regard them as
+futile and uncalled for.  But Coroner Z. was never known to waste
+time on trivialities, and if he called for these facts, those who
+knew him best felt certain that they were meant as a preparation for
+Mr. Jeffrey's testimony, which was now called for.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THRUST AND PARRY
+
+
+When Francis Jeffrey's hand fell from his forehead and he turned to
+face the assembled people, an instinctive compassion arose in every
+breast at sight of his face, which, if not open in its expression,
+was at least surcharged with the deepest misery.  In a flash the
+scene took on new meaning.  Many remembered that less than a month
+before his eye had been joyous and his figure a conspicuous one
+among the favored sons of fortune.  And now he stood in sight of a
+crowd, drawn together mainly by curiosity, to explain as best he
+might why this great happiness and hope had come to a sudden
+termination, and his bride of a fortnight had sought death rather
+than continue to live under the same roof with him.
+
+So much for what I saw on the faces about me.  What my own face
+revealed I can not say.  I only know that I strove to preserve an
+impassive exterior.  If I secretly held this man's misery to be a
+mask hiding untold passions and the darkness of an unimaginable
+deed, it was not for me to disclose in this presence either my
+suspicions or my fears.  To me, as to those about me, he apparently
+was a man who at some sacrifice to his pride, would, yet be able
+to explain whatever seemed dubious in the mysterious case in which
+he had become involved.
+
+His wife's uncle, who to all appearance shared the general curiosity
+as to the effect which this woeful tragedy had had upon his niece's
+most interested survivor, eyed with a certain cold interest,
+eminently in keeping with his general character, the pallid forehead,
+sunken eyes and nervously trembling lip of the once "handsome
+Jeffrey" till that gentleman, rousing from his depression, manifested
+a realization of what was required of hire and turned with a bow
+toward the coroner.
+
+Miss Tuttle settled into a greater rigidity.  I pass over the
+preliminary examination of this important witness and proceed at once
+to the point when the coroner, holding out the two or three lines
+of writing which Mr. Jeffrey had declared to have been left him by
+his wife, asked:
+
+"Are these words in your wife's handwriting?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey replied hastily, and, with just a glance at the paper
+offered him:
+
+"They are."
+
+The coroner pressed the slip upon him.
+
+"Look at them carefully," he urged.  "The handwriting shows hurry
+and in places is scarcely legible.  Are you ready to swear that
+these words were written by your wife and by no other?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey, with just a slight contraction of his brow expressive
+of annoyance, did as he was bid.  He scanned, or appeared to scan,
+the small scrap of paper which he now took into his own hand.
+
+"It is my wife's writing," he impatiently declared.  "Written, as all
+can see, under great agitation of mind, but hers without any doubt."
+
+"Will you read aloud these words for our benefit?" asked the coroner:
+
+It was a cruel request, causing an instinctive protest from the
+spectators.  But no protest disturbed Coroner Z.  He had his reasons,
+no doubt, for thus trying this witness, and when Coroner Z. had
+reason for anything it took more than the displeasure of the crowd
+to deter him.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey, who had subdued whatever indignation he may have felt
+at this unmistakable proof of the coroner's intention to have his
+own way with him whatever the cost to his sensitiveness or pride,
+obeyed the latter's command in firmer tones than I expected.
+
+The lines he was thus called upon to read may bear repetition:
+
+"I find that I do not love you as I thought.  I can not live knowing
+this to be so.  Pray God you may forgive me!
+
+VERONICA."
+
+
+As the last word fell with a little tremble from Mr. Jeffrey's lips,
+the coroner repeated:
+
+"You still think these words were addressed to you by your wife;
+that in short they contain an explanation of her death?"
+
+"I do."
+
+There was sharpness in the tone.  Mr. Jeffrey was feeling the prick.
+There was agitation in it, too; an agitation he was trying hard to
+keep down.
+
+"You have reason, then," persisted the coroner, "for accepting this
+peculiar explanation of your wife's death; a death which, in the
+judgment of most people, was of a nature to call for the strongest
+provocation possible."
+
+"My wife was not herself.  My wife was in an over strained and
+suffering condition.  For one so nervously overwrought many
+allowances must be made.  She may have been conscious of not
+responding fully to my affection.  That this feeling was strong
+enough to induce her to take her life is a source of unspeakable
+grief to me, but one for which you must find explanation, as I have
+so often said, in the terrors caused by the dread event at the
+Moore house, which recalled old tragedies and emphasized a most
+unhappy family tradition."
+
+The coroner paused a moment to let these words sink into the ears
+of the jury, then plunged immediately into what might be called the
+offensive part of his examination.
+
+"Why, if your wife's death caused you such intense grief, did you
+appear so relieved at receiving this by no means consoling
+explanation?"
+
+At an implication so unmistakably suggestive of suspicion Mr.
+Jeffrey showed fire for the first time.
+
+"Whose word have you for that?  A servant's, so newly come into my
+house that her very features are still strange to me.  You must
+acknowledge that a person of such marked inexperience can hardly be
+thought to know me or to interpret rightly the feelings of my heart
+by any passing look she may have surprised upon my face."
+
+This attitude of defiance so suddenly assumed had an effect he
+little realized.  Miss Tuttle stirred for the first time behind her
+veil, and Uncle David, from looking bored, became suddenly quite
+attentive.  These two but mirrored the feelings of the general
+crowd, and mine especially.
+
+"We do not depend on her judgment alone," the coroner now remarked.
+"The change in you was apparent to many others.  This we can prove
+to the jury if they require it."
+
+But no man lifting a voice from that gravely attentive body, the
+coroner proceeded to inquire if Mr. Jeffrey felt like volunteering
+any explanations on this head.  Receiving no answer from him either,
+he dropped the suggestive line of inquiry and took up the
+consideration of facts.  The first question he now put was:
+
+"Where did you find the slip of paper containing these last words
+from your wife?"
+
+"In a book I picked out of the book-shelf in our room upstairs.
+When Loretta gave me my wife's message I knew that I should find
+some word from her in the novel we had just been reading.  As we had
+been interested in but one book since our marriage, there was no
+possibility of my making an' mistake as to which one she referred."
+
+"Will you give us the name of this novel?"
+
+"COMPENSATION."
+
+"And you found this book called COMPENSATION in your room upstairs?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"On the book-shelf?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where does this book-shelf stand?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey looked up as much as to say, "Why so many small questions
+about so simple a matter?" but answered frankly enough:
+
+"At the right of the door leading into the bedroom."
+
+"And at right angles to the door leading into the hall?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very good.  Now may I ask you to describe the cover of this book?"
+
+"The cover?  I never noticed the cover.  Why do you--.  Excuse me,
+I suppose you have your reasons for asking even these puerile and
+seemingly unnecessary questions.  The cover is a queer one I believe;
+partly red and partly green; and that is all I know about it."
+
+"Is this the book?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey glanced at the volume the coroner held up before him.
+
+"I believe so; it looks like it."
+
+The book had a flaming cover, quite unmistakable in its character.
+
+"The title shows it to be the same," remarked the coroner.  "Is this
+the only book with a cover of this kind in the house?"
+
+"The only one, I should say."
+
+The coroner laid down the book.
+
+"Enough of this, then, for the present; only let the jury remember
+that the cover of this book is peculiar and that it was kept on a
+shelf at the right of the opening leading into the adjoining
+bed-room.  And now, Mr. Jeffrey, we must ask you to look at these
+rings; or, rather, at this one.  You have seen it before; it is the
+one you placed on Mrs. Jeffrey's hand when you were married to her
+a little over a fortnight ago.  You recognize it?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Do you also recognize this small mark of blood on it as having been
+here when it was shown to you by the detective on your return from
+seeing her dead body at the Moore house?"
+
+"I do; yes."
+
+"How do you account for that spot and the slight injury made to her
+finger?  Should you not say that the ring had been dragged from her
+hand?"
+
+"I should."
+
+"By whom was it dragged?  By you?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"By herself, then?"
+
+"It would seem so."
+
+"Much passion must have been in that act.  Do you think that any
+ordinary quarrel between husband and wife would account for the
+display of such fury?  Are we not right in supposing a deeper cause
+for the disturbance between you than the slight one you offer in
+way of explanation?"
+
+An inaudible answer; then a sudden straightening of Francis Jeffrey's
+fine figure.  And that was all.
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey, in the talk you had with your wife on Tuesday morning
+was Miss Tuttle's name introduced?"
+
+"It was mentioned; yes, sir."
+
+"With recrimination or any display of passion on the part of your
+wife?"
+
+"You would not believe me if I said no," was the unexpected rejoinder.
+
+The coroner, taken aback by this direct attack from one who had
+hitherto borne all his innuendoes with apparent patience, lost
+countenance for a moment, but, remembering that in his official
+capacity he was more than a match for the elegant gentleman, who
+under other circumstances would have found it only too easy to put
+him to the blush, he observed with dignity:
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey, you are on oath.  We certainly have no reason for not
+believing you."
+
+Mr. Jeffrey bowed.  He was probably sorry for his momentary loss
+of self-control, and gravely, but with eyes bent downward, answered
+with the abrupt phrase:
+
+"Well, then, I will say no."
+
+The coroner shifted his ground.
+
+"Will you make the same reply when I ask if the like forbearance
+was shown toward your wife's name in the conversation you had with
+Miss Tuttle immediately afterward?"
+
+A halt in the eagerly looked-for reply; a hesitation, momentary
+indeed, but pregnant with nameless suggestions, caused his answer,
+when it did come, to lose some of the emphasis he manifestly wished
+to put into it.
+
+"Miss Tuttle was Mrs. Jeffrey's half-sister.  The bond between them
+was strong.  Would she would I--be apt to speak of my young wife
+with bitterness?"
+
+"That is not an answer to my question, Mr. Jeffrey.  I must request
+a more positive reply."
+
+Miss Tuttle made a move.  The strain on all present was so great we
+could but notice it.  He noticed it too, for his brows came together
+with a quick frown, as he emphatically replied:
+
+"There were no recriminations uttered.  Mrs. Jeffrey had displeased
+me and I said so, but I did not forget that I was speaking of my
+wife and to her sister."
+
+As this was in the highest degree non-committal, the coroner could
+be excused for persisting.
+
+"The conversation, then, was about your wife?"
+
+"It was."
+
+"In criticism of her conduct?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"At the ambassador's ball?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Mr. Jeffrey was a poor hand at lying.  That last "yes" came with
+great effort.
+
+The coroner waited, possibly for the echo of this last "yes" to
+cease; then he remarked with a coldness which lifted at once the
+veil from his hitherto well disguised antagonism to this witness.
+
+"If you will recount to us anything which your wife said or did on
+that evening which, in your mind, was worthy of all this coil, it
+might help us to understand the situation."
+
+But the witness made no attempt to do so, and while many of us were
+ready to pardon him this show of delicacy, others felt that under
+the circumstances it would have been better had he been more open.
+
+Among the latter was the coroner himself, who, from this moment,
+threw aside all hesitation and urged forward his inquiries in a way
+to press the witness closer and closer toward the net he was secretly
+holding out for him.  First, he obliged him to say that his
+conversation with Miss Tuttle had not tended to smooth matters; that
+no reconciliation with his wife had followed it, and that in the
+thirty-six hours which elapsed before he returned home again he had
+made no attempt to soothe the feelings of one, who, according to his
+own story, he considered hardly responsible for any extravagances
+in which she might have indulged.  Then when this inconsistency had
+been given time to sink into the minds of the jury, Coroner Z.
+increased the effect produced by confronting Jeffrey with witnesses
+who testified to the friendly, if not lover-like relations which had
+existed between himself and Miss Tuttle prior to the appearance of
+his wife upon the scene; closing with a question which brought out
+the denial, by no means new, that an engagement had ever taken place
+between him and Miss Tuttle and hence that a bond had been canceled
+by his marriage with Miss Moore.
+
+But his manner and careful choice of words in making this denial
+did not satisfy those present of his entire candor; especially as
+Miss Tuttle, for all her apparent immobility, showed, by the violent
+locking of her hands, both her anxiety and the suffering she was
+undergoing during this painful examination.  Was the suffering merely
+one of outraged delicacy?  We felt justified in doubting it, and
+looked forward, with cruel curiosity I admit, to the moment when
+this renowned and universally admired beauty would be called on to
+throw aside her veil axed reveal the highly praised features which
+had been so openly scorned for the sake of one whose chief claims
+to regard lay in her great wealth.
+
+But this moment was as yet far distant.  The coroner was a man of
+method, and his plan was now to prove, as had been apparent to most
+of us from the first, that the assumption of suicide on the part of
+Mrs. Jeffrey was open to doubt.  The communication suggesting such
+an end to her troubles was the strongest proof Mr. Jeffrey could
+bring forward that her death had been the result of her own act.
+Consequently it was now the coroner's business to show that this
+communication was either a forgery, or a substitution, and that if
+she left some word in the book to which she had in so peculiar a
+manner directed his attention, it was not necessarily the one
+bewailing her absence of love for him and her consequent intention
+of seeking relief from her disappointment in death.
+
+Some hint of what the coroner contemplated had already escaped him
+in the persistent and seemingly inconsequent questions to which he
+had subjected this witness in reference to these very matters.  But
+the time had now come for a more direct attack, and the interest
+rose correspondingly high, when the coroner, lifting again to sight
+the scrap of paper containing the few piteous lines so often quoted,
+asked of the now anxious and agitated witness, if he had ever
+noticed any similarity between the handwriting of his wife and that
+of Miss Tuttle.
+
+An indignant "No!" was about to pass his lips, when he suddenly
+checked himself and said more mildly: "There may have been a
+similarity; I hardly know, I have seen too little of Miss Tuttle's
+hand to judge."
+
+This occasioned a diversion.  Specimens of Miss Tuttle's handwriting
+were produced, which, after having been duly proved, were passed
+down to the jury along with the communication professedly signed by
+Mrs. Jeffrey.  The grunts of astonishment which ensued as the knowing
+heads drew near over these several papers caused Mr. Jeffrey to
+flush and finally to cry out with startling emphasis:
+
+"I know that those words were written by my wife."
+
+But when the coroner asked him his reasons for this conviction, he
+could, or would not state them.
+
+"I have said," he stolidly repeated; and that was all.
+
+The coroner made no comment, but when, after some further inquiry,
+which added little to the general knowledge, he dismissed Mr.
+Jeffrey and recalled Loretta, there was that in his tone which warned
+us that the really serious portion of the day's examination was about
+to begin.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+CHIEFLY THRUST
+
+
+The appearance of this witness had undergone a change since she
+last stood before us.  She was shame-faced still, but her manner
+showed resolve and a feverish determination to face the situation
+which could but awaken in the breasts of those who had Mr. Jeffrey's
+honor and personal welfare at heart a nameless dread; as if they
+already foresaw the dark shadow which minute by minute was slowly
+sinking over a household which, up to a week ago, had been the envy
+and admiration of all Washington society.
+
+The first answer she made revealed both the cause of her shame and
+the reason of her firmness.  It was in response to the question
+whether she, Loretta, had seen Miss Tuttle before she went out on
+the walk she was said to have taken immediately after Mrs. Jeffrey's
+final departure from the house.
+
+Her words were these
+
+"I did sir.  I do not think Miss Tuttle knows it, but I saw her in
+Mrs. Jeffrey's room."
+
+The emphatic tone, offering such a contrast to her former manner of
+speech, might have drawn all eyes to the speaker had not the person
+she mentioned offered a still more interesting subject to the general
+curiosity.  As it was, all glances flew to that silent and seemingly
+impassive figure upon which all open suggestions and covert innuendo
+had hitherto fallen without creating more than a pressure of her
+interlaced fingers.  This direct attack, possibly the most
+threatening she had received, appeared to produce no more effect
+upon her than the others; less, perhaps, for no stir was visible in
+her now, and to some eyes she hardly seemed to breathe.
+
+Curiosity, thus baffled, led the gaze on to Mr. Jeffrey, and even
+to Uncle David; but the former had dropped his head again upon his
+hand, and the other--well, there was little to observe in Mr. Moore
+at any time, save the immense satisfaction he seemed to take in
+himself; so attention returned to the witness, who, by this time,
+had entered upon a consecutive tale.
+
+As near as I can remember, these are the words with which she
+prefaced it:
+
+"I am not especially proud of what I did that night, but I was led
+into it by degrees, and I am sure I beg the lady's pardon."  And
+then she went on to relate how, after she had seen Mrs. Jeffrey
+leave the house, she went into her room with the intention of putting
+it to rights.  As this was no more than her duty, no fault could be
+found with her; but she owned that when she had finished this task
+and removed all evidence of Mrs. Jeffrey's frenzied condition, she
+had no business to linger at the table turning over the letters she
+found lying there.
+
+Here the coroner stopped her and made some inquiries in regard to
+these letters, but as they seemed to be ordinary epistles from
+friends and quite foreign to the investigation, he allowed her to
+proceed.
+
+Her cheeks were burning now, for she had found herself obliged to
+admit that she had read enough of these letters to be sure that they
+had no reference to the quarrel then pending between her mistress
+and Mr. Jeffrey.  Her eyes fell and she looked seriously distressed
+as she went on to say that she was as conscious then as now of
+having no business with these papers; so conscious, indeed, that
+when she heard Miss Tuttle's step at the door, her one idea was to
+hide herself.
+
+That she could stand and face that lady never so much as occurred
+to her.  Her own guilty consciousness made her cheeks too hot for
+her to wish to meet an eye which had never rested on her any too
+kindly; so noticing how straight the curtains fell over one of the
+windows on the opposite side of the room, she dashed toward it and
+slipped in out of sight just as Miss Tuttle came in.  This window
+was one seldom used, owing to the fact that it overlooked an
+adjoining wall, so she had no fear of Miss Tuttle's approaching it.
+Consequently, she could stand there quite at her ease, and, as the
+curtains in falling behind her had not come quite together, she
+really could not help seeing just what that lady did.
+
+Here the witness paused with every appearance of looking for some
+token of disapprobation from the crowd.
+
+But she encountered nothing there but eager anxiety for her to
+proceed, so without waiting for the coroner's question, she added
+in so many words:
+
+"She went first to the book-shelves"
+
+We had expected it; but yet a general movement took place, and a
+few suppressed exclamations could be heard.
+
+"And what did she do there?"
+
+"Took down a book, after looking carefully up and down the shelves."
+
+"What color of book?"
+
+"A green one with red figures on it.  I could see the cover plainly
+as she took it down."
+
+"Like this one?"
+
+"Exactly like that one."
+
+"And what did she do with this book?"
+
+"Opened it, but not to read it.  She was too quick in closing it
+for that."
+
+"Did she take the book away?"
+
+"No; she put it back on the shelf."
+
+"After opening and closing it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Did you see whether she put anything into the book?"
+
+"I can not swear that she did; but then her back was to me, and I
+could not have seen it if she had."
+
+The implied suggestion caused some excitement, but the coroner,
+frowning on this, pressed the girl to continue, asking if Miss
+Tuttle left the room immediately after turning from the book-shelves.
+Loretta replied no; that, on the contrary, she stood for some minutes
+near them, gazing, in what seemed like a great distress of mind,
+straight upon the floor; after which she moved in an agitated way
+and with more than one anxious look behind her into the adjoining
+room where she paused before a large bureau.  As this bureau was
+devoted entirely to Mr. Jeffrey's use, Loretta experienced some
+surprise at seeing his wife's sister approach it in so stealthy a
+manner.  Consequently she was watching with all her might, when
+this young lady opened the upper drawer and, with very evident
+emotion, thrust her hand into it.
+
+What she took out, or whether she took out anything, this spy upon
+her movements could not say, for when Loretta heard the drawer being
+pushed back into place she drew the curtains close, perceiving that
+Miss Tuttle would have to face this window in coming back.  However,
+she ventured upon one other peep through them just as that lady was
+leaving the room, and remembered as if it were yesterday how
+clay-white her face looked, and how she held her left hand pressed
+close against the folds of her dress.  It was but a few minutes after
+this that Miss Tuttle left the house.
+
+As we all knew what was kept in that drawer, the conclusion was
+obvious.  Whatever excuse Miss Tuttle might give for going into her
+sister's room at this time, but one thought, one fear, or possibly
+one hope, could have taken her to Mr. Jeffrey's private drawer.  She
+wished to see if his pistol was still there, or if it had been taken
+away by her sister,--a revelation of the extreme point to which her
+thoughts had flown at this crisis, and one which effectually
+contradicted her former statement that she had been conscious of no
+alarm in behalf of her sister and had seen her leave the house
+without dread or suspicion of evil.
+
+The temerity which had made it possible to associate the name of
+such a man as Francis Jeffrey with an outrageous crime having been
+thus in a measure explained, the coroner recalled that gentleman and
+again thoroughly surprised the gaping public.
+
+Had the witness accompanied his wife to the Moore house?
+
+"No"
+
+Had he met her there by any appointment he had made with her or
+which had been made for them both by some third person?
+
+"No"
+
+Had he been at the Moore house on the night of the eleventh at any
+time previous to the hour when he was brought there by the officials?
+
+"No."
+
+Would he glance at this impression of certain finger-tips which had
+been left in the dust of the southwest chamber mantel?
+
+He had already noted them.
+
+Now would he place his left hand on the paper and see--
+
+"It is not necessary," he burst forth, in great heat.  "I own to
+those marks.  That is, I have no doubt they were made by my hand"
+Here, unconsciously, his eyes flew to the member thus referred to,
+as if conscious that in some way it had proved a traitor to him;
+after which his gaze traveled slowly my way, with an indescribable
+question in it which roused my conscience and made the trick by
+which I had got the impression of his hand seem less of a triumph
+than I had heretofore considered it.  The next minute he was
+answering the coroner under oath, very much as he had answered him
+in the unofficial interview at which I had been present.
+
+"I acknowledge having been in the Moore house and even having been
+in its southwest chamber, but not at the time supposed.  It was on
+the previous night."  He went on to relate how, being in a nervous
+condition and having the key to this old dwelling in his pocket, he
+had amused himself by going through its dilapidated interior.  All
+of this made a doubtful impression which was greatly emphasized
+when, in reply to the inquiry as to where he got the light to see
+by, he admitted that he had come upon a candle in an upstairs room
+and made use of that; though he could not remember what he had done
+with this candle afterward, and looked dazed and quite at sea, till
+the coroner suggested that he might have carried it into the closet
+of the room where his fingers had left their impression in the dust
+of the mantel-shelf.  Then he broke down like a man from whom some
+prop is suddenly snatched and looked around for a seat.  This was
+given him, while a silence, the most dreadful I ever experienced,
+held every one there in check.  But he speedily rallied and, with
+the remark that he was a little confused in regard to the incidents
+of that night, waited with a wild look in his averted eye for the
+coroner's next question.
+
+Unhappily for him it was in continuation of the same subject.  Had
+he bought candles or not at the grocer's around the corner?  Yes, he
+had.  Before visiting the house?  Yes.  Had he also bought matches?
+Yes.  What kind?  Common safety matches.  Had he noticed when he got
+home that the box he had just bought was half empty?  No.
+Nevertheless he had used many matches in going through this old
+house, had he not?  Possibly.  To light his way upstairs, perhaps?
+It might be.  Had he not so used them?  Yes.  Why had he done so,
+if he had candles in his pocket, which were so much easier to hold
+and so much more lasting than a lighted match?  Ah, he could not
+say; he did not know; his mind was confused.  He was awake when
+he should have been asleep.  It was all a dream to him.
+
+The coroner became still more persistent.
+
+"Did you enter the library on your solitary visit to this old house?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"What did you do there?"
+
+"Pottered around.  I don't remember."
+
+"What light did you use?"
+
+"A candle, I think."
+
+"You must know."
+
+"Well, I had a candle; it was in a candelabrum."
+
+"What candle and what candelabrum?"
+
+"The same I used upstairs, of course"
+
+"And you can not remember where you left this candle and candelabrum
+when you finally quitted the house?"
+
+"No.  I wasn't thinking about candles."
+
+"What were you thinking about?"
+
+"The rupture with my wife and the bad name of the house I was in."
+
+"Oh! and this was on Tuesday night?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How can you prove this to us?"
+
+"I can not."
+
+"But you swear--"
+
+"I swear that it was Tuesday night, the night immediately preceding
+the one when--when my wife's death robbed me of all earthly
+happiness."
+
+It was feelingly uttered, and several faces lightened; but the
+coroner repeating: "Is there no way you can prove this to our
+satisfaction?" the shadow settled again, and on no head more
+perceptibly than on that of the unfortunate witness.
+
+It was now late in the day and the atmosphere of the room had
+become stifling; but no one seemed to be conscious of any discomfort,
+and a general gasp of excitement passed through the room when the
+coroner, taking out a box from under a pile of papers, disclosed to
+the general gaze the famous white ribbon with its dainty bow, lying
+on top of the fatal pistol.
+
+That this special feature, the most interesting one of all connected
+with this tragedy, should have been kept so long in reserve and
+brought out just at this time, struck many of Mr. Jeffrey's closest
+friends as unnecessarily dramatic; but when the coroner, lifting out
+the ribbon, remarked tentatively, "You know this ribbon?" we were
+more struck by the involuntary cry of surprise which rose from some
+one in the crowd about the door, than by the look with which Mr.
+Jeffrey eyed it and made the necessary reply.  That cry had something
+more than nervous excitement in it.  Identifying the person who had
+uttered it as a certain busy little  woman well known in town, I
+sent an officer to watch her; then recalled my attention to the point
+the coroner was attempting to make.  He had forced Mr. Jeffrey to
+recognize the ribbon as the one which had fastened the pistol to
+his wife's arm; now he asked whether, in his opinion, a woman could
+tie such a bow to her own wrist, and when in common justice Mr.
+Jeffrey was obliged to say no, waited a third time before he put
+the general suspicion again into words:
+
+"Can not you, by some means or some witness, prove to us that it
+was on Tuesday night and not on Wednesday you spent the hours you
+speak of on this scene of your marriage and your wife's death?"
+
+The hopelessness which more than once had marked Mr. Jeffrey's
+features since the beginning of this inquiry, reappeared with renewed
+force as this suggestive question fell again upon his ears; and he
+was about to repeat his plea of forgetfulness when the coroner's
+attention was diverted by a request made in his ear by one of the
+detectives.  In another moment Mr. Jeffrey had been waved aside and
+a new witness sworn in.
+
+You can imagine every one's surprise, mine most of all, when this
+witness proved to be Uncle David.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+"TALLMAN!  LET US HAVE TALLMAN!"
+
+
+I do not know why the coroner had so long delayed to call this
+witness.  In the ordinary course of events his testimony should
+have preceded mine, but the ordinary course of events had not been
+followed, and it was only at the request of Mr. Moore himself that
+he was now allowed the privilege of appearing before this coroner
+and jury.
+
+I speak of it as a privilege because he himself evidently regarded
+it as such.  Indeed, his whole attitude and bearing as he addressed
+himself to the coroner showed that he was there to be looked at and
+that he secretly thought he was very well worth this attention.
+Possibly some remembrance of the old days, in which he had gone in
+and out before these people in a garb suggestive of penury, made
+the moment when he could appear before them in a guise more
+befitting his station one of incalculable importance to him.
+
+At all events, he confronted us all with an aspect which openly
+challenged admiration.  When, in answer to the coroner's inquiries,
+it became his duty to speak, he did so with a condescension which
+would have called up smiles if the occasion had been one of less
+seriousness, and his connection with it as unimportant as he would
+have it appear.
+
+What he said was in the way of confirming the last witness'
+testimony as to his having been at the Moore house on Tuesday
+evening.  Mr. Moore, who was very particular as to dates and days,
+admitted that the light which he had seen in a certain window of
+his ancestral home on the evening when he summoned the police was
+but the repetition of one he had detected there the evening before.
+It was this repetition which alarmed him and caused him to break
+through all his usual habits and leave his home at night to notify
+the police.
+
+"The old sneak!" thought I.  "Why didn't he tell us this before?"
+And I allowed myself afresh doubt of his candor which had always
+seemed to me somewhat open to question.  It is possible that the
+coroner shared my opinion, or that he felt it incumbent upon him to
+get what evidence he could from the sole person living within view
+of the house in which such ghastly events had taken place.  For,
+without betraying the least suspicion, and yet with the quiet
+persistence for which men in his responsible position are noted,
+he subjected this suave old man to such a rigid examination as to
+what he had seen, or had not seen, from his windows, that no
+possibility seemed to remain of his concealing a single fact which
+could help to the elucidation of this or any other mystery connected
+with the old mansion.
+
+He asked him if he had seen Mr. Jeffrey go in on the night in
+question; if he had ever seen any one go in there since the wedding;
+or even if he had seen any one loitering about the steps, or sneaking
+into the rear yard.  But the answer was always no; these same noes
+growing more and more emphatic, and the gentleman more and more
+impenetrable and dignified as the examination went on.  In fact, he
+was as unassailable a witness as I have ever heard testify before
+any jury.  Beyond the fact already mentioned of his having observed
+a light in the opposite house on the two evenings in question, he
+admitted nothing.  His life in the little cottage was so engrossing--he
+had his organ--his dog--why should he look out of the window?
+Had it not been for his usual habit of letting his dog run the
+pavements for a quarter of an hour before finally locking up for
+the night, he would not have seen as much as he did.
+
+"Have you any stated hour for doing this?" the coroner now asked.
+
+"Yes; half-past nine"
+
+"And was this the hour when you caw that light?"
+
+"Yes, both times."
+
+As he had appeared at the station-house at a few minutes before ten
+he was probably correct in this statement.  But, notwithstanding
+this, I did not feel implicit confidence in him.  He was too
+insistent in his regret at not being able to give greater assistance
+in the disentanglement of a mystery so affecting the honor of the
+family of which he was now the recognized head.  His voice, nicely
+attuned to the occasion, was admirable; so was his manner; but I
+mentally wrote him down as one I should enjoy outwitting if the
+opportunity ever came my way.
+
+He wound up with such a distinct repetition of his former emphatic
+assertion as to the presence of light in the old house on Tuesday
+as well as Wednesday evening that Mr. Jeffrey's testimony in this
+regard received a decided confirmation.  I looked to see some open
+recognition of this, when suddenly, and with a persistence understood
+only by the police, the coroner recalled Mr. Jeffrey and asked him
+what proof he had to offer that his visit of Tuesday had not been
+repeated the next night and that he was not in the building when
+that fatal trigger was pulled.
+
+At this leading question, a lawyer sitting near me, edged himself
+forward as if he hoped for some sign from Mr. Jeffrey which would
+warrant him in interfering.  But Mr. Jeffrey gave no such sign.  I
+doubt if he even noticed this man's proximity, though he knew him
+well and had often employed him as his legal adviser in times gone
+by.  He was evidently exerting himself to recall the name which so
+persistently eluded his memory, putting his hand to his head and
+showing the utmost confusion.
+
+"I can not give you one," he finally stammered.  "There is a man
+who could tell--if only I could remember his name."  Suddenly with
+a loud cry which escaped him involuntarily, he gave a gurgling
+laugh and we heard the name "Tallman!" leap from his lips.
+
+The witness had at last remembered whom he had met at the cemetery
+gate at the hour, or near the hour, his wife lay dying in the lower
+part of the city.
+
+The effect was electrical.  One of the spectators--some country
+boor, no doubt--so far forgot himself as to cry out loud enough for
+all to hear:
+
+"Tallman! Let us have Tallman!"
+
+Of course he met with an instant rebuke, but I did not wait to hear
+it, or to see order restored, for a glance from the coroner had
+already sent me to the door in search of this new witness.
+
+My destination was the Cosmos Club, for Phil Tallman and his habits
+and haunts were as well known in Washington as the figure of Liberty
+on the summit of the Capitol dome.  When I saw him I did not wonder.
+Never have I seen a more amiable looking man, or one with a more
+absentminded expression.  To my query as to whether he had ever met
+Mr. Jeffrey at or near the entrance of Rock Creek Cemetery, he replied
+with an amazed look and the quick response:
+
+"Of course I did.  It was the very night that his wife--  But what's
+up?  You look excited for a detective."
+
+"Come to the morgue and see.  This testimony of yours will prove
+invaluable to Mr. Jeffrey."
+
+I shall never forget the murmur of suppressed excitement which
+greeted us as I reappeared before coroner and jury accompanied by
+the gentleman who had been called for in such peremptory tones a
+short time before.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey, who had attempted to rise at our entrance, but seemed
+to lack the ability, gave a faint smile as Tallman's good-natured
+face appeared; and the coroner, feeling, perhaps, that some cords
+are liable to break if stretched too strongly, administered the oath
+and made the necessary inquiries with as little delay as was
+compatible with the solemnity of the occasion.
+
+The result was an absolute proof that Mr. Jeffrey had been near
+Soldiers' Home as late as seven, which was barely fifteen minutes
+previous to the hour Mrs. Jeffrey's watch was stopped by her fall
+in the old house on Waverley Avenue.  As the distance between the
+two places could not be compassed in that time, Mr. Jeffrey's alibi
+could be regarded as established.
+
+When we were all rising, glad of an adjournment which restored free
+movement and an open interchange of speech, a sudden check in the
+general rush called our attention back to Mr. Jeffrey.  He was
+standing facing Miss Tuttle, who was still sitting in a strangely
+immovable attitude in her old place.  He had just touched her on the
+arm, and now, with a look of alarm, he threw up the veil which had
+kept her face hidden from all beholders.
+
+A vision of loveliness greeted us, but that was not all.  It was an
+unconscious loveliness.  Miss Tuttle had fainted away, sitting
+upright in her chair.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+WHITE BOW AND PINK
+
+
+Mr. Jeffrey's examination and its triumphant conclusion created a
+great furor in town.  Topics which had hitherto absorbed all minds
+were forgotten in the discussion of the daring attempt which had
+been made by the police to fix crime upon one of Washington's most
+esteemed citizens, and the check which they had rightly suffered
+for this outrage.  What might be expected next?  Something equally
+bold and reprehensible, of course, but what?  It was a question
+which at the next sitting completely filled the inquest room.
+
+To my great surprise, Mr. Jeffrey was recalled to the stand.  He
+had changed since the night before.  He looked older, and while
+still handsome, for nothing could rob him of his regularity of
+feature and extreme elegance of proportion, showed little of the
+spirit which, in spite of the previous day's depression, had
+upheld him through its most trying ordeal and kept his eye bright,
+if only from excitement.  This was fact number one, and one which
+I stored away in my already well-furnished memory.
+
+Miss Tuttle sat in a less conspicuous position than on the previous
+day, and Mr. Moore, her uncle, was not thereat all.
+
+The testimony called for revived an old point which, seemingly, had
+not been settled to the coroner's satisfaction.
+
+Had Mr. Jeffrey placed the small stand holding the candelabrum on
+the spot where it had been found?  No.  Had he carried into the
+house, at the time of his acknowledged visit, the candles which had
+been afterward discovered there?  No.  He had had time to think
+since his hesitating and unsatisfactory replies of the day before,
+and he was now in a position to say that while he distinctly
+remembered buying candles on his way to the Moore house, he had not
+found them in his pocket on getting there and had been obliged to
+make use of the matches he always carried on his person in order to
+find his way to the upstairs room where he felt positive he would
+find a candle.
+
+This gave the coroner an opportunity to ask:
+
+"And why did you expect to find a candle there?"
+
+The answer astonished me and, I have no doubt, many others.
+
+"It was the room in which my wife had dressed for the ceremony.  It
+had not been disturbed since that time.  My wife had little ways of
+her own; one was to complete her toilet by using a curling iron on
+a little lock she wore over her temple.  When at home she heated
+this curling iron in the gas jet, but there being no gas in the Moore
+house, I naturally concluded that she had made use of a candle, as
+the curl had been noticeable under her veil."
+
+Oh, the weariness in his tone! I could scarcely interpret it.  Was
+he talking by rote, or was he utterly done with life and all its
+interests?  No one besides myself seemed to note this strange
+passivity.  To the masses he was no longer a suffering man, but an
+individual from whom information was to be got.  The next question
+was a vital one.
+
+He had accounted for one candle in the house; could he account for
+the one found in the tumbler or for the one lying crushed and
+battered on the closet floor?
+
+He could not.
+
+And now we all observed a change of direction in the inquiry.
+Witnesses were summoned to corroborate Mr. Jeffrey's statements,
+statements which it seemed to be the coroner's present wish to
+establish.  First came the grocer who had sold Mr. Jeffrey the
+candles.  He acknowledged, much to Jinny's discomfort, that an hour
+after Mr. Jeffrey had left the store, he had found on the counter
+the package which that gentleman had forgotten to take.  Poor Jinny
+had not stayed long enough to hear his story out.  The grocer
+finished his testimony by saying that immediately upon his
+discovery he had sent the candles to Mr. Jeffrey's house.
+
+This the coroner caused to be emphasized to such an extent that we
+were all convinced of its importance.  But as yet his purpose was
+not evident save to those who were more in his confidence than myself.
+
+The other witnesses were men from Rauchers, who had acted as waiters
+at the time of the marriage.  One of them testified that immediately
+on Miss Moore's arrival he had been sent for a candle and a box of
+matches.  The other, that he had carried up to her room a large
+candelabrum from the drawing-room mantel.  A pair of curling tongs
+taken from the dressing table of this room was next produced,
+together with other articles of toilet use which had been allowed
+to remain there uncared for, though they were of solid silver and
+of beautiful design.
+
+The next witness was a member of Mr. Jeffrey's own household.  Chloe
+was her name, and her good black face worked dolefully as she
+admitted that the package of candles which the grocer boy had left
+on the kitchen table, with the rest of the groceries on the morning
+of that dreadful day when "Missus" killed herself, was not to be
+found when she came to put the things away.  She had looked and
+looked for it, but it was not there.
+
+Further inquiry brought out the fact that but one other member of
+the household was in the kitchen when these groceries were delivered;
+and that this person gave a great start when the boy shouted out,
+"The candles there were bought by Mr. Jeffrey," and hurried over to
+the table and handled the packages, although Chloe did not see her
+carry any of them away.
+
+"And who was this person?"
+
+"Miss Tuttle."
+
+With the utterance of this name the veil fell from the coroner's
+intentions and the purpose of this petty but prolonged inquiry stood
+revealed.  It was to all a fearful and impressive moment.  To me it
+was as painful as it was triumphant.  I had not anticipated such an
+outcome when I put my wits to work to prove that murder, and not
+suicide, was answerable for young Mrs. Jeffrey's death.
+
+When the murmur which had hailed this startling turn in the inquiry
+had subsided, the coroner drew a deep breath, and, with an uneasy
+glance at the jury, who, to a man, seemed to wish themselves well
+out of this job, he dismissed the cook and summoned a fresh witness.
+
+Her name made the people stare.
+
+"Miss Nixon."
+
+Miss Nixon!  That was a name well known in Washington; almost as
+well known as that of Uncle David, or even of Mr. Tallman.  What
+could this quaint and characteristic little body have to do with
+this case of doubtful suicide?  A word will explain.  She was the
+person who, on the day before, had made that loud exclamation when
+the box containing the ribbon and the pistol had been disclosed to
+the jury.
+
+As her fussy little figure came forward, some nudged and some
+laughed, possibly because her bonnet was not of this year's style,
+possibly because her manner was peculiar and as full of oddities
+as her attire.  But they did not laugh long, for the little lady's
+look was appealing, if not distressed.  The fact that she was
+generally known to possess one of the largest bank accounts in the
+District, made any marked show of disrespect toward her a matter
+of poor judgment, if not of questionable taste.
+
+The box in the coroner's hand prepared us for what was before us.
+As he opened it and disclosed again the dainty white bow which, as
+I have before said, was of rather a fantastic make, the whole
+roomful of eager spectators craned forward and were startled enough
+when he asked:
+
+"Did you ever see a bow like this before?"
+
+Her answer came in the faintest of tones.
+
+"Yes, I have one like it; very like it; so like it that yesterday
+I could not suppress an exclamation on seeing this one."
+
+"Where did you get the one you have?  Who fashioned it, I mean, or
+tied it for you, if that is what I ought to say?"
+
+"It was tied for me by--Miss Tuttle.  She is a friend of mine, or
+was--and a very good one; and one day while watching me struggling
+with a piece of ribbon, which I wanted made into a bow, she took it
+from my hand and tied a knot for which I was very much obliged to
+her.  It was very pretty."
+
+"And like this?"
+
+"Almost exactly, sir."
+
+"Have you that knot with you?"
+
+She had.
+
+"Will you show it to the jury?"
+
+Heaving a sigh which she had much better have suppressed, she opened
+a little bag she carried at her side and took out a pink satin bow.
+It had been tied by a deft hand; and more than one pair of eyes fell
+significantly at sight of it.
+
+Amid a silence which was intense, two or three other witnesses were
+called to prove that Miss Tuttle's skill in bow-tying was exceptional,
+and was often made use of, not only by members of her household, but,
+as in Miss Nixon's case, by outsiders; the special style shown in the
+one under consideration being the favorite.
+
+During all this, I kept my eyes on Mr. Jeffrey.  It had now become
+so evident which way the coroner's inquiries tended that I wished to
+be the first to note their effect on him.  It was less marked than I
+had anticipated.  The man seemed benumbed by accumulated torment and
+stared at the witnesses filing before him as if they were part of
+some wild phantasmagoria which confused, without enlightening him.
+When finally several persons of both sexes were brought forward to
+prove that his attentions to Miss Tuttle had once been sufficiently
+marked for an announcement of their engagement to be daily looked
+for, he let his head fall forward on his breast as if the creeping
+horror which had seized him was too much for his brain if not for
+his heart.  The final blow was struck when the man whom I had myself
+seen in Alexandria testified to the contretemps which had occurred
+in Atlantic City; an additional point being given to it by the
+repetition of some old conversation raked up for the purpose, by
+which an effort was made to prove that Miss Tuttle found it hard to
+forgive injuries even from those nearest and dearest to her.  This
+subject might have been prolonged, but some of the jury objected,
+and the time being now ripe for the great event of the day, the
+name of the lady herself was called.
+
+After so significant a preamble, the mere utterance of Miss Tuttle's
+name had almost the force of an accusation; but the dignity with
+which she rose calmed all minds, and subdued every expression of
+feeling.  I could but marvel at her self-poise and noble equanimity,
+and asked myself if, in the few days which had passed since first
+the murmur of something more serious than suicide had gone about,
+she had so schooled herself for all emergencies that nothing could
+shake her self-possession, not even the suggestion that a woman of
+her beauty and distinction could be concerned in a crime.  Or had
+she within herself some great source of strength, which sustained
+her in this most dreadful ordeal?  All were on watch to see.  When
+the veil dropped from before her features and she stepped into the
+full sight of the expectant crowd, it was not the beauty of her
+face, notable and conspicuous as that was, which roused the hum of
+surprise that swept from one end of the room to the other, but the
+calmness, almost the elevation of her manner, a calmness and
+elevation so unlooked for in the light of the strange contradictions
+offered by the evidence to which we had been listening for a day and
+a half, that all were affected; many inclined even to believe her
+innocent of any undue connection with her sister's death before she
+had stretched forth her hand to take the oath.
+
+I was no exception to the rest.  Though I had exerted myself from
+the first to bring matters to a climax--but not to this one--I
+experienced such a shock under the steady gaze of her sad but
+gentle eyes, that I found myself recoiling before my own presumption
+with something like secret shame till I was relieved by the thought
+that a perfectly innocent woman would show more feeling at so false
+and cruel a position.  I felt that only one with something to conceal
+would turn so calm a front upon men ready, as she knew, to fix upon
+her a great crime.  This conviction steadied me and made me less
+susceptible to her grace and to the tone of her quiet voice and the
+far-away sadness of her look.  She faltered only when by chance she
+glanced at the shrinking figure of Francis Jeffrey.
+
+Her name which she uttered without emphasis and yet in a way to
+arouse attention sank into all hearts with more or less disturbance.
+"Alice Cora Tuttle!"  How in days gone by, and not so long gone by,
+either, those three words had aroused the enthusiasm of many a
+gallant man and inspired the toast at many a gallant feast! They
+had their charm yet, if the heightened color observable on many a
+cheek there was a true index to the quickening heart below.
+
+"How are you connected with the deceased Mrs. Jeffrey?"
+
+"I am the child of her mother by a former husband.  We were
+half-sisters."
+
+No bitterness in this statement, only an infinite sadness.  The
+coroner continued to question her.  He asked for an account of her
+childhood, and forced her to lay bare the nature of her relations
+with her sister.  But little was gained by this, for their relations
+seemed to have been of a sympathetic character up to the time of
+Veronica's return from school, when they changed somewhat; but how
+or why, Miss Tuttle was naturally averse to saying.  Indeed she
+almost refused to do so, and the coroner, feeling his point gained
+more by this refusal than by any admission she might have made, did
+not press this subject but passed on to what interested us more: the
+various unexplained actions on her part which pointed toward crime.
+
+His first inquiry was in reference to the conversation held between
+her and Mr. Jeffrey at the time he visited her room.  We had
+listened to his account of it and now we wished to hear hers.  But
+the cue which had been given her by this very account had been
+invaluable to her, and her testimony naturally coincided with his.
+We found ourselves not an inch advanced.  They had talked of her
+sister's follies and she had advised patience, and that was all she
+could say on the subject--all she would say, as we presently saw.
+
+The coroner introduced a fresh topic.
+
+"What can you tell us about the interview you had with you sister
+prior to her going out on the night of her death?"
+
+"Very little, except that it differed entirely from what is generally
+supposed.  She did not come to my room for conversation but simply
+to tell me that she had an engagement.  She was in an excited mood
+but said nothing to alarm me.  She even laughed when she left me;
+perhaps to put me off my guard, perhaps because she was no longer
+responsible."
+
+"Did she know that Mr. Jeffrey had visited you earlier in the day?
+Did she make any allusion to it, I mean?"
+
+"None at all.  She shrugged her shoulders when I asked if she was
+well, and anticipated all further questions by running from the room.
+She was always capricious in her ways and never more so than at that
+moment.  Would to God that it had been different!  Would to God that
+she had shown herself to be a suffering woman!  Then I might have
+reached her heart and this tragedy would have been averted."
+
+The coroner favored the witness with a look of respect, perhaps
+because his next question must necessarily be cruel.
+
+"Is that all you have to say concerning this important visit, the
+last you held with your sister before her death?"
+
+"No, sir, there is something else, something which I should like to
+relate to this jury.  When she came into my room, she held in her
+hand a white ribbon; that is, she held the two ends of a long satin
+ribbon which seemed to come from her pocket.  Handing those two ends
+to me, she asked me to tie them about her wrist.  'A knot under and
+a bow on top,' she said, 'so that it can not slip off.'  As this was
+something I had often been called on to do for her, I showed no
+hesitation in complying with her request.  Indeed, I felt none.  I
+thought it was her fan or her bouquet she held concealed in the folds
+of her dress, but it proved to be--Gentlemen, you know what.  I pray
+that you will not oblige me to mention it."
+
+It was such a stroke as no lawyer would have advised her to make,--I
+heard afterward that she had refused the offices of a dozen lawyers
+who had proffered her their services.  But uttered as it was with a
+noble air and a certain dignified serenity, it had a great effect upon
+those about her and turned in a moment the wavering tide of favor in
+her direction.
+
+The coroner, who doubtless was perfectly acquainted with the
+explanation with which she had provided herself, but who perhaps did
+not look for it to antedate his attack, bowed in quiet acknowledgment
+of her request and then immediately proceeded to ignore it.
+
+"I should be glad to spare you," said he, "but I do not find it
+possible.  You knew that Mr. Jeffrey had a pistol?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"That it was kept in their apartment?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In the upper drawer of a certain bureau?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Now, Miss Tuttle, will you tell us why you went to that drawer--if
+you did go to that drawer--immediately after Mrs. Jeffrey left the
+house?"
+
+She had probably felt this question coming, not only since the
+coroner began to speak but ever since the evidence elicited from
+Loretta proved that her visit to this drawer had been secretly
+observed.  Yet she had no answer ready.
+
+"I did not go for the pistol," she finally declared.  But she did
+not say what she had gone for, and the coroner did not press her.
+
+Again the tide swung back.
+
+She seemed to feel the change but did not show it in the way
+naturally looked for.  Instead of growing perturbed or openly
+depressed she bloomed into greater beauty and confronted with
+steadier eye, not us, but the men she instinctively faced as the
+tide of her fortunes began to lower.  Did the coroner perceive this
+and recognize at last both the measure of her attractions and the
+power they were likely to carry with them?  Perhaps, for his voice
+took an acrid note as he declared:
+
+"You had another errand in that room?"
+
+She let her head droop just a trifle.
+
+"Alas!" she murmured.
+
+"You went to the book-shelves and took out a book with a peculiar
+cover, a cover which Mr. Jeffrey has already recognized as that of
+the book in which he found a certain note."
+
+"You have said it," she faltered.
+
+"Did you take such a book out?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"For what purpose, Miss Tuttle?"
+
+She had meant to answer quickly.  But some consideration made her
+hesitate and the words were long in coming; when she did speak, it
+was to say:
+
+"My sister asked another favor of me after I had tied the ribbon.
+Pausing in her passage to the door, she informed me in a tone quite
+in keeping with her whole manner, that she had left a note for her
+husband in the book they were reading together.  Her reason for
+doing this, she said, was the very natural one of wishing him to
+come upon it by chance, but as she had placed it in the front of
+the book instead of in the back where they were reading, she was
+afraid that he would fail to find it.  Would I be so good as to take
+it out for her and insert it again somewhere near the end?  She was
+in a hurry or she would return and do it herself.  As she and Mr.
+Jeffrey had parted in anger, I hailed with joy this evidence of her
+desire for a reconciliation, and it was in obedience to her request,
+the singularity of which did not strike me as forcibly then as now,
+that I went to the shelves in her room and took down the book."
+
+"And did you find the note where she said?"
+
+"Yes, and put it in toward the end of the story."
+
+"Nothing more?  Did you read the note?"
+
+"It was folded," was Miss Tuttle's quiet answer.  Certainly this
+woman was a thoroughbred or else she was an adept in deception such
+as few of us had ever encountered.  The gentleness of her manner,
+the easy tone, the quiet eyes, eyes in whose dark depths great
+passions were visible, but passions that were under the control of
+an equally forcible will, made her a puzzle to all men's minds; but
+it was a fascinating puzzle that awoke a species of awe in those
+who attempted to understand her.  To all appearances she was the
+unlikeliest woman possible to cherish criminal intents, yet her
+answers were rather clever than convincing, unless you allowed
+yourself to be swayed by the look of her beautiful face or the music
+of her rich, sad voice.
+
+"You did not remain before these book-shelves long?" observed the
+coroner.
+
+"You have a witness who knows more about that than I do," she
+suggested; and doubtless aware of the temerity of this reply, waited
+with unmoved countenance, but with a visibly bounding breast, for
+what would doubtless prove a fresh attack.
+
+It was a violent one and of a character she was least fitted to meet.
+Taking up the box I have so often mentioned, the coroner drew away
+the ribbon lying on top and disclosed the pistol.  In a moment her
+hands were over her ears.
+
+"Why do you do that?" he asked.  "Did you think I was going to
+discharge it?"
+
+She smiled pitifully as she let her hands fall again.
+
+"I have a dread of firearms," she explained.  "I always have had.
+Now they are simply terrible to me, and this one--"
+
+"I understand," said the coroner, with a slight glance in the
+direction of Durbin.  They had evidently planned this test together
+on the strength of an idea suggested to Durbin by her former action
+when the memory of this shot was recalled to her.
+
+"Your horror seems to lie in the direction of the noise they make,"
+continued her inexorable interlocutor.  "One would say you had
+heard this pistol discharged."
+
+Instantly a complete breaking-up of her hitherto well maintained
+composure altered her whole aspect and she vehemently cried:
+
+"I did, I did.  I was on Waverley Avenue that night, and I heard
+the shot which in all probability ended my sister's life.  I walked
+farther than I intended; I strolled into the street which had such
+bitter memories for us and I heard--No, I was not in search of my
+sister.  I had not associated my sister's going out with any
+intention of visiting this house; I was merely troubled in mind and
+anxious and--and--"
+
+She had overrated her strength or her cleverness.  She found herself
+unable to finish the sentence, and so did not try.  She had been
+led by the impulse of the moment farther than she had intended, and,
+aghast at her own imprudence, paused with her first perceptible loss
+of courage before the yawning gulf opening before her.
+
+I felt myself seized by a very uncomfortable dread lest her
+concealments and unfinished sentences hid a guiltier knowledge of
+this crime than I was yet ready to admit.
+
+The coroner, who is an older man than myself, betrayed a certain
+satisfaction but no dread.  Never did the unction which underlies
+his sharpest speeches show more plainly than when he quietly
+remarked:
+
+"And so under a similar impulse you, as well as Mr. Jeffrey, chose
+this uncanny place to ramble in.  To all appearance that old hearth
+acted much more like a lodestone upon members of your family than
+you were willing at one time to acknowledge."
+
+This reference to words she had herself been heard to use seemed to
+overwhelm her.  Her calmness fled and she cast a fleeting look of
+anguish at Mr. Jeffrey.  But his face was turned from sight, and,
+meeting with no help there, or anywhere, indeed, save in her own
+powerful nature, she recovered as best she could the ground she had
+lost and, with a trembling question of her own, attempted to put
+the coroner in fault and reestablish herself.
+
+"You say 'ramble through.'  Do you for a moment think that I entered
+that old house?"
+
+"Miss Tuttle," was the grave, almost sad reply, "did you not know
+that in some earth, dropped from a flower-pot overturned at the
+time when a hundred guests flew in terror from this house, there is
+to be seen the mark of a footstep,--a footstep which you are at
+liberty to measure with your own?"
+
+"Ah!" she murmured, her hands going up to her face.
+
+But in another moment she had dropped them and looked directly at
+the coroner.
+
+"I walked there--I never said that I did not walk there--when I
+went later to see my sister and in sight of a number of detectives
+passed straight through the halls and into the library."
+
+"And that this footstep," inexorably proceeded the coroner, "is not
+in a line with the main thoroughfare extending from the front to the
+back of the house, but turned inwards toward the wall as if she who
+made it had stopped to lean her head against the partition?"
+
+Miss Tuttle's head drooped.  Probably she realized at this moment,
+if not before, that the coroner and jury had ample excuse for
+mistrusting one who had been so unmistakably caught in a
+prevarication; possibly her regret carried her far enough to wish
+she had not disdained all legal advice from those who had so
+earnestly offered it.  But though she showed alike her shame and
+her disheartenment, she did not give up the struggle.
+
+"If I went into the house," she said, "it was not to enter that room.
+I had too great a dread of it.  If I rested my head against the wall
+it was in terror of that shot.  It came so suddenly and was so
+frightful, so much more frightful than anything you can conceive."
+
+"Then you did enter the house?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"And it was while you were inside, instead of outside, that you
+heard the shot?"
+
+"I must admit that, too.  I was at the library door."
+
+"You acknowledge that?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"But you did not enter the library?"
+
+"No, not then; not till I was taken back by the officer who told me
+of my sister's death."
+
+"We are glad to hear this precise statement from you.  It encourages
+me to ask again the nature of the freak which took you into this
+house.  You say that it was not from any dread on your sister's
+account?  What, then, was it?  No evasive answer will satisfy us,
+Miss Tuttle."
+
+She realized this as no one else could.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey's reason for his visit there could not be her reason,
+yet what other had she to give?  Apparently none.
+
+"I can not answer," she said.
+
+And the deep sigh which swept through the room was but an echo of
+the despair with which she saw herself brought to this point.
+
+"We will not oblige you to," said the coroner with apparent
+consideration.  But to those who knew the law against forcing a
+witness to incriminate himself, this was far from an encouraging
+concession.
+
+"However," he now went on, with suddenly assumed severity, "you
+may answer this.  Was the house dark or light when you entered it?
+And, how did you get in?"
+
+"The house was dark, and I got in through the front door, which I
+found ajar."
+
+"You are more courageous than most women!  I fear there are few of
+your sex who could be induced to enter it in broad daylight and
+under every suitable protection."
+
+She raised her figure proudly.
+
+"Miss Tuttle, you have heard Chloe say that you were in the kitchen
+of Mr. Jeffrey's house when the grocer boy delivered the candles
+which had been left by your brother-in-law on the counter of the
+store where he bought them.  Is this true?"
+
+"Yes, sir, it is true."
+
+"Did you see those candles?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"You did not see them?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Yet you went over to the table?"
+
+"Yes, sir, but I did not meddle with the packages.  I had really
+no business with them."
+
+The coroner, surveying her sadly, went quickly on as if anxious to
+terminate this painful examination.
+
+"You have not told us what you did when you heard that pistol-shot."
+
+"I ran away as soon as I could move; I ran madly from the house."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Home."
+
+"But it was half-past ten when you got home."
+
+"Was it?"
+
+"It was half-past ten when the man came to tell you of your
+sister's death."
+
+"It may have been."
+
+"Your sister is supposed to have died in a few minutes.  Where were
+you in the interim?"
+
+"God knows.  I do not."
+
+A wild look was creeping into her face, and her figure was swaying.
+But she soon steadied it.  I have never seen a more admirable
+presence maintained in the face of a dreadful humiliation.
+
+"Perhaps I can help you," rejoined the coroner, not unkindly.  "Were
+you not in the Congressional Library looking up at the lunettes and
+gorgeously painted walls?"
+
+"I?"  Her eyes opened wide in wondering doubt.  "If I was, I did
+not know it.  I have no remembrance of it."
+
+She seemed to lose sight of her present position, the cloud under
+which she rested, and even the construction which might be put upon
+such a forgetfulness at a time confessedly prior to her knowledge
+of the purpose and effect of the shot from which she had so
+incontinently fled.
+
+"Your condition of mind and that of Mr. Jeffrey seem to have been
+strangely alike," remarked the coroner.
+
+"No, no!" she protested.
+
+"Arguing a like source."
+
+"No, no," she cried again, this time with positive agony.  Then with
+an effort which awakened respect for her powers of mind, if for
+nothing else, she desperately added: "I can not say what was in his
+heart that night, but I know what was in mine--dread of that old
+house, to which I had been drawn in spite of myself, possibly by the
+force of the tragedy going on inside it, culminating in a delirium
+of terror, which sent me flying in an opposite direction from my home
+and into places I had been accustomed to visit when my heart was
+light and untroubled."
+
+The coroner glanced at the jury, who unconsciously shook their heads.
+He shook his, too, as he returned to the charge.
+
+"Another question, Miss Tuttle.  When you heard a pistol-shot
+sounding from the depths of that dark library, what did you think it
+meant?"
+
+She put her hands over her ears--it seemed as if she could not
+prevent this instinctive expression of recoil at the mention of the
+death-dealing weapon--and in very low tones replied:
+
+"Something dreadful; something superstitious.  It was night, you
+remember, and at night one has such horrible thoughts."
+
+"Yet an hour or two later you declared that the hearth was no
+lodestone.  You forgot its horrors and your superstition upon
+returning to your own house."
+
+"It might be;" she murmured; "but if so, they soon returned.  I
+had reason for my horror, if not for my superstition, as the event
+showed."
+
+The coroner did not attempt to controvert this.  He was about to
+launch a final inquiry.
+
+"Miss Tuttle; upon the return of yourself and Mr. Jeffrey to your
+home after your final visit to the Moore house, did you have any
+interview that was without witnesses?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did you exchange any words?"
+
+"I think we did exchange some words; it would be only natural."
+
+"Are you willing to state what words?"
+
+She looked dazed and appeared to search her memory.
+
+"I don't think I can," she objected.
+
+"But something was said by you and some answer was made by him?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"Can not you say definitely?"
+
+"We did speak."
+
+"In English?"
+
+"No, in French."
+
+"Can not you translate that French for us?"
+
+"Pardon me, sir; it was so long ago my memory fails me."
+
+"Is it any better for the second and longer interview between you
+the next day?"
+
+"No-sir."
+
+"You can not give us any phrase or word that was uttered there?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Is this your final reply on this subject?"
+
+"It is."
+
+She never had been subjected to an interrogation like this before.
+It made her proud soul quiver in revolt, notwithstanding the
+patience with which she had fortified herself.  With red cheeks
+and glistening eyes she surveyed the man who had made her suffer so,
+and instantly every other man there suffered with her; excepting
+possibly Durbin, whose heart was never his strong point.  But our
+hearts were moved, our reasons were not convinced, as was presently
+shown, when, with a bow of dismissal, the coroner released her, and
+she passed back to her seat.
+
+Simultaneously with her withdrawal the gleam of sensibility left
+the faces of the jury, and the dark and brooding look which had
+marked their countenances from the beginning returned, and returned
+to stay.
+
+What would their verdict be?  There were present two persons who
+affected to believe that it would be one of suicide occasioned by
+dementia.  These were Miss Tuttle and Mr. Jeffrey, who, now that
+the critical period had come, straightened themselves boldly in
+their seats and met the glances concentrated upon them with dignity,
+if not with the assurance of complete innocence.  But from the
+carefulness with which they avoided each other's eyes and the almost
+identical expression mirrored upon both faces, it was visible to
+all that they regarded their cause as a common one, and that the
+link which they denied, as having existed between them prior to
+Mrs. Jeffrey's death, had in some way been supplied by that very
+tragedy; so that they now unwittingly looked with the same eyes,
+breathed with the same breath, and showed themselves responsive to
+the same fluctuations of hope and fear.
+
+The celerity with which that jury arrived at its verdict was a shock
+to us all.  It had been a quiet body, offering but little assistance
+to the coroner in his questioning; but when it fell to these men to
+act, the precision with which they did so was astonishing.  In a
+half-hour they returned from the room into which they had adjourned,
+and the foreman gave warning that he was prepared to render a verdict.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey and Miss Tuttle both clenched their hands; then Miss
+Tuttle pulled down her veil.
+
+"We find," said the solemn foreman, "that Veronica Moore Jeffrey, who
+on the night of May eleventh was discovered lying dead on the floor
+of her own unoccupied house in Waverley Avenue, came to her death by
+means of a bullet, shot from a pistol connected to her wrist by a
+length of white satin ribbon.
+
+"That the first conclusion of suicide is not fully sustained by the
+facts;
+
+"And that attempt should be made to identify the hand that fired
+this pistol."
+
+It was as near an accusation of Miss Tuttle as was possible without
+mentioning her name.  A groan passed through the assemblage, and Mr.
+Jeffrey, bounding to his feet, showed an inclination to shout aloud
+in his violent indignation.  But Miss Tuttle, turning toward him,
+lifted her hand with a commanding gesture and held it so till he sat
+down again.
+
+It was both a majestic and an utterly incomprehensible movement on
+her part, giving to the close of these remarkable proceedings a
+dramatic climax which set all hearts beating and, I am bound to say,
+all tongues wagging till the room cleared.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+AN EGOTIST OF THE FIRST WATER
+
+
+Had the control of affairs been mine at this moment I am quite
+positive that I should have found it difficult to deny these two
+the short interview which they appeared to crave and which would
+have been to them such an undeniable comfort.  But a sterner spirit
+than mine was in charge, and the district attorney, into whose hands
+the affair had now fallen, was inexorable.  Miss Tuttle was treated
+with respect, with kindness, even, but she was not allowed any
+communication with her brother-in-law beyond the formal "Good
+afternoon" incident upon their separation; while he, scorning to
+condemn his lips to any such trite commonplace, said nothing at all,
+only looked a haggard inquiry which called forth from her the most
+exalted look of patience and encouraging love it has ever been my
+good fortune to witness.  Durbin was standing near and saw this
+look as plainly as I did, but it did not impose on him, he said.
+But what in the nature of human woe could impose on him?  Durbin is
+a machine--a very reliable and useful machine, no doubt, yet when
+all is said, a simple contrivance of cogs and wheels; while I--well,
+I hope that I am something more than that; or why was I a changed
+man toward her from the moment I saw the smile which marked this
+accused woman's good by to Francis Jeffrey.  No longer believing in
+her guilt, I went about my business with tumult in brain and heart,
+asking in my remorse for an opportunity to show her some small
+courtesy whereby to relieve the torture I felt at having helped the
+coroner in the inquiries which had brought about what looked to me
+now like a cruel and unwarranted result.
+
+That it should be given to Durbin to hold such surveillance over her
+as her doubtful position demanded added greatly to my discomfort.
+But I was enabled to keep my lips firmly shut over any expression of
+secret jealousy or displeasure; and this was fortunate, as otherwise
+I might have failed to obtain the chance of aiding her later on, in
+other and deeper matters.
+
+Meanwhile, and before any of us had left this room, one fact had
+become apparent.  Mr. Jeffrey was not going to volunteer any fresh
+statement in face of the distinct disapproval of his sister-in-law.
+As his eye fell upon the district attorney, who had lingered near,
+possibly in the hope of getting something more from this depressed
+and almost insensible man, he made one remark, but it was an
+automatic one, calculated to produce but little effect on the
+discriminating ears of this experienced official.
+
+"I do not believe that my wife was murdered."  This was what he said.
+"It was a wicked verdict.  My wife killed herself.  Wasn't the pistol
+found tied to her?"
+
+Either from preoccupation or a dazed condition of mind, he seemed to
+forget that Miss Tuttle had owned to tying on this pistol; and that
+nothing but her word went to prove that this was done before and not
+after the shot had been delivered in the Moore house library.  I
+thought I understood him and was certain that I sympathized with his
+condition; but in the ears of those less amiably disposed toward him,
+his statements had lost force and the denial went for little.
+
+Meanwhile a fact which all had noted and commented on had recurred to
+my mind and caused me to ask a brother officer who was walking out
+beside me what he thought of Mr. Moore's absence from an inquiry
+presumably of such importance to all members of this family.
+
+The fellow laughed and said:
+
+"Old Dave has lost none of his peculiarities in walking into his
+fortune.  This is his day at the cemetery.  Didn't you know that?
+He will let nothing on earth get in the way of his pilgrimage to
+that spot on the twenty-third of May, much less so trivial an
+occurrence as an inquest over the remains of his nearest relative."
+
+I felt my gorge rise; then a thought struck me and I asked how long
+the old gentleman kept up his watch.
+
+"From sunrise to sundown, the boys say.  I never saw him there myself.
+My beat lies in an opposite direction."
+
+I left him and started for Rock Creek Cemetery.  There were two good
+hours yet before sundown and I resolved to come upon Uncle David at
+his post.
+
+It took just one hour and a quarter to get there by the most direct
+route I could take.  Five minutes more to penetrate the grounds to
+where a superb vehicle stood, drawn by two of the finest horses I
+had seen in Washington for many a long day.  As I was making my way
+around this equipage I came upon a plot in a condition of upheaval
+preparatory to new sodding and the planting of several choice shrubs.
+In the midst of the sand thus exposed a single head-stone rose.  On
+his knees beside this simple monument I saw the figure of Uncle
+David, dressed in his finest clothes and showing in his oddly
+contorted face the satisfaction of great prosperity, battling with
+the dissatisfaction of knowing that one he had so loved had not
+lived to share his elevation.  He was rubbing away the mold from the
+name which, by his own confession, was the only one to which his
+memory clung in sympathy or endearment.  At his feet lay an open
+basket, in which I detected the remains of what must have been a
+rather sumptuous cold repast.  To all appearance he had foregone
+none of his ancient customs; only those customs had taken on elegance
+with his rise in fortune.  The carriage and the horses, and most of
+all, the imperturbable driver, seemed to awaken some awe in the boys.
+They were still in evidence, but they hung back sheepishly and eyed
+the basket of neglected food as if they hoped he would forget to take
+it away.  Meanwhile the clattering of chains against the harness, the
+pawing of the horses and the low exclamations of the driver caused me
+the queerest feelings.  Advancing quite unceremoniously upon the
+watcher by the grave, I remarked aloud;
+
+"The setting sun will soon release you, Mr. Moore.  Are you going
+immediately into town?"
+
+He paused in his rubbing, which was being done with a very tender
+hand, and as if he really loved the name he was endeavoring to bring
+into plainer view.  Scowling a little, he turned and met me
+point-blank with a look which had a good deal of inquiry in it.
+
+"I am not usually interrupted here," he emphasized; "except by the
+boys," he added more mildly.  "They sometimes approach too closely,
+but I am used to the imps and scarcely notice them.  Ah!  there are
+some of my old friends now!  Well, it is time they knew that a
+change has taken place in my fortunes.  Hi, there!  Hands up and
+catch this, and this, and this!" he shouted.  "But keep quiet about
+it or next year you will get pennies again."
+
+And flinging quarters right and left, he smiled in such a pompous,
+self-satisfied way at the hurrah and scramble which ensued, that it
+was well worth my journey there just to see this exhibition of
+combined vanity and good humor.
+
+"Now go!" he vociferated; and the urchins, black and white, flew
+away, flinging up their heels in delight and shouting: "Bully for you,
+Uncle David!  We'll come again next year, not for twenty-fives but
+fifties."
+
+"I will make it dollars if I only live so long," he muttered.  And
+deigning now to remember the question I had put to him, he grandly
+remarked:
+
+"I am going straight into town.  Can I do anything for you?"
+
+"Nothing.  I thought you might like to know what awaits you there.
+The city is greatly stirred up.  The coroner's jury in the
+Jeffrey-Moore case has just brought in a verdict to the effect that
+suicide has not been proved.  Naturally, this is equivalent to one
+of murder."
+
+"Ah!" he ejaculated, slightly taken aback for one so invariably
+impassive.
+
+"And to whom is the guilt of this crime ascribed?" he presently
+ventured.
+
+"There was mention of no name; but the opprobrium naturally falls
+on Miss Tuttle."
+
+"Miss Tuttle?  Ah!"
+
+"Since Mr. Jeffrey is proved to have been too far away at the time
+to have fired that shot, while she--"
+
+"I am following you--"
+
+"Was in the very house--at the door of the library in fact--and
+heard the pistol discharged, if she did not discharge it herself--which
+some believe, notably the district attorney.  You should have been
+there, Mr. Moore."
+
+He looked surprised at this suggestion.
+
+"I never am anywhere but here on the twenty-third of May," he
+declared.
+
+"Miss Tuttle needed some adviser."
+
+"Ah, probably."
+
+"You would have been a good one."
+
+"And a welcome one, eh?"
+
+I hardly thought he would have been a welcome one, but I did not
+admit the fact.  Nevertheless he seized on the advantage he evidently
+thought he had gained and added, mildly enough, or rather without any
+display of feeling:
+
+"Miss Tuttle likes me even less than Veronica did.  I do not think
+she would have accepted, certainly she would not have desired, my
+presence in her counsels.  But of one thing I wish her to be assured,
+her and the world in general.  Any money she may need at this--at
+this unhappy crisis in her life, she will find amply supplied.  She
+has no claims on me, but that makes little difference where the
+family honor is concerned.  Her mother's husband was my brother--the
+girl shall have all she needs.  I will write her so."
+
+He was moving toward his carriage.
+
+"Fine turnout?" he interrogatively remarked.
+
+I assented with all the surprise,--with all the wonder even--which
+his sublime egotism seemed to invite.
+
+"It is the best that Downey could raise in the time I allotted him.
+When I really finger the money, we shall see, we shall see."
+
+His foot was on the carriage-step.  He looked up at the west.  The
+sun was almost down but not quite.  "Have you any special business
+with me?" he asked, lingering with what I thought a surprising
+display of conscientiousness till the last ray of direct sunlight
+had disappeared.
+
+I glanced up at the coachman sitting on his box as rigid as any
+stone.
+
+"You may speak," said he; "Caesar neither hears nor sees anything
+but his horses when he drives me."
+
+The black did not wink.  He was as completely at home on the box
+and as quiet and composed in his service as if he had driven this
+man for years.
+
+"He understands his duty," finished the master, but with no outward
+appearance of pride.  "What have you to say to me?"
+
+I hesitated no longer.
+
+"Miss Tuttle is supposed to have secretly entered the Moore house
+on the night you summoned us.  She even says she did.  I know that
+you have sworn to having seen no one go into that house; but
+notwithstanding this, haven't you some means at your disposal for
+proving to the police and to the world at large that she never
+fired that fatal shot?  Public opinion is so cruel.  She will be
+ruined whether innocent or guilty, unless it can be very plainly
+shown that she did not enter the library prior to going there with
+the police."
+
+"And how can you suppose me to be in a position to prove that?  Say
+that I had sat in my front window all that evening, and watched with
+uninterrupted assiduity the door through which so many are said to
+have passed between sunset and midnight--something which I did not
+do, as I have plainly stated on oath--how could you have expected
+me to see what went on in the black interior of a house whose
+exterior is barely discernible at night across the street?"
+
+"Then you can not aid her?" I asked.
+
+With a light bound he leaped into the carriage.  As he took his seat
+he politely remarked:
+
+"I should be glad to, since, though not a Moore, she is near enough
+the family to affect its honor.  But not having even seen her enter
+the house I can not testify in any way in regard to her.  Home,
+Caesar, and drive quickly.  I do not thrive under these evening damps."
+
+And leaning back, with an inexpressible air of contentment with
+himself, his equipage and the prospect of an indefinite enjoyment of
+the same, the last representative of the great Moore family was
+quietly driven away.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+A FRESH START
+
+
+I was far from being good company that night.  I knew this without
+being told.  My mind was too busy.  I was too full of regrets and
+plans, seasonings and counter reasonings.  In my eyes Miss Tuttle
+had suddenly become innocent, consequently a victim.  But a victim
+to what?  To some exaggerated sense of duty?  Possibly; but to what
+duty?  That was the question, to answer which offhand I would, in
+my present excitement, have been ready to sacrifice a month's pay.
+
+For I was moved, not only by the admiration and sympathy which all
+men must feel for a beautiful woman caught in such a deadly snare
+of circumstantial evidence, but by the conviction that Durbin, whose
+present sleek complacency was more offensive to me than the sneering
+superiority of a week ago, believed her to be a guilty woman, and as
+such his rightful prey.  This alone would have influenced me to take
+the opposite view; for we never ran along together, and in a case
+where any division of opinion was possible, always found ourselves,
+consciously or unconsciously, on different sides.  Yet I did not
+really dislike Durbin, who is a very fine fellow.  I only hated his
+success and the favor which rewarded it.
+
+I know that I have some very nasty failings and I do not shrink from
+owning them.  My desire is to represent myself as I am, and I must
+admit that it was not entirely owing to disinterested motives that
+I now took the secret stand I did in Miss Tuttle's favor.  To prove
+her innocent whom once I considered the cause of, if not the guilty
+accessory to her sister's murder, now became my dream by night and
+my occupation by day.  Though I seemed to have no sympathizer in
+this effort and though the case against her was being pushed very
+openly in the district attorney's office, yet I clung to my
+convictions with an almost insensate persistence, inwardly declaring
+her the victim of circumstances, and hoping against hope that some
+clue would offer itself by means of which I might yet prove her so.
+But where was I to seek for this clue?
+
+Alas, no ready answer to this very important query was forthcoming.
+All possible evidence in this case seemed to have been exhausted save
+such as Mr. Jeffrey and Miss Tuttle withheld.  And so the monstrous
+accusation stood, and before it all Washington--my humble self
+included--stood in a daze of mingled doubt and compassion, hunting
+for explanations which failed to appear and seeking in vain for
+some guiltier party, who evermore slipped from under our hand.  Had
+Mr. Jeffrey's alibi been less complete he could not have stood up
+against the suspicions which now ran riot.  But there was no
+possibility of shifting the actual crime back to him after the
+testimony of so frank and trustworthy a man as Tallman.  If the
+stopping of Mrs. Jeffrey's watch fixed the moment of her death as
+accurately as was supposed,--and I never heard the least doubt
+thrown out in this regard,--he could not by any means of transit
+then known in Washington have reached Waverley Avenue in time to
+fire that shot.  The gates of the cemetery were closed at sundown;
+sundown took place that night at one minute past seven, and the
+distance into town is considerable.  His alibi could not be gainsaid.
+So his name failed to be publicly broached in connection with the
+shooting, though his influence over Miss Tuttle could not be
+forgotten, suggesting to some that she had acted as his hand in the
+deed which robbed him of an undesirable wife.  But this I would not
+believe.  I preferred to accept the statement that she had stopped
+short of the library door in her suspicious visit there, and that
+the ribbon-tying, which went for so much, had been done at home.
+That these facts, especially the latter, called for more than common
+credulity, I was quite ready to acknowledge; and had her feeling for
+Francis Jeffrey shown less unselfishness, I should certainly have
+joined my fellows in regarding these assertions as very lame attempts
+to explain what could only be explained by a confession of guilt.
+
+So here was a tangle without a frayed end to pull at, unless the
+impervious egotism of Uncle David afforded one, which I doubted.  For
+how could any man with a frightful secret in his breast show that
+unmixed delight in his new equipage and suddenly acquired position,
+which had so plainly beamed from that gentleman's calm eye and
+assured bearing?  When he met my scrutiny in the sacred precincts
+where the one love of his heart lay buried, he did so without a
+quiver or any sign of inner disturbance.  His tone to Caesar as he
+drove off had been the tone of a man who can afford to speak quietly
+because he is conscious of being so undeniably the master; and when
+his foot rose to the carriage step it was with the confidence of one
+who had been kept out of his rights for most of his natural life,
+but who feels in his present enjoyment of them no apprehension of a
+change.  His whole bearing and conversation on that day were, as I
+am quite ready to admit, an exhibition of prodigious selfishness;
+but it was also an exhibition of mental poise incompatible with a
+consciousness of having acquired his fortune by any means which laid
+him open to the possibility of losing it.  Or so I judged.
+
+Finding myself, with every new consideration of the tantalizing
+subject, deeper and deeper in the quagmire of doubt and uncertainty,
+I sought enlightenment by making a memorandum of the special points
+which must have influenced the jury in their verdict, as witness:
+
+1.  The relief shown by Mr. Jeffrey at finding an apparent
+communication from his wife hinting at suicide.
+
+2.  The possibility, disclosed by the similarity between the sisters'
+handwriting, of this same communication being a forgery substituted
+for the one really written by Mrs. Jeffrey.
+
+3.  The fact that, previous to Mr. Jeffrey's handling of the book
+in which this communication was said to have been hidden, it had
+been seen in Miss Tuttle's hands.
+
+4.  That immediately after this she had passed to the drawer where
+Mr. Jeffrey's pistol was kept.
+
+5.  That while this pistol had not been observed in her hand, there
+was as yet no evidence to prove that it had been previously taken
+from the drawer, save such as was afforded by her own acknowledgment
+that she had tied some unknown object, presumably the pistol, to her
+sister's wrist before that sister left the house.
+
+6.  That if this was so, the pistol and the ribbon connecting it
+with Mrs. Jeffrey's wrist had been handled again before the former
+was discharged, and by fingers which had first touched dust--of
+which there was plenty in the old library.
+
+7.  That Miss Tuttle had admitted, though not till after much
+prevarication and apparent subterfuge, that she had extended her
+walk on that fatal night not only as far as the Moore house, but
+that she had entered it and penetrated as far as the library door
+at the very moment the shot was fired within.
+
+8.  That in acknowledging this she had emphatically denied
+having associated the firing of this shot with any idea of harm to
+her sister; yet was known to have gone from this house in a
+condition of mind so serious that she failed to recollect the places
+she visited or the streets she passed through till she found herself
+again in her sister's house face to face with an officer.
+
+9.  That her first greeting of this officer was a shriek, betraying
+a knowledge of his errand before he had given utterance to a word.
+
+10.  That the candles found in the Moore house were similar to those
+bought by Mr. Jeffrey and afterward delivered at his kitchen door.
+
+11.  That she was the only member of the household besides the cook
+who was in the kitchen at the time, and that it was immediately
+after her departure from the room that the package containing the
+candles had been missed.
+
+12.  That opportunities of coming to an understanding with Mr.
+Jeffrey after his wife's death had not been lacking and it was not
+until after such opportunities had occurred that any serious inquiry
+into this matter had been begun by the police.  To which must be
+added, not in way of proof but as an important factor in the case,
+that her manner, never open, was such throughout her whole public
+examination as to make it evident to all that only half of what had
+occurred in the Jeffreys' house since the wedding had been given
+out by her or by the man for whose release from a disappointing
+matrimonial entanglement she was supposed to have worked; this,
+though the suspicion hanging over them both called for the utmost
+candor.
+
+Verily, a serious list; and opposed to this I had as yet little to
+offer but my own belief in her innocence and the fact, but little
+dwelt on and yet not without its value, that the money which had
+come to Mr. Jeffrey, and the home which had been given her, had both
+been forfeited by Mrs. Jeffrey's death.
+
+As I mused and mused over this impromptu synopsis, in my vain
+attempt to reach some fresh clue to a proper understanding of the
+inconsistencies in Miss Tuttle's conduct by means of my theory of
+her strong but mistaken devotion to Mr. Jeffrey, a light suddenly
+broke upon me from an entirely unexpected quarter.  It was a faint
+one, but any glimmer was welcome.  Remembering a remark made by Mr.
+Jeffrey in his examination, that Mrs. Jeffrey had not been the same
+since crossing the fatal doorstep of the Moore house, I asked myself
+if we had paid enough attention to the mental condition and conduct
+of the bride prior to the alarm which threw a pall of horror over
+her marriage; and caught by the idea, I sought for a fuller account
+of the events of that day than had hitherto been supplied by
+newspaper or witness.
+
+Hunting up my friend, the reporter, I begged him to tell me where
+he had obtained the facts from which he made that leading article
+in the Star which had so startled all Washington on the evening of
+the Jeffrey wedding.  That they had come from some eye-witness I
+had no doubt, but who was the eye-witness?  Himself?  No.  Who then?
+At first he declined to tell me, but after a fuller understanding of
+my motives he mentioned the name of a young lady, who, while a
+frequent guest at the most fashionable functions, was not above
+supplying the papers with such little items of current gossip as
+came under her own observation.
+
+How I managed to approach this lady and by what means I succeeded
+in gaining her confidence are details quite unnecessary to this
+narrative.  Enough that I did obtain access to her and that she
+talked quite frankly to me, and in so doing supplied me with a clue
+which ultimately opened up to me an entirely new field of inquiry.
+We had been discussing Mr. Jeffrey and Miss Tuttle, when suddenly,
+and with no apparent motive beyond the natural love of gossip which
+was her weakness, she launched out into remarks about the bride.
+The ceremony had been late; did I know it?  A half-hour or
+three-quarters past the time set for it.  And why?  Because Miss
+Moore was not ready.  She had chosen to array herself in the house
+and had come early enough for the purpose; but she would not accept
+any assistance, not even that of her maid, and of course she kept
+every one waiting.  "Oh, there was no more uneasy soul in the whole
+party that morning than the bride!"  Let other people remark upon
+the high look in Cora Tuttle's face, or gossip about the anxious
+manner of the bridegroom; she, the speaker, could tell things about
+the bride which would go to show that she was not all right even
+before that ominous death's-head reared itself into view at her
+marriage festival.  Why, the fact that she came downstairs and was
+married without her bridal bouquet was enough.  Had there not been
+so much else to talk about, people would have talked about that.
+But the big event had so effectually swallowed up the little that
+only herself, and possibly two other ladies she might name, seemed
+to retain any memory of the matter.
+
+"What ladies?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter what ladies.  Two of the very best sort.  I
+know they noticed it, because I heard them talking about it.  We
+were all standing in the upper hall and were all crowded into a
+passage leading to the room where the bride was dressing.  It was
+before the alarm had gone around of what had been discovered in the
+library, and we were all impatient enough for the appearance of the
+bride, who, we had been told, intended to wear the old point in
+which her great-grandmother was married.  I have a weakness for old
+point and I was determined to stand where I could see her come out,
+even if I lost sight of the ceremony itself.  But it would have been
+tedious enough waiting in that close hall if the ladies behind me
+had not kept up a conversation, which I, of course, pretended not
+to hear.  I remember it, every word, for it was my sole amusement
+for half an hour.  What was it?  Oh, it was about that same bouquet,
+which, by the way, I had the privilege of staring at all the time
+they chatted.  For the boy who brought it had not been admitted
+into Miss Moore's room, and, not knowing what else to do with it,
+was lingering before her door, with the great streamers falling
+from his hands, and the lilies making the whole place heavy with a
+sickening perfume.  From what I heard the ladies say, he had been
+standing there an hour, and the timid knock he gave from time to
+time produced in me an odd feeling which those ladies behind me
+seemed to share.
+
+"'It's a shame!' I heard one of them cry.  'Veronica Moore has no
+excuse for such thoughtlessness.  It is an hour now that she has
+been shut up in her room alone.  She won't have even her maid in.
+She prefers to dress alone, she says.  Peculiar in a bride, isn't
+it?  But one thing is certain: she can not put on her veil without
+help.  She will have to call some one in for that.'  At which the
+other volunteered that the Moores were all queer, and that she
+didn't envy Francis Jeffrey.  'What!  not with fifty thousand a
+year to lighten her oddities?' returned her companion with a shrug
+which communicated itself to me, so closely were we packed together.
+'I have a son who could bear with them under such circumstances.'
+Indeed she has, and all Washington knows it, but the remark passed
+without comment, for they had not yet exhausted the main event, and
+the person they now attacked was Miss Tuttle.  'Why doesn't she
+come and see that that bouquet is taken in?  I declare it's not
+decent.  Mr. Jeffrey would not feel complimented if he knew the fate
+of those magnificent lilies and roses.  I presume he furnished the
+bouquet.'
+
+"'Miss Tuttle has looked out of her room once,' I heard the other
+reply.  'She is in splendid beauty to-day, but pale.  But she
+never could control Veronica.'  'Hush!  you speak louder than you
+think'  This amused me, and I do believe that in another moment I
+should have laughed outright if another boy had not appeared in
+the hall before us, who, shoving aside the first, rapped on the
+door with a spirit which called for answer.  But he was no more
+successful than the other boy had been; so, being a brisk fellow,
+with no time for nonsense, he called out, 'Your bouquet, Miss, and
+a message, which I am to give you before you go downstairs!  The
+gentleman is quite particular about it.'  These words were
+literally shouted at the door, but in the hubbub of voices about
+us I don't believe any one heard them but ourselves and the bride.
+I know that she heard them, for she opened the door a very little
+way,--such a very little way that the boy had to put his lips to
+the crack when he spoke, and then turn and place his ear where his
+lips had been in order to catch her reply.  This, for some reason,
+seemed a long time in coming, and the fellow grew so impatient that
+he amused himself by snatching the bouquet from the other boy and
+thrusting it in through the crack, to the very great detriment of
+its roses and lilies.  When she took it he bawled for his answer,
+and when he got it, he stared and muttered doubtfully to himself as
+he worked his way out again through the crowd, which by this time
+was beginning to choke up all the halls and stairways.
+
+"But why have I told you all this nonsense?" she asked quite suddenly.
+"It isn't of the least consequence that Veronica Moore kept a boy
+waiting at her door while she dressed herself for her wedding; but
+it shows that she was queer even then, and I for one believe in the
+theory of suicide, and in that alone, and in the excuse she gave for
+it, too; for if she had really loved Francis Jeffrey she would not
+have been so slow to take in the magnificent bouquet he had provided
+for her."
+
+But comment, even from those who had known these people well, was
+not what I wanted at this moment, but facts.  So, without much
+attention to these words, I said:
+
+"You will excuse me if I suggest that you are going on too fast.
+The door of the bride's room has just been shut upon the boy who
+brought her a message.  When was it opened again?"
+
+"Not for a good half-hour; not till every one had grown nervous and
+Miss Tuttle and one or two of her most intimate friends had gone
+more than once to her door; not, in fact, till the hour for the
+ceremony had come and gone and Mr. Jeffrey had crossed the hall
+twice under the impression that she was ready for him.  Then, when
+weariness was general and people were asking what kept the bride
+and how much longer they were to be kept waiting, her door suddenly
+opened and I caught a glimpse of her face and heard her ask at
+last for her maid.  O, I repeat that Veronica Moore was not all
+right that day, and though I have heard no one comment on the fact,
+it has been a mystery to me ever since why she gave that sudden
+recoil when Francis Jeffrey took her hand after the benediction.
+It was not timidity, nor was it fear, for she did not know till a
+minute afterward what had happened in the house.  Did some sudden
+realization of what she had done in marrying a man whom she
+herself declared she did not love come when it was too late?
+What do you think?"
+
+Miss Freeman had forgotten herself; but the impetuosity which had
+led her into asking my opinion made her forget in another moment
+that she had done so.  And when in my turn I propounded a question
+and inquired whether she ever again saw the boy who besieged the
+bride's door with a message, she graciously replied:
+
+"The boy; let me see.  Yes, I saw him twice; once in a back hall
+talking earnestly to Mr. Jeffrey, and secondly at the carriage
+door just before the bridal party rode away.  It was Mrs. Jeffrey
+who was talking to him then, and I wondered to see him look so
+pleased when everybody in and about the house was pale as ashes."
+
+"Do you know the name of that boy?" I carelessly inquired.
+
+"His name?  O no.  He is one of Raucher's waiters; the curly-haired
+one.  You see him everywhere; but I don't know his name.  Do you
+flatter yourself that he can tell you anything that other people
+don't know?  Why, if he knew the least thing that wasn't in
+everybody's mouth, you would have heard from him long ago.  Those
+men are the greatest gossips in town"--I wonder what she thought
+of herself,--"and so proud to be of any importance."  This was true
+enough, though I did not admit it at the time; and when the interview
+was closed and I went away, I have no doubt she considered me quite
+the most heavy person she had ever met.  But this did not disturb me.
+The little facts she had stated were new to me and, repeating my
+former method, I was already busy arranging them in my mind.  Witness
+the result:
+
+1.  The ceremony of marriage between Francis Jeffrey and Veronica
+Moore was fully three-quarters of an hour late.
+
+2.  This was owing to the caprice of the bride, who would not have
+any one in the room with her, not even her maid.
+
+3.  The bridal bouquet did not figure in the ceremony.  In the flurry
+of the moment it was forgotten or purposely left behind by the bride.
+As this bouquet was undoubtedly the gift of Mr. Jeffrey, the fact
+may be significant.
+
+4.  She received a message of a somewhat peremptory character before
+going below.  From whom?  Her bridegroom?  It would so appear from
+the character of the message.
+
+5.  The messenger showed great astonishment at the reply he was
+given to carry back.  Yet he has not been known to mention the
+matter.  Why?  When every one talked he was silent.  Through whose
+influence?  This was something to find out.
+
+6.  Though at the time the benediction was pronounced every one was
+in a state of alarm except the bride, it was noticed that she gave
+an involuntary recoil when her bridegroom stooped for the customary
+kiss.  Why?  Were the lines of her last farewell true then, and did
+she experience at that moment a sudden realization of her lack of
+love?
+
+7.  She did not go again upstairs, but very soon fled from the
+house with the rest of the bridal party.
+
+Petty facts, all, but possibly more significant than appeared.  I
+made up my mind to find the boy who brought the bouquet and also
+the one who carried back her message.
+
+But here a surprise, if not a check, awaited me.  The florist's boy
+had left his place and no one could tell where he had gone.  Neither
+could I find the curly-haired waiter at Raucher's.  He had left also,
+but it was to join the volunteers at San Antonio.
+
+Was there meaning in this coincidence?  I resolved to know.  Visiting
+the former haunts of both boys, I failed to come upon any evidence
+of an understanding between them, or of their having shown any
+special interest in the Jeffrey tragedy.  Both seemed to have been
+strangely reticent in regard to it, the florist's boy showing
+stupidity and the waiter such satisfaction in his prospective
+soldiering that no other topic was deemed worthy his attention.  The
+latter had a sister and she could not say enough of the delight her
+brother had shown at the prospect of riding a horse again and of
+fighting in such good company.  He had had some experience as a
+cowboy before coming to Washington, and from the moment war was
+declared had expressed his intention of joining the recruits for
+Cuba as soon as he could see her so provided for that his death would
+not rob her of proper support.  How this had come about she did not
+know.  Three weeks before he had been in despair over the faint
+prospect of doing what he wished; then suddenly, and without any
+explanation of how the change had come about, he had rushed in upon
+her with the news that he was going to enlist in a company made up
+of bronco busters and rough riders from the West, that she need not
+worry about herself or about him, for he had just put five hundred
+dollars to her account in bank, and that as for himself he possessed
+a charmed life and was immune, as she well knew, and need fear
+bullets no more than the fever.  By this he meant that he had had
+yellow fever years before in Louisiana, and that a ball which had
+once been fired at him had gone clean through his body without
+taking his life.
+
+"What was the date of the evening on which he told you he had placed
+money in bank for you?"
+
+"April the twenty-ninth."
+
+Two days after the Jeffrey-Moore wedding!
+
+Convinced now that his departure from town was something more than
+a coincidence, I pursued my inquiries and found that he had been
+received, just as she had said, into the First Volunteer Corps under
+Colonel Wood.  This required influence.  Whose was the influence?
+It took me some time to find out, but after many and various
+attempts, most of which ended in failure, I succeeded in learning
+that the man who had worked and obtained for him a place in this
+favored corps was FRANCIS JEFFREY.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+IN THE GRASS
+
+
+I did some tall thinking that night.  I remembered that this man had
+held some conversation with the Jeffreys at their carriage door
+previous to their departure from the Moore house, and found myself
+compelled to believe that only a matter of importance to themselves
+as well as to him would have detained them at such a minute.  Oh,
+that Tampa were not so far off or that I had happened on this clue
+earlier!  But Tampa was at that moment a far prospect for me and I
+could only reason from such facts as I had been able to collect in
+Washington.
+
+Fixing my mind now on Mrs. Jeffrey, I asked the cause of the many
+caprices which had marked her conduct on her wedding morning.  Why
+had she persisted in dressing alone, and what occasioned the
+absorption which led to her ignoring all appeals at her door at a
+time when a woman is supposed to be more than usually gracious?  But
+one answer suggested itself.  Her heart was not in her marriage, and
+that last hour of her maidenhood had been an hour of anguish and
+struggle.  Perhaps she not only failed to love Francis Jeffrey, but
+loved some other man.  This seemed improbable, but things as strange
+as this have happened in our complex society and no reckoning can be
+made with a woman's fancy.  If this was so--and what other theory
+would better or even so well account for her peculiar behavior both
+then and afterward?  The hour usually given by brides to dress and
+gladsome expectation was with her one of farewell to past hopes and
+an unfortunate, if not passionate, attachment.  No wonder that she
+wished to be alone.  No wonder that interruption angered her.
+Perhaps it had found her on her knees.  Perhaps--  Here I felt
+myself seized by a strong and sudden excitement.  I remembered the
+filings I had gathered up from the small stand by the window, filings
+which had glittered and which must have been of gold.  What was the
+conclusion?  In this last hour of her maiden life she had sought to
+rid herself of some article of jewelry which she found it undesirable
+to carry into her new life.  What article of jewelry?  In
+consideration of the circumstances and the hour, I could think of
+but one.  A ring! the symbol of some old attachment.
+
+The slight abrasion at the base of her third finger, which had been
+looked upon as the result of too rough and speedy a withdrawing of
+the wedding-ring on the evening of her death, was much more likely
+to have been occasioned by the reopening of some little wound made
+two weeks before by the file.  If Durbin and the rest had taken into
+account these filings, they must have come to very much the same
+conclusion; but either they had overlooked them in their search
+about the place, or, having noted them, regarded them as a clue
+leading nowhere.
+
+But for me they led the way to a very definite inquiry.  Asking to
+see the rings Mrs. Jeffrey had left behind her on the night she
+went for the last time to the Moore house, I looked them carefully
+over, and found that none of them showed the least mark of the file.
+This strengthened my theory, and I proceeded to take my next step
+with increased confidence.  It seemed an easy one, but proved
+unexpectedly difficult.  My desire was to ascertain whether she had
+worn previous to her marriage any rings which had not been seen on
+her finger since, and it took me one whole week to establish the
+fact that she had.
+
+But that fact once learned, the way cleared before me.  Allowing my
+fancy full rein, I pictured to myself her anxious figure standing
+alone in that ancient and ghostly room filing off this old ring
+from her dainty finger.  Then I asked myself what she would be
+likely to do with this ring after disengaging it from her hand?
+Would she keep it?  Perhaps; but if so, why could it not be found?
+None such had been discovered among her effects.  Or had she thrown
+it away, and if so, where?  The vision of her which I had just seen
+in my mind's eye came out with a clearness at this, which struck
+me as providential.  I could discern as plainly as if I had been a
+part of the scene the white-clad form of the bride bending toward
+the light which came in sparsely through the half-open shutter she
+had loosened for this task.  This was the shutter which had never
+again been fastened and whose restless blowing to and fro had first
+led attention to this house and the crime it might otherwise have
+concealed indefinitely.  Had some glimpse of the rank grass growing
+underneath this window lured her eye and led her to cast away the
+ring which she had no longer any right to keep?  It would be like
+a woman to yield to such an impulse; and on the strength of the
+possibility I decided to search this small plot for what it might
+very reasonably conceal.
+
+But I did not wish to do this openly.  I was not only afraid of
+attracting Durbin's attention by an attempt which could only awaken
+his disdain, but I hesitated to arouse the suspicion of Mr. Moore,
+whose interest in his newly acquired property made him very properly
+alert to any trespass upon it.
+
+The undertaking, therefore, presented difficulties.  But it was my
+business to overcome these, and before long I conceived a plan by
+which every blade of grass in the narrow strip running in front of
+this house might be gone over without rousing anything more serious
+than Uncle David's ire.
+
+Calling together a posse of street urchins, I organized them into
+a band, with the promise of a good supper all around if one of them
+brought me the pieces of a broken ring which I had lost in the grass
+plot of a house where I had been called upon to stay all night.
+That they might win the supper in the shortest possible time and
+before the owner of this house, who lived opposite, could interfere,
+I advised them to start at the fence in a long line and, proceeding
+on their knees, to search, each one, the ground before him to the
+width of his own body.  The fortunate one was to have the privilege
+of saying what the supper should consist of.  To give a plausible
+excuse for this search, a ball was to be tossed up and down the
+street till it lighted in the Moore house inclosure.
+
+It was a scheme to fire the street boy's soul, and I was only afraid
+of failure from the over-enthusiasm it aroused.  But the injunctions
+which I gave them to spare the shrubs and not to trample the grass
+any more than was necessary were so minute and impressive that they
+moved away to their task in unexpected order and with a subdued
+cheerfulness highly promising of success.
+
+I did not accompany them.  Jinny, who has such an innocent air on
+the street, took my place and promenaded up and down the block, just
+to see that Mr. Moore did not make too much trouble.  And it was
+well she did so, for though he was not at home,--I had chosen the
+hour of his afternoon ride, his new man-servant was; and he no sooner
+perceived this crowd of urchins making for the opposite house than
+he rushed at them, and would have scattered them far and wide in a
+twinkling if the demure dimples of my little ally had not come into
+play and distracted his attention so completely as to make him
+forget the throng of unkempt hoodlums who seemed bound to invade
+his master's property.  She was looking for Mr. Moore's house, she
+told him.  Did he know Mr. Moore, and his house which was somewhere
+near?  Not his new, great, big house, where the horrible things
+took place of which she had read in the papers, but his little old
+house, which she had heard was soon to be for rent, and which she
+thought would be just the right size for herself and mother.  Was
+that it?  That dear little place all smothered in vines?  How
+lovely!  and what would the rent be, did he think?  and had it a
+back-yard with garden-room enough for her to raise pinks and
+nasturtiums?  and so on, and so on, while he stared with delighted
+eyes, and tried to put in a word edgewise, and the boys--well,
+they went through that strip of grass in just ten minutes.  My
+brave little Jinny had just declared with her most roguish smile
+that she would run home and tell her mother all about this sweetest
+of sweet little places, when a shout rose from the other side of
+the street, and that collection of fifteen or twenty boys scampered
+away as if mad, shouting in joyous echo of the boy at their head:
+
+"It's to be chicken, heaping plates of ice cream and sponge cake."
+
+By which token she knew that the ring had been found.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+When they brought this ring to me I would not have exchanged places
+with any man on earth.  As Jinny herself was curious enough to
+stroll along about this time, I held it out where we both could see
+it and draw our conclusions.
+
+It was a plain gold circlet set with a single small ruby.  It was
+cut through and twisted out of shape, just as I had anticipated;
+and as I examined it I wondered what part it had played and was
+yet destined to play in the drama of Veronica Jeffrey's mysterious
+life and still more mysterious death.  That it was a factor of some
+importance, arguing some early school-girl love, I could but gather
+from the fact that its removal from her finger was effected in
+secrecy and under circumstances of such pressing haste.  How could
+I learn the story of that ring and the possible connection between
+it and Mr. Jeffrey's professed jealousy of his wife and the
+disappointing honeymoon which had followed their marriage?  That
+this feeling on his part had antedated the ambassador's ball no one
+could question; but that it had started as far back as the wedding
+day was a new idea to me and one which suggested many possibilities.
+Could this idea be established, and, if so, how?  But one avenue of
+inquiry offered itself.  The waiter, who had been spirited away so
+curiously immediately after the wedding; might be able to give us
+some information on this interesting point.  He had been the medium
+of the messages which had passed between her and Mr. Jeffrey just
+prior to the ceremony; afterward he had been seen talking earnestly
+to that gentleman and later with her.  Certainly, it would add to
+our understanding of the situation to know what reply she had sent
+to the peremptory demand made upon her at so critical a time; an
+understanding so desirable that the very prospect of it was almost
+enough to warrant a journey to Tampa.  Yet, say that the results
+were disappointing, how much time lost and what a sum of money!  I
+felt the need of advice in this crisis, yet hesitated to ask it.
+My cursed pride and my no less cursed jealousy of Durbin stood very
+much in my way at this time.
+
+A week had now passed since the inquest, and, while Miss Tuttle
+still remained at liberty, it was a circumscribed liberty which
+must have been very galling to one of her temperament and habits.
+She rode and she walked, but she entered no house unattended nor
+was she allowed any communication with Mr. Jeffrey.  Nevertheless
+she saw him, or at least gave him the opportunity of seeing her.
+Each day at three o'clock she rode through K Street, and the
+detective who watched Mr. Jeffrey's house said that she never
+passed it without turning her face to the second-story window,
+where he invariably stood.  No signs passed between them; indeed,
+they scarcely nodded; but her face, as she lifted it to meet his
+eye, showed so marked a serenity and was so altogether beautiful
+that this same detective had a desire to see if it maintained
+like characteristics when she was not within reach of her
+brother-in-law.  Accordingly, the next day he delegated his place
+to another and took his stand farther down the street.  Alas!  it
+was not the same woman's face he saw; but a far different and sadder
+one.  She wore that look of courage and brave hope only in passing
+Mr. Jeffrey's house.  Was it simply an expression of her secret
+devotion to him or the signal of some compact which had been
+entered into between them?
+
+Whichever it was, it touched my heart, even in his description of
+it.  After advising with Jinny I approached the superintendent, to
+whom, without further reserve, I opened my heart.
+
+The next day I found myself on the train bound for Tampa, with full
+authority to follow Curly Jim until I found him.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+THE HOUSE OF DOOM
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+IN TAMPA
+
+
+When I started on this desperate search after a witness, war had
+been declared, but no advance as yet ordered on Cuba.  But during
+my journey south the long expected event happened, and on my
+arrival in Tampa I found myself in the midst of departure and
+everything in confusion.
+
+Of course, under such conditions it was difficult to find my man on
+the instant.  Innumerable inquiries yielded no result, and in the
+absence of any one who would or could give me the desired information
+I wandered from one end of the camp to the other till I finally
+encountered a petty officer who gave signs of being a Rough Rider.
+Him I stopped, and, with some hint of my business, asked where
+James Calvert could be found.
+
+His answer was a stare and a gesture toward the hospital tents.
+
+Nothing could have astonished me more.
+
+"Sick?" I cried.
+
+"Dying," was his answer.
+
+Dying!  Curly Jim!  Impossible.  I had misled my informant as to
+the exact man I wanted, or else there were two James Calverts in
+Tampa.  Curly Jim, the former cowboy, was not the fellow to succumb
+in camp before he had ever smelt powder.
+
+"It is James Calvert of the First Volunteer Corps I am after," said
+I.  "A sturdy fellow--"
+
+"No doubt, no doubt.  Many sturdy fellows are down.  He's down to
+stay.  Typhoid, you know.  Bad case.  No hope from the start.  Pity,
+but--"
+
+I heard no more.  Dying!  Curly Jim.  He who was considered to be
+immune!  He who held the secret--
+
+"Let me see him," I demanded.  "It is important--a police matter--a
+word from him may save a life.  He is still breathing?"
+
+"Yes, but I do not think there is any chance of his speaking.  He
+did not recognize his nurse five minutes ago."
+
+As bad as that!  But I did not despair.  I did not dare to.  I had
+staked everything on this interview, and I was not going to lose
+its promised results from any lack of effort on my own part.
+
+"Let me see him," I repeated.
+
+I was taken in.  The few persons I saw clustered about a narrow cot
+in one corner gave way and I was cut to the heart to see that they
+did this not so much out of consideration for me or my errand there
+as from the consciousness that their business at the bedside of
+this dying man was over.  He was on the point of breathing his
+last.  I pressed forward, and after one quick scrutiny of the closed
+eyes and pale face I knelt at his side and whispered a name into
+his ear.  It was that of Veronica Moore.
+
+He started; they all saw it.  On the threshold of death, some
+emotion--we never knew what one--drew him back for an instant,
+and the pale cheek showed a suspicion of color.  Though the eyes
+did not open, the lips moved, and I caught these words:
+
+"Kept word--told no one--she was so--"
+
+And that was all.  He died the next instant.
+
+Well!  I was woefully done up by this sudden extinction of all my
+hopes.  They had been extravagant, no doubt, but they had sustained
+me through all my haps and mishaps, trials and dangers, till now,
+here, they ended with the one inexorable fact-death.  Was I doomed
+to defeat, then?  Must I go back to the major with my convictions
+unchanged but with no fresh proof, no real evidence to support them?
+I certainly must.  With the death of this man, all means of reaching
+the state of Mrs. Jeffrey's mind immediately preceding her marriage
+were gone.  I could never learn now what to know would make a man
+of me and possibly save Cora Tuttle.
+
+Bending under this stroke of Providence, I passed out.  A little
+boy was sobbing at the tent door.  I stared at him curiously, and
+was hurrying on, when I felt myself caught by the hand.
+
+"Take me with you," cried a choked and frightened voice in my ear.
+"I have no friend here, now he is gone; take me back to Washington."
+
+Washington!  I turned and looked at the lad who, kneeling in the
+hot sand at the door of the tent, was clutching me with imploring
+hands.
+
+"Who are you?" I asked; "and how came you here?  Do you belong to
+the army?"
+
+"I helped care for his horse," he whispered.  "He found me smuggled
+on board the train--for I was bound to go to the war--and he was
+sorry for me and used to give me bits of his own rations, but--but
+now no one will give me anything.  Take me back; she won't care.
+She's dead, they say.  Besides, I wouldn't stay here now if she was
+alive and breathing.  I have had enough of war since he--Oh, he
+was good to me--I never cared for any one so much."
+
+I looked at the boy with an odd sensation for which I have no name.
+
+"Whom are you talking about?" I asked.  "Your mother your sister?"
+
+"Oh, no;" the tone was simplicity itself.  "Never had no mother.
+I mean the lady at the big house; the one that was married.  She
+gave me money to go out of Washington, and, wanting to be a soldier,
+I followed Curly Jim.  I didn't think he'd die--he looked so
+strong--  What's the matter, sir?  Have I said anything I shouldn't?"
+
+I had him by the arm.  I fear that I was shaking him.
+
+"The lady!" I repeated.  "She who was married--who gave you money.
+Wasn't it Mrs. Jeffrey?"
+
+"Yes, I believe that was the name of the man she married.  I didn't
+know him; but I saw he r-"
+
+"Where?  And why did she give you money?  I will take you home with
+me if you tell me the truth about it."
+
+He glanced back at the tent from which I had slightly drawn him
+and a hungry look crept into his eyes.
+
+"Well, it's no secret now," he muttered.  "He used to say I must
+keep my mouth shut; but he wouldn't say so now if he knew I could
+get home by telling.  He used to be sorry for me, he used.  What
+do you want to know?"
+
+"Why Mrs. Jeffrey gave you money to leave Washington."
+
+The boy trembled, drew a step away, and then came back, and under
+those hot Florida skies, in the turmoil of departing troops, I
+heard these words:
+
+"Because I heard what she said to Jim."
+
+I felt my heart go down, then up, up, beyond anything I had ever
+experienced in my whole life.  The way before me was not closed
+then.  A witness yet remained, though Jim was dead.  The boy was
+oblivious of my emotion; he was staring with great mournfulness
+t the tent.
+
+"And what was that?" said I.
+
+His attention, which had been wandering, came back, and it was
+with some surprise he said:
+
+"It was not much.  She told him to take the gentleman into the
+library.  But it was the library where men died, and he just went
+and died there, too, you remember, and Jim said he wasn't ever going
+to speak of it, and so I promised not to, neither, but--but--when
+do you think you will be starting, sir?"
+
+I did not answer him.  I was feeling very queer, as men feel, I
+suppose, who in some crisis or event recognize an unexpected
+interposition of Providence.
+
+"Are you the boy who ran away from the florist's in Washington?"
+I inquired when ready to speak.  "The boy who delivered Miss Moore's
+bridal bouquet?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I let go of his hand and sat down.  Surely there was a power greater
+than chance governing this matter.  Through what devious ways and
+from what unexpected sources had I come upon this knowledge?
+
+"Mrs. Jeffrey, or Miss Moore, as she was then, told Jim to seat the
+gentleman in the library," I now said.  "Why?"
+
+"I do not know.  He told her the gentleman's name and then she
+whispered him that.  I heard her, and that was why I got money, too.
+But it's all gone now.  Oh, sir, when are you going back?"
+
+I started to my feet.  Was it in answer to this appeal or because
+I realized that I had come at last upon a clue calling for immediate
+action?
+
+"I am going now," said I, "and you are going with me.  Run!  for
+the train we take leaves inside of ten minutes.  My business here
+is over."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+"THE COLONEL'S OWN"
+
+
+Words can not express the tediousness of that return journey.  The
+affair which occupied all my thoughts was as yet too much enveloped
+in mystery for me to contemplate it with anything but an anxious
+and inquiring mind.  While I clung with new and persistent hope to
+the thread which had been put in my hand, I was too conscious of
+the maze through which we must yet pass, before the light could be
+reached, to feel that lightness of spirit which in itself might
+have lessened the hours, and made bearable those days of forced
+inaction.  To beguile the way a little, I made a complete analysis
+of the facts as they appeared to me in the light of this latest bit
+of evidence.  The result was not strikingly encouraging, yet I will
+insert it, if only in proof of my diligence and the extreme interest
+I experienced in each and every stage of this perplexing affair.  It
+again took the form of a summary and read as follows:
+
+Facts as they now appear:
+
+1.  The peremptory demand for an interview which had been delivered
+to Miss Moore during the half-hour preceding her marriage had come,
+not from the bridegroom as I had supposed, but from the so-called
+stranger, Mr. Pfeiffer.
+
+2.  Her reply to this demand had been an order for that gentleman
+to be seated in the library.
+
+3.  The messenger carrying this order had been met and earnestly
+talked with by Mr. Jeffrey either immediately before or immediately
+after the aforementioned gentleman had been so seated.
+
+4.  Death reached Mr. Pfeiffer before the bride did.
+
+5.  Miss Moore remained in ignorance of this catastrophe till after
+her marriage, no intimation of the same having been given her by
+the few persons allowed to approach her before she descended to her
+nuptials; yet she was seen to shrink unaccountably when her husband's
+lips touched hers, and when informed of the dreadful event before
+which she beheld all her guests fleeing, went from the house a
+changed woman.
+
+6.  For all this proof that Mr. Pfeiffer was well known to her, if
+not to the rest of the bridal party, no acknowledgment of this was
+made by any of them then or afterward, nor any contradiction given
+either by husband or wife to the accepted theory that this seeming
+stranger from the West had gone into this fatal room of the Moores'
+to gratify his own morbid curiosity.
+
+7.  On the contrary, an extraordinary effort was immediately made
+by Mr. Jeffrey to rid himself of the only witnesses who could tell
+the truth concerning those fatal ten minutes; but this brought no
+peace to the miserable wife, who never again saw a really happy
+moment.
+
+8.  Extraordinary efforts at concealment argue extraordinary causes
+for fear.  Fully too understand the circumstances of Mrs. Jeffrey's
+death, it would be necessary first to know what had happened in the
+Moore house when Mr. Jeffrey learned from Curly Jim that the man,
+whose hold upon his bride had been such that he dared to demand an
+interview with her just as she was on the point of descending to
+her nuptials, had been seated, or was about to be seated, in the
+room where death had once held its court and might easily be
+persuaded to hold court again.
+
+This was the limit of my conclusions.  I could get no further, and
+awaited my arrival in Washington with the greatest impatience.
+But once there, and the responsibility of this new inquiry shifted
+to broader shoulders than my own, I was greatly surprised and as
+deeply chagrined to observe the whole affair lag unaccountably and
+to note that, in spite of my so-called important discoveries,
+the prosecution continued working up the case against Miss Tuttle
+in manifest intention of presenting it to the grand jury at its
+fall sitting.
+
+Whether Durbin was to blame for this I could not say.  Certainly
+his look was more or less quizzical when next we met, and this
+nettled me so that I at once came to the determination that whatever
+was in his mind, or in the minds of the men whose counsels he
+undoubtedly shared, I was going to make one more great effort on my
+own account; not to solve the main mystery, which had passed out of
+my hands, but to reach the hidden cause of the equally unexplained
+deaths which had occurred from time to time at the library fireplace.
+
+For nothing could now persuade me that the two mysteries were not
+indissolubly connected, or that the elucidation of the one would not
+lead to the elucidation of the other.
+
+To be sure, it was well accepted at headquarters that all possible
+attempts had been made in this direction and with nothing but
+failure as a result.  The floor, the hearth, the chimney, and, above
+all, the old settle, had been thoroughly searched.  But to no avail.
+The secret had not been reached and had almost come to be looked
+upon as insolvable.
+
+But I was not one to be affected by other men's failures.  The
+encouragement afforded me by my late discoveries was such that I
+felt confident that nothing could hinder my success save the
+necessity of completely pulling down the house.  Besides, all
+investigation had hitherto started, if it had not ended, in the
+library.  I was resolved to begin work in quite a different spot.
+I had not forgotten the sensations I had experienced in the
+southwest chamber.
+
+During my absence this house had been released from surveillance.
+But the major still held the keys and I had no difficulty in
+obtaining them.  The next thing was to escape its owner's vigilance.
+This I managed to do through the assistance of Jinny, and when
+midnight came and all lights went out in the opposite cottage I
+entered boldly upon the scene.
+
+As before, I went first of all to the library.  It was important
+to know at the outset that this room was in its normal condition.
+But this was not my only reason for prefacing my new efforts by a
+visit to this scene of death and mysterious horror.  I had another,
+so seemingly puerile, that I almost hesitate to mention it and
+would not if the sequel warranted its omission.
+
+I wished to make certain that I had exhausted every suspected, as
+well as every known clue, to the information I sought.  In my long
+journey home and the hours of thought it had forced upon me, I had
+more than once been visited by flitting visions of things seen in
+this old house and afterward nearly forgotten.  Among these was
+the book which on that first night of hurried search had given
+proofs of being in some one's hand within a very short period.  The
+attention I had given it at a moment of such haste was necessarily
+cursory, and when later a second opportunity was granted me of
+looking into it again, I had allowed a very slight obstacle to
+deter me.  This was a mistake I was anxious to rectify.  Anything
+which had been touched with purpose at or near the time of so
+mysterious a tragedy,--and the position of this book on a shelf so
+high that a chair was needed to reach it proved that it had been
+sought and touched with purpose, held out the promise of a clue which
+one on so blind a trail as myself could not afford to ignore.
+
+But when I had taken the book down and read again its totally
+uninteresting and unsuggestive title and, by another reference to
+its dim and faded leaves, found that my memory had not played me
+false and that it contained nothing but stupid and wholly irrelevant
+statistics, my confidence in it as a possible aid in the work I had
+in hand departed just as it had on the previous occasion.  I was
+about to put it back on the shelf, when I bethought me of running
+my hand in behind the two books between which it had stood.  Ah!
+that was it! Another book lay flat against the wall at the back of
+the shelf; and when, by the removal of those in front I was enabled
+to draw this book out, I soon saw why it had been relegated to
+such a remote place of concealment on the shelves of the Moore
+library.
+
+It was a collection of obscure memoirs written by an English woman,
+but an English woman who had been in America during the early part
+of the century, and who had been brought more or less into contact
+with the mysteries connected with the Moore house in Washington.
+Several passages were marked, one particularly, by a heavy
+pencil-line running the length of the margin.  As the name of Moore
+was freely scattered through these passages as well as through two
+or three faded newspaper clippings which I discovered pasted on the
+inside cover, I lost no time in setting about their perusal.
+
+The following extracts are from the book itself, taken in the order
+in which I found them marked:
+
+"It was about this time that I spent a week in the Moore house;
+that grand and historic structure concerning which and its occupants
+so many curious rumors are afloat.  I knew nothing then of its
+discreditable fame; but from the first moment of my entrance into
+its ample and well lighted halls I experienced a sensation which I
+will not call dread, but which certainly was far from being the
+impulse of pure delight which the graciousness of my hostess and
+the imposing character of the place itself were calculated to
+produce.  This emotion was but transitory, vanishing, as was natural,
+in the excitement of my welcome and the extraordinary interest I
+took in Callista Moore, who in those days was a most fascinating
+little body.  Small to the point of appearing diminutive, and lacking
+all assertion in manner and bearing, she was nevertheless such a
+lady that she easily dominated all who approached her, and produced,
+quite against her will I am sure, an impression of aloofness
+seasoned with kindness, which made her a most surprising and
+entertaining study to the analytic observer.  Her position as nominal
+mistress of an establishment already accounted one of the finest in
+Washington,--the real owner, Reuben Moore, preferring to live
+abroad with his French wife,--gave to her least action an importance
+which her shy, if not appealing looks, and a certain strained
+expression most difficult to characterize, vainly attempted to
+contradict.  I could not understand her, and soon gave up the
+attempt; but my admiration held firm, and by the time the evening
+was half over I was her obedient slave.  I think from what I know
+of her now that she would have preferred to be mine.
+
+"I was put to sleep in a great chamber which I afterward heard
+called 'The Colonel's Own.' It was very grand and had a great bed
+in it almost royal in its size and splendor.  I believe that I
+shrank quite unaccountably from this imposing piece of furniture
+when I first looked at it; it seemed so big and so out of
+proportion to my slim little body.  But admonished by the look
+which I surprised on Mistress Callista's high-bred face, I quickly
+recalled an expression so unsuited to my position as guest, and,
+with a gush of well-simulated rapture, began to expatiate upon
+the interesting characteristics of the room, and express myself
+as delighted at the prospect of sleeping there.
+
+"Instantly the nervous look left her, and, with the quiet remark,
+'It was my father's room,' she set down the candles with which both
+her hands were burdened, and gave me a kiss so warm and surcharged
+with feeling that it sufficed to keep me happy and comfortable for
+a half-hour or more after she passed out.
+
+"I had thought myself a very sleepy girl, but when, after a somewhat
+lengthened brooding over the dying embers in the open fireplace, I
+lay down behind the curtains of the huge bed, I found myself as far
+from sleep as I had ever been in my whole life.
+
+"And I did not recover from this condition for the entire night.
+For hours I tossed from one side of the bed to the other in my
+efforts to avoid the persistent eyes of a scarcely-to-be-perceived
+drawing facing me from the opposite wall.  It had no merit as a
+picture, this drawing, but seen as it was under the rays of a
+gibbous moon looking in through the half-open shutter, it exercised
+upon me a spell such as I can not describe and hope never again to
+experience.  Finally I rose and pulled the curtains violently
+together across the foot of the bed.  This shut out the picture;
+but I found it worse to imagine it there with its haunting eyes
+peering at me through the intervening folds of heavy damask than
+to confront it openly; so I pushed the curtains back again, only
+to rise a half-hour later and twitch them desperately together
+once more.
+
+"I fidgeted and worried so that night that I must have looked quite
+pale when my attentive hostess met me at the head of the stairs the
+next morning.  For her hand shook quite perceptibly as she grasped
+mine, and her voice was pitched in no natural key as she inquired
+how I had slept.  I replied, as truth, if not courtesy, demanded,
+'Not as well as usual,' whereupon her eyes fell and she remarked
+quite hurriedly; 'I am so sorry; you shall have another room
+tonight,' adding, in what appeared to be an unconscious whisper:
+'There is no use; all feel it; even the young and the gay;' then
+aloud and with irrepressible anxiety: 'You didn't see anything,
+dear?'
+
+"'No!' I protested in suddenly awakened dismay; 'only the strange
+eyes of that queer drawing peering at me through the curtains of my
+bed.  Is it--is it a haunted room?'
+
+"Her look was a shocked one, her protest quite vehement.  'Oh, no!
+No one has ever witnessed anything like a ghost there, but every
+one finds it impossible to sleep in that bed or even in the room.
+I do not know why, unless it is that my father spent so many weary
+years of incessant wakefulness inside its walls.'
+
+"'And did he die in that bed?' I asked.
+
+"She gave a startled shiver, and drew me hurriedly downstairs. As
+we paused at the foot, she pressed my hand and whispered:
+
+"'Yes; at night; with the full of the moon upon him.'
+
+"I answered her look with one she probably understood as little as
+I did hers.  I had heard of this father of hers.  He had been a
+terrible old man and had left a terrible memory behind him.
+
+"The next day my room was changed according to her promise, but in
+the light of the charges I have since heard uttered against that
+house and the family who inhabit it, I am glad that I spent one night
+in what, if it was not a haunted chamber, had certainly a very
+thrilling effect upon its occupants."
+
+Second passage; the italics showing where it was most heavily marked.
+
+"The house contained another room as interesting as the one I have
+already mentioned.  It went by the name of the library and its walls
+were heavily lined with books; but the family never sat there, nor
+was I ever fortunate enough to see it with its doors unclosed except
+on the occasion of the grand reception Mistress Callista gave in my
+honor.  I have a fancy for big rooms and more than once urged my
+hostess to tell me why this one stood neglected.  But the lady was
+not communicative on this topic and it was from another member of
+the household I learned that its precincts had been forever clouded
+by the unexpected death within them of one of her father's friends,
+a noted army officer.
+
+"Why this should have occasioned a permanent disuse of the spot I
+could not understand, and as every one who conversed on this topic
+invariably gave the impression of saying less than the subject
+demanded, my curiosity soon became too much for me and I attacked
+Miss Callista once again in regard to it.  She gave me a quick smile,
+for she was always amiable, but shook her head and introduced another
+topic.  But one night when the wind was howling in the chimneys and
+the sense of loneliness was even greater than usual in the great
+house, we drew together on the rug in front of my bedroom fire, and,
+as the embers burned down to ashes before us, Miss Callista became
+more communicative.
+
+"Her heart was heavy, she told me; had been heavy for years.  Perhaps
+some ray of comfort would reach her if she took a friend into her
+confidence.  God knew that she needed one, especially on nights like
+this, when the wind woke echoes all over the house and it was hard
+to tell which most to fear, the sounds which came from no one knew
+where, or the silence which settled after.
+
+"She trembled as she said this, and instinctively drew nearer my
+side so that our heads almost touched over the flickering flame from
+whose heat and light we sought courage.  She seemed to feel grateful
+for this contact, and the next minute, flinging all her scruples to
+the wind, she began a relation of events which more or less answered
+my late unwelcome queries.
+
+"The death in the library, about which her most perplexing memory
+hung, took place when she was a child and her father held that high
+governmental position which has reflected so much credit upon the
+family.  Her father and the man who thus perished had been intimate
+friends.  They had fought together in the War of 1812 and received
+the same distinguishing marks of presidential approval afterward.
+They were both members of an important commission which brought them
+into diplomatic relations with England.  It was while serving on this
+commission that the sudden break occurred which ended all intimate
+relations between them, and created a change in her father that was
+equally remarked at home and abroad.  What occasioned this break no
+one knew.  Whether his great ambition had received some check through
+the jealousy of this so-called friend--a supposition which did not
+seem possible, as he rose rapidly after this--or on account of other
+causes darkly hinted at by his contemporaries, but never breaking
+into open gossip, he was never the same man afterwards.  His children,
+who used to rush with effusion to greet him, now shrank into corners
+at his step, or slid behind half open doors, whence they peered with
+fearful interest at his tall figure, pacing in moody silence the
+halls of his ancestral home, or sitting with frowning brows over the
+embers dying away on the great hearthstone of his famous library.
+
+"Their mother, who was an invalid, did not share these terrors.  The
+father was ever tender of her, and the only smile they ever saw on
+his face came with his entrance into her darkened room.
+
+"Such were Callista Moore's first memories.  Those which followed
+were more definite and much more startling.  President Jackson, who
+had a high opinion of her father's ability, advanced him rapidly.
+Finally a position was given him which raised him into national
+prominence.  As this had been the goal of his ambition for years,
+he was much gratified by this appointment, and though his smiles
+came no more frequently, his frowns lightened, and from being
+positively threatening, became simply morose.
+
+"Why this moroseness should have sharpened into menace after an
+unexpected visit from his once dear, but long estranged
+companion-in-arms, his daughter, even after long years of constant
+brooding upon this subject, dares not decide.  If she could she
+might be happier.
+
+"The general was a kindly man, sharp of face and of a tall thin
+figure, but with an eye to draw children and make them happy with
+a look.  But his effect on the father was different.  From the
+moment the two met in the great hall below, the temper of the host
+betrayed how little he welcomed this guest.  He did not fail in
+courtesy--the Moores are always gentlemen--but it was a hard
+courtesy, which cut while it flattered.  The two children, shrinking
+from its edge without knowing what it was that hurt them, slunk to
+covert, and from behind the two pillars which mark the entrance to
+the library, watched the two men as they walked up and down the
+halls discussing the merits of this and that detail of the freshly
+furnished mansion.  These two innocent, but eager spies, whom fear
+rather than curiosity held in hiding, even caught some of the
+sentences which passed between tire so-called friends; and though
+these necessarily conveyed but little meaning to their childish
+minds, the words forming them were never forgotten, as witness
+these phrases confided to me by Mistress Callista twenty-five years
+afterward.
+
+"'You have much that most men lack,' remarked the general, as they
+paused to admire some little specimen of Italian art which had been
+lately received from Genoa.  'You have money--too much money, Moore,
+by an amount I might easily name--a home which some might call
+palatial, a lovely, if not altogether healthy wife, two fine
+children, and all the honor which a man in a commonwealth like this
+should ask for.  Drop politics.'
+
+"'Politics are my life,' was the cold response.  'To bid me drop
+them is to bid me commit suicide.'  Then, as an afterthought to
+which a moment of intervening silence added emphasis, 'And for you
+to drive me from them would be an act little short of murder.'
+
+"'Justice dealt upon a traitor is not murder,' was the stern and
+unyielding reply.  'By one black deed of treacherous barter and sale,
+of which none of your countrymen is cognizant but myself, you have
+forfeited the confidence of this government.  Were I, who so
+unhappily surprised your secret, to allow you to continue in your
+present place of trust, I myself would be a traitor to the republic
+for which I have fought and for which I am ready to die.  That is
+why I ask you to resign before--'
+
+"The two children did not catch the threat latent in that last
+word, but they realized the force of it from their father's look
+and were surprised when he quietly said:
+
+"'You declare yourself to be the only man on the commission who is
+acquainted with the facts you are pleased to style traitorous?'
+
+"The general's lips curled.  'Have I not said?' he asked.
+
+"Something in this stern honesty seemed to affect the father.  His
+face turned away and it was the other's voice which was next heard.
+A change had taken place in it and it sounded almost mellow as it
+gave form to these words:
+
+"'Alpheus, we have been friends.  You shall have two weeks in which
+to think over my demand and decide.  If at the end of that time you
+have not returned to domestic life you may expect another visit from
+me which can not fail of consequences.  You know my temper when
+roused.  Do not force me into a position which will cause us both
+endless regret.'
+
+"Perhaps the father answered; perhaps he did not.  The children
+heard nothing further, but they witnessed the gloom with which he
+rode away to the White House the next day.  Remembering the general's
+threat, they imagined in their childish hearts that their father had
+gone to give up his post and newly acquired honors.  But he returned
+at night without having done so, and from that day on carried his
+head higher and showed himself more and more the master, both at home
+and abroad.
+
+"But he was restless, very restless, and possibly to allay a great
+mental uneasiness, he began having some changes made in the house;
+changes which occupied much of his time and with which he never
+seemed satisfied.  Men working one day were dismissed the next and
+others called in until this work and everything else was interrupted
+by the return of his late unwelcome guest, who kept his appointment
+to a day.
+
+"At this point in her narrative Mistress Callista's voice fell and
+the flame which had thrown a partial light on her countenance died
+down until I could but faintly discern the secretly inquiring look
+with which she watched me as she went on to say
+
+"'Reuben and I,'--Reuben was her brother,--'were posted in the
+dark corner under the stairs when my father met the general at the
+door.  We had expected to hear high words, or some explosion of
+bitter feeling between them, and hardly knew whether to be glad or
+sorry when our father welcomed his guest with the same elaborate
+bow we once saw him make to the president in the grounds of the
+White House.  Nor could we understand what followed.  We were
+summoned in to supper.  Our mother was there--a great event in
+those days--and toasts were drunk and our father proposed one to
+the general's health.  This Reuben thought was an open signal of
+peace, and turned upon me his great round eyes in surprise; but I,
+who was old enough to notice that this toast was not responded to
+and that the general did not even touch his lips to the glass he
+had lifted in compliment to our mother, who had lifted hers, felt
+that there was something terrifying rather than reassuring in this
+attempt at good fellowship.
+
+Though unable to reason over it at the time, I have often done so
+since, and my father's attitude and look as he faced this strange
+guest has dwelt so persistently in my memory that scarcely a year
+passes without the scene coming up in my dreams with its accompanying
+emotions of fear and perplexity.  For--perhaps you know the story--that
+hour was the general's last.  He died before leaving the house;
+died in that same dark library concerning which you have asked so
+many questions.
+
+"'I remember the circumstances well, how well down to each and every
+detail.  Our mother had gone back to her room, and the general and
+my father, who did not linger over their wine--why should they,
+when the general would not drink?--had withdrawn to the library at
+the suggestion of the general, whose last words are yet lingering
+in my ears.
+
+"'The time has come for our little talk,' said he.  'Your reception
+augurs--'
+
+"'You do not look well,' my father here broke in, in what seemed an
+unnaturally loud voice.  'Come and sit down--'
+
+"'Here the door closed.
+
+"'We had hung about this door, curious children that we were, in
+hopes of catching a glimpse of the queer new settle which had been
+put into place that day.  But we scampered away at this, and were
+playing in and out of the halls when the library door again opened
+and my father came out.
+
+"'Where's Samba?' he cried.  'Tell him to carry a glass of wine in
+to the general.  I do not like his looks.  I am going upstairs for
+some medicine.'  This he whispered in choked tones as he set foot
+on the stairs.  Why I remember it I do not know, for Reuben, who
+was standing where he could look into the library when our father
+came out and saw the settle and the general sitting at one end of
+it, was chattering about it in my ear at the very moment our father
+was giving his orders.
+
+"'Reuben is a man now, and I have asked him more than once since
+then how the general looked at that critical instant.  It is
+important to me, very, very important, and to him, too, now that
+he has come to know a man's passions and temptations.  But he will
+never tell me, never relieve my mind, and I can only hope that
+there were real signs of illness on the general's brow; for then I
+could feel that all had been right and that his death was the
+natural result of the great distress he felt at opposing my father
+in the one desire of his heart.  That glimpse which Reuben had of
+him before he fell has always struck me with strange pathos.  A
+little child looking in upon a man, who, for all his apparent
+health, will in another moment be in eternity--I do not wonder he
+does not like to talk of it, and yet--
+
+"'It was Samba who came upon the general first.  Our father had not
+yet descended.  When he did, it was with loud cries and piteous
+ejaculations.  Word had gone upstairs and surprised him in the room
+with my mother.  I recollect wondering in all childish simplicity
+why he wrung his hands so over the death of a man he so hated and
+feared.  Nor was it till years had passed and our mother had been
+laid in the grave and the house had settled into a gloom too heavy
+and somber for Reuben to endure, that I recognized in my father the
+signs of a settled remorse.  These I endeavored to account for by
+the fact that he had been saved from what he looked upon as political
+death by the sudden but opportune decease of his best friend.  This
+caused a shock to his feelings which had unnerved him for life.
+Don't you think this the true explanation of his invariably moody
+brow and the great distaste he always showed for this same library?
+Though he would live in no other house, he would not enter that
+room nor look at the gloomy settle from which the general had fallen
+to his death.  The place was virtually tabooed, and though, as the
+necessity arose, it was opened from time to time for great
+festivities, the shadow it had acquired never left it and my father
+hated its very door until he died.  Is it not natural that his
+daughter should share this feeling?'
+
+"It was, and I said so; but I would say no more, though she cast me
+little appealing looks which acquired an eery significance from the
+pressure of her small fingers on my arm and the wailing sound of
+the wind which at that moment blew down in one gust, scattering the
+embers and filling the house with banshee calls.  I simply kissed
+her and advised her to go back with me to England and forget this
+old house and all its miserable memories.  For that was the sum of
+the comfort at my poor command.  When, after another restless night,
+I crept down in the early morning to peer into the dim and unused
+room whose story I had at last learned, I can not say but that I
+half expected to behold the meager ghost of the unfortunate general
+rise from the cushions of the prodigious bench which still kept its
+mysterious watch over the deserted hearthstone."
+
+So much for the passages culled from the book itself.  The newspaper
+excerpts, to which I next turned, bore a much later date, and read
+as follows:
+
+"A strange coincidence marks the death of Albert Moore in his
+brother's house yesterday.  He was discovered lying with his head
+on the identical spot where General Lloyd fell forty years before.
+It is said that this sudden demise of a man hitherto regarded as a
+model of physical strength and endurance was preceded by a violent
+altercation with his elder brother.  If this is so, the excitement
+incident upon such a break in their usually pleasant relations may
+account for his sudden death.  Edward Moore, who, unfortunately,
+was out of the room when his brother succumbed--some say that he
+was in his grandfather's room above--was greatly unnerved by this
+unexpected end to what was probably merely a temporary quarrel,
+and now lies in a critical condition.
+
+"The relations between him and the deceased Albert have always been
+of the most amicable character until they unfortunately fell in
+love with the same woman."
+
+Attached to this was another slip, apparently from a later paper.
+
+"The quarrel between the two brothers Moore, just prior to the
+younger one's death, turns out to have been of a more serious nature
+than was first supposed.  It has since leaked out that an actual
+duel was fought at that time between these two on the floor of the
+old library; and that in this duel the elder one was wounded.  Some
+even go so far as to affirm that the lady's hand was to be the
+reward of him who drew the first blood; it is no longer denied that
+the room was in great disorder when the servants first rushed in at
+the sound he made in falling.  Everything movable had been pushed
+back against the wall and an open space cleared, in the center of
+which could be seen one drop of blood.  What is certain is that
+Mr. Moore is held to the house by something even more serious than
+his deep grief, and that the young lady who was the object of this
+fatal dispute has left the city."
+
+Pasted under this was the following short announcement:
+
+"Married on the twenty-first of January, at the American consulate
+in Rome, Italy, Edward Moore, of Washington, D. C., United States
+of America, to Antoinette Sloan, daughter of Joseph Dewitt Sloan,
+also of that city."
+
+With this notice my interest in the book ceased and I prepared to
+step down from the chair on which I had remained standing during
+the reading of the above passages.
+
+As I did so I spied a slip of paper lying on the floor at my feet.
+As it had not been there ten minutes before there could be little
+doubt that it had slipped from the book whose leaves I had been
+turning over so rapidly.  Hastening to recover it, I found it to
+be a sheet of ordinary note paper partly inscribed with words in
+a neat and distinctive handwriting.  This was a great find, for
+the paper was fresh and the handwriting one which could be readily
+identified.  What I saw written there was still more remarkable.
+It had the look of some of the memoranda I had myself drawn up
+during the most perplexing moments of this strange case.  I
+transcribe it just as it read:
+
+"We have here two separate accounts of how death comes to those
+who breathe their last on the ancestral hearthstone of the Moore
+house library.
+
+"Certain facts are emphasized in both:
+
+"Each victim was alone when he fell.
+
+"Each death was preceded by a scene of altercation or violent
+controversy between the victim and the alleged master of these
+premises.
+
+"In each case the master of the house reaped some benefit, real or
+fancied, from the other's death."
+
+A curious set of paragraphs.  Some one besides myself was searching
+for the very explanation I was at that moment intent upon.  I should
+have considered it the work of our detectives if the additional
+lines I now came upon could have been written by any one but a Moore.
+But no one of any other blood or associations could have indited the
+amazing words which followed.  The only excuse I could find for them
+was the difficulty which some men feel in formulating their thoughts
+otherwise than with pen and paper, they were so evidently intended
+for the writer's eye and understanding only, as witness:
+
+"Let me recall the words my father was uttering when my brother
+rushed in upon us with that account of my misdeeds which changed
+all my prospects in life.  It was my twenty-first birthday and the
+old man had just informed me that as the eldest son I might expect
+the house in which we stood to be mine one day and with it a secret
+which has been handed down from father to son ever since the Moores
+rose to eminence in the person of Colonel Alpheus.  Then he noted
+that I was now of age and immediately went on to say: 'This means
+that you must be told certain facts, without the knowledge of which
+you would be no true Moore.  These facts you must hereafter relate
+to your son or whoever may be fortunate enough to inherit from you.
+It is the legacy which goes with this house and one which no
+inheritor as yet has refused either to receive or to transmit.
+Listen.  You have often noted the gold filigree ball which I wear
+on my watch-guard.  This ball is the talisman of our house, of this
+house.  If, in the course of your life you find yourself in an
+extremity from which no issue seems possible mind the strictness
+of the injunction--an extremity from which no issue seems possible
+(I have never been in such a case; the gold filigree ball has never
+been opened by me) you will take this trinket from its chain, press
+upon this portion of it so, and use what you will find inside, in
+connection with--'  Alas! it was at this point John Judson came
+rushing in and those disclosures were made which lost me my father's
+regard and gave to the informer my rightful inheritance, together
+with the full secret of which I only got a part.  But that part
+must help me now to the whole.  I have seen the filigree ball many
+times; Veronica has it now.  But its contents have never been shown
+me.  If I knew what they were and why the master of this secret
+always left the library--"
+
+Here the memorandum ceased with a long line straggling from the
+letter y as if the writer had been surprised at his task.
+
+The effect upon me of these remarkable words was to heighten my
+interest and raise me into a state of renewed hope, if not of
+active expectation.
+
+Another mind than my own had been at work along the only groove
+which held out any promise of success, and this mind, having at
+its command certain family traditions, had let me into a most
+valuable secret.  Another mind!  Whose mind?  That was a question
+easily answered.  But one man could have written these words; the
+man who was thrust aside in early life in favor of his younger
+brother, and who now, by the sudden death of that brother's
+daughter, had come again into his inheritance.  Uncle David, and
+he only, was the puzzled inquirer whose self-communings I had just
+read.  This fact raised a new problem far me to work upon, and I
+could but ask when these lines were written--before or after Mr.
+Pfeiffer's death and whether he had ever succeeded in solving the
+riddle he had suggested, or whether it was still a baffling
+mystery to him.  I was so moved by the suggestion conveyed in his
+final and half-finished sentence, that I soon lost sight of these
+lesser inquiries in the more important one connected with the
+filigree ball.  For I had seen this filigree ball.  I had even
+handled it.  From the description given I was very certain that
+it had been one of the many trinkets I had observed lying on the
+dressing table when I made my first hasty examination of the room
+on the evening of Mrs. Jeffrey's death.  Why had no premonition
+of its importance as a connecting link between these tragedies and
+their mysterious cause come to me at the time when it was within
+reach of my hand? It was too late now.  It had been swept away with
+the other loose objects littering the place, and my opportunity for
+pursuing this very promising investigation was gone for the night.
+
+Yet it was with a decided feeling of triumph that I finally locked
+the door of this old mansion behind me.  Certainly I had taken a
+step forward since my entrance there, to which I had but to add
+another of equal importance to merit the attention of the
+superintendent himself.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+THE HEART OF THE PUZZLE.
+
+
+The next morning I swallowed my pride and sought out Durbin.  He
+had superintended the removal of Mrs. Jeffrey's effects from the
+southwest chamber, and should know, if any one, where this filigree
+ball was now to be found.  Doubtless it had been returned with the
+other things to Mr. Jeffrey, and yet, who knows?  Durbin is sly and
+some inkling of its value as a clue may have entered his mind.  If
+so, it would be anywhere but in Mr. Jeffrey's or Miss Tuttle's
+possession.
+
+To test my rival's knowledge of and interest in this seemingly
+trivial object, I stooped to what I can but consider a pardonable
+subterfuge.  Greeting him in the offhand way least likely to develop
+his suspicion, I told him that I had a great idea in connection
+with the Jeffrey case and that the clue to it lay in a little gold
+ball which Mrs. Jeffrey sometimes wore and upon which she set great
+store.  So far I spoke the truth.  It had been given her by some
+one--not Mr. Jeffrey--and I believed, though I did not know, that
+it contained a miniature portrait which it might be to our advantage
+to see.
+
+I expected his lip to curl; but for a wonder it maintained its
+noncommittal aspect, though I was sure that I caught a slight, very
+slight, gleam of curiosity lighting up for a moment his calm, gray
+eye.
+
+"You are on a fantastic trail," he sneered, and that was all.
+
+But I had not expected more.  I had merely wished to learn what
+place, if any, this filigree ball held in his own suspicions, and
+in case he had overlooked it, to jog his curiosity so that he would
+in some way betray its whereabouts.
+
+That, for all its seeming inconsequence, it did hold some place in
+his mind was evident enough to those who knew him; but that it was
+within reach or obtainable by any ordinary means was not so plain.
+Indeed, I very soon became convinced that he, for one, had no idea
+where it was, or after the suggestive hint I had given him he would
+never have wasted a half-hour on me.  What was I to do then?  Tell
+my story to the major and depend on him to push the matter to its
+proper conclusion?  "Not yet," whispered pride.  "Durbin thinks you
+a fool.  Wait till you can show your whole hand before calling
+attention to your cards."  But it was hard not to betray my
+excitement and to act the fool they considered me when the boys
+twitted me about this famous golden charm and asked what great
+result had followed my night in the Moore house.  But remembering
+that he who laughs last laughs best, and that the cause of mirth
+was not yet over between Durbin and myself, I was able to preserve
+an impassive exterior even when I came under the major's eye.  I
+found myself amply repaid when one of the boys who had studiously
+avoided chaffing me dropped the following words in my ear:
+
+"I don't know what your interest is in the small gold charm you
+were talking about, but you have done some good work in this case
+and I don't mind telling you what I know about it.  That little
+gold ball has caused the police much trouble.  It is on the list
+of effects found in the room where the candle was seen burning; but
+when all these petty belongings of Mrs. Jeffrey's were gathered up
+and carried back to her husband, this special one was not to be
+found amongst them.  It was lost in transit, nor has it ever been
+seen since.  And who do you think it was who called attention to
+this loss and demanded that the article be found?  Not Mr. Jeffrey,
+who seems to lay little or no stress upon it, but the old man they
+call Uncle David.  He who, to all appearance, possessed no interest
+in his niece's personal property, was on hand the moment these
+things were carried into her husband's house, with the express
+intention, it seems, of inquiring for this gold ball, which he
+declared to be a family heirloom.  As such it belonged to him as
+the present holder of the property, and to him only.  Attention
+being thus called to it, it was found to be missing, and as no one
+but the police seemed to be to blame for its loss the matter was
+hushed up and would have been regarded as too insignificant for
+comment, the trinket being intrinsically worthless, if Mr. Moore
+had not continued to make such a fuss about it.  This ball, he
+declared, was worth as much to a Moore as all the rest of his
+property, which was bosh, you know; and the folly of these
+assertions and the depth of the passions he displayed whenever
+the subject was mentioned have made some of us question if he is
+the innocent inheritor he has tried to make himself out.  At all
+events, I know for a certainty that the district attorney holds
+his name in reserve, if the grand jury fails to bring in an
+indictment against Miss Tuttle."
+
+"The district attorney is wise," I remarked, and fell athinking.
+
+Had this latent suspicion against Mr. Moore any solid foundation?
+Was he the guilty man?  The memorandum I had come across in the
+book which had been lately pulled down from the library shelves
+showed that, notwithstanding his testimony to the contrary, he
+had been in that house close upon that fatal night, if not on the
+very night itself.  It also showed his extreme interest in the
+traditions of the family.  But did it show anything more?  Had he
+interrupted his writing to finish his query in blood, and had one
+of his motives for this crime been the acquisition of this
+filigree ball?  If so, why had he left it on the table upstairs?
+A candle had been lit in that room--could it have been by him in
+his search for this object?  It would be a great relief to believe
+so.  What was the reason then that my mind refused so emphatically
+to grasp this possibility and settle upon him as the murderer of
+Mrs. Jeffrey?  I can not tell.  I hated the man, and I likewise
+deeply distrusted him.  But I could not, even after this revelation
+of his duplicity, connect him in my thoughts with absolute crime
+without a shock to my intuitions.  Happily, my scruples were not
+shared by my colleagues.  They had listed him.  Here I felt my
+shoulder touched, and a newspaper was thrust into my hand by the
+man who had just addressed me.
+
+"Look down the lost and found column," said he.  "The third
+advertisement you will see there came from the district attorney's
+office; the next one was inserted by Mr. Moore himself."
+
+I followed his pointing finer and read two descriptions of the
+filigree ball.  The disproportion in the rewards offered was
+apparent.  That promised by Uncle David was calculated to rouse
+any man's cupidity and should have resulted in the bauble's
+immediate return.
+
+"He got ahead of the police that time," I laughed.  "When did
+these advertisements appear?"
+
+"During the days you were absent from Washington."
+
+"And how sure are you that he did not get this jewel back?"
+
+"Oh, we are sure.  His continued anxiety and still active interest
+prove this, even if our surveillance had been less perfect."
+
+"And the police have been equally unsuccessful?"
+
+"Equally."
+
+"After every effort?"
+
+"Every."
+
+"Who was the man who collected and carried out those things from
+the southwest chamber?"
+
+He smiled.
+
+"You see him," said he.
+
+"It was you?"
+
+"Myself."
+
+"And you are sure this small ball was among them?"
+
+"No.  I only know that I have seen it somewhere, but that it
+wasn't among the articles I delivered to Mr. Jeffrey."
+
+"How did you carry them?"
+
+"In a hand-bag which I locked myself."
+
+"Before leaving the southwest chamber?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then it is still in that room?"
+
+"Find it," was his laconic reply.
+
+Here most men would have stopped, but I have a bulldog's tenacity
+when once I lay hold.  That night I went back to the Moore house
+and, taking every precaution against being surprised by the
+sarcastic Durbin or some of his many flatterers, I ransacked the
+southwest chamber on my own behalf for what certainly I had
+little reason to expect to find there.
+
+It seemed a hopeless cause from the first, but I acted as if no
+one had hunted for this object before.  Moving every article, I
+sought first on the open floor and then in every possible cranny
+for the missing trinket.  But I failed to find it and was about
+to acknowledge myself defeated when my eye fell on the long
+brocaded curtains which I had drawn across the several windows to
+hide every gleam of light from the street.  They were almost free
+from folds, but I shook them well, especially the one nearest the
+table, and naturally with no effect.
+
+"Folly," I muttered, yet did not quite desist.  For the great
+tassels still hung at the sides and--  Well!  you may call it an
+impossible find or say that if the bauble was there it should have
+been discovered in the first search for it!  I will not say no.  I
+can only tell you what happened.  When I took one of those tassels
+in my band, I thought, as it twirled under my touch, that I saw
+something gleam in its faded old threads which did not belong there.
+Startled, and yet not thoroughly realizing that I had come upon the
+object of my search, I picked at this thing and found it to be a
+morsel of gold chain that had become entangled in it.  When I had
+pulled it out, it showed a small golden ball at one end, filigreed
+over and astonishingly heavy for its size and apparent delicacy.
+
+How it came there--whether it rolled from the table, or was swept
+off inadvertently by the detective's hand, and how it came to be
+caught by this old tassel and held there in spite of the many
+shakings it must have received, did not concern me at this momentous
+instant.  The talisman of this old family was found.  I had but to
+discover what it held concealed to understand what had baffled Mr.
+Moore and made the mystery he had endeavored to penetrate so
+insolvable.  Rejoicing in my triumph, but not wasting a moment in
+self-congratulation, I bent over the candle with my prize and sought
+for the clasp or fastening which held its two parts together.  I
+have a knack at clasps and curious fastenings and was able at first
+touch to spring this one open.  And what did I find inside?
+Something so different from what I expected, something so trivial
+and seemingly harmless, that it was not until I recalled the final
+words of Uncle David's memorandum that I realized its full import
+and the possibilities it suggested.  In itself it was nothing but
+a minute magnifying glass; but when used in connection with--what?
+Ah, that was just what Uncle David failed to say, possibly to know.
+Yet this was now the important point, the culminating fact which
+might lead to a full understanding of these many tragedies.  Could
+I hope to guess what presented itself to Mr. Moore as a difficult
+if not insolvable problem?  No; guessing would not answer.  I must
+trust to the inspiration of the moment which suggested with almost
+irresistible conviction:
+
+The picture!  That inane and seemingly worthless drawing over the
+fireplace in The Colonel's Own, whose presence in so rich a room
+has always been a mystery!
+
+Why this object should have suggested itself to me and with such
+instant conviction, I can not readily say.  Whether, from my
+position near the bed, the sight of this old drawing recalled the
+restless nights of all who had lain in face of its sickly smile,
+or whether some recollection of that secret law of the Moores
+which forbade the removal of any of their pictures from the
+time-worn walls, or a remembrance of the curiosity which this
+picture excited in every one who looked at it--Francis Jeffrey
+among the number--I no sooner asked myself what object in this
+house might possibly yield counsel or suggest aid when subjected
+to the influence of a magnifying glass, than the answer, which I
+have already given, sprang instantly into my mind: The picture!
+
+Greatly excited, I sprang upon a chair, took down the drawing from
+the wall and laid it face up on the bed.  Then I placed the glass
+over one of the large coils surrounding the insipid face, and was
+startled enough, in spite of all mental preparation, to perceive
+the crinkly lines which formed it, resolve themselves into script
+and the script into words, some of which were perfectly legible.
+
+The drawing, simple as it looked, was a communication in writing
+to those who used a magnifying glass to read it.  I could hardly
+contain my triumph, hardly find the self-control necessary to a
+careful study of its undulating and often conflicting lines and to
+the slow picking out of the words therein contained.
+
+But when I had done this, and had copied the whole of the wandering
+scrawl on a page of my note book the result was of value.
+
+Read, and judge for yourself.
+
+"Coward that I am, I am willing to throw upon posterity the shadow
+of a crime whose consequences I dare not incur in life.  Confession
+I must make.  To die and leave no record of my deed is impossible.
+Yet how tell my story so that only my own heirs may read and they
+when at the crisis of their fate?  I believe I have found the way
+by this drawing and the injunction I have left to the holders of
+the filigree ball.
+
+"No man ever wished his enemy dead more than I did, and no man
+ever spent more cunning on the deed.  Master in my own house, I
+contrived a device by which the man who held my fate in his hands
+fell on my library hearth with no one near and no sign by which
+to associate me with the act.  Does this seem like the assertion
+of a madman?  Go to the old chamber familiarly called "The Colonel's
+Own."  Enter its closet, pull out its two drawers, and in the
+opening thus made seek for the loophole at the back, through which,
+if you stoop low enough, you can catch a glimpse of the library
+hearth and its great settle.  With these in view, slip your finger
+along the wall on your right and when it touches an obstruction--pass
+it if it is a handle, for that is only used to rewind the
+apparatus and must be turned from you until it can be turned no
+farther; but if it is a depression you encounter, press, and press
+hard on the knob concealed within it.  But beware when any one you
+love is seated in that corner of the settle where the cushion
+invites rest, lest it be your fate to mourn and wail as it is mine
+to curse the hour when I sought to clear my way by murder.  For
+the doom of the man of blood is upon me.  The hindrance is gone
+from my life, but a horror has entered it beyond the conception
+of any soul that has not yielded itself to the unimaginable
+influences emanating from an accomplished crime.  I can not be
+content with having pressed that spring once.  A mania is upon me
+which, after thirty years of useless resistance and superhuman
+struggle, still draws me from bed and sleep to rehearse in ghastly
+fashion that deed of my early manhood.  I can not resist it.  To
+tear out the deadly mechanism, unhinge weight and drum and rid the
+house of every evidence of crime would but drive me to shriek my
+guilt aloud and act in open pantomime what I now go through in
+fearsome silence and secrecy.  When the hour comes, as come it
+must, that I can not rise and enter that fatal closet, I shall
+still enact the deed in dreams, and shriek aloud in my sleep and
+wish myself dead and yet fear to die lest my hell be to go through
+all eternity, slaying over and over my man, in ever growing horror
+and repulsion.
+
+"Do you wish to share my fate?  Try to effect through blood a
+release from the difficulties menacing you."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+A THREAD IN HAND
+
+
+There are moments which stand out with intense force and clearness
+in every man's life.  Mine was the one which followed the reading
+of these lines which were meant for a warning, but which in
+more than one case had manifestly served to open the way to a
+repetition of the very crime they deplored.  I felt myself under
+the same fascination.  I wanted to test the mechanism; to follow
+out then and there the instructions given with such shortsighted
+minuteness and mark the result.  But a sense of decorum prevented.
+It was clearly my duty to carry so important a discovery as this
+to the major and subject myself to his commands before making the
+experiment suggested by the scroll I had so carefully deciphered.
+Besides, it would be difficult to carry out this experiment alone,
+and with no other light than that afforded by my lantern.
+Another man and more lights were needed.
+
+Influenced by these considerations, I restored the picture to its
+place, and left the building.  As I did so, the first signs of
+dawn became visible in the east.  I had expended three hours in
+picking out the meaning concealed in the wavy lines of the old
+picture.
+
+I was early at headquarters that morning, but not so early as to
+find the superintendent alone.  A group of men were already
+congregated about him in his small office, and when, on being
+admitted, I saw amongst them the district attorney, Durbin and
+another famous detective, I instinctively knew what matter was
+under discussion.
+
+I was allowed to remain, possibly because I brought news in my
+face, possibly because the major felt more kindly toward me than
+I thought.  Though Durbin, who had been speaking, had at first
+sight of me shut his mouth like a trap, and even went so far as
+to drum an impatient protest with his fingers on the table before
+which he stood, neither the major nor the district attorney turned
+an unkindly face toward me, and my amiable friend was obliged to
+accept my presence with what grace he could.
+
+There was with them a fourth man, who stood apart.  On him the
+general attention had been concentrated at my entrance and to him
+it now returned.  He was an unpretentious person of kindly aspect.
+To any one accustomed to Washington residents, he bore the
+unmistakable signs of being one of the many departmental employees
+whose pay is inadequate to the necessities of his family.  Of his
+personal peculiarities I noted two.  He blinked when he talked,
+and stuttered painfully when excited.  Notwithstanding these
+defects he made a good impression, and commanded confidence.
+This I soon saw was of importance, for the story he now entered
+upon was one calculated to make me forget my own errand and even
+to question my own convictions.
+
+The first intimation I received of the curious nature of his
+communication was through the following questions, put to him by
+the major:
+
+"You are sure this gentleman is identical with the one pointed out
+to you last night?"
+
+"Very sure, sir.  I can swear to it."
+
+I omit all evidence of the defect in his speech above mentioned.
+
+"You recognize him positively?"
+
+"Positively.  I should have picked him out with the same assurance,
+if I had seen him in some other city and in a crowd of as
+fine-looking gentlemen as himself.  His face made a great impression
+on me.  You see I had ample time to study it in the few minutes we
+stood so close together."
+
+"So you have said.  Will you be kind enough to repeat the
+circumstance?  I should like the man who has just come in to hear
+your description of this scene.  Give the action, please.  It is
+all very interesting."
+
+The stranger glanced inquisitively in my direction, and turned to
+obey the superintendent.
+
+"I was returning to my home in Georgetown, on the evening of May
+the eleventh, the day of the great tragedy.  My wife was ill, and
+I had been into town to see a physician and should have gone
+directly home; but I was curious to see how high the flood was
+running--you remember it was over the banks that night.  So I
+wandered out on the bridge, and came upon the gentleman about whom
+you have been questioning me.  He was standing all alone leaning
+on the rail thus."  Here the speaker drew up a chair, and, crossing
+his arms over its back, bent his head down over them.  "I did not
+know him, but the way he eyed the water leaping and  boiling in a
+yellow flood beneath was not the way of a curious man like myself,
+but of one who was meditating some desperate deed.  He was handsome
+and well dressed, but he looked a miserable wretch and was in a
+state of such complete self-absorption that he did not notice me,
+though I had stopped not five feet from his side.  I expected to
+see him throw himself over, but instead of that, he suddenly
+raised his head and, gazing straight before him, not at the heavy
+current, but at some vision in his own mind, broke forth in these
+words, spoken as I had never heard words spoken before--"
+
+Here the speaker's stuttering got the better of him and the
+district attorney had time to say:
+
+"What were these words?  Speak them slowly; we have all the time
+there is."
+
+Instantly the man plucked up heart and, eying us all impressively,
+was able to say:
+
+"They were these: 'She must die!  she must die!'  No name, but just
+the one phrase twice repeated, 'She must die!'  This startled me,
+and hardly knowing whether to lay hands on him, or to turn about
+and run, I was moving slowly away, when he drew his arms from the
+rail, like this, and, still staring into space, added, in the same
+hard and determined voice, this one word more, 'To-night!'; and,
+wheeling about, passed me with one blank and wholly unconscious
+look and betook himself toward the city.  As he went by, his lips
+opened for the third time.  'Which means--' he cried, between a
+groan and a shriek, 'a bullet for her and--' I wish I had heard
+the rest, but he was out of my hearing before his sentence was
+finished."
+
+"What time was this?"
+
+"As near half-past five as possible.  It was six when I reached
+home a few minutes later."
+
+"Ah, he must have gone to the cemetery after this."
+
+"I am quite sure of it."
+
+"Why didn't you follow the man?" grumbled Durbin.
+
+"It wasn't my business.  He was a stranger and possibly mad.  I
+didn't know what to do."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"Went home and kept quiet; my wife was very ill that night and I
+had my own cause for anxiety."
+
+"You, however, read the papers next morning?"
+
+"No, sir, nor for many days.  My wife grew constantly worse and
+for a week I didn't leave her, not knowing but that every breath
+would be her last.  I was dead to everything outside the sick-room
+and when she grew better, which was very gradually, we had to take
+her away, so that I had no opportunity of speaking of this
+occurrence to any one till a week ago, when some remark, published
+in connection with Mrs. Jeffrey's death, recalled that encounter
+on the bridge.  I told a neighbor that I believed the man I had
+seen there was Mr. Jeffrey, and we looked up the papers and ran
+over them till we came upon his picture.  That settled it, and I
+could no longer--being free from home anxieties now--hold my
+tongue and the police heard--"
+
+"That will do, Mr. Gelston," broke in the major.  "When we want
+you again, we will let you know.  Durbin, see Mr. Gelston out."
+
+I was left alone with the major and the district attorney.
+
+There was a moment's silence, during which my own heart beat so
+loud that I was afraid they would hear it.  Since taking up Miss
+Tuttle's cause I had never really believed in Mr. Jeffrey's
+innocence in spite of the alibi he had brought forward, and now
+I expected to hear these men utter the same conviction.  The major
+was the first to speak.  Addressing the district attorney, he
+remarked: "This will strengthen your case very materially.  We
+have proof now that Mrs. Jeffrey's death was actually determined
+upon.  If Miss Tuttle had not shot her, he would.  I wonder if it
+was a relief to him on reaching his door to find that the deed
+was done."
+
+I could not suppress my surprise.
+
+"Miss Tuttle!" I repeated.  "Is it so unmistakably evident that
+Mr. Jeffrey did not get to the Moore house in time to do the
+shooting himself?"
+
+The major gave me a quick look.
+
+"I thought you considered Miss Tuttle the guilty one."
+
+I felt that the time had come to show my colors.
+
+"I have changed my mind," said I.  "I can give you no good reason
+for this; something in the woman herself, I suppose.  She does not
+look nor act like a criminal.  While not desirous of raising myself
+in opposition to the judgment of those so greatly my superior in
+all respects, I have had this feeling, and I am courageous enough
+to avow it.  And yet, if Mr. Jeffrey could not have left the
+cemetery gates and reached the Moore house in time to fulfil all
+the conditions of this tragedy, the case does look black against
+the woman.  She admits to having been there when the pistol was
+fired, unless--"
+
+"Unless what?  You have something new to tell us.  That I have seen
+ever since you entered the room.  What is it?"
+
+I cast a glance at the door.  Should I be able to finish my story
+before Durbin returned?  I thought it possible, and, though still
+upset by this new evidence, which I could now see was not entirely
+in Miss Tuttle's favor, I spoke up with what spirit I might.
+
+"I have just come from spending another night in the Moore house.
+All the efforts heretofore made to exhaust its secrets have been
+founded upon a theory that has brought us nowhere.  I had another
+in mind, and I was anxious to test it before resting from all
+further attempt to solve this riddle.  And it has not failed me.
+By pursuing a clue apparently so trivial that I allowed it to go
+neglected for weeks, I have come upon the key to the many mysterious
+crimes which have defiled the library hearthstone.  And where do
+you think it lies?  Not in the hearthstone itself and not in the
+floor under the settle; not, in fact, in the library at all, but
+in the picture hanging upstairs in the southwest chamber."
+
+"The picture!  that faded-out sketch, fit only for the garret?"
+
+"Yes.  To you and to most people surveying it, it is just what you
+say and nothing more.  But to the initiated few--pray Heaven they
+may have been few--it is writing, conveying secret instructions.
+The whole combination of curves which go to make up this sketch is
+a curious arrangement of words inscribed with the utmost care, in
+the smallest of characters.  Viewed with a magnifying glass, the
+uncertain outlines of a shadowy face surmounted by a mass of
+piled-up hair resolve themselves into lines of writing, the words
+of which are quite intelligible and full of grim and unmistakable
+purpose.  I have read those lines; and what is more, I have
+transcribed them into plain copy.  Will you read them?  They
+contain a most extraordinary confession; a confession that was
+manifestly intended as a warning, but which unfortunately has had
+very different results.  It may explain the death of the man from
+Denver, even if it cast no light upon the other inexplicable
+features of the remarkable case we are considering."
+
+As I spoke I laid open on the table before me the transcription of
+which I spoke.  Instantly the two men bent over it.  When they
+looked up again, their countenances showed not excitement only but
+appreciation; and in the one minute of triumph which I then enjoyed,
+all that had wounded or disturbed me in the past was forgotten.
+
+"You are a man in a thousand," was the major's first enthusiastic
+comment; at which I was conscious of regretting, with very pardonable
+inconsistency, that Durbin had not returned in time to hear these
+words.
+
+The major now proposed that we should go at once to the old house.
+"A family secret like this does not crop up every day even in a city
+so full of surprises as Washington.  We will hunt for the spring
+under the closet drawers and see what happens, eh?  And on our way
+there"--here he turned to me "I should like to hear the particulars
+concerning the little clue just mentioned.  By the way, Mr. Jeffrey's
+interest in this old drawing is now explained.  He knew its
+diabolical secret."
+
+This was self-evident, and my heart was heavy for Miss Tuttle, who
+seemed to be so deep in her brother-in-law's confidence.
+
+It grew still heavier when Durbin, joining us, added his incredulity
+to the air of suspicion assumed by the others.  Through all the
+explanations I now entered into, I found myself inwardly repeating
+with somewhat forced iteration, "I will not believe her guilty under
+any circumstances.  She carries the look of innocence, and innocent
+she must be proved, whatever the result may be to Francis Jeffrey."
+
+To such an extent had I been influenced by the lofty expression
+which I had once surprised on her face.
+
+Had Mr. David Moore been sitting open-eyed behind his vines that
+morning, he would have been much surprised to see so many of his
+natural enemies intrude on his property at so early an hour.  But,
+happily, he had not yet risen, and we were able to enter upon our
+investigations without being watched or interrupted by him.
+
+Our first move was to go in a body to the southwest chamber, take
+down the picture, examine it with a magnifying-glass and satisfy
+ourselves that the words I had picked out of its mazy lines were
+really to be found there.  This done and my veracity established,
+we next proceeded to the closet where, according to the
+instructions embodied in this picture, the secret spring was to be
+found by which some unknown and devilish machinery would be released
+in the library below.
+
+To my great satisfaction the active part in this experiment was
+delegated to me.  Durbin continued to be a mere looker-on.  Drawing
+out the two large drawers from their place at the end of this closet,
+I set them aside.  Then I hunted for and found the small loophole
+which we had been told afforded a glimpse of the library hearthstone;
+but seeing nothing through it, I called for a light to be placed in
+the room below.
+
+I heard Durbin go down, then the major, and finally, the district
+attorney.  Nothing could stay their curiosity now, not even the
+possibility of danger, which as yet was a lurking and mysterious one.
+But when a light shot up from below, and the irregular opening
+before me became a loophole through which I could catch a very wide
+glimpse of the library beneath, I found that it was not necessary
+for me to warn them to keep away from the hearth, as they were all
+clustered very near the door--a precaution not altogether uncalled
+for at so hazardous a moment.
+
+"Are you ready?" I called down.
+
+"Ready!" rose in simultaneous response from below.
+
+"Then look out!"
+
+Reaching for the spring cleverly concealed in the wall at my right
+I vigorously pressed it.
+
+The result was instantaneous.  Silently, but with unerring certainty,
+something small, round, and deadly, fell plumb from the library
+ceiling to where the settle had formerly stood against the
+hearthstone.  Finding nothing there but vacancy to expend itself
+upon, it swung about for a moment on what looked like a wire or a
+whip-cord, then slowly came to rest within a foot or so from the
+floor.
+
+A cry from the horrified officials below was what first brought me
+to myself.  Withdrawing from my narrow quarters I hastened down to
+them and added one more white face to the three I found congregated
+in the doorway.  In the diabolical ingenuity we had seen displayed,
+crime had reached its acme and the cup of human depravity seemed
+full.  When we had regained in some measure our self-possession, we
+all advanced for a closer look at the murderous object dangling
+before us.  We found it to be a heavy leaden weight painted on its
+lower end to match the bosses of stucco-work which appeared at
+regular intervals in the ornamentation of the ceiling.  When drawn
+up into place, that is, when occupying the hole from which it now
+hung suspended, the portion left to protrude would evidently bear
+so small a proportion to its real bulk as to justify any eye in
+believing it to be the mate, and the harmless mate, of all the
+others.
+
+"It hangs just where the settle stood," observed Durbin,
+significantly.
+
+"And just at the point where the cushions invite rest, as the
+colonel so suggestively puts it in his strange puzzle of a
+confession," added the district attorney.
+
+"Replace the old seat," ordered the major, "and let us make sure of
+this."
+
+Ready hands at once grasped it, and, with some effort, I own, drew
+it carefully back into position.
+
+"You see!" quoth Durbin.
+
+We did.
+
+"Devilish!" came from the major's lips.  Then with a glance at the
+ball which, pushed aside by the seat, now hung over its edge a foot
+or so from the floor, he added briskly: "The ball has fallen to the
+full length of the cord.  If it were drawn up a little--"
+
+"Wait," I eagerly interposed.  "Let me see what I can do with it."
+
+And I dashed back upstairs and into the closet of "The Colonel's Own."
+
+With a single peep down to see if they were still on the watch, I
+seized the handle whose position I had made sure of when searching
+for the spring, and began to turn; when instantly--so quick was
+the response--the long cord stiffened and I saw the ball rise into
+sight above the settle top.
+
+"Stop!" called out the major.  "Let go and press the spring again."
+
+I hastened to obey and, though the back of the settle hid the result
+from me, I judged from the look and attitude of those below that
+the old colonel's calculations had been made with great exactness,
+and that the one comfortable seat on the rude and cumbersome bench
+had been so placed that this leaden weight in descending would at
+the chosen moment strike the head of him who sat there, inflicting
+death.  That the weight should be made just heavy enough to produce
+a fatal concussion without damaging the skull was proof of the
+extreme care with which this subtle apparatus had been contrived.
+An open wound would have aroused questions, but a mere bruise might
+readily pass as a result of the victim's violent contact with the
+furnishings of the hearth toward which the shocked body would
+naturally topple.  The fact that a modern jury had so regarded it
+shows how justified he was in this expectation.
+
+I was expending my wonder on this and on a new discovery which,
+with a very decided shock to myself I had just made in the closet,
+when the command came to turn the handle again and to keep on
+turning it till it would turn no farther.
+
+I complied, but with a trembling hand, and though I did not watch
+the result, the satisfaction I heard expressed below was significant
+of the celerity and precision with which the weight rose, foot by
+foot, to the ceiling and finally slunk snugly and without seeming
+jar into its lair.
+
+When, a few minutes later, I rejoined those below, I found them all,
+with eyes directed toward the cornice, searching for the hole
+through which I had just been looking.  It was next to imperceptible,
+so naturally had it been made to fit in with the shadows of the
+scroll work; and even after I had discovered it and pointed it out
+to them, I found difficulty in making them believe that they really
+looked upon an opening.  But when once convinced of this, the
+district attorney's remark was significant.
+
+"I am glad that my name is not Moore."
+
+The superintendent made no reply; his eye had caught mine, and he
+had become very thoughtful.
+
+"One of the two candelabra belonging to the parlor mantel was found
+lying on that closet floor," he observed.  "Somebody has entered
+there lately, as lately as the day when Mr. Pfeiffer was seated
+here."
+
+"Pardon me," I impetuously cried.  "Mr. Pfeiffer's death is quite
+explained." And, drawing forward my hand, which up to this moment
+I had held tight-shut behind my back, I slowly unclosed it before
+their astonished eyes.
+
+A bit of lace lay in my palm, a delicate bit, such as is only worn
+by women in full dress.
+
+"Where did you find that?" asked the major, with the first show of
+deep emotion I have ever observed in him.
+
+My agitation was greater than his as I replied:
+
+"In the rough boarding under those drawers.  Some woman's arm and
+hand has preceded mine in stealthy search after that fatal spring.
+A woman who wore lace, valuable lace."
+
+There was but one woman connected with this affair who rightly
+answered these conditions.  The bride!  Veronica Moore.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+WORDS IN THE NIGHT
+
+
+Had I any premonition of the astounding fact thus suddenly and, I
+may say, dramatically revealed to us during the weeks I had devoted
+to the elucidation of the causes and circumstances of Mrs. Jeffrey's
+death?  I do not think so.  Nothing in her face, as I remembered it;
+nothing in the feeling evinced toward her by husband or sister, had
+prepared me for a disclosure of crime so revolting as to surpass all
+that I had ever imagined or could imagine in a woman of such dainty
+personality and unmistakable culture.  Nor was the superintendent
+or the district attorney less confounded by the event.  Durbin only
+tried to look wise and strut about, but it was of no use; he
+deceived nobody.  Veronica Moore's real connection with Mr. Pfeiffer's
+death,--a death which in some inscrutable way had in so short a time
+led to her own,--was an overwhelming surprise to every one of us.
+
+The superintendent, as was natural, recovered first.
+
+"This throws quite a new light upon the matter," said he.  "Now we
+can understand why Mr. Jeffrey uttered that extraordinary avowal
+overheard on the bridge: 'She must die!'  She had come to him with
+blood on her hands."
+
+It seemed incredible, nay more, unreal.  I recalled the sweet
+refined face turned up to me from the bare boards of this same floor,
+the accounts I had read of the vivacity of her spirits and the wild
+charm of her manner till the shadow of this old house fell upon her.
+I marveled, still feeling myself in the dark, still clinging to my
+faith in womankind, still asking to what depths her sister had
+followed her in the mazes of crime we were forced to recognize but
+could not understand.
+
+Durbin had no such feelings and no such scruples, as was shown by
+the sarcastic comment which now left his lips.
+
+"So!" he cried, "we have to do with three criminals instead of two.
+Nice family, the Moore-Jeffreys!"
+
+But no one paid any attention to him.  Addressing the major, the
+district attorney asked when he expected to hear from Denver, adding
+that it had now become of the first importance to ascertain the
+exact relations existing between the persons under suspicion and the
+latest victim of this deadly mechanism.
+
+The major's answer was abrupt.  He had been expecting a report for
+days.  He was expecting one yet.  If it came in at any time, night
+or day, he was to be immediately notified.  Word might be sent him
+in an hour, in a minute.
+
+Were his remarks a prophecy?  He had hardly ceased speaking when
+an officer appeared with a telegram in his hand.  This the major
+eagerly took and, noting that it was in cipher, read it by means
+of the code he carried in his pocket.  Translated, it ran thus:
+
+Result of open inquiry in Denver.
+
+Three brothers Pfeiffer; all well thought of, but plain in their
+ways and eccentric.  One doing business in Denver.  Died June,
+'97.  One perished in Klondike, October, same year; and one, by
+name Wallace, died suddenly three months since in Washington.
+
+Nothing further gained by secret inquiry in this place.
+
+Result of open inquiry in Owosso.
+
+A man named Pfeiffer kept a store in Owosso during the time V. M.
+attended school there.  He was one of three brothers, home Denver,
+name Wallace.  Simultaneously with V. M.'s leaving school, P.
+broke up business and at instigation of his brother William, who
+accompanied him, went to the Klondike.  No especial relation between
+lady and this same P. ever noted.  V. M. once heard to laugh at his
+awkward ways.
+
+Result of secret inquiry in Owosso.
+
+V. M. very intimate with schoolmate who has since died.  Often rode
+together; once gone a long time.  This was just before V. M. left
+school for good.  Date same as that on which a marriage occurred in
+a town twenty miles distant.  Bride, Antoinette Moore; groom, W.
+Pfeiffer of Denver; witness, young girl with red hair.  Schoolmate
+had red hair.  Had V. M. a middle initial, and was that initial A?
+
+We all looked at each other; this last question was one none of us
+could answer.
+
+"Go for Mr. Jeffrey at once," ordered the major, "and let another
+one of you bring Miss Tuttle.  No word to either of what has occurred
+and no hint of their possible meeting here."
+
+It fell to me to fetch Miss Tuttle.  I was glad of this, as it gave
+me a few minutes by myself in which to compose my mind and adjust my
+thoughts to the new conditions opened up by the amazing facts which
+had just come to light.  But beyond the fact that Mrs. Jeffrey had
+been answerable for the death which had occurred in the library at
+the time of her marriage--that, in the words of the district
+attorney, she had come to her husband with blood on her hands, my
+thoughts would not go; confusion followed the least attempt to
+settle the vital question of how far Miss Tuttle and Mr. Jeffrey
+had been involved in the earlier crime and what the coming interview
+with these two would add to our present knowledge.  In my anxiety to
+have this question answered I hastened my steps and was soon at the
+door of Miss Tuttle's present dwelling place.
+
+I had not seen this lady since the inquest, and my heart beat high
+as I sat awaiting her appearance in the dim little parlor where I
+had been seated by the person who held her under secret surveillance.
+The scene I had just been through, the uncertain nature of the
+relations held by this beautiful woman both toward the crime just
+discovered and the one long associated with her name, lent to these
+few moments of anticipation an emotion which poorly prepared me for
+the touching sight of the patient smile with which she presently
+entered.
+
+But I doubt if she noticed my agitation.  She was too much swayed
+by her own.  Advancing upon me in all the unconscious pride of her
+great beauty, she tremulously remarked:
+
+"You have a message for me.  Is it from headquarters?  Or has the
+district attorney still more questions to ask?"
+
+"I have a much more trying errand than that," I hastened to say,
+with some idea of preparing her for an experience that could not
+fail to be one of exceptional trial.  "For reasons which will be
+explained to you by those in greater authority than myself, you are
+wanted at the house where--" I could not help stammering
+under the light of her melancholy eyes--"where I saw you once
+before," I lamely concluded.
+
+"The house in Waverley Avenue?" she objected wildly, with the first
+signs of positive terror I had ever beheld in her.
+
+I nodded, dropping my eyes.  What call had I to penetrate the
+conscience of this woman?
+
+"Are they there?  all there?" she presently asked again.  "The
+police and--and Mr. Jeffrey?"
+
+"Madam," I respectfully protested, "my duty is limited to
+conducting you to the place named.  A carriage is waiting.  May I
+beg that you will prepare yourself to go at once to Waverley Avenue?"
+
+For answer she subjected me to a long and earnest look which I found
+it impossible to evade.  Then she hastened from the room, but with
+very unsteady steps.  Evidently the courage which had upborne her so
+long was beginning to fail.  Her very countenance was changed.  Had
+she recognized, as I meant she should, that the secret of the Moore
+house was no longer a secret confined to her own breast and to that
+of her unhappy brother-in-law?
+
+When she returned ready for her ride this change in her spirits was
+less observable, and by the time we had reached the house in Waverley
+Avenue she had so far regained her old courage as to move and speak
+with the calmness of despair if not of mental serenity.
+
+The major was awaiting us at the door and bowed gravely before her
+heavily veiled figure.
+
+"Miss Tuttle," he asked, without any preamble, the moment she was
+well inside the house, "may I inquire of you here, and before I
+show you what will excuse us for subjecting you to the distress of
+entering these doors, whether your sister, Mrs. Jeffrey, had any
+other name or was ever known by any other name than that of Veronica?"
+
+"She was christened Antoinette, as well as Veronica; but the person
+in whose memory the former name was given her was no honor to the
+family and she very soon dropped it and was only known as Veronica.
+Oh, what have I done?" she cried, awed and frightened by the silence
+which followed the utterance of these simple words.
+
+No one answered her.  For the first time in her presence, the minds
+of those who faced her were with another than herself.  The bride!
+the unhappy bride--no maiden but a wife!  nay, a wife one minute,
+a widow the next, and then again a newly-wedded bride before the
+husband lying below was cold!  What wander that she shrank when her
+new-made bridegroom's lips approached her own!  or that their
+honeymoon was a disappointment!  Or that the shadow which fell upon
+her on that evil day never left her till she gave herself wholly up
+to its influence and returned to die on the spot made awful by her
+own crime.
+
+Before any of us were quite ready to speak, a tap at the door told
+us that Durbin had arrived with Mr. Jeffrey.  When they had been
+admitted and the latter saw Miss Tuttle standing there, he, too,
+seemed to realize that a turn had come in their affairs, and that
+courage rather than endurance was the quality most demanded from
+him.  Facing the small group clustered in the dismal hall fraught
+with such unutterable associations, he earnestly prayed:
+
+"Do not keep me in suspense.  Why am I summoned here?"
+
+The reply was as grave as the occasion warranted.
+
+"You are summoned to learn the murderous secret of these old walls,
+and who it was that last made use of it.  Do you feel inclined to
+hear these details from my lips, or are you ready to state that you
+already know the means by which so many persons, in times past as
+well as in times present, have met death here?  We do not require
+you to answer us."
+
+"I know the means," he allowed, recognizing without doubt that the
+crisis of crises had come, and that denial would be worse than
+useless.
+
+"Then it only remains for us to acquaint you with the identity of
+the person who last pressed the fatal spring.  But perhaps you know
+that, too?"
+
+"I--"  He paused; words were impossible to him; and in that pause
+his eyes flashed helplessly in the direction of Miss Tuttle.
+
+But the major was quick on his feet and was already between him and
+that lady.  This act forced from Mr. Jeffrey's lips the following
+broken sentence:
+
+"I should--like--you--to--tell--me."  Great gasps came with
+each heavily spoken word.
+
+"Perhaps this morsel of lace will do it in a gentler manner than
+I could," responded the district attorney, opening his hand, in
+which lay the scrap of lace that, an hour or so before, I had
+plucked away from the boarding of that fatal closet.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey eyed it and understood.  His hands went up to his face
+and he swayed to the point of falling.  Miss Tuttle came quickly
+forward.
+
+"Oh!" she moaned, as her eyes fell on the little white shred.  "The
+providence of God has found us out.  We have suffered, labored and
+denied in vain."
+
+"Yes," came in dreary echo from the man none of us had understood
+till now; "so great a crime could not be hid.  God will have
+vengeance.  What are we that we should hope to avert it by any act
+or at any cost?"
+
+The major, with his eyes fixed piercingly on this miserable man,
+replied with one pregnant, sentence:
+
+"Then you forced your wife to suicide?"
+
+"No," he began; but before another word could follow, Miss Tuttle,
+resplendent in beauty and beaming with new life, broke in with the
+fervid cry:
+
+"You wrong him and you wrong her by such a suggestion.  It was not
+her husband but her conscience that forced her to this retributive
+act.  What Mr. Jeffrey might have done had she proved obdurate and
+blind to the enormity of her own guilt, I do not know.  But that he
+is innocent of so influencing her is proved by the shock he suffered
+at finding she had taken her punishment into her own hands."
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey will please answer the question," insisted the major.
+Whereupon the latter, with great effort, but with the first
+appearance of real candor yet seen in him, said earnestly:
+
+"I did nothing to influence her.  I was in no condition to do so.
+I was benumbed--dead.  When first she told me,--it was in some
+words muttered in her sleep--I thought she was laboring under some
+fearful nightmare; but when she persisted, and I questioned her,
+and found the horror true, I was like a man turned instantly into
+stone, save for one intolerable throb within.  I am still so;
+everything passes by me like a dream.  She was so young, seemingly
+so innocent and light-hearted.  I loved her!  Gentlemen, you have
+thought me guilty of my wife's death,--this young fairy-like
+creature to whom I ascribed all the virtues!  and I was willing,
+willing that you should think so, willing even to face the distrust
+and opprobrium of the whole world,--and so was her sister, the
+noble woman whom you see before you--rather than that the full
+horror of her crime should be known and a name so dear be given up
+to execration.  We thought we could keep the secret--we felt that
+we must keep the secret--we took an oath--in French--in the
+carriage with the detectives opposite us.  She kept it--God bless
+her!  I kept it.  But it was all useless--a tiny bit of lace is
+found hanging to a lifeless splinter, and all our efforts, all the
+hopes and agony of weeks are gone for naught.  The world will soon
+know of her awful deed--and I--"
+
+He still loved her!  That was apparent in every look, in every word
+he uttered.  We marveled in awkward silence, and were glad when the
+major said:
+
+"The deed, as I take it, was an unpremeditated one on her part.  Is
+that why her honor was dearer to you than your own, and why you
+could risk the reputation if not the life of the woman who you say
+sacrificed herself to it?"
+
+"Yes, it was unpremeditated; she hardly realized her act.  If you
+must know her heart through all this dreadful business, we have her
+words to show you--words which she spent the last miserable day of
+her life in writing.  The few lines which I showed the captain and
+which have been published to the world was an inclosure meant for
+the public eye.  The real letter, telling the whole terrible truth,
+I kept for myself and for the sister who already knew her sin.  Oh,
+we did everything we could!"  And he again moaned: "But it was in
+vain; quite in vain."
+
+There were no signs of subterfuge in him now, and we all, unless I
+except Durbin, began to yield him credence.  Durbin never gives
+credence to anybody whose name he has once heard associated with
+crime.
+
+"And this Pfeiffer was contracted to her?  A man she had secretly
+married while a school-girl and who at this very critical instant
+had found his way to the house."
+
+"You shall read her letter.  It was meant for me, for me only--but
+you shall see it.  I can not talk of him or of her crime.  It is
+enough that I have been unable to think of anything else since first
+those dreadful words fell front her lips in sleep, thirty-six hours
+before she died."  Then with the inconsistency of great anguish he
+suddenly broke forth into the details he shrank from and cried
+"She muttered, lying there, that she was no bigamist.  That she had
+killed one husband before she married the other.  Killed him in the
+old house and by the method her ancestors had taught her.  And I,
+risen on my elbow, listened, with the sweat oozing from my forehead,
+but not believing her, oh, not believing her, any more than any one
+of you would believe such words uttered in a dream by the darling of
+your heart.  But when, with a long-drawn sigh, she murmured,
+'Murderer!' and raised her fists--tiny fists, hands which I had
+kissed a thousand times--and shook them in the air, an awful terror
+seized me, and I sought to grasp them and hold them down, but was
+hindered by some nameless inner recoil under which I could not speak,
+nor gasp, nor move.  Of course, it was some dream-horror she was
+laboring under, a nightmare of unimaginable acts and thoughts, but
+it was one to hold me back; and when she lay quiet again and her
+face resumed its old sweetness in the moonlight, I found myself
+staring at her almost as if it were true--what she had said--that
+word--that awful word which no woman could use with regard to
+herself, even in dreams, unless--Something, an echo from the
+discordant chord in our two weeks' married life, rose like the
+confirmation of a doubt in my shocked and rebellious breast.  From
+that hour till dawn nothing in that slowly brightening room seemed
+real, not her face lying buried in its youthful locks upon the
+pillow, not the objects well-known and well-prized by which we were
+surrounded--not myself--most of all, not myself, unless the icy
+dew oozing from the roots of my lifted hair was real, unless that
+shape, fearsome, vague, but persistent, which hovered in the
+shadows above us, drawing a line of eternal separation between me
+and my wife, was a thing which could be caught and strangled and--
+Oh!  I rave!  I chatter like a madman; but I did not rave that
+night.  Nor did I rave when, in the bright, broad sunlight, her eye
+slowly unclosed and she started to see me bending so near her, but
+not with my usual kiss or glad good morning.  I could not question
+her then; I dared not.  The smile which slowly rose to her lips was
+too piteous--it showed confidence. I waited till after breakfast.
+Then, while she was seated where she could not see my face, I
+whispered the question: 'Do you know that you have had a horrible
+dream?'  She shrieked and turned.  I saw her face and knew that what
+she had uttered in her sleep was true.'
+
+"I have no remembrance of what I said to her. She tried to tell me
+how she had been tempted and how she had not realized her own act,
+till the moment I bent down to kiss her lips as her husband.  But I
+did not stop to listen--I could not.  I flew immediately to Miss
+Tuttle with the violent demand as to whether she knew that her
+sister was already a wife when she married me, and when she cried
+out 'No!' and showed great dismay, I broke forth with the dreadful
+tale and cowered in unmanly anguish at her feet, and went mad and
+lost myself for a little while.  Then I went back to my wretched
+wife and asked her how the awful deed had been done.  She told me,
+and again I did not believe her and began to look upon it all as
+some wild dream or the distempered fancies of a disordered brain.
+This thought calmed me and I spoke gently to her and even tried to
+take her hand.  But she herself was raving now, and clung about my
+knees, murmuring words of such anguish and contrition that my worst
+fears returned and, only stopping to take the key of the Moore
+house from my bureau, I left the house and wandered madly--I know
+not where.
+
+"I did not go back that day.  I could not face her again till I
+knew how much of her confession was fancy and how much was fact.
+I roamed the streets, carrying that key from one end of the city to
+the other, and at night I used it to open the house which she had
+declared contained so dreadful a secret.
+
+"I had bought candles on my way there but, forgetting to take them
+from the store, I had no light with which to penetrate the horrible
+place that even the moon refused to illumine. I realized this when
+once in, but would not go back.  All I have told about using matches
+to light me to the southwest chamber is true, also my coming upon
+the old candelabrum there, with a candle in one of its sockets. This
+candle I lit, my sole reason for seeking this room being my desire
+to examine the antique sketch for the words which she had said could
+be found there.
+
+"I had failed to bring a magnifying-glass with me, but my eyes are
+phenomenally sharp.  Knowing where to look, I was able to pick out
+enough words here and there in the lines composing the hair, to feel
+quite sure that my wife had neither deceived me nor been deceived
+as to certain directions being embodied there in writing.  Shaken in
+my last lingering hope, but not yet quite convinced that these words
+pointed to outrageous crime, I flew next to the closet and drew out
+the fatal drawer.
+
+"You have been there and know what the place is, but no one but
+myself can ever realize what it was for me, still loving, still
+clinging to a wild inconsequent belief in my wife, to grope in that
+mouth of hell for the spring she had chattered about in her sleep,
+to find it, press it, and then to hear, down in the dark of the
+fearsome recess, the sound of something deadly strike against what
+I took to be the cushions of the old settle standing at the edge
+of the library hearthstone.
+
+"I think I must have fainted.  For when I found myself possessed
+of sufficient consciousness to withdraw from that hole of death,
+the candle in the candelabrum was shorter by an inch than when I
+first thrust my head into the gap made by the removed drawers.
+In putting back the drawers I hit the candelabrum with my foot,
+upsetting it and throwing out the burning candle.  As the flames
+began to lick the worm-eaten boarding of the floor a momentary
+impulse seized me to rush away and leave the whole place to burn.
+But I did not.  With a sudden frenzy, I stamped out the flame,
+and then finding myself in darkness, griped my way downstairs and
+out.  If I entered the library I do not remember it.  Some lapses
+must be pardoned a man involved as I was."
+
+"But the fact which you dismiss so lightly is an important one,"
+insisted the major.  "We must know positively whether you entered
+this room or not."
+
+"I have no recollection of doing so"
+
+"Then you can not tell us whether the little table was standing
+there, with the candelabrum upon it or--"
+
+"I can tell you nothing about it."
+
+The major, after a long look at this suffering man, turned toward
+Miss Tuttle.
+
+"You must have loved your sister very much," he sententiously
+remarked.
+
+She flushed and for the first time her eyes fell from their
+resting-place on Mr. Jeffrey's face.
+
+"I loved her reputation," was her quiet answer, "and--"  The
+rest died in her throat.
+
+But we all--such of us, I mean, who were possessed of the least
+sensibility or insight, knew how that sentence sounded as finished
+in her heart "and I loved him who asked this sacrifice of me."
+
+Yet was her conduct not quite clear.
+
+"And to save that reputation you tied the pistol to her wrist?"
+insinuated the major.
+
+"No," was her vehement reply.  "I never knew what I was tying to
+her.  My testimony in that regard was absolutely true.  She held
+the pistol concealed in the folds of her dress.  I did not dream--I
+could not--that she was contemplating any such end to the atrocious
+crime--to which she had confessed.  Her manner was too light,
+too airy and too frivolous--a manner adopted, as I now see,
+to forestall all questions and hold back all expressions of
+feeling on my part.  'Tie these hanging ends of ribbon to my
+wrist,' were her words.  'Tie them tight; a knot under and a bow
+on top.  I am going out--  There, don't say anything--  What you
+want to talk about will keep till tomorrow.  For one night more I
+am going to make merry--to--to enjoy myself.'  She was laughing.
+I thought her horribly callous and trembled with such an
+unspeakable repulsion that I had difficulty in making the knot.
+To speak at all would have been impossible.  Neither did I dare
+to look in her face.  I was touching the hand and she kept on
+laughing--such a hollow laugh covering up such an awful resolve!
+When she turned to give me that last injunction about the note,
+this resolve glared still in her eyes."
+
+"And you never suspected?"
+
+"Not for an instant.  I did not do justice either to her misery or
+to her conscience.  I fear that I have never done her justice in
+anyway.  I thought her light, pleasure-loving.  I did not know that
+it was assumed to hide a terrible secret."
+
+"Then you had no knowledge of the contract she had entered into
+while a school-girl?"
+
+"Not in the least.  Another woman, and not myself, had been her
+confidante; a woman who has since died.  No intimation of her first
+unfortunate marriage had ever reached me till Mr. Jeffrey rushed
+in upon me that Tuesday morning with her dreadful confession on
+his lips."
+
+The district attorney, who did not seem quite satisfied on a certain
+point passed over by the major, now took the opportunity of saying:
+
+"You assure us that you had no idea that this once lighthearted
+sister of yours meditated suicide when she left you?"
+
+"And I repeat it, sir."
+
+"Then why did you immediately go to Mr. Jeffrey's drawer, where
+you could have no business, unless it was to see if she had taken
+his pistol with her?"
+
+Miss Tuttle's head fell and a soft flush broke through the pallor
+of her cheek.
+
+"Because I was thinking of him.  Because I was terrified for him.
+He had left the house the morning before in a half-maddened condition
+and had not come back to sleep or eat since.  I did not know what a
+man so outraged in every sacred feeling of love and honor might be
+tempted to do.  I thought of suicide.  I remembered the old house
+and how he had said, 'I don't believe her.  I don't believe she ever
+did so cold-blooded an act, or that any such dreadful machinery is
+in that house.  I never shall believe it till I have seen and handled
+it myself.  It is a nightmare, Cora.  We are insane.'  I thought of
+this, sirs, and when I went into her room, to change the place of
+the little note in the book, I went to his bureau drawer, not to
+look for the pistol--I did not think of that then,--but to see if
+the keys of the Moore house were still there.  I knew that they were
+kept in this drawer, for I had been present in the room when they
+were brought in after the wedding.  I had also been short-sighted
+enough to conclude that if they were gone it was he who had taken
+them.  They were gone, and that was why I flew immediately from the
+house to the old place in Waverley Avenue.  I was concerned for Mr.
+Jeffrey!  I feared to find him there, demented or dead."
+
+"But you had no key."
+
+"No.  Mr. Jeffrey had taken one of them and my sister the other.
+But the lack of a key or even of a light--for the missing candles
+were not taken by me[1]--could not keep me at home after I was
+once convinced that he had gone to this dreadful house.  If I
+could not get in I could at least hammer at the door or rouse the
+neighbors.  Something must be done.  I did not think what; I merely
+flew."
+
+"Did you know that the house had two keys?"
+
+"Not then."
+
+"But your sister did?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+"And finding the only key, as you supposed, gone, you flew to the
+Moore house?"
+
+"Immediately."
+
+"And now what else?"
+
+"I found the door unlocked."
+
+"That was done by Mrs. Jeffrey?"
+
+"Yes, but I did not think of her then."
+
+"And you went in?"
+
+"Yes; it was all dark, but I felt my way till I came to the gilded
+pillars."
+
+"Why did you go there?"
+
+"Because I felt--I knew--if he were anywhere in that house he
+would be there!"
+
+"And why did you stop?"
+
+Her voice rose above its usual quiet pitch in shrill protest:
+
+"You know!  you know!  I heard a pistol-shot from within, then a
+fall.  I don't remember anything else.  They say I went wandering
+about town.  Perhaps I did; it is all a blank to me--everything is
+a blank till the policeman said that my sister was dead and I
+learned for the first time that the shot I had heard in the Moore
+house was not the signal of his death, but hers.  Had I been myself
+when at that library door," she added, after a moment of silence,
+"I would have rushed in at the sound of that shot and have received
+my sister's dying breath."
+
+"Cora!"  The cry was from Mr. Jeffrey, and seemed to be quite
+involuntary.  "In the weeks during which we have been kept from
+speaking together I have turned all these events over in my mind
+till I longed for any respite, even that of the grave.  But in all
+my thinking I never attributed this motive to your visit here.
+Will you forgive me?"
+
+There was a new tone in his voice, a tone which no woman could
+hear without emotion.
+
+"You had other things to think of," she said, and her lips trembled.
+Never have I seen on the human face a more beautiful expression than
+I saw on hers at that moment; nor do I think Mr. Jeffrey had either,
+for as he marked it his own regard softened almost to tenderness.
+
+The major had no time for sentimentalities.  Turning to Mr. Jeffrey,
+he said:
+
+"One more question before we send for the letter which you say will
+give us full insight into your wife's crime.  Do you remember what
+occurred on the bridge at Georgetown just before you came into town
+that night?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Did you meet any one there?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"Can you remember your state of mind?"
+
+"I was facing the future."
+
+"And what did you see in the future?"
+
+"Death.  Death for her and death for me!  A crime was on her soul
+and she must die, and if she, then myself.  I knew no other course.
+I could not summon the police, point out my bride of a fortnight
+and, with the declaration that she had been betrayed into killing a
+man, coldly deliver her up to justice.  Neither could I live at her
+side knowing the guilty secret which parted us; or live anywhere in
+the world under this same consciousness.  Therefore, I meant to kill
+myself before another sun rose.  But she was more deeply stricken
+with a sense of her own guilt than I realized.  When I returned home
+for the pistol which was to end our common misery I found that she
+had taken her punishment into her own hands.  This strangely affected
+me, but when I found that, in doing this, she had remembered that I
+should have to face the world after she was gone, and so left a few
+lines for me to show in explanation of her act, my revolt against
+her received a check which the reading of her letter only increased.
+But the lines she thus wrote and left were not true lines.  All her
+heart was mine, and if it was a wicked heart she has atoned--"
+
+He paused, quite overcome.  Others amongst us were overcome, too,
+but only for a moment.  The following remark from the district
+attorney soon recalled us to the practical aspects of the case.
+
+"You have accounted for many facts not hitherto understood.  But
+there is still a very important one which neither yourself nor
+Miss Tuttle has yet made plain.  There was a candle on the scene
+of crime; it was out when this officer arrived here.  There was
+also one found burning in the upstairs room, aside from the one you
+professedly used in your tour of inspection there.  Whence came
+those candles?  And did your wife blow out the one in the library
+herself, previous to the shooting, or was it blown out afterward
+and by other lips?"
+
+"These are questions which, as I have already said, I have no means
+of answering," repeated Mr. Jeffrey.  "The courage which brought
+her here may have led her to supply herself with light; and, hard
+as it is to conceive, she may even have found nerve to blow out the
+light before she lifted the pistol to her breast:"
+
+The district attorney and the major looked unconvinced, and the
+latter, turning toward Miss Tuttle, asked if she had any remark to
+make on the subject.
+
+But she could only repeat Mr. Jeffrey's statement.
+
+"These are questions I can not answer either.  I have said that I
+stopped at the library door, which means that I saw nothing of what
+passed within."
+
+Here the major asked where Mrs. Jeffrey's letter was to be found.
+It was Mr. Jeffrey who replied:
+
+"Search in my room for a book with an outside cover of paper still
+on it.  You will probably find it on my table.  The inner cover is
+red.  Bring that book here.  Our secret is hidden in it."
+
+Durbin disappeared on this errand.  I followed him as far as the
+door, but I did not think it necessary to state that I had seen
+this book lying on the table when I paid my second visit to Mr.
+Jeffrey's room in company with the coroner.  The thought that my
+hand had been within reach of this man's secret so many weeks
+before was sufficiently humiliating without being shared.
+
+
+[1] We afterwards found that these candles were never delivered  at the
+house at all; that they had been placed in the wrong basket and left
+in a neighboring kitchen.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+TANTALIZING TACTICS
+
+
+I made my way to the front door, but returned almost immediately.
+Drawing the major aside, I whispered a request, which led to a
+certain small article being passed over to me, after which I
+sauntered out on the stoop just in time to encounter the spruce
+but irate figure of Mr. Moore, who had crossed from the opposite
+side.
+
+"Ah!" said I.  "Good morning!" and made him my most deferential bow.
+
+He glared and Rudge glared from his place on the farther curb.
+Evidently the police were not in favor with the occupants of the
+cottage that morning.
+
+"When is this to cease?" he curtly demanded.  "When are these
+early-morning trespasses upon an honest citizen's property coming
+to an end?  I wake with a light heart, expecting that my house,
+which is certainly as much mine as is any man's in Washington, would
+be handed over this very day for my habitation, when what do I
+see--one police officer leaving the front door and another sunning
+himself in the vestibule.  How many more of you are within I do not
+presume to ask.  Some half-dozen, no doubt, and not one of you smart
+enough to wind up this matter and have done with it."
+
+"Ah!  I don't know about that," I drawled, and looked very wise.
+
+His curiosity was aroused.
+
+"Anything new?" he snapped.
+
+"Possibly," I returned, in a way to exasperate a saint.
+
+He stepped on to the porch beside me.  I was too abstracted to
+notice; I was engaged in eying Rudge.
+
+"Do you know," said I, after an instant of what I meant should be
+one of uncomfortable suspense on his part, "that I have a greater
+respect than ever for that animal of yours since learning the very
+good reason he has for refusing to cross the street?"
+
+"Ha!  what's that?" he asked, with a quick look behind him at the
+watchful brute straining toward him with nose over the gutter.
+
+"He sees farther than we can.  His eyes penetrate walls and
+partitions," I remarked.  Then, carelessly and with the calm drawing
+forth of a folded bit of paper which I held out toward him, I added:
+"By the way, here is something of yours."
+
+His hand rose instinctively to take it; then dropped.
+
+"I don't know what you mean," he remarked.  "You have nothing of
+mine."
+
+"No?  Then John Judson Moore had another brother."  And I thrust
+the paper back into my pocket.
+
+He followed it with his eye.  It was the memorandum I had found in
+the old book of memoirs plucked from the library shelf within, and
+he recognized it for his and saw that I did also.  But he failed
+to show the white feather.
+
+"You are good at ransacking," he observed; "pity that it can not
+be done to more purpose."
+
+I smiled and made a fresh start.  With my hand thrust again into my
+pocket, I remarked, without even so much as a glance at him:
+
+"I fear that you do some injustice to the police.  We are not such
+bad fellows; neither do we waste as much time as you seem to think."
+And drawing out my hand, with the little filigree ball in it, I
+whirled the latter innocently round and round on my finger.  As it
+flashed under his eye, I cast him a penetrating look.
+
+He tried to carry the moment off successfully; I will give him so
+much credit.  But it was asking too much of his curiosity, and
+there was no mistaking the eager glitter which lighted his glance
+as he saw within his reach this article which a moment before he
+had probably regarded as lost forever.
+
+"For instance," I went on, watching him furtively, though quite
+sure from his very first look that he knew no more now of the secret
+of this little ball than he knew when he jotted down the memorandum
+I had just pocketed before his eyes, "a little thing--such a little
+thing as this," I repeated, giving the bauble another twist--"may
+lead to discoveries such as no common search would yield in years.
+I do not say that it has; but such a thing is possible, you know:
+who better?"
+
+My nonchalance was too much for him.  He surveyed me with covert
+dislike, and dryly observed "Your opportunities have exceeded mine,
+even with my own effects.  That petty trinket which you have
+presumed to flaunt in my face--and of whose value I am the worst
+judge in the world since I have never had it in my hand--descended
+to me with the rest of Mrs. Jeffrey's property.  Your conduct,
+therefore, strikes me in the light of an impertinence, especially
+as no one could be supposed to have more interest than myself in
+what has been for many years recognized as a family talisman."
+
+"Ah," I remarked.  "You own to the memorandum then.  It was made
+on the spot, but without the benefit of the talisman."
+
+"I own to nothing," he snapped.  Then, realizing that denial in this
+regard was fatal, he added more genially: "What do you mean by
+memorandum?  If you mean that recapitulation of old-time mysteries
+and their accompanying features with which I once whiled away an
+idle hour, I own to it, of course.  Why shouldn't I?  It is only a
+proof of my curiosity in regard to this old mystery which every
+member of my family must feel.  That curiosity has not been appeased.
+If it would not be indiscreet on your part, may I now ask if you
+have found out what that little golden ball of mine which you sport
+so freely before my eyes is to be used in connection with?"
+
+"Read the papers," I said; "read tomorrow's papers, Mr. Moore; or,
+better still, tonight's.  Perhaps they will inform you."
+
+He was as angry as I had expected him to be, but as this ire proved
+conclusively that his strongest emotion had been curiosity rather
+than fear, I felt assured of my ground, and turned to reenter the
+house.  Mr. Moore did not accompany me.
+
+The major was standing in the hall.  The others had evidently
+retreated to the parlor.
+
+"The man opposite knows what he knows," said I; "but this does not
+include the facts concerning the picture in the southwest chamber
+or the devilish mechanism."
+
+"You are sure?"
+
+"As positive as one of my inexperience can be.  But, Major, I am
+equally positive that he knows more than he should of Mrs. Jeffrey's
+death.  I am even ready to state that in my belief he was in the
+house when it occurred."
+
+"Has he acknowledged this?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Then what are your reasons for this belief?"
+
+"They are many"
+
+"Will you state them?"
+
+"Gladly, if you will pardon the presumption.  Some of my conclusions
+can not be new to you.  The truth is that I have possibly seen more
+of this old man than my duty warranted, and I feel quite ready to
+declare that he knows more of what has taken place in this house
+than he is ready to avow.  I am sure that he has often visited it
+in secret and knows about a certain broken window as well as we do.
+I am also sure that he was here on the night of Mrs. Jeffrey's
+suicide.  He was too little surprised when I informed him of what
+had happened not to have had some secret inkling of it beforehand,
+even if we had not the testimony of the lighted candle and the book
+he so hurriedly replaced.  Besides, he is not the man to drag
+himself out at night for so simple a cause as the one with which
+he endeavored to impose upon us.  He knew what we should find in
+this house."
+
+"Very good.  If Mr. Jeffrey's present explanations are true, these
+deductions of yours are probably correct.  But Mr. Moore's denial
+has been positive.  I fear that it will turn out a mere question of
+veracity."
+
+"Not necessarily," I returned.  "I think I see a way of forcing
+this man to acknowledge that he was in or about this house on that
+fatal night."
+
+"You do?"
+
+"Yes, sir; I do not want to boast, and I should be glad if you
+did not oblige me to confide to you the means by which I hope to
+bring this out.  Only give me leave to insert an advertisement in
+both evening and morning papers and in two days I will report
+failure or success."
+
+The major eyed me with an interest that made my heart thrill.
+Then he quickly said: "You have earned the privilege; I will give
+you two days."
+
+At this moment Durbin reappeared.  As I heard his knock and turned
+to open the door for him, I cast the major an entreating if not
+eloquent look.
+
+He smiled and waved his hand with friendly assurance.  The state of
+feeling between Durbin and myself was evidently well known to him.
+
+My enemy entered with a jaunty air, which changed ever so slightly
+when he saw me in close conference with the superintendent.
+
+He had the book in his pocket.  Taking it out, he handed it to the
+major, with this remark:
+
+"You won't find anything there; the gent's been fooling you."
+
+The major opened the book, shook it, looked under the cover, found
+nothing, and crossed hastily to the drawing-room.  We as hastily
+followed him.  The district attorney was talking with Miss Tuttle;
+Mr. Jeffrey was nervously pacing the floor.  The latter stopped as
+we all entered and his eyes flashed to the book.
+
+"Let me take it," said he.
+
+"It is absolutely empty," remarked the major.  "The letter has
+been abstracted, probably without your knowledge."
+
+"I do not think so," was Mr. Jeffrey's unexpected retort.  "Do you
+suppose that I would intrust a secret, for the preservation of
+which I was ready to risk life and honor, to the open pages of a
+book?  When I found myself threatened with all sorts of visits from
+the police and realized that at any moment my effects might be
+ransacked, I sought a hiding place for this letter, which no man
+without superhuman insight could discover.  Look!"
+
+And, pulling off the outside wrapper, he inserted the point of
+his penknife under the edge of the paper lining the inside cover
+and ripped it off with a jerk.
+
+"I pasted this here myself," he cried, and showed us where between
+this paper and the boards, in a place thinned out to hold it, there
+lay a number of folded sheets, which, with a deep sigh, he handed
+over to the major's inspection.  As he did so he remarked:
+
+"I had rather have died any natural death than have had my miserable
+wife's secret known.  But since the crime has come to light, this
+story of her sin and her repentance may serve in some slight degree
+to mitigate public opinion.  She was sorely tempted and she
+succumbed; the crime of her ancestors was in her blood."
+
+He again walked off.  The major unfolded the sheets.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+WHO WILL TELL THE MAN INSIDE THERE
+
+
+Later I saw this letter.  It was like no other that has ever come
+under my eye.  Written at intervals, as her hand had power or her
+misery found words, it bore on its face all the evidences of that
+restless, suffering spirit which for thirty-six hours drove her in
+frenzy about her room, and caused Loretta to say, in her effort to
+describe her mistress' face as it appeared to her at the end of
+this awful time: "It was as if a blight had passed over it.  Once
+gay and animated beyond the power of any one to describe, it had
+become a ghost's face, with the glare of some awful resolve upon
+it."  I give this letter just as it was written-disjointed
+paragraphs, broken sentences, unfinished words and all.  The
+breaks show where she laid down her pen, possibly for that wild
+pacing of the floor which left such unmistakable signs behind it.
+It opens abruptly:
+
+"I killed him.  I am all that I said I was, and you can never again
+give me a thought save in the way of cursing and to bewail the day
+I came into your life.  But you can not hate me more than I hate
+myself, my wicked self, who, seeing an obstacle in the way to
+happiness, stamped it out of existence, and so forfeited all right
+to happiness forever.
+
+"It was so easy!  Had it been a hard thing to do; had it been
+necessary to lay hand on knife or lift a pistol, I might have
+realized the act and paused.  But just a little spring which a
+child's hand could manage--Who, feeling for it, could help pressing
+it, if only to see--
+
+"I was always a reckless girl, mad for pleasure and without any
+thought of consequences.  When school bored me, I took all my books
+out of my desk, called upon my mates to do the same, and, stacking
+them up into a sort of rostrum in a field where we played, first
+delivered an oration from them in which reverence for my teachers
+had small part, then tore them into pieces and burned them in full
+sight of my admiring school-fellows.  I was dismissed, but not with
+disgrace.  Teachers and scholars bewailed my departure, not because
+they liked me, or because of any good they had found in me, but
+because my money had thrown luster on them and on the whole
+establishment.
+
+"This was when I was twelve, and it was on account of this reckless
+escapade that I was sent west and kept so long from home and all
+my flatterers.  My guardian meant well by this, but in saving me
+from one pitfall he plunged me into another.  I grew up without
+Cora and also without any idea of the requirements of my position
+or what I might anticipate from the world when the time came for me
+to enter it.  I knew that I had money; so did those about me; but I
+had little or no idea of the amount, nor what that money would do
+for me when I returned to Washington.  So, in an evil day, and when
+I was just eighteen, I fell in love, or thought I did, with a man--(Oh,
+Francis, imagine it, now that I have seen you!)--of sufficient
+attraction to satisfy one whose prospects were limited to a
+contracted existence in some small town, but no more fitted
+to content me after seeing Washington life than if he had been a
+common farm hand or the most ordinary of clerks in a country store.
+But I was young, ignorant and self-willed, and thought because my
+cheek burned under his look that he was the man of men, and suited
+to be my husband.  That is, if I thought at all, which is not likely;
+for I was in a feverish whirl, and just followed the impulse of the
+moment, which was to be with him whenever I could without attracting
+the teacher's attention.  And this, alas!  was only too often, for
+he was the brother of one of our storekeepers, a visitor in Owosso,
+and often in the store where we girls went.  Why the teachers did
+not notice how often we needed things there, I do not know.  But
+they did not, and matters went on and--
+
+"I can not write of those days, and you do not want to hear about
+them.  They seem impossible to me now, and almost as if it had all
+happened to some one else, so completely have I forgotten the man
+except as the source and cause of an immeasurable horror.  Yet he
+was not bad himself; only ordinary and humdrum.  Indeed, I believe
+he was very good in ways, or so his brother once assured me.  We
+would not have been married in the way we were if he had not wanted
+to go to the Klondike for the purpose of making money and making
+it quickly, so that his means might match mine.
+
+"I do not know which of us two was most to blame for that marriage.
+He urged it because he was going so far away and wanted to be sure
+of me.  I accepted it because it seemed to be romantic and because
+it pleased me to have my own way in spite of my hard old guardian
+and the teachers, who were always prying about, and the girls, who
+went silly over him--for he was really handsome in his way--and
+who thought, (at least many of them did,) that he cared for them
+when he cared only for me.
+
+"I have hated black eyes for a year.  He had black eyes.
+
+"I forgot Cora, or, rather, I did not let any remembrance of her
+hinder me.  She was a very shadowy person to me in those days.  I
+had not seen her since we were both children, and as for her
+letters--they were almost a bore to me; she lived such a
+different life from mine and wrote of so many things I had no
+interest in.  On my knees I ask her pardon now.  I never understood
+her.  I never understood myself.  I was light as thistledown and
+blown by every breeze.  There came a gust one day which blew me
+into the mouth of hell.  I am hovering there yet and am sinking,
+Francis, sinking--Save me!  I love you--I--I--
+
+"It was all planned by him--I have no head for such things.
+Sadie helped him--Sadie was my friend--but Sadie had not much to
+say about it, for he seemed to know just how to arrange it all so
+that no one at the seminary should know or even suspect what had
+occurred till we got ready to tell them.  He did not even take
+his brother into his confidence, for Wallace kept store and
+gossiped very much with his customers.  Besides, he was very busy
+just then selling out, for he was going to the Klondike with
+William, and he had too much on his mind to be bothered, or so
+William said.  All this I must tell you or you will never
+understand the temptation which assailed me when, having returned
+to Washington, I awoke to my own position and the kind of men whom
+I could now hope to meet.  I was the wife--oh, the folly of
+it--but this was known to so few, and those were so far removed,
+and one even--my friend Sadie--being dead--  Why not ignore the
+miserable secret ceremony and cheat myself into believing myself
+free, and enjoy this world of pleasure and fashion as Cora was
+enjoying it and--trust.  Trust what?  Why the Klondike!  That
+swallower-up of men.  Why shouldn't it swallow one more--  Oh, I
+know that it sounds hateful.  But I was desperate; I had seen you.
+
+"I had one letter from him after he reached Alaska, but that was
+before I left Owosso.  I never got another.  And I never wrote to
+him.  He told me not to do so until he could send me word how and
+where to write; but when these directions came my heart had changed
+and my only wish was to forget his existence.  And I did forget
+it--almost.  I rode and danced with you and went hither and yon,
+lavishing money and time and heart on the frivolities which came in
+my way, calling myself Veronica and striving by these means to crush
+out every remembrance of the days when I was known as Antoinette
+and Antoinette only.  For the Klondike was far and its weather
+bitter, and men were dying there every day, and no letters came (I
+used to thank God for this), and I need not think--not yet--whither
+I was tending.  One thing only made me recall my real position.
+That was when your eyes turned on mine--your true eyes, so bright
+with confidence and pride.  I wanted to meet them full, and when I
+could not, I suddenly knew why, and suffered.
+
+"Do you remember the night when we stood together on the balcony
+at the Ocean View House and you laid your hand on my arm and
+wondered why I persisted in looking at the moon instead of into
+your expectant face?  It was because the music then being played
+within recalled another night and the pressure of another hand on
+my arm--a hand whose touch I hoped never to feel again, but which
+at that moment was so much more palpable than yours that I came
+near screaming aloud and telling you in one rush of maddened
+emotion my whole abominable secret.
+
+"I did not accept your attentions nor agree to marry you, without
+a struggle.  You know that.  You can tell, as no one else can, how
+I held back and asked for time and still for time, thus grieving
+you and tearing my own breast till a day came--you remember the
+day when you found me laughing like a mad woman in a circle of
+astonished friends?  You drew me aside and said words which I
+hardly waited for you to finish, for at last I was free to love
+you, free to love and free to say so.  The morning paper had brought
+news.  A telegraphic despatch from Seattle told how a man had
+struggled into Nome, frozen, bleeding and without accouterments or
+companion.  It was with difficulty he had kept his feet and turned
+in at the first tent he came to.  Indeed, he had only time to
+speak his name before he fell dead.  This name was what made this
+despatch important to me.  It was William Pfeiffer.  For me there
+was but one William Pfeiffer in the Klondike--my husband--and he
+was dead!  That was why you found me laughing.  But not in mirth.
+I am not so bad as that; but because I could breathe again without
+feeling a clutch about my throat.  I did not know till then how
+nearly I had been stifled.
+
+"We were not long in marrying after that.  I was terrified at delay,
+not because I feared any contradiction of the report which had given
+this glorious release, but because I dreaded lest some hint of my
+early folly should reach you and dim the pride with which you
+regarded me.  I wanted to feel myself yours so closely and so dearly
+that you would not mind if any one told you that I had once cared,
+or thought I had cared, for another.  The week of our marriage came;
+I was mad with gaiety and ecstatic with hope.  Nothing had occurred
+to mar my prospects.  No letter from Denver--no memento from the
+Klondike, no word even from Wallace, who had gone north with his
+brother.  Soon I should be called wife again, but by lips I loved,
+and to whose language my heart thrilled.  The past, always vague,
+would soon be no more than a forgotten dream--an episode quite
+closed.  I could afford from this moment on to view life like other
+girls and rejoice in my youth and the love which every day was
+becoming more and more to me.
+
+"But God had His eye upon me, and in the midst of my happiness and
+the hurry of our final preparations His bolt fell.  It struck me
+while I was at the--don't laugh; rather shudder--at the
+dressmaker's shop in Fourteenth Street.  I was leaning over a table,
+chattering like a magpie over the way I wanted a gown trimmed, when
+my eye fell on a scrap of newspaper in which something had come
+rolled to madame.  It was torn at the edge, but on the bit lying
+under my eyes I saw my husband's name, William Pfeiffer, and that
+the paper was a Denver one.  There was but one William Pfeiffer
+in Denver--and he was my husband.  And I read--feeling nothing.
+Then I read again, and the world, my world, went from under my feet;
+for the man who had fallen dead in the camp at Nome was Wallace,
+William's brother, and not William himself.  William had been left
+behind on the road by his more energetic brother, who had pushed
+on for succor through the worst storm and under the worst conditions
+possible even in that God-forsaken region.  With the lost one in
+mind, the one word that Wallace uttered in sight of rescue, was
+William.  A hope was expressed of finding the latter alive and a
+party had started out--Did I read more? I do not think so.
+Perhaps there was no more to read; here was where the paper was
+torn across.  But it was no matter.  I had seen enough.  It was
+Wallace who had fallen dead, and while William might have perished
+also, and doubtless had, I had no certainty of it.  And my wedding
+day was set for Thursday.
+
+"Why didn't I tell Cora; why didn't I tell you? Pride held my tongue;
+besides, I had had time to think before I saw either of you, and to
+reason a bit and to feel sure that if Wallace had been spent enough
+to fall dead on reaching the camp, William could never have survived
+on the open road.  For Wallace was the stronger of the two and the
+most hardy every way.  Free I certainly was.  Some later paper would
+assure me of this.  I would hunt them up and see--but I never did.
+I do not think I dared.  I was afraid I should see some account of
+his rescue.  I was afraid of being made certain of what was now but
+a possibility, and so I did nothing.  But for three nights I did not
+sleep.
+
+"The caprice which had led me to choose the old Moore house to be
+married in led me to plan dressing there on my wedding morning.  It
+was early when we started, Cora and I, for Waverley Avenue, but not
+too early for the approaches to that dreadful house to be crowded
+with people, eager to see the daring bride.  Why I should have
+shrunk so from that crowd I can not say.  I trembled at sight of
+their faces and at the sound of their voices, and if by chance a
+head was thrust forward farther than the rest I cowered back
+instinctively and nearly screamed.  Did I dread to recognize a too
+familiar face?  The paper I had seen bore a date six months back.
+A man could arrive here from Alaska in that time.  Or was my
+conscience aroused at last and clamoring to be heard when it was
+too late?  On the corner of N Street the carriage suddenly stopped.
+A man had crossed in front of it.  I caught one glimpse of this
+man and instantly the terrors of a lifetime were concentrated into
+one instant of agonizing fear.  It was William Pfeiffer.  I knew
+the look; I knew the gait.  He was gone in a moment and the
+carriage rolled on.  But I knew my doom as well that minute as I
+did an hour later.  My husband was alive and he was here.  He had
+escaped the perils of the Klondike and wandered east to reclaim
+his recreant wife.  There had been time for him to do this since
+the rescue party left home in search of him; time for him to
+recover, time for him to reach home, time for him to reach the
+east.  He had heard of my wedding; it was in all the papers, and I
+should find him at the house when I got there, and you would know
+and Cora would know, and the wedding would stop and my name be
+made a by-word the world over.  Instead of the joy awaiting me a
+moment since, I should have to go away with him into some wilderness
+or distant place of exile where my maiden name would never be heard,
+and all the memories of this year of stolen delights be effaced.
+Oh, it was horrible!  And all in a minute!  And Cora sat there,
+pale, calm and beautiful as an angel, beaming on me with tender
+eyes whose expression I have never understood!  Hell in my heart,--and
+she, in happy ignorance of this, brooding over my joy and smiling
+to herself while the soft tears rose!
+
+"You were waiting at the curb when I arrived, and I remember how my
+heart stood still when you laid your hand on the carriage door and
+confronted me with that light on your face I had never seen
+disturbed since we first pledged ourselves to marry.  Would he see
+it, too, and come forward from the secret place where he held
+himself hidden?  Was I destined to behold a struggle in the streets,
+an unseemly contest of words in sight of the door I had expected
+to enter so joyously?  In terror of such an event, I seized the
+hand which seemed my one refuge in this hour of mortal trouble,
+and hastened into the house which, for all its doleful history,
+had never received within its doors a heart more burdened or
+rebellious.  As this thought rushed over me, I came near crying
+out, 'The house of doom!  The house of doom!'  I had thought to
+brave its terrors and its crimes and it has avenged itself.  But
+instead of that, I pressed your hand with mine and smiled.  O
+God!  if you could have seen what lay beneath that smile!  For,
+with my entrance beneath those fatal doors a thought had come.
+I remembered my heritage.  I remembered how I had been told by
+my father when I was a very little girl,--I presume when he first
+felt the hand of death upon him,--that if ever I was in great
+trouble,--very great trouble, he had said, where no deliverance
+seemed possible--I was to open a little golden ball which he
+showed me and take out what I should find inside and hold it close
+up before a picture which had hung from time immemorial in the
+southwest corner of this old house.  He could not tell me what I
+should encounter there this I remember his saying--but something
+that would assist me, something which had passed with good effect
+from father down to child for many generations.  Only, if I would
+be blessed in my undertakings, I must not open the golden ball nor
+endeavor to find out its mystery unless my trouble threatened death
+or some great disaster.  Such a trouble had indeed come to me,
+and--startling coincidence--I was at this moment in the very house
+where this picture hung, and--more startling fact yet--the
+golden ball needed to interpret its meaning was round my neck--for
+with such jealousy was this family trinket always guarded by its
+owner.  Why then not test their combined effect?  I certainly needed
+help from some quarter.  Never would William allow me to be married
+to another while he lived.  He would yet appear and I should need
+thus great assistance (great enough to be transmitted from father to
+son) as none of the Moores had needed it yet; though what it was I
+did not know and did not even try to guess.
+
+"Yet when I got to the room I did not drag out the filigree ball at
+once nor even take more than one fearful side-long look at the
+picture.  In drawing off my glove I had seen his ring--the ring you
+had once asked about.  It was such a cheap affair; the only one he
+could get in that obscure little town where we were married.  I
+lied when you asked me if it was a family jewel; lied but did not
+take it off, perhaps because it clung so tightly, as if in
+remembrance of the vows it symbolized.  But now the very sight of
+it gave me a fright.  With his ring on my finger I could not defy
+him and swear his claim to be false the dream of a man maddened by
+his experiences in the Klondike.  It must come off.  Then, perhaps,
+I should feel myself a free woman.  But it would not come off.  I
+struggled with it and tugged in vain; then I bethought me of using
+a nail file to sever it.  This I did, grinding and grinding at it
+till the ring finally broke, and I could wrench it off and cast it
+away out of sight and, as I hoped, out of my memory also.  I
+breathed easier when rid of this token, yet choked with terror
+whenever a step approached the door.  I was clad in my bridal dress,
+but not in my bridal veil or ornaments, and naturally Cora, and
+then my maid, came to assist me.  But I would not let them in.  I
+was set upon testing the secret of the filigree ball and so
+preparing myself for what my conscience told me lay between me and
+the ceremony arranged for high noon.
+
+"I did not guess that the studying out of that picture would take
+so long.  The contents of the ball turned out to be a small
+magnifying-glass, and the picture a maze of written words.  I did
+not decipher it all; I did not decipher the half.  I did not need
+to.  A spirit of divination was given me in that awful hour which
+enabled me to grasp its full meaning from the few sentences I did
+pick out.  And that meaning!  It was horrible, inconceivable.
+Murder was taught; but murder from a distance, and by an act too
+simple to awake revulsion.  Were the wraiths of my two ancestors
+who had played with the spring hidden in the depths of this old
+closet, drawn up in mockery beside me during the hour when I stood
+spellbound in the middle of the floor, thinking of what I had just
+read, and listening--listening for something less loud than the
+sound of carriages now beginning to roll up in front or the stray
+notes of the band tuning up below?--less loud, but meaning what?
+A step into the empty closet yawning so near--an effort with a
+drawer--a--a--  Do not ask me to recall it.  I did not shudder
+when the moment came and I stood there.  Then I was cold as marble.
+But I shudder now in thinking of it till soul and body seem
+separating, and the horror which envelopes me gives me such a
+foretaste of hell that I wonder I can contemplate the deed which,
+if it releases me from this earthly anguish, will only plunge me
+into a possibly worse hereafter.  Yet I shall surely take my life
+before you see me again, and in that old house.  If it is despair
+I feel, then despair will take me there.  If it is repentance,
+then repentance will suffice to drive me to the one expiation
+possible to me--to perish where I caused an innocent man to
+perish, and so relieve you of a wife who was never worthy of you
+and whom it would be your duty to denounce if she let another sun
+rise upon her guilt.
+
+"I did not stand there long between the wraiths of my murderous
+ancestors.  A message was shouted through the door--the message for
+which my ears had been strained in dreadful anticipation for the
+last two hours.  A man named Pfeiffer wanted to see me before I
+went down to be married.  A man named Pfeiffer!
+
+"I looked closely at the boy who delivered this message.  He showed
+no excitement, nor any feeling greater than impatience at being kept
+waiting a minute or so at the door.  Then I glanced beyond him, at
+the people chatting in the hall.  No alarm there; nothing but a very
+natural surprise that the bride should keep so big a crowd waiting.
+I felt that this fixed the event.  He who had sent me this quiet
+message was true to himself and to our old compact.  He had not
+published below what would have set the house in an uproar in a
+moment.  He had left his secret to be breathed into my ear alone.
+I could recall the moment he passed me his word, and his firm look
+as he said, with his hand lifted to Heaven 'You have been good to
+me and given me your precious self while I was poor and a nobody.
+In return, I swear to keep our marriage a secret till great success
+shows me to be worthy of you or till you with your own lips express
+forgiveness of my failure and grant me leave to speak.  Nothing but
+death or your permission shall ever unseal my lips.'  When I heard
+that he was dead I feared lest he might have spoken, but now that
+I had seen him alive, I knew that in no other breast, save his, my
+own and that of the unknown minister in an almost unknown town,
+dwelt any knowledge of the fact which stood between me and the
+marriage which all these people had come here to see.  My confidence
+in his rectitude determined me.  Without conscious emotion, without
+fear even,--the ending of suspense had ended all that,--I told
+the boy to seat the gentleman in the library.  Then "I am haunted
+now, I am haunted always, by one vision, horrible but persistent.
+It will not leave me; it rises between us now; it has stood between
+us ever since I left that house with the seal of your affection on
+my lips.  Last night it terrified me into unconscious speech.  I
+dreamed that I saw again, and plainly, what I caught but a shadowy
+glimpse of in that murderous hour: a man's form seated at the end
+of the old settle, with his head leaning back, in silent
+contemplation.  His face was turned the other way--I thanked God
+for that--no, I did not thank God; I never thought of God in that
+moment of my blind feeling about for a chink and a spring in the
+wall.  I thought only of your impatience, and the people waiting,
+and the pleasure of days to come when, free from this intolerable
+bond, I could keep my place at your side and bear your name
+unreproved and taste to the full the awe and delight of a passion
+such as few women ever feel, because few women were ever loved by
+a man like you.  Had my thoughts been elsewhere, my fingers might
+have forgotten to fumble along that wall, and I had been simply
+wretched to-day,--and innocent.  Innocent!  O, where in God's
+universe can I be made innocent again and fit to look in your face
+and to love--heart-breaking thought--even to love you again?
+
+"To turn and turn a miserable crank after those moments of frenzied
+action and silence that was the hard part-that was what tried my
+nerve and first robbed me of calmness.  But I dared not leave that
+fearful thing dangling there; I had to wind.  The machinery squeaked,
+and its noise seemed to fill the house, but no one came nor did the
+door below open.  Sometimes I have wished that it had.  I should not
+then have been lured on and you would not have become involved in
+my ruin.
+
+"I have heard many say that I looked radiant when I came down to be
+married.  The radiance was in their thoughts.  Or if my face did
+shine, and if I moved as if treading on air, it was because I had
+triumphed over all difficulties and could pass down to the altar
+without fear of that interrupting voice crying out: `I forbid!  She
+is mine!  The wife of William Pfeiffer can not wed another!'  No
+such words could be dreaded now.  The lips which might have spoken
+them were dumb.  I forgot that fleshless lips gibber loudest, and
+that a lifetime, long or short, lay before me, in which to hear
+them mumble and squeak their denunciation and threats.  Oh, but I
+have been wretched!  At ball and dinner and dance those lips have
+been ever at my ear, but most when we have sat alone together; most
+then; Oh, most then!
+
+"He is avenged; but you!  Who will avenge you, and where will you
+ever find happiness?
+
+"To blot myself from your memory I would go down deeper into the
+vale of suffering than ever I have gone yet.  But no, no!  do not
+quite forget me.  Remember me as you saw me one night--the night
+you took the flower out of my hair and kissed it, saying that
+Washington held many beautiful women, but that none of them save
+myself had ever had the power to move your inmost heart-strings.
+Ah, low was your voice and eloquent your eyes that hour, and I
+forgot,--for a moment I forgot--everything but this pure love;
+and the heartbeat it called up and the hope, never to be realized--that
+I should live to hear you repeat the same sweet words in our
+old age, in just such a tone and with just such a look.  I was
+innocent at that moment, innocent and good.  I am willing that
+you should remember me as I was that night.
+
+"When I think of him lying cold and dead in the grave I myself
+dug for him, my heart is like stone, but when I think of you--
+
+"I am afraid to die; but I am more afraid of failing in courage.
+I shall have the pistol tied to me; this will make it seem
+inevitable to use it.  Oh!  that the next twenty-four hours could
+be blotted out of time!  Such horror can not be.  I was born for
+joy and gaiety; yet no dismal depth of misery and fear has been
+spared me!  But all on account of my own act.  I do not accuse
+God; I do not accuse man; I only accuse myself, and my thoughtless
+grasping after pleasure.
+
+"I want Cora to read this as well as you.  She must know me dead as
+she never knew me living.  But I can not tell her that I have left
+a confession behind me.  She must come upon it unexpectedly, just
+as I mean you to do.  Only thus can it reach either of you with any
+power.  If I could but think of some excuse for sending her to the
+book where I propose to hide it!  that would give her a chance of
+reading it before you do, and this would be best.  She may know how
+to prepare or comfort you--I hope so.  Cora is a noble woman, but
+the secret which kept my thoughts in such a whirl has held us apart.
+
+"You did what I asked.  You found a place for Rancher's waiter in
+the volunteer corps.  Surprised as you were at the interest I
+expressed in him, you honored my first request and said nothing.
+Would you have shown the same anxious eagerness if you had known why
+I whispered those few words to him from the carriage door?  Why I
+could neither rest nor sleep till he and the other boy were safely
+out of town?
+
+"I must leave a line for you to show to people if they should wonder
+why I killed myself so soon after my seemingly happy marriage.  You
+will find it in the same book with this letter.  Some one will tell
+you to look in the book--I can not write any more.
+
+"I can not help writing.  It is all that connects me now with life
+and with you.  But I have nothing more to say except, forgive--forgive--
+
+"Do you think that God looks at his wretched ones differently from
+what men do?  That He will have tenderness for one so sorry--that
+He will even find place--  But my mother is there!  my father!  Oh,
+that makes it fearful to go--to meet--  But it was my father who
+led me into this--only he did not know--  There!  I will think
+only of God.
+
+"Good by--good by--good--"
+
+That was all.  It ended, as it began, without name and without date,--the
+final heart-throbs of a soul, awakened to its own act when it
+was quite too late.  A piteous memorial which daunted each one of
+us as we read it, and when finished, drew us all together in the
+hall out of the sight and hearing of the two persons most intimately
+concerned in it.
+
+Possibly because all had one thought--a thrilling one, which the
+major was the first to give utterance to.
+
+"The man she killed was buried under the name of Wallace.  How's
+that, if he was her husband, William?"
+
+An officer we had not before noted was standing near the front door.
+He came forward at this and placed a second telegram in the
+superintendent's hand.  It was from the same source as the one
+previously received and appeared to settle this very question.
+
+"I have just learned that the man married was not the one who kept
+store in Owosso, but his brother William, who afterward died in
+Klondike.  It is Wallace whose death you are investigating."
+
+"What snarl is here?" asked the major.
+
+"I think I understand," I ventured to put in.  "Her husband was the
+one left on the road by the brother who staggered into camp for aid.
+He was a weak man--the weaker of the two she said--and probably
+died, while Wallace, after seemingly collapsing, recovered.  This
+last she did not know, having failed to read the whole of the
+newspaper slip which told about it, and so when she saw some one
+with the Pfeiffer air and figure and was told later that a Mr.
+Pfeiffer was waiting to see her, she took it for granted that it
+was her husband, believing positively that Wallace was dead.  The
+latter, moreover, may have changed to look more like his brother
+in the time that had elapsed."
+
+"A possible explanation which adds greatly to the tragic aspects
+of the situation.  She was probably a widow when she touched the
+fatal spring.  Who will tell the man inside there?  It will be his
+crowning blow."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+RUDGE
+
+
+I never saw any good reason for my changing the opinion just
+expressed.  Indeed, as time went on and a further investigation
+was made into the life and character of these two brothers, I came
+to think that not only had the unhappy Veronica mistaken the person
+of Wallace Pfeiffer for that of her husband William, but also the
+nature of the message he sent her and the motives which actuated
+it; that the interview he so peremptorily demanded before she
+descended to her nuptials would, had she but understood it properly,
+have yielded her an immeasurable satisfaction instead of rousing
+in her alarmed breast the criminal instincts of her race; that it
+was meant to do this; that he, knowing William's secret--a secret
+which the latter naturally would confide to him at a moment so
+critical as that which witnessed their parting in the desolate
+Klondike pass--had come, not to reproach her with her new nuptials,
+but to relieve her mind in case she cherished the least doubt of
+her full right to marry again, by assurances of her husband's death
+and of her own complete freedom.  To this he may have intended to
+add some final messages of love and confidence from the man she
+had been so ready to forget; but nothing worse.  Wallace Pfeiffer
+was incapable of anything worse, and if she had only resigned
+herself to her seeming fate and consented to see this man--
+
+But to return to fact and leave speculation to the now doubly
+wretched Jeffrey.
+
+On the evening of the day which saw our first recognition of this
+crime as the work of Veronica Moore, the following notice appeared
+in the Star and all the other local journals:
+
+"Any person who positively remembers passing through Waverley
+Avenue between N and M Streets on the evening of May the eleventh
+at or near the hour of a quarter past seven will confer a favor on
+the detective force of the District by communicating the same to F.
+at the police headquarters in C street."
+
+I was "F.," and I was soon deep in business.  But I was readily
+able to identify those who came from curiosity, and as the persons
+who had really fulfilled the conditions expressed in my advertisement
+were few, an evening and morning's work sufficed to sift the whole
+matter down to the one man who could tell me just what I wanted to
+know.  With this man I went to the major, and as a result we all
+met later in the day at Mr. Moore's door.
+
+This gentleman looked startled enough when he saw the number and
+character of his visitors; but his grand air did not forsake him
+and his welcome was both dignified and cordial.  But I did not like
+the way his eye rested on me.
+
+But the slight venom visible in it at that moment was nothing to
+what he afterwards displayed when at a slight growl from Rudge,
+who stood in an attitude of offense in the doorway beyond, I drew
+the attention of all to the dog by saying sharply:
+
+"There is our witness, sirs.  There is the dog who will not cross
+the street even when his master calls him, but crouches on the
+edge of the curb and waits with eager eyes but immovable body,
+till that master comes back.  Isn't that so, Mr. Moore?  Have I
+not heard you utter more than one complaint in this regard?"
+
+"I can not deny it," was the stiff reply, "but what--"
+
+I did not wait for him to finish.
+
+"Mr. Correan," I asked, "is this the animal you gassed between the
+hours of seven and eight on the evening of May the eleventh,
+crouching in front of this house with his nose to the curbstone?"
+
+"It is; I noted him particularly; he seemed to be watching the
+opposite house."
+
+Instantly I turned upon Mr. Moore.
+
+"Is Rudge the dog to do that," I asked, "if his master were not
+there?  Twice have I myself seen him in the self-same place and
+with the self-same air of expectant attention, and both times
+you had crossed to the house which you acknowledge he will
+approach no nearer than the curb on this side of the street."
+
+"You have me," was the short reply with which Mr. Moore gave up
+the struggle.  "Rudge, go back to your place.  When you are wanted
+in the court-room I will let you know."
+
+The smile with which he said this was sarcastic enough, but it was
+sarcasm directed mainly against himself.  We were not surprised
+when, after some sharp persuasion on the part of the major, he
+launched into the following recital of his secret relation to what
+he called the last tragedy ever likely to occur in the Moore family.
+
+"I never thought it wrong to be curious about the old place; I never
+thought it wrong to be curious about its mysteries.  I only
+considered it wrong, or at all events ill judged, to annoy Veronica,
+in regard to them, or to trouble her in any way about the means by
+which I might effect an entrance into its walls.  So I took the one
+that offered and said nothing.
+
+"I have visited the old house many times during my sojourn in this
+little cottage.  The last time was, as one of your number has so
+ably discovered on the most memorable night in its history; the one
+in which Mrs. Jeffrey's remarkable death occurred there.  The
+interest roused in me by the unexpected recurrence of the old
+fatality attending the library hearthstone reached its culmination
+when I perceived one night the glint of a candle burning in the
+southwest chamber.  I did not know who was responsible for this
+light, but I strongly suspected it to be Mr. Jeffrey; for who else
+would dare to light a candle in this disused house without first
+seeing that all the shutters were fast?  I did not dislike Mr.
+Jeffrey or question his right to do this.  Nevertheless I was very
+angry.  Though allied to a Moore he was not one himself and the
+difference in our privileges affected me strongly.  Consequently I
+watched till he came out and upon positively recognizing his figure
+vowed in my wrath and jealous indignation to visit the old house
+myself on the following night and make one final attempt to learn
+the secret which would again make me the equal of this man, if not
+his superior.
+
+"It was early when I went; indeed it was not quite dark, but knowing
+the gloom of those old halls and the almost impenetrable nature of
+the darkness that settles over the library the moment the twilight
+set in, I put in my pocket two or three candles, sirs, about which
+you have made such a coil.  My errand was twofold.  I wanted first
+to see what Mr.  Jeffrey had been up to the night before, and next,
+to spend an hour over a certain book of old memoirs which in
+recalling the past might explain the present.  You remember a door
+leading into the library from the rear room.  It was by this door
+I entered, bringing with me from the kitchen the chair you afterwards
+found there."
+
+I knew where the volume of memoirs I speak of was to be found--you
+do, too, I see--for it was my hand which had placed it in its
+present concealment.  Quite determined to reread such portions of
+it, as I had long before marked as pertinent to the very attempt I
+had in mind, I brought in the candelabrum from the parlor and drew
+out a table to hold it.  But I waited a few moments before taking
+down the book itself.  I wanted first to learn what Mr. Jeffrey had
+been doing upstairs the night before. So leaving the light burning
+in the library, I proceeded to the southwest chamber, holding an
+unlit candle in my hand, the light feebly diffused through the
+halls from some upper windows being sufficient for me to see my way.
+But in the chamber itself all was dark.
+
+The wind had not yet risen and the shutter which a half-hour later
+moved so restlessly on its creaking hinges, hugged the window so
+tightly that I imagined Mr. Jeffrey had fastened it the night before.
+Looking for some receptacle in which to set the candle I now lit,
+I failed to find anything but an empty tumbler, so I made use of
+that.  Then I glanced about me, but seeing nothing worth my
+attention--Mrs. Jeffrey's wedding fixings did not interest me, and
+everything else about the room looking natural except the overturned
+chair, which struck me as immaterial.  I hurried downstairs again,
+leaving the candle burning behind me in case I should wish to return
+aloft after I had refreshed my mind with what had been written about
+this old room.
+
+"Not a sound disturbed the house as I seated myself to my reading
+in front of the library shelves.  I was as much alone under that
+desolate roof as mortal could be with men anywhere within reach of
+him.  I enjoyed the solitude and was making a very pretty theory
+for myself on a scrap of paper I tore from another old book when
+a noise suddenly rose in front, which, slight as it was, was quite
+unmistakable to ears trained in listening.  Some one was unlocking
+the front door.
+
+"Naturally I thought it to be Mr. Jeffrey returning for a second
+visit to his wife's house, and knowing what I might expect if he
+surprised me on the premises, I restored the book hastily to its
+place and as hastily blew out the candle.  Then, with every
+intention of flight, I backed toward the door by which I had
+entered.  But some impulse stronger than that of escape made me
+stop just before I reached it.  I could see nothing; the place was
+dark as Tophet; but I could listen.  The person--Mr. Jeffrey, or
+some other--was coming my way and in perfect darkness.  I could
+hear the faltering steps--the fingers dragging along the walls;
+then a rustle as of skirts, proving the intruder to be a woman--a
+fact which greatly surprised me--then a long drawn sigh or gasp.
+
+"The last determined me.  The situation was too intense for me to
+leave without first learning who the woman was who in terror and
+shrinking dared to drag her half resisting feet through these empty
+halls and into a place cursed with such unwholesome memories.  I
+did not think of Veronica.  No one looks for a butterfly in the
+depths of a dungeon. But I did think of Miss Tuttle--that woman of
+resolute will.  Without attempting to imaging the reason for her
+presence, I stood my ground and harkened till the heavy mahogany door
+at the other end of the room began to swing in by jerks under the
+faint and tremulous push of a terrified hand.  Then there came
+silence--a long silence--followed by a moan so agonized that I
+realized that whatever was the cause of this panting woman's
+presence here, it was due to no mere errand of curiosity.  This
+whetted my purpose.  Anything done in this house was in a way done
+to me; so I remained quiet and watched.  But the sounds which now
+and then came from the remote corner upon which my attention was
+concentrated were very eloquent.
+
+"I heard sighs and bitter groans, with now and then a murmured
+prayer, broken by a low wailing, in which I caught the name of
+Francis.  And still, possibly on account of the utterance of this
+name, I thought the woman near me to be Miss Tuttle, and even went
+so far as to imagine the cause of her suffering if not the nature
+of her retribution.  Words succeeded cries and I caught phrases
+expressive of fear and some sort of agonized hesitation.  Once
+these broken ejaculations were interrupted by a dull sound.
+Something had dropped to the bare floor.  We shall never know what
+it was, but I have no doubt that it was the pistol, and that the
+marks of dust to be found on the connecting ribbon were made by her
+own fingers in taking it again in her hand.  (You will remember
+that these same fingers had but a few minutes previous groped their
+way along the walls.)  For her voice soon took a different tone,
+and such unintelligible phrases as these could be heard issuing
+from her partly paralyzed lips:
+
+"'I must!--I can never meet his eye again alive.  He would
+despise--  Brave enough to--to--another's blood--coward--when--own.
+Oh, God! forgive!'  Then another silence during which I almost
+made up my mind to interfere, then a loud report and a flash so
+startling and unexpected that I recoiled, during which the room
+leaped into sudden view--she too--Veronica--with baby face drawn
+and set like a woman's--then darkness again and a heavy fall which
+shook the floor, if not my hard old heart.  The flash and that fall
+enlightened me.  I had just witnessed the suicide of the last Moore
+saving myself; a suicide for which I was totally unprepared and one
+which I do not yet understand."
+
+I did not go over to her.  She was as dead when she fell as she
+ever would be.  In the flash which lit everything, I had seen where
+her pistol was pointed.  Why disturb her then?  Nor did I return
+upstairs.  I had small interest now in anything but my own escape
+from a situation more or less compromising.
+
+"Do you blame me for this?  I was her heir and I was where I had no
+legal right to be.  Do you think that I was called upon to publish
+my shame and tell how I lingered there while my own niece shot
+herself before my eyes?  That shot made me a millionaire.  This
+certainly was excitement enough for one day--besides, I did not
+leave her there neglected.  I notified you later--after I had got
+my breath and had found some excuse.  That wasn't enough?  Ah, I
+see that you are all models of courage and magnanimity.  You would
+have laid yourselves open to every reproach rather than let a
+little necessary perjury pass your lips.  But I am no model.  I
+am simply an old man who has been too hardly dealt with for seventy
+long years to possess every virtue.  I made a mistake--I see it
+now--trusted a dog when I shouldn't--but if Rudge had not seen
+ghosts--well, what now?"
+
+We had, one and all, with an involuntary impulse, turned our backs
+upon him.
+
+"What are you doing?" he hotly demanded.
+
+"Only what all Washington will do to-morrow, and afterwards the
+whole world," gravely returned the major.  Then, as an ejaculation
+escaped the astonished millionaire, he impressively added: "A
+perjury which allows an innocent man and woman to remain under the
+suspicion of murder for five weeks is one which not only the law
+has a right to punish, but which all society will condemn.
+Henceforth you will find yourself under a ban, Mr. Moore."[1]
+
+My story ends here.  The matter never came before the grand jury.
+Suicide had been proved, and there the affair rested.  Of myself it
+is enough to add that I sometimes call in Durbin to help me in a
+big case.
+
+
+[1] Time amply verified this prophecy.  Mr.  Moore is living in great
+style in the Moore house, and drives horses which are conspicuous
+even in Washington.  But no one accepts his invitations, and he is
+as much of a recluse in his present mansion as he ever was in the
+humble cottage in which his days of penury were spent.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+"YOU HAVE COME!  YOU HAVE SOUGHT ME!"
+
+
+These are some words from a letter written a few months after the
+foregoing by one Mrs. Edward Truscott to a friend in New York:
+
+"Edinburgh, May 7th, 1900.
+
+"Dear Louisa:--You have always accused me of seeing more and
+hearing more than any other person of your acquaintance.  Perhaps
+I am fortunate in that respect.  Certainly I have been favored
+today with an adventure of some interest which I make haste to
+relate to you.
+
+"Being anxious to take home with me some sketches of the
+exquisite ornamentation in the Rosslyn chapel about which I wrote
+you so enthusiastically the other day, I took advantage of Edward's
+absence this morning to visit the place again and this time alone.
+The sky was clear and the air balmy, and as I approached the spot
+from the near-by station I was not surprised to see another woman
+straying quietly about the exterior of the chapel gazing at walls
+which, interesting as they are, are but a rough shell hiding the
+incomparable beauties within.  I noticed this lady; I could not
+help it.  She was one to attract any eye.  Seldom have I seen such
+grace, such beauty, and both infused by such melancholy.  Her
+sadness added wonderfully to her charm, and I found it hard enough
+to pass her with the single glance allowable to a stranger,
+especially as she gave evidence of being one of my own countrywomen:
+
+"However, I saw no alternative, and once within the charmed edifice,
+forgot everything in the congenial task I had set for myself.  For
+some reason the chapel was deserted at this moment by all but me.
+As the special scroll-work I wanted was in a crypt down a short
+flight of steps at the right of the altar, I was completely hidden
+from view to any one entering above and was enjoying both my
+seclusion and the opportunity it gave me of carrying out my purpose
+unwatched when I heard a light step above and realized that the
+exquisite beauty which had so awakened my admiration had at last
+found its perfect setting.  Such a face amid such exquisite
+surroundings was a rare sight, and interested as I always am in
+artistic effects I was about to pocket pencil and pad and make my
+way up to where she moved among the carved pillars when I heard a
+soft sigh above and caught the rustle of her dress as she sat down
+upon a bench at the head of the steps near which I stood.  Somehow
+that sigh deterred me.  I hesitated to break in upon a melancholy
+so invincible that even the sight of all this loveliness could not
+charm it away, and in that moment of hesitation something occurred
+above which fixed me to my place in irrepressible curiosity.
+
+"Another step had entered the open door of the chapel--a man's
+step--eager and with a purpose in it eloquent of something deeper
+than a mere tourist's interest in this loveliest of interiors.  The
+cry which escaped her lips, the tone in which he breathed her name
+in his hurried advance, convinced me that this was a meeting of two
+lovers after a long heart-break and that I should mar the supreme
+moment of their lives by intruding into it the unwelcome presence
+of a stranger.  So I lingered where I was and thus heard what
+passed between them at this moment of all moments ire their lives.
+
+"It was she who spoke first.
+
+"Francis, you have come!  You have sought me!"
+
+"To which he replied in choked accents which yet could not conceal
+the inexpressible elation of his heart:
+
+"'Yes I have come, I have sought you.  Why did you fly?  Did you not
+see that my whole soul was turning to you as it never turned even
+to--to her in the best days of our unshaken love; and that I could
+never rest till I found you and told you how the eyes which have
+once been blind enjoy a passion of seeing unknown to others--a
+passion which makes the object seem so dear--so dear--'
+
+"He paused, perhaps to look at her, perhaps to recover his own
+self-possession, and I caught the echo of a sigh of such utter
+content and triumph from her lips that I was surprised when in
+another moment she exclaimed in a tone so thrilling that I am sure
+no common circumstances had separated this pair:
+
+"'Have we a right to happiness while she--  Oh, Francis, I can not!
+She loved you.  It was her love for you which drove her--'
+
+"'Cora!' came with a sort of loving authority, 'we have buried our
+erring one and passionately as I loved her, she is no more mine,
+but God's.  Let her woeful spirit rest.  You who suffered,
+supported--who sacrificed all that woman holds dear to save what,
+in the nature of things, could not be saved--have more than right
+to happiness if it is in my power to give it to you; I, who have
+failed in so much, but never in anything more than in not seeing
+where true worth and real beauty lay.  Cora, there is but one hand
+which can lift the shadow from my life.  That hand I am holding
+now--do not draw it away--it is my anchor, my hope.  I dare not
+confront life without the promise it holds out.  I should be a
+wreck--'
+
+"His emotion stopped him and there was silence; then I heard him
+utter solemnly, as befitted the place: 'Thank God!' and I knew that
+she had turned her wonderful eyes upon him or nestled her hand in
+his clasp as only a loving woman may.
+
+"The next moment I heard them draw away and leave the place.
+
+"Do you wonder that I long to know who they are and what their story
+is and whom they meant by 'the erring one?'"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Filigree Ball, by Anna Katherine Green
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Filigree Ball, Anna Katherine Green
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+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
+
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+
+
+THE FILIGREE BALL
+
+by Anna Katherine Green
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+BOOK I
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I      "THE MOORE HOUSE?"
+II     I ENTER
+III    I REMAIN
+IV     SIGNED, VERONICA
+V      MASTER AND DOG
+VI     GOSSIP
+VII    SLY WORK
+VIII   SLYER WORK
+IX     JINNY
+X      FRANCIS JEFFREY
+
+BOOK II
+
+XI     DETAILS
+XII    THRUST AND PARRY
+X1II   CHIEFLY THRUST
+XIV    "LET US HAVE TALLMAN!"
+XV     WHITE BOW AND PINK
+XVI    AN EGOTIST OF THE FIRST WATER
+XVII   A FRESH START
+XVIII  IN THE GRASS
+
+BOOK III
+
+XIX    IN TAMPA
+XX     "THE COLONEL'S OWN"
+XXI    THE HEART OF THE PUZZLE
+XXII   A THREAD IN HAND
+XXIII  WORDS IN THE NIGHT
+XXIV   TANTALIZING TACTICS
+XXV    "WHO WILL TELL THE MAN!"
+XXVI   RUDGE
+XXVII  "YOU HAVE COME!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+THE FORBIDDEN ROOM
+
+
+
+
+THE FILIGREE BALL
+
+
+I
+
+"THE MOORE HOUSE?  ARE YOU SPEAKING OF THE MOORE HOUSE?"
+
+
+For a detective whose talents, had not been recognized at
+headquarters, I possessed an ambition which, fortunately for my
+standing with the lieutenant of the precinct, had not yet been
+expressed in words.  Though I had small reason for expecting great
+things of myself, I had always cherished the hope that if a big
+case came my way I should be found able to do something with it
+something more, that is, than I had seen accomplished by the
+police of the District of Columbia since I had had the honor of
+being one of their number.  Therefore, when I found myself plunged,
+almost without my own volition, into the Jeffrey Moore affair, I
+believed that the opportunity had come whereby I might distinguish
+myself.
+
+It had complications, this Jeffrey-Moore affair; greater ones than
+the public ever knew, keen as the interest in it ran both in and
+out of Washington.  This is why I propose to tell the story of this
+great tragedy from my own standpoint, even if in so doing I risk
+the charge of attempting to exploit my own connection with this
+celebrated case.  In its course I encountered as many disappointments
+as triumphs, and brought out of the affair a heart as sore as it was
+satisfied; for I am a lover of women and -
+
+But I am keeping you from the story itself.
+
+I was at the station-house the night Uncle David came in.  He was
+always called Uncle David, even by the urchins who followed him in
+the street; so I am showing him no disrespect, gentleman though he
+is, by giving him a title which as completely characterized him in
+those days, as did his moody ways, his quaint attire and the
+persistence with which he kept at his side his great mastiff, Rudge.
+I had long since heard of the old gentleman as one of the most
+interesting residents of the precinct.  I had even seen him more
+than once on the avenue, but I had never before been brought face
+to face with him, and consequently had much too superficial a
+knowledge of his countenance to determine offhand whether the
+uneasy light in his small gray eyes was natural to them, or simply
+the result of present excitement.  But when he began to talk I
+detected an unmistakable tremor in his tones, and decided that he
+was in a state of suppressed agitation; though he appeared to have
+nothing more alarming to impart than the fact that he had seen a
+light burning in some house presumably empty.
+
+It was all so trivial that I gave him but scant attention till he
+let a name fall which caused me to prick up my ears and even to
+put in a word.  "The Moore house," he had said.
+
+"The Moore house?" I repeated in amazement.  "Are you speaking of
+the Moore house?"
+
+A thousand recollections came with the name.
+
+"What other?" he grumbled, directing toward me a look as keen as it
+was impatient.  "Do you think that I would bother myself long about
+a house I had no interest in, or drag Rudge from his warm rug to
+save some ungrateful neighbor from a possible burglary?  No, it is
+my house which some rogue has chosen to enter.  That is," he suavely
+corrected, as he saw surprise in every eye, "the house which the law
+will give me, if anything ever happens to that chit of a girl whom
+my brother left behind him."
+
+Growling some words at the dog, who showed a decided inclination to
+lie down where he was, the old man made for the door and in another
+moment would have been in the street, if I had not stepped after him.
+
+"You are a Moore and live in or near that old house?" I asked.
+
+The surprise with which he met this question daunted me a little.
+
+"How long have you been in Washington, I should like to ask?" was
+his acrid retort.
+
+"0h, some five months."
+
+His good nature, or what passed for such in this irascible old man,
+returned in an instant; and he curtly but not unkindly remarked:
+
+"You haven't learned much in that time."  Then, with a nod more
+ceremonious than many another man's bow, he added, with sudden
+dignity: "I am of the elder branch an live in the cottage fronting
+the old place.  I am the only resident on the block.  When you have
+lived here longer you will know why that especial neighborhood is
+not a favorite one with those who can not boast of the Moore blood.
+For the present, let us attribute the bad name that it holds to
+ - malaria."  And with a significant hitch of his lean shoulders
+which set in undulating motion every fold of the old-fashioned
+cloak he wore, he started again for the door.
+
+But my curiosity was by this time roused to fever heat.  I knew
+more about this house than he gave me credit for.  No one who had
+read the papers of late, much less a man connected with the police,
+could help being well informed in all the details of its remarkable
+history.  What I had failed to know was his close relationship to
+the family whose name for the last two weeks had been in every mouth.
+
+"Wait!" I called out.  "You say that you live opposite the Moore
+house.  You can then tell me -"
+
+But he had no mind to stop for any gossip.
+
+"It was all in the papers," he called back.  "Read them.  But first
+be sure to find out who has struck a light in the house that we all
+know has not even a caretaker in it."
+
+It was good advice.  My duty and my curiosity both led me to follow
+it.
+
+Perhaps you have heard of the distinguishing feature of this house;
+if so, you do not need my explanations.  But if, for any reason,
+you are ignorant of the facts which within a very short time have
+set a final seal of horror upon this old, historic dwelling, then
+you will be glad to read what has made and will continue to make the
+Moore house in Washington one to be pointed at in daylight and
+shunned after dark, not only by superstitious colored folk, but by
+all who are susceptible to the most ordinary emotions of fear and
+dread.
+
+It was standing when Washington was a village.  It antedates the
+Capitol and the White House.  Built by a man of wealth, it bears to
+this day the impress of the large ideas and quiet elegance of
+colonial times; but the shadow which speedily fell across it made
+it a marked place even in those early days.  While it has always
+escaped the hackneyed epithet of "haunted," families that have moved
+in have as quickly moved out, giving as their excuse that no
+happiness was to be found there and that sleep was impossible under
+its roof.  That there was some reason for this lack of rest within
+walls which were not without their tragic reminiscences, all must
+acknowledge.  Death had often occurred there, and while this fact
+can be stated in regard to most old houses, it is not often that
+one can say, as in this case, that it was invariably sudden and
+invariably of one character.  A lifeless man, lying outstretched on
+a certain hearthstone, might be found once in a house and awaken no
+special comment; but when this same discovery has been made twice,
+if not thrice, during the history of a single dwelling, one might
+surely be pardoned a distrust of its seemingly home-like
+appointments, and discern in its slowly darkening walls the
+presence of an evil which if left to itself might perish in the
+natural decay of the e place, but which, if met and challenged,
+might strike again and make another blot on its thrice-crimsoned
+hearthstone.
+
+But these are old fables which I should hardly, presume to mention,
+had it not been for the recent occurrence which has recalled them
+to all men's minds and given to this long empty and slowly crumbling
+building an importance which has spread its fame from one end of
+the country to the other.  I refer to the tragedy attending the
+wedding lately celebrated there.
+
+Veronica Moore, rich, pretty and wilful, had long cherished a
+strange liking for this frowning old home of her ancestors, and,
+at the most critical time of her life, conceived the idea of proving
+to herself and to society at large that no real ban lay upon it save
+in the imagination of the superstitious.  So, being about to marry
+the choice of her young heart, she caused this house to be opened
+for the wedding ceremony; with what result, you know.
+
+Though the occasion was a joyous one and accompanied by all that
+could give cheer to such a function, it had not escaped the
+old-time shadow.  One of the guests straying into the room of
+ancient and unhallowed memory, the one room which had not been
+thrown open to the crowd, had been found within five minutes of
+the ceremony lying on its dolorous hearthstone, dead; and though
+the bride was spared a knowledge of the dreadful fact till the
+holy words were said, a panic had seized the guests and emptied
+the houses suddenly and completely as though the plague had been
+discovered there.
+
+This is why I hastened to follow Uncle David when he told me that
+all was not right in this house of tragic memories.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+I ENTER
+
+
+Though past seventy, Uncle David was a brisk walker, and on this
+night in particular he sped along so fast that he was half-way down
+H Street by the time I had turned the corner at New Hampshire Avenue.
+
+His gaunt but not ungraceful figure, merged in that of the dog
+trotting closely at his heels, was the only moving object in the
+dreary vista of this the most desolate block in Washington.  As I
+neared the building, I was so impressed by the surrounding stillness
+that I was ready to vow that the shadows were denser here than
+elsewhere and that the few gas lamps, which flickered at intervals
+down the street, shone with a more feeble ray than in any other equal
+length of street in Washington.
+
+Meanwhile, the shadow of Uncle David had vanished from the pavement.
+He had paused beside a fence which, hung with vines, surrounded and
+nearly hid from sight the little cottage he had mentioned as the
+only house on the block with the exception of the great Moore place;
+in other words, his own home.
+
+As I came abreast of him I heard him muttering, not to his dog as
+was his custom, but to himself.  In fact, the dog was not to be seen,
+and this desertion on the part of his constant companion seemed to
+add to his disturbance and affect him beyond all reason.  I could
+distinguish these words amongst the many he directed toward the
+unseen animal:
+
+"You're a knowing one, too knowing!  You see that loosened shutter
+over the way as plainly as I do; but you're a coward to slink away
+from it.  I don't.  I face the thing, and what's more, I'll show
+you yet what I think of a dog that can't stand his ground and help
+his old master out with some show of courage.  Creaks, does it?
+Well, let it creak!  I don't mind its creaking, glad as I should be
+to know whose hand - Halloo!  You've come, have you?"  This to me.
+I had just stepped up to him.
+
+"Yes, I've come.  Now what is the matter with the Moore house?"
+
+He must have expected the question, yet his answer was a long time
+coming.  His voice, too, sounded strained, and was pitched quite
+too high to be natural.  But he evidently did not expect me to show
+surprise at his manner.
+
+"Look at that window over there!" he cried at last.  "That one with
+the slightly open shutter!  Watch and you will see that shutter move.
+There!  it creaked; didn't you hear it?"
+
+A growl - it was more like a moan - came from the porch behind us.
+Instantly the old gentleman turned and with a gesture as fierce as
+it was instinctive, shouted out:
+
+"Be still there!  If you haven't the courage to face a blowing
+shutter, keep your jaws shut and don't let every fellow who happens
+along know what a fool you are.  I declare," he maundered on, half
+to himself and half to me, "that dog is getting old.  He can't be
+trusted any more.  He forsakes his master just when -"  The rest was
+lost in his throat which rattled with something more than impatient
+anger.
+
+Meanwhile I had been attentively scrutinizing the house thus
+pointedly brought to my notice.
+
+I had seen it many times before, but, as it happened, had never
+stopped to look at it when the huge trees surrounding it were
+shrouded in darkness.  The black hollow of its disused portal looked
+out from shadows which acquired some of their somberness from the
+tragic memories connected with its empty void.
+
+Its aspect was scarcely reassuring.  Not that superstition lent its
+terrors to the lonely scene, but that through the blank panes of the
+window, alternately appearing and disappearing from view as the
+shutter pointed out by Uncle David blew to and fro in the wind, I
+saw, or was persuaded that I saw, a beam of light which argued an
+unknown presence within walls which had so lately been declared
+unfit for any man's habitation.
+
+"You are right," I now remarked to the uneasy figure at my side.
+"Some one is prowling through the house yonder.  Can it possibly be
+Mrs. Jeffrey or her husband?"
+
+"At night and with no gas in the house?  Hardly."
+
+The words were natural, but the voice was not.  Neither was his
+manner quite suited to the occasion.  Giving him another sly glance,
+and marking how uneasily he edged away from me in the darkness, I
+cried out more cheerily than he possibly expected:
+
+"I will summon another officer and we three will just slip across
+and investigate."
+
+"Not I!" was his violent rejoinder, as he swung open a gate concealed
+in the vines behind him.  "The Jeffreys would resent my intrusion if
+they ever happened to hear of it."
+
+"Indeed!" I laughed, sounding my whistle; then, soberly enough, for
+I was more than a little struck by the oddity of his behavior and
+thought him as well worth investigation as the house in which he
+showed such an interest:  "You shouldn't let that count.  Come and
+see what's up in the house you are so ready to call yours."
+
+But he only drew farther into the shade.
+
+"I have no business over there," he objected.  "Veronica and I have
+never been on good terms.  I was not even invited to her wedding
+though I live within a stone's throw of the door.  No; I have done
+my duty in calling attention to that light, and whether it's the
+bull's-eye of a burglar - perhaps you don't know that there are
+rare treasures on the book shelves of the great library - or whether
+it is the fantastic illumination which frightens fool-folks and some
+fool-dogs, I'm done with it and done with you, too, for to-night."
+
+As he said this, he mounted to his door and disappeared under the
+vines, hanging like a shroud over the front of the house.  In another
+moment the rich peal of an organ sounded from within, followed by
+the prolonged howling of Rudge, who, either from a too keen
+appreciation of his master's music or in utter disapproval of it,
+- no one, I believe, has ever been able to make out which, - was
+accustomed to add this undesirable accompaniment to every strain
+from the old man's hand.  The playing did not cease because of these
+outrageous discords.  On the contrary, it increased in force and
+volume, causing Rudge's expression of pain or pleasure to increase
+also.  The result can be imagined.  As I listened to the intolerable
+howls of the dog cutting clean through the exquisite harmonies of
+his master, I wondered if the shadows cast by the frowning structure
+of the great Moore house were alone to blame for Uncle David's lack
+of neighbors.
+
+Meantime, Hibbard, who was the first to hear my signal, came running
+down the block.  As he joined me, the light, or what we chose to
+call a light, appeared again in the window toward which my attention
+had been directed.
+
+"Some one's in the Moore house!" I declared, in as matter of-fact
+tones as I could command.
+
+Hibbard is a big fellow, the biggest fellow on the force, and so far
+as my own experience with him had gone, as stolid and imperturbable
+as the best of us.  But after a quick glance at the towering walls
+of the lonely building, he showed decided embarrassment and seemed
+in no haste to cross the street.
+
+With difficulty I concealed my disgust.
+
+"Come," I cried, stepping down from the curb, "let's go over and
+investigate.  The property is valuable, the furnishings handsome,
+and there is no end of costly books on the library shelves.  You
+have matches and a revolver?"
+
+He nodded, quietly showing me first the one, then the other; then
+with a sheepish air which he endeavored to carry of with a laugh, he
+cried:
+
+"Have you use for 'em?  If so, I'm quite willing, to part with 'em
+for a half-hour."
+
+I was more than amazed at this evidence of weakness in one I had
+always considered as tough and impenetrable as flint rock.  Thrusting
+back the hand with which he had half drawn into view the weapon I
+had mentioned, I put on my sternest sir and led the way across the
+street.  As I did so, tossed back the words:
+
+"We may come upon a gang.  You do not wish me to face some half-dozen
+men alone?"
+
+"You won't find any half-dozen men there," was his muttered reply.
+Nevertheless he followed me, though with less spirit than I liked,
+considering that my own manner was in a measure assumed and that I
+was not without sympathy - well, let me, say, for a dog who
+preferred howling a dismal accompaniment to his master's music, to
+keeping open watch over a neighborhood dominated by the unhallowed
+structure I now propose to enter.
+
+The house is too well known for me to attempt a minute description
+of it.  The illustrations which have appeared in all the papers have
+already acquainted the general public with its simple facade and rows
+upon rows of shuttered windows.  Even the great square porch with
+its bench for negro attendants has been photographed for the million.
+Those who have seen the picture in which the wedding-guests are
+shown flying from its yawning doorway, will not be especially
+interested in the quiet, almost solemn aspect it presented as I
+passed up the low steps and laid my hand upon the knob of the
+old-fashioned front door.
+
+Not that I expected to win an entrance thereby, but because it is
+my nature to approach everything in a common-sense way.  Conceive
+then my astonishment when at the first touch the door yielded.  It
+was not even latched.
+
+"So!  so!" thought I.  "This is no fool's job; some one is in the
+house."
+
+I had provided myself with an ordinary pocket-lantern, and, when I
+had convinced Hibbard that I fully meant to enter the house and
+discover for myself who had taken advantage of the popular prejudice
+against it to make a secret refuge or rendezvous of its decayed old
+rooms, I took out this lantern and held it in readiness.
+
+"We may strike a hornets' nest," I explained to Hibbard, whose feet
+seemed very heavy even for a man of his size.  "But I'm going in and
+so are you.  Only, let me suggest that we first take off our shoes.
+We can hide them in these bushes."
+
+"I always catch cold when I walk barefooted," mumbled my brave
+companion; but receiving no reply he drew off his shoes and dropped
+them beside mine in the cluster of stark bushes which figure so
+prominently in the illustrations that I have just mentioned.  Then
+he took out his revolver, and cocking it, stood waiting, while I
+gave a cautious push to the door.
+
+Darkness!  silence!
+
+Rather had I confronted a light and heard some noise, even if it
+had been the ominous click to which eve are so well accustomed.
+Hibbard seemed to share my feelings, though from an entirely
+different cause.
+
+"Pistols and lanterns are no good here," he grumbled.  "What we want
+at this blessed minute is a priest with a sprinkling of holy water;
+and I for one -"
+
+He was actually sliding off.
+
+With a smothered oath I drew him back.
+
+"See here!" I cried, "you're not a babe in arms.  Come on or -  Well,
+what now?"
+
+He had clenched my arm and was pointing to the door which was slowly
+swaying to behind us.
+
+"Notice that," he whispered.  "No key in the lock!  Men use keys but -"
+
+My patience could stand no more.  With a shake I rid myself of his
+clutch, muttering:
+
+"There, go!  You're too much of a fool for me.  I'm in for it alone."
+And in proof of my determination, I turned the slide of the lantern
+and flashed the light through the house.
+
+The effect was ghostly; but while the fellow at my side breathed hard
+he did not take advantage of my words to make his escape, as I half
+expected him to.  Perhaps, like myself, he was fascinated by the
+dreary spectacle of long shadowy walls and an equally shadowy
+staircase emerging from a darkness which a minute before had seemed
+impenetrable.  Perhaps he was simply ashamed.  At all events he stood
+his ground, scrutinizing with rolling eyes that portion of the hall
+where two columns, with gilded Corinthian capitals, marked the door
+of the room which no man entered without purpose or passed without
+dread.  Doubtless he was thinking of that which had so frequently
+been carried out between those columns.  I know that I was; and when,
+in the sudden draft made by the open door, some open draperies
+hanging near those columns blew out with a sudden swoop and shiver,
+I was not at all astonished to see him lose what little courage had
+remained in him.  The truth is, I was startled myself, but I was
+able to hide the fact and to whisper back to him, fiercely:
+
+"Don't be an idiot.  That curtain hides nothing worse than some
+sneaking political refugee or a gang of counterfeiters."
+
+"Maybe.  I'd just like to put my hand on Upson and -"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+I had just heard something.
+
+For a moment we stood breathless, but as the sound was not repeated
+I concluded that it was the creaking of that far-away shutter.
+Certainly there was nothing moving near us.
+
+"Shall we go upstairs?" whispered Hibbard.
+
+"Not till we have made sure that all is right down here"
+
+A door stood slightly ajar on our left.
+
+Pushing it open, we looked in.  A well furnished parlor was before
+us.
+
+"Here's where the wedding took place," remarked Hibbard, straining
+his head over my shoulder.
+
+There were signs of this wedding on every side.  Walls and ceilings
+had been hung with garlands, and these still clung to the mantelpiece
+and over and around the various doorways.  Torn-off branches and the
+remnants of old bouquets, dropped from the hands of flying guests,
+littered the carpet, adding to the general confusion of overturned
+chairs and tables.  Everywhere were evidences of the haste with which
+the place had been vacated as well as the superstitious dread which
+had prevented it being re-entered for the commonplace purpose of
+cleaning.  Even the piano had not been shut, and under it lay some
+scattered sheets of music which had been left where they fell, to
+the probable loss of some poor musician.  The clock occupying the
+center of the mantelpiece alone gave evidence of life.  It had been
+wound for the wedding and had not yet run down.  Its tick-tick came
+faint enough, however, through the darkness, as if it too had lost
+heart and would soon lapse into the deadly quiet of its ghostly
+surroundings.
+
+"It's it's funeral-like," chattered Hibbard.
+
+He was right; I felt as if I were shutting the lid of a coffin when
+I finally closed the door.
+
+Our next steps took us into the rear where we found little to detain
+us, and then, with a certain dread fully justified by the event, we
+made for the door defined by the two Corinthian columns.
+
+It was ajar like the rest, and, call me coward or call me fool - I
+have called Hibbard both, you will remember - I found that it cost me
+an effort to lay my hand on its mahogany panels.  Danger, if danger
+there was, lurked here; and while I had never known myself to quail
+before any ordinary antagonist, I, like others of my kind, have no
+especial fondness for unseen and mysterious perils.
+
+Hibbard, who up to this point had followed me almost too closely,
+now accorded me all the room that was necessary.  It was with a sense
+of entering alone upon the scene that I finally thrust wide the door
+and crossed the threshold of this redoubtable room where, but two
+short weeks before, a fresh victim had been added to the list of
+those who had by some unheard-of, unimaginable means found their
+death within its recesses.
+
+My first glance showed me little save the ponderous outlines of an
+old settle, which jutted from the corner of the fireplace half way
+out into the room.  As it was seemingly from this seat that the men,
+who at various times had been found lying here, had fallen to their
+doom, a thrill passed over me as I noted its unwieldy bulk and the
+deep shadow it threw on the ancient and dishonored hearthstone.  To
+escape the ghastly memories it evoked and also to satisfy myself
+that the room was really as empty as it seemed, I took another step
+forward.  This caused the light from the lantern I carried to spread
+beyond the point on which it had hitherto been so effectively
+concentrated; but the result was to emphasize rather than detract
+from the extreme desolation of the great room.  The settle was a
+fixture, as I afterwards found, and was almost the only article of
+furniture to be seen on the wide expanse of uncarpeted floor.  There
+was a table or two in hiding somewhere amid the shadows at the other
+end from where I stood, and possibly some kind of stool or settee;
+but the general impression made upon me was that of a completely
+dismantled place given over to moth and rust.
+
+I do not include the walls.  They were not bare like the floor, but
+covered with books from floor to ceiling.  These books were not the
+books of to-day; they had stood so long in their places unnoted and
+untouched, that they had acquired the color of fungus, and smelt -
+Well, there is no use adding to the picture.  Every one knows the
+spirit of sickening desolation pervading rooms which have been shut
+up for an indefinite length of time from air and sunshine.
+
+The elegance of the heavily stuccoed ceiling, admitted to be one of
+the finest specimens of its kind in Washington, as well as the
+richness of the carvings ornamenting the mantel of Italian marble
+rising above the accursed hearthstone, only served to make more
+evident the extreme neglect into which the rest of the room had sunk.
+Being anything but anxious to subject myself further to its unhappy
+influence and quite convinced that the place was indeed as empty as
+it looked, I turned to leave, when my eyes fell upon something so
+unexpected and so extraordinary, seen as it was under the influence
+of the old tragedies with which my mind was necessarily full, that
+I paused, balked in my advance, and well-nigh uncertain whether I
+looked upon a real thing or on some strange and terrible fantasy of
+my aroused imagination.
+
+A form lay before me, outstretched on that portion of the floor
+which had hitherto been hidden from me by the half-open door - a
+woman's form, which even in that first casual look impressed itself
+upon me as one of aerial delicacy and extreme refinement; and this
+form lay as only the dead lie; the dead!  And I had been looking at
+the hearthstone for just such a picture!  No, not just such a
+picture, for this woman lay face uppermost, and, on the floor beside
+her was blood.
+
+A hand had plucked my sleeve.  It was Hibbard's.  Startled by my
+immobility and silence, he had stepped in with quaking members,
+expecting he hardly knew what.  But no sooner did his eyes fall on
+the prostrate form which held me spellbound, than an unforeseen
+change took place in him.  What had unnerved me, restored him to
+full self-possession.  Death in this shape was familiar to him.  He
+had no fear of blood.  He did not show surprise at encountering it,
+but only at the effect it appeared to produce on me.
+
+"Shot!" was his laconic comment as he bent over the prostrate body.
+"Shot through the heart!  She must have died before she fell."
+
+Shot!
+
+That was a new experience for this room.  No wound had ever before
+disfigured those who had fallen here, nor had any of the previous
+victims been found lying on any other spot than the one over which
+that huge settle kept guard.  As these thoughts crossed my mind, I
+instinctively glanced again toward the fireplace for what I almost
+refused to believe lay outstretched at my feet.  When nothing more
+appeared there than that old seat of sinister memory, I experienced
+a thrill which poorly prepared me for the cry which I now heard
+raised by Hibbard.
+
+"Look here!  What do you make of this?"
+
+He was pointing to what, upon closer inspection, proved to be a
+strip of white satin ribbon running from one of the delicate wrists
+of the girl before us to the handle of a pistol which had fallen
+not far away from her side.  "It looks as if the pistol was attached
+to her.  That is something new in my experience.  What do you think
+it means?"
+
+Alas!  there was but one thing it could mean.  The shot to which she
+had succumbed had been delivered by herself.  This fair and delicate
+creature was a suicide.
+
+But suicide in this place!  How could we account for that?  Had the
+story of this room's ill-acquired fame acted hypnotically on her, or
+had she stumbled upon the open door in front and been glad of any
+refuge where her misery might find a solitary termination?  Closely
+scanning her upturned face, I sought an answer to this question, and
+while thus seeking received a fresh shock which I did not hesitate
+to communicate to my now none-too-sensitive companion.
+
+"Look at these features," I cried.  "I seem to know them, do you?"
+
+He growled out a dissent, but stooped at my bidding and gave the
+pitiful young face a pro longed stare.  When he looked up again it
+was with a puzzled contraction of his eyebrows.
+
+"I've certainly seen it somewhere," he hesitatingly admitted, edging
+slowly away toward the door.  "Perhaps in the papers.  Isn't she
+like -?"
+
+"Like!" I interrupted, "it is Veronica Moore herself; the owner of
+this house and she who was married here two weeks since to Mr. Jeffrey.
+Evidently her reason was unseated by the tragedy which threw so deep
+a gloom over her wedding."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+I REMAIN
+
+Not for an instant did I doubt the correctness of this identification.
+All the pictures I had seen of this well-known society belle had
+been marked by an individuality of expression which fixed her face
+in the memory and which I now saw repeated in the lifeless features
+before me.
+
+Greatly startled by the discovery, but quite convinced that this was
+but the dreadful sequel of an already sufficiently dark tragedy, I
+proceeded to take such steps as are common in these cases.  Having
+sent the too-willing Hibbard to notify headquarters, I was on the
+point of making a memorandum of such details as seemed important,
+when my lantern suddenly went out, leaving me in total darkness.
+
+This was far from pleasant, but the effect it produced upon my mind
+was not without its result.  For no sooner did I find myself alone
+and in the unrelieved darkness of this grave-like room, than I became
+convinced that no woman, however frenzied, would make her plunge
+into an unknown existence from the midst of a darkness only too
+suggestive of the tomb to which she was hastening.  It was not in
+nature, not in woman's nature, at all events.  Either she had
+committed the final act before such daylight as could filter through
+the shutters of this closed-up room had quite disappeared, - an
+hypothesis instantly destroyed by the warmth which still lingered
+in certain portions of her body, - or else the light which had been
+burning when she pulled the fatal trigger had since been carried
+elsewhere or extinguished.
+
+Recalling the uncertain gleams which we had seen flashing from one
+of the upper windows, I was inclined to give some credence to the
+former theory, but was disposed to be fair to both.  So after
+relighting my lamp, I turned on one of the gas cocks of the massive
+chandelier over my head and applied a match.  The result was just
+what I anticipated; no gas in the pipes.  A meter had not been put
+in for the wedding.  This the papers had repeatedly stated in
+dwelling upon the garish effect of the daylight on the elaborate
+costumes worn by the ladies.  Candles had not even been provided -
+ah, candles!  What, then, was it that I saw glittering on a small
+table at the other end of the room?  Surely a candlestick, or
+rather an old-fashioned candelabrum with a half-burned candle in
+one of its sockets.  Hastily crossing to it, I felt of the
+candlewick.  It was quite stiff and hard.  But not considering this
+a satisfactory proof that it had not been lately burning - the tip
+of a wick soon dries after the flame is blown out - I took out my
+penknife and attacked the wick at what might be called its root;
+whereupon I found that where the threads had been protected by the
+wax they were comparatively soft and penetrable.  The conclusion was
+obvious.  True to my instinct in this matter the woman had not
+lifted her weapon in darkness; this candle had been burning.  But
+here my thoughts received a fresh shock.  If burning, then by whom
+had it since been blown out?  Not by her; her wound was too fatally
+sure for that.  The steps taken between the table where the
+candelabrum stood and the place where she lay, were taken, if taken
+at all by her, before that shot was fired.  Some one else - some one
+whose breath still lingered in the air about me - had extinguished
+this candle-flame after she fell, and the death I looked down upon
+was not a suicide, but a murder.
+
+The excitement which this discovery caused to tingle through my
+every nerve had its birth in the ambitious feeling referred to in
+the opening paragraph of this narrative.  I believed that my
+long-sought-for opportunity had come; that with the start given me
+by the conviction just stated, I should be enabled to collect such
+clues and establish such facts as would lead to the acceptance of
+this new theory instead of the apparent one of suicide embraced by
+Hibbard and about to be promulgated at police headquarters.  If so,
+what a triumph would be mine; and what a debt I should owe to the
+crabbed old gentleman whose seemingly fantastic fears had first
+drawn me to this place!
+
+Realizing the value of the opportunity afforded me by the few
+minutes I was likely to spend alone on this scene of crime, I
+proceeded to my task with that directness and method which I had
+always promised myself should characterize my first success in
+detective work.
+
+First, then, for another look at the fair young victim herself!
+What a line of misery on the brow!  What dark hollows disfiguring
+cheeks otherwise as delicate as the petals of a rose!  An interesting,
+if not absolutely beautiful face, it told me something I could hardly
+put into words; so that it was like leaving a fascinating but
+unsolved mystery when I finally turned from it to study the hands,
+each of which presented a separate problem.  That offered by the
+right wrist you already know - the long white ribbon connecting it
+with the discharged pistol.  But the secret concealed by the left,
+while less startling, was perhaps fully as significant.  All the
+rings were gone, even the wedding ring which had been placed there
+such a short time before.  Had she been robbed?  There were no signs
+of violence visible nor even such disturbances as usually follow
+despoliation by a criminal's hand.  The boa of delicate black net
+which encircled her neck rose fresh and intact to her chin; nor did
+the heavy folds of her rich broadcloth gown betray that any
+disturbance had taken place in her figure after its fall.  If a jewel
+had flashed at her throat, or earrings adorned her ears, they had
+been removed by a careful, if not a loving, hand.  But I was rather
+inclined to think that she had entered upon the scene of her death
+without ornaments, - such severe simplicity marked her whole attire.
+Her hat, which was as plain and also as elegant as the rest of her
+clothing, lay near her on the floor.  It had been taken off and
+thrown down, manifestly by an impatient hand.  That this hand was
+her own was evident from a small but very significant fact.  The
+pin which had held it to her hair had been thrust again into the hat.
+No hand but hers would have taken this precaution.  A man would have
+flung it aside just as he would have flung the hat.
+
+Question:
+
+Did this argue a natural expectation on her part of resuming her
+hat?  Or was the action the result of an unconscious habit?
+
+Having thus noted all that was possible concerning her without
+infringing on the rights of the coroner, I next proceeded to cast
+about for clues to the identity of the person whom I considered
+responsible for the extinguished candle.  But here a great
+disappointment awaited me.  I could find nothing expressive of a
+second person's presence save a pile of cigar ashes scattered
+near the legs of a common kitchen chair which stood face to face
+with the book shelves in that part of the room where the
+candelabrum rested on a small table.  But these ashes looked old,
+nor could I detect any evidence of tobacco smoke in the general
+mustiness pervading the place.  Was the man who died here a
+fortnight since accountable for these ashes?  If so, his unfinished
+cigar must be within sight.  Should I search for it?  No, for this
+would take me to the hearth and that was quite too deadly a place
+to be heedlessly approached.
+
+Besides, I was not yet finished with the spot where I then stood.
+If I could gather nothing satisfactory from the ashes, perhaps I
+could from the chair or the shelves before which it had been placed.
+Some one with an interest in books had sat there; some one who
+expected to spend sufficient time over these old tomes to feel the
+need of a chair.  Had this interest been a general one or had it
+centered in a particular volume?  I ran my eye over the shelves
+within reach, possibly with an idea of settling this question, and
+though my knowledge of books is limited I could see that these were
+what one might call rarities.  Some of them contained specimens of
+black letter, all moldy and smothered in dust; in others I saw
+dates of publication which placed them among volumes dear to a
+collector's heart.  But none of them, so far as I could see, gave
+any evidence of having been lately handled; and anxious to waste no
+time on puerile details, I hastily quitted my chair, and was
+proceeding to turn my attention elsewhere, when I noticed on an
+upper shelf, a book projecting slightly beyond the others.  Instantly
+my foot was on the chair and the book in my hand.  Did I find it of
+interest?  Yes, but not on account of its contents, for they were
+pure Greek to me; but because it lacked the dust on its upper edge
+which had marked every other volume I had handled.  This, then, was
+what had attracted the unknown to these shelves, this - let me see
+if I can remember its title - Disquisition upon Old Coastlines.
+Pshaw!  I was wasting my time.  What had such a dry compendium as
+this to do with the body lying in its blood a few steps behind me,
+or with the hand which had put out the candle upon this dreadful
+deed?  Nothing.  I replaced the book, but not so hastily as to push
+it one inch beyond the position in which I found it.  For, if it
+had a tale to tell, then was it my business to leave that tale to
+be read by those who understood books better than I did.
+
+My next move was toward the little table holding the candelabrum
+with the glittering pendants.  This table was one of a nest standing
+against a near-by wall.  Investigation proved that it had been
+lifted from the others and brought to its present position within a
+very short space of time.  For the dust lying thick on its top was
+almost entirely lacking from the one which had been nested under it.
+Neither had the candelabrum been standing there long, dust being
+found under as well as around it.  Had her hand brought it there?
+Hardly, if it came from the top of the mantel toward which I now
+turned in my course of investigation.
+
+I have already mentioned this mantel more than once.  This I could
+hardly avoid, since in and about it lay the heart of the mystery for
+which the room was remarkable.  But though I have thus freely spoken
+of it, and though it was not absent from my thoughts for a moment,
+I had not ventured to approach it beyond a certain safe radius.  Now,
+in looking to see if I might not lessen this radius, I experienced
+that sudden and overwhelming interest in its every feature which
+attaches to all objects peculiarly associated with danger.
+
+I even took a step toward it, holding up my lamp so that a stray ray
+struck the faded surface of an old engraving hanging over the
+fireplace.
+
+It was the well-known one - in Washington at least - of Benjamin
+Franklin at the Court of France; interesting no doubt in a general
+way, but scarcely calculated to hold the eye at so critical an
+instant.  Neither did the shelf below call for more than momentary
+attention, for it was absolutely bare.  So was the time-worn, if not
+blood-stained hearth, save for the impenetrable shadow cast over it
+by the huge bulk of the great settle standing at its edge.
+
+I have already described the impression made on me at my first
+entrance by this ancient and characteristic article of furniture.
+
+It was intensified now as my eye ran over the clumsy carving which
+added to the discomfort of its high straight back and as I smelt the
+smell of its moldy and possibly mouse-haunted cushions.  A crawling
+sense of dread took the place of my first instinctive repugnance;
+not because superstition had as yet laid its grip upon me, although
+the place, the hour and the near and veritable presence of death
+were enough to rouse the imagination past the bounds of the actual,
+but because of a discovery I had made--a discovery which emphasized
+the tradition that all who had been found dead under the mantel had
+fallen as if from the end of this monstrous and patriarchal bench.
+Do you ask what this discovery was?  It can be told in a word.  This
+one end and only this end had been made comfortable for the sitter.
+For a space scarcely wide enough for one, the seat and back at this
+special point had been upholstered with leather, fastened to the
+wood with heavy wrought nails.  The remaining portion stretched out
+bare, hard and inexpressibly forbidding to one who sought ease there,
+or even a moment of casual rest.  The natural inference was that the
+owner of this quaint piece of furniture had been a very selfish man
+who thought only of his own comfort.  But might he not have had some
+other reason for his apparent niggardliness?  As I asked myself this
+question and noted how the long and embracing arm which guarded this
+cushioned retreat was flattened on top for the convenient holding of
+decanter and glass, feelings to which I can give no name and which I
+had fondly believed myself proof against, began to take the place of
+judgment and reason.  Before I realized the nature of my own impulse
+or to what it was driving me, I found myself moving slowly and
+steadily toward this formidable seat, under an irresistible desire
+to fling myself down upon these old cushions and -
+
+But here the creaking of some far-off shutter - possibly the one I
+had seen swaying from the opposite side of the street - recalled me
+to the duties of the hour, and, remembering that my investigations
+were but half completed and that I might be interrupted any moment
+by detectives from headquarters, I broke from the accursed charm,
+which horrified me the moment I escaped it, and quitting the room
+by a door at the farther end, sought to find in some of the adjacent
+rooms the definite traces I had failed to discover on this, the
+actual scene of the crime.
+
+It was a dismal search, revealing at every turn the almost maddened
+haste with which the house had been abandoned.  The dining-room
+especially roused feelings which were far from pleasant.  The table,
+evidently set for the wedding breakfast, had been denuded in such
+breathless hurry that the food had been tossed from the dishes and
+now lay in moldering heaps on the floor.  The wedding cake, which
+some one had dropped, possibly in the effort to save it, had been
+stepped on; and broken glass, crumpled napery and withered flowers
+made all the corners unsightly and rendered stepping over the
+unwholesome floors at once disgusting and dangerous.  The pantries
+opening out of this room were in no better case.  Shrinking from the
+sights and smells I found there, I passed out into the kitchen and
+so on by a close and narrow passage to the negro quarters clustered
+in the rear.
+
+Here I made a discovery.  One of the windows in this long disused
+portion of the house was not only unlocked but partly open.  But as
+I came upon no marks showing that this outlet had been used by the
+escaping murderer, I made my way back to the front of the house and
+thus to the stairs communicating with the upper floor.
+
+It was on the rug lying at the foot of these stairs that I came upon
+the first of a dozen or more burned matches which lay in a distinct
+trail up the staircase and along the floors of the upper halls.  As
+these matches were all burned as short as fingers could hold them,
+it was evident that they had been used to light the steps of some
+one seeking refuge above, possibly in the very room where we had
+seen the light which had first drawn us to this house.  How then?
+Should I proceed or await the coming of the "boys" before pushing
+in upon a possible murderer?  I decided to proceed, fascinated, I
+think, by the nicety of the trail which lay before me.
+
+But when, after a careful following in the steps of him who had so
+lately preceded me, I came upon a tightly closed door at the end
+of aside passage, I own that I stopped a moment before lifting hand
+to it.  So much may lie behind a tightly closed door!  But my
+hesitation, if hesitation it was, lasted but a moment.  My natural
+impatience and the promptings of my vanity overcame the dictates
+of my judgment, and, reckless of consequences, perhaps disdainful
+of them, I soon had the knob in my grasp.  I gave a slight push to
+the door and, on seeing a crack of light leap into life along the
+jamb, pushed the door wider and wider till the whole room stood
+revealed.
+
+The instantaneous banging of a shutter in one of its windows proved
+the room to be the very one which we had seen lighted from below.
+Otherwise all was still; nor was I able to detect, in my first
+hurried glance, any other token of human presence than a candle
+sputtering in its own grease at the bottom of a tumbler placed on
+one corner of, an old-fashioned dressing table.  This, the one
+touch of incongruity in a room otherwise rich if not stately in
+its appointments, was loud in its suggestion of some hidden
+presence given to expedients and reckless of consequences; but of
+this presence nothing was to be seen.
+
+Not satisfied with this short survey,-a survey which had given me
+the impression of a spacious old-fashioned chamber, fully furnished
+but breathing of the by-gone rather than of the present - and
+resolved to know the worst, or, rather, to dare the worst and be
+done with it, I strode straight into the center of the room and
+cast about me quickly a comprehensive glance which spared nothing,
+not even the shadows lurking in the corners.  But no low-lying
+figure started up from those corners, nor did any crouching head
+rise into sight from beyond the leaves of the big screen behind
+which I was careful to look.
+
+Greatly reassured, and indeed quite convinced that wherever the
+criminal lurked at that moment he was not in the same room with me,
+I turned my attention to my surroundings, which had many points of
+interest.  Foremost among these was the big four-poster which
+occupied a large space at my right.  I had never seen its like in
+use before, and I was greatly attracted by its size and the air of
+mystery imparted to it by its closely drawn curtains of faded
+brocade.  In fact, this bed, whether from its appearance or some
+occult influence inherent in it, had a fascination for me.  I
+hesitated to approach it, yet could not forbear surveying it long
+and earnestly.  Could it be possible that those curtains concealed
+some one in hiding behind them?  Strange to say I did not feel
+quite ready to lay hand on them and see.
+
+A dressing table laden with woman's fixings and various articles of
+the toilet, all of an unexpected value and richness, occupied the
+space between the two windows; and on the floor, immediately in
+front of a high mahogany mantel, there lay, amid a number of empty
+boxes, an overturned chair.  This chair and the conjectures its
+position awakened led me to look up at the mantel with which it
+seemed to be in some way connected, and thus I became aware of a
+wan old drawing hanging on the wall above it.  Why this picture,
+which was a totally uninteresting sketch of a simpering girl face,
+should have held my eye after the first glance, I can not say even
+now.  It had no beauty even of the sentimental kind and very little,
+if any, meaning.  Its lines, weak at the best, were nearly
+obliterated and in some places quite faded out.  Yet I not only
+paused to look at it, but in looking at it forgot myself and
+well-nigh my errand.  Yet there was no apparent reason for the spell
+it exerted over me, nor could I account in any way for the really
+superstitious dread which from this moment seized me, making my
+head move slowly round with shrinking backward looks as that swaying
+shutter creaked or some of the fitful noises, which grow out of
+silence in answer to our inner expectancy, drew my attention or
+appalled my sense.
+
+To all appearance there was less here than below to affect a man's
+courage.  No inanimate body with the mark of the slayer upon it lent
+horror to these walls; yet sensations which I had easily overcome in
+the library below clung with strange insistence to me here, making
+it an effort for me to move, and giving to the unexpected reflection
+of my own image in the mirror I chanced to pass, a power to shock my
+nerves which has never been repeated in my experience.
+
+It may seem both unnecessary and out of character for a man of my
+calling to acknowledge these chance sensations, but only by doing so
+can I account for the minutes which elapsed before I summoned
+sufficient self-possession to draw aside the closed curtains of the
+bed and take the quick look inside which my present doubtful position
+demanded.  But once I had broken the spell and taken the look just
+mentioned, I found my manhood return and with it my old ardor for
+clues.  The bed held no gaping, chattering criminal; yet was it not
+quite empty.  Something lay there, and this something, while
+commonplace in itself, was enough out of keeping with the place and
+hour to rouse my interest and awaken my conjectures.  It was a lady's
+wrap so rich in quality and of such a festive appearance that it was
+astonishing to find it lying in a neglected state in this crumbling
+old house.  Though I know little of the cost of women's garments, I
+do know the value of lace, and this garment was covered with it.
+
+Interesting as was this find, it was followed by one still more so.
+Nestled in the folds of the cloak, lay the withered remains of what
+could only have been the bridal bouquet.  Unsightly now and
+scentless, it was once a beautiful specimen of the florist's art.
+As I noted how the main bunch of roses and lilies was connected by
+long satin ribbons to the lesser clusters which hung from it, I
+recalled with conceivable horror the use to which a similar ribbon
+had been put in the room below.  In the shudder called up by this
+coincidence I forgot to speculate how a bouquet carried by the
+bride could have found its way back to this upstairs room when, as
+all accounts agree, she had fled from the parlor below without
+speaking or staying foot the moment she was told of the catastrophe
+which had taken place in the library.  That her wrap should be lying
+here was not strange, but that the wedding bouquet -
+
+That it really was the wedding bouquet and that this was the room
+in which the bride had dressed for the ceremony was apparent to the
+most casual observer.  But it became an established fact when in my
+further course about the room I chanced on a handkerchief with the
+name Veronica embroidered in one corner.
+
+This handkerchief had an interest apart from the name on it.  It was
+of dainty texture and quite in keeping, so far as value went, with
+the other belongings of its fastidious owner.  But it was not clean.
+Indeed it was strangely soiled, and this soil was of a nature I did
+not readily understand.  A woman would doubtless have comprehended
+immediately the cause of the brown streaks I found on it, but it took
+me several minutes to realize that this bit of cambric, delicate as
+a cobweb, had been used to remove dust.  To remove dust!  Dust from
+what?  From the mantel-shelf probably, upon one end of which I found
+it.  But no!  one look along the polished boards convinced me that
+whatever else had been dusted in this room this shelf had not.  The
+accumulation of days, if not of months, was visible from one end to
+the other of its unrelieved surface save where the handkerchief had
+lain, and - the greatest discovery yet - where five clear spots just
+to the left of the center showed where some man's finger-tips had
+rested.  Nothing but the pressure of fingertips could have caused
+just the appearance presented by these spots.  By scrutinizing them
+closely I could even tell where the thumb had rested, and at once
+foresaw the possibility of determining by means of these marks both
+the size and shape of the hand which had left behind it so neat and
+unmistakable a clue.
+
+Wonderful!  but what did it all mean?  Why should a man rest his
+finger-tips on this out-of-the-way shelf ?  Had he done so in an
+effort to balance himself for a look up the chimney?  No; for then
+the marks made by his fingers would have extended to the edge of the
+shelf, whereas these were in the middle of it.  Their shape, too,
+was round, not oblong; hence, the pressure had come from above and -
+ah!  I had it, these impressions in the dust of the shelf were just
+such as would be made by a person steadying himself for a close look
+at the old picture.  And this accounted also for the overturned
+chair, and for the handkerchief used as a duster.  Some one's
+interest in this picture had been greater than mine; some one who
+was either very near-sighted or whose temperament was such that only
+the closest inspection would satisfy an aroused curiosity.
+
+This gave me an idea, or rather impressed upon me the necessity of
+preserving the outline of these tell-tale marks while they were
+still plain to the eye.  Taking out my penknife, I lightly ran the
+point of my sharpest blade around each separate impression till I
+had fixed them for all time in the well worn varnish of the mahogany.
+
+This done, my thoughts recurred to the question already raised.  What
+was there in this old picture to arouse such curiosity in one bent on
+evil if not fresh from a hideous crime?  I have said before that the
+picture as a picture was worthless, a mere faded sketch fit only for
+lumbering up some old garret.  Then wherein lay its charm, - a charm
+which I myself had felt, though not to this extent?  It was useless
+to conjecture.  A fresh difficulty had been added to my task by this
+puzzling discovery, but difficulties only increased my interest.  It
+was with an odd feeling of elation that, in a further examination of
+this room, I came upon two additional facts equally odd and
+irreconcilable.
+
+One was the presence of a penknife with the file blade open, on a
+small table under the window marked by the loosened shutter.
+Scattered about it were some filings which shone as the light from
+my lantern fell upon them, but which were so fine as to call for a
+magnifying-glass to make them out.  The other was in connection with
+a closet not far from the great bed.  It was an empty closet so far
+as the hooks went and the two great drawers which I found standing
+half open at its back; but in the middle of the floor lay an
+overturned candelabrum similar to the one below, but with its prisms
+scattered and its one candle crushed and battered out of all shape
+on the blackened boards.  If upset while alight, the foot which had
+stamped upon it in a wild endeavor to put out the flames had been a
+frenzied one.  Now, by whom had this frenzy been shown, and when?
+Within the hour?  I could detect no smell of smoke.  At some former
+time, then?  say on the day of the bridal?
+
+Glancing from the broken candle at my feet to the one giving its last
+sputter in the tumbler on the dressing table, I owned myself perplexed.
+
+Surely, no ordinary explanation fitted these extraordinary and
+seemingly contradictory circumstances.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+SIGNED, VERONICA
+
+
+I am in some ways hypersensitive.  Among my other weaknesses I have
+a wholesome dread of ridicule, and this is probably why I failed to
+press my theory on the captain when he appeared, and even forbore
+to mention the various small matters which had so attracted my
+attention.  If he and the experienced men who came with him saw
+suicide and nothing but suicide in this lamentable shooting of a
+bride of two weeks, then it was not for me to suggest a deeper
+crime, especially as one of the latter eyed me with open scorn when
+I proposed to accompany them upstairs into the room where the light
+had been seen burning.  No, I would keep my discoveries to myself
+or, at least, forbear to mention them till I found the captain
+alone, asking nothing at this juncture but permission to remain in
+the house till Mr. Jeffrey arrived.
+
+I had been told that an officer had gone for this gentleman, and
+when I heard the sound of wheels in front I made a rush for the
+door, in my anxiety to catch a glimpse of him.  But it was a woman
+who alighted.
+
+As this woman was in a state of great agitation, one of the men
+hastened down to offer his arm.  As she took it, I asked Hibbard,
+who had suddenly reappeared upon the scene, who she was.
+
+He said that she was probably the sister of the woman who lay
+inside.  Upon which I remembered that this lady, under the name of
+Miss Tuttle - she was but half-sister to Miss Moore - had been
+repeatedly mentioned by the reporters, in the accounts of the
+wedding before mentioned, as a person of superior attainments and
+magnificent beauty.
+
+This did not take from my interest, and flinging decorum to the
+winds, I approached as near as possible to the threshold which she
+must soon cross.  As I did so I was astonished to hear the strains
+of Uncle David's organ still pealing from the opposite side of the
+way.  This at a moment so serious and while matters of apparent
+consequence were taking place in the house to which he had himself
+directed the attention of the police, struck me as carrying stoicism
+to the extreme.  Not very favorably impressed by this display of
+open if not insulting indifference on the part of the sole remaining
+Moore, - an indifference which did not appear quite natural even in
+a man of his morbid eccentricity, - I resolved to know more of this
+old man and, above all, to make myself fully acquainted with the
+exact relations which had existed between him and his unhappy niece.
+
+Meanwhile Miss Tuttle had stepped within the circle of light cast
+by our lanterns.
+
+I have never seen a finer woman, nor one whose features displayed
+a more heart-rending emotion.  This called for respect, and I, for
+one, endeavored to show it by withdrawing into the background.  But
+I soon stepped forward again.  My desire to understand her was too
+great, the impression made by her bearing too complex, to be passed
+over lightly by one on the lookout for a key to the remarkable
+tragedy before us.
+
+Meanwhile her lips had opened with the cry:
+
+"My sister!  Where is my sister?"
+
+The captain made a hurried movement toward the rear and then with
+the laudable intention, doubtless, of preparing her for the ghastly
+sight which awaited her, returned and opened a way for her into the
+drawing-room.  But she was not to be turned aside from her course.
+Passing him by, she made directly for the library which she entered
+with a bound.  Struck by her daring, we all crowded up behind her,
+and, curious brutes that we were, grouped ourselves in a semicircle
+about the doorway as she faltered toward her sister's outstretched
+form and fell on her knees beside it.  Her involuntary shriek and
+the fierce recoil she made as her eyes fell on the long white ribbon
+trailing over the floor from her sister's wrist, struck me as voicing
+the utmost horror of which the human soul is capable.  It was as
+though her very soul were pierced.  Something in the fact itself,
+something in the appearance of this snowy ribbon tied to the scarce
+whiter wrist, seemed to pluck at the very root of her being; and
+when her glance, in traveling its length, lighted on the death dealing
+weapon at its end, she cringed in such apparent anguish that we
+looked to see her fall in a swoon or break out into delirium.  We
+were correspondingly startled when she suddenly burst forth with
+this word of stern command:
+
+"Untie that knot!  Why do you leave that dreadful thing fast to her?
+Untie it, I say, it is killing me; I can not bear the sight."  And
+from trembling she passed to shuddering till her whole body shook
+convulsively.
+
+The captain, with much consideration, drew back the hand he had
+impulsively stretched toward the ribbon.
+
+"No, no," he protested; "we can not do that; we can do nothing till
+the coroner comes.  It is necessary that he should see her just as
+she was found.  Besides, Mr. Jeffrey has a right to the same
+privilege.  We expect him any moment."
+
+The beautiful head of the woman before us shook involuntarily, but
+her lips made no protest.  I doubt if she possessed the power of
+speech at that moment.  A change, subtle, but quite perceptible,
+had taken place in her emotions at mention of her sister's husband,
+and, though she exerted herself to remain calm, the effort seemed
+too much for her strength.  Anxious to hide this evidence of weakness,
+she rose impetuously; and then we saw how tall she was, how the long
+lines of her cloak became her, and what a glorious creature she was
+altogether.
+
+"It will kill him," she groaned in a deep inward voice.  Then, with
+a certain forced haste and in a tone of surprise which to my ear had
+not quite a natural ring, she called aloud on her who could no longer
+either listen or answer:
+
+"Oh, Veronica, Veronica!  What cause had you for death?  And why do
+we find you lying here in a spot you so feared and detested?"
+
+"Don't you know?" insinuated the captain, with a mild persuasiveness,
+such as he was seldom heard to use.  "Do you mean that you can not
+account for your sister's violent end, you, who have lived with her
+ - or so I have been told-ever since her marriage with Mr. Jeffrey?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Keen and clear the word rang out, fierce in its keenness and almost
+too clear to be in keeping with the half choked tones with which she
+added: "I know that she was not happy, that she never has been happy
+since the shadow which this room suggests fell upon her marriage.
+But how could I so much as dream that her dread of the past or her
+fear of the future would drive her to suicide, and in this place of
+all places!  Had I done so - had I imagined in the least degree that
+she was affected to this extent - do you think that I would have
+left her for one instant alone?  None of us knew that she contemplated
+death.  She had no appearance of it; she laughed when I -"
+
+What had she been about to say?  The captain seemed to wonder, and
+after waiting in vain for the completion of her sentence, he quietly
+suggested:
+
+"You have not finished what you had to say, Miss Tuttle."
+
+She started and seemed to come back from some remote region of
+thought into which she had wandered.  "I don't know - I forget," she
+stammered, with a heart-broken sigh.  "Poor Veronica!  Wretched
+Veronica!  How shall I ever tell him!  How, how, can we ever prepare
+him!"
+
+The captain took advantage of this reference to Mr. Jeffrey to ask
+where that gentleman was.  The young lady did not seem eager to
+reply, but when pressed, answered, though somewhat mechanically,
+that it was impossible for her to say; Mr. Jeffrey had many friends
+with any one of whom he might be enjoying a social evening.
+
+"But it is far past midnight now," remarked the captain.  "Is he in
+the habit of remaining out late?"
+
+"Sometimes," she faintly admitted.  "Two or three times since his
+marriage he has been out till one."
+
+Were there other causes for the young bride's evident disappointment
+and misery besides the one intimated?  There certainly was some
+excuse for thinking so.
+
+Possibly some one of as may have shown his doubts in this regard,
+for the woman before us suddenly broke forth with this vehement
+assertion:
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey was a loving husband to my sister.  A very loving
+husband," she emphasized.  Then, growing desperately pale, she added,
+"I have never known a better man," and stopped.
+
+Some hidden anguish in this cry, some self-consciousness in this
+pause, suggested to me a possibility which I was glad to see ignored
+by the captain in his next question.
+
+"When did you see your sister last?" he asked.  "Were you at home
+when she left her husband's house?"
+
+"Alas!" she murmured.  Then seeing that a more direct answer was
+expected of her, she added with as little appearance of effort as
+possible: "I was at home and I heard her go out.  But I had no idea
+that it was for any purpose other than to join some social gathering."
+
+"Dressed this way?"
+
+The captain pointed to the floor and her eyes followed.  Certainly
+Mrs. Jeffrey was not appareled for an evening company.  As Miss
+Tuttle realized the trap into which she had been betrayed, her words
+rushed forth and tripped each other up.
+
+"I did not notice.  She often wore black - it became her.  My sister
+was eccentric."
+
+Worse, worse than useless.  Some slips can not be explained away.
+Miss Tuttle seemed to realize that this was one of them, for she
+paused abruptly, with the words half finished on her tongue.  Yet
+her attitude commanded respect, and I for one was ready to accord
+it to her.
+
+Certainly, such a woman was not to be seen every day, and if her
+replies lacked candor, there was a nobility in her presence which
+gave the lie to any doubt.  At least, that was the effect she
+produced on me.  Whether or not her interrogator shared my feeling
+I could not so readily determine, for his attention as well as mine
+was suddenly diverted by the cry which now escaped her lips.
+
+"Her watch!  Where is her watch?  It is gone!  I saw it on her
+breast and it's gone.  It hung just - just where -"
+
+"Wait!" cried one of the men who had been peering about the floor.
+"Is this it?"
+
+He held aloft a small object blazing with jewels.
+
+"Yes," she gasped, trying to take it.
+
+But the officer gave it to the captain instead.
+
+"It must have slipped from her as she fell," remarked the latter,
+after a cursory examination of the glittering trinket.  "The pin by
+which she attached it to her dress must have been insecurely
+fastened."  Then quickly and with a sharp look at Miss Tuttle: "Do
+you know if this was considered an accurate timepiece?"
+
+"Yes.  Why do you ask?  Is it -"
+
+"Look!"  He held it up with the face toward us.  The hands stood at
+thirteen minutes past seven.  "The hour and the moment when it struck
+the floor," he declared.  "And consequently the hour and the moment
+when Mrs. Jeffrey fell," finished Durbin.
+
+Miss Tuttle said nothing, only gasped.
+
+"Valuable evidence," quoth the captain, putting the watch in his
+pocket.  Then, with a kind look at her, called forth by the sight
+of her misery:
+
+"Does this hour agree with the time of her leaving the house?"
+
+"I can not say.  I think so.  It was some time before or after seven.
+I don't remember the exact minute."
+
+"It would take fifteen for her to walk here.  Did she walk?"
+
+"I do not know.  I didn't see her leave.  My room is at the back of
+the house."
+
+"You can say if she left alone or in the company of her husband?"
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey was not with her?"
+
+"Was Mr. Jeffrey in the house?"
+
+"He was not."
+
+This last negative was faintly spoken.
+
+The captain noticed this and ventured upon interrogating her further.
+
+"How long had he been gone?"
+
+Her lips parted; she was deeply agitated; but when she spoke it was
+coldly and with studied precision.
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey was not at home to-night at all.  He has not been in
+all day."
+
+"Not at home?  Did his wife know that he was going to dine out?"
+
+"She said nothing about it."
+
+The captain cut short his questions and in another moment I
+understood why.  A gentleman was standing in the doorway, whose face
+once seen, was enough to stop the words on any man's lips.  Miss
+Tuttle saw this gentleman almost as quickly as we did and sank with
+an involuntary moan to her knees.
+
+It was Francis Jeffrey come to look upon his dead bride.
+
+I have been present at many tragic scenes and have beheld men under
+almost every aspect of grief, terror and remorse; but there was
+something in the face of this man at this dreadful moment that was
+quite new to me, and, as I judge, equally new to the other hardy
+officials about me.  To be sure he was a gentleman and a very
+high-bred one at that; and it is but seldom we have to do with any
+of his ilk.
+
+Breathlessly we awaited his first words.
+
+Not that he showed frenzy or made any display of the grief or
+surprise natural to the occasion.  On the contrary, he was the
+quietest person present, and among all the emotions his white face
+mirrored I saw no signs of what might be called sorrow.  Yet his
+appearance was one to wring the heart and rouse the most
+contradictory conjectures as to just what chord in his evidently
+highly strung nature throbbed most acutely to the horror and
+astonishment of this appalling end of so short a married life.
+
+His eye, which was fixed on the prostrate body of his bride, did
+not yield up its secret.  When he moved and came to where she lay
+and caught his first sight of the ribbon and the pistol attached to
+it, the most experienced among us were baffled as to the nature of
+his feelings and thoughts.  One thing alone was patent to all.  He
+had no wish to touch this woman whom he had so lately sworn to
+cherish.  His eyes devoured her, he shuddered and strove several
+times to speak, and though kneeling by her side, he did not reach
+forth his hand nor did he let a tear fall on the appealing features
+so pathetically turned upward as if to meet his look.
+
+Suddenly he leaped to his feet.
+
+"Must she stay here?" he demanded, looking about for the person most
+in authority.
+
+The captain answered by a question:
+
+"How do you account for her being here at all?  What explanation
+have you, as her husband, to give for this strange suicide of your
+wife?"
+
+For reply, Mr. Jeffrey, who was an exceptionally handsome man, drew
+forth a small slip of crumpled paper, which he immediately handed
+over to the speaker.
+
+"Let her own words explain," said he.  "I found this scrap of
+writing in our upstairs room when I returned home to-night.  She
+must have written it just before - before -"
+
+A smothered groan filled up the break, but it did not come from his
+lips, which were fixed and set, but from those of the woman who
+crouched amongst us.  Did he catch this expression of sorrow from
+one whose presence he as yet had given no token of recognizing?  He
+did not seem to.  His eye was on the captain, who was slowly reading,
+by the light of a lantern held in a detective's hand, the almost
+illegible words which Mr. Jeffrey had just said were his wife's last
+communication.
+
+Will they seem as pathetic to the eye as they did to the ear in that
+room of awesome memories and present death?
+
+"I find that I do not love you as I thought I did.  I can not live,
+knowing this to be so.  I pray God that you may forgive me.
+
+VERONICA"
+
+
+A gasp from the figure in the corner; then silence.  We were glad to
+hear the captain's voice again.
+
+"A woman's heart is a great mystery," he remarked, with a short
+glance at Mr. Jeffrey.
+
+It was a sentiment we could all echo; for he, to whom she had alluded
+in these few lines as one she could not love, was a man whom most
+women would consider the embodiment of all that was admirable and
+attractive.
+
+That one woman so regarded him was apparent to all.  If ever the
+heart spoke in a human face, it spoke in that of Miss Tuttle as she
+watched her sister's husband struggling for composure above the
+prostrate form of her who but a few hours previous had been the
+envy of all the fashionable young women in Washington.  I found it
+hard to fix my attention on the next question, interesting and
+valuable as every small detail was likely to prove in case my theory
+of this crime should ever come to be looked on as the true one.
+
+"How came you to search here for the wife who had written you this
+vague and far from satisfactory farewell?  I see no hint in these
+lines of the place where she intended to take her life."
+
+"No!  no!"  Even this strong man shrank from this idea and showed a
+very natural recoil as his glances flew about the ill-omened room
+and finally rested on the fireside over which so repellent a mystery
+hung in impenetrable shadow.  "She said nothing of her intentions;
+nothing!  But the man who came for me told me where she was to be
+found.  He was waiting at the door of my house.  He had been on a
+search for me up and down the town.  We met on the stoop."
+
+The captain accepted this explanation without cavil.  I was glad he
+did.  But to me the affair showed inconsistencies which I secretly
+felt it to be my especial duty to unravel.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+MASTER AND DOG
+
+
+No further opportunity was afforded me that night for studying the
+three leading characters in the remarkable drama I saw unfolding
+before me.  A task was assigned me by the captain which took me from
+the house, and I missed the next scene - the arrival of the coroner.
+But I repaid myself for this loss in a way I thought justified by
+the importance of my own theory and the evident necessity there was
+of collecting each and every point of evidence which could give
+coloring to the charge, in the event of this crime coming to be
+looked on at headquarters as one of murder.
+
+Observing that a light was still burning in Uncle David's domicile,
+I crossed to his door and rang the bell.  I was answered by the deep
+and prolonged howl of a dog, soon cut short by his master's amiable
+greeting.  This latter was a surprise to me.  I had heard so often
+of Mr. Moore's churlishness as a host that I had expected some
+rebuff.  But I encountered no such tokens of hostility.  His brow
+was smooth and his smile cheerfully condescending.  Indeed, he
+appeared anxious to have me enter, and cast an indulgent look at
+Rudge, whose irrepressible joy at this break in the monotony of his
+existence was tinged with a very evident dread of offending his
+master.  Interested anew, I followed this man of contradictory
+impulses into the room toward which he led me.
+
+The time has now come for a more careful description of this peculiar
+man.  Mr. Moore was tall and of that refined spareness of shape which
+suggests the scholar.  Yet he had not the scholar's eye.  On the
+contrary, his regard was quick, if not alert, and while it did not
+convey actual malice or ill-will, it roused in the spectator an
+uncomfortable feeling, not altogether easy to analyze.  He wore his
+iron gray locks quite long, and to this distinguishing idiosyncrasy,
+as well as to his invariable custom of taking his dog with him
+wherever he went, was due the interest always shown in him by street
+urchins.  On account of his whimsicalities, he had acquired the
+epithet of Uncle David among them, despite his aristocratic
+connections and his gentlemanlike bearing.  His clothes formed no
+exception to the general air of individuality which marked him.  They
+were of different cut from those of other men, and in this as in many
+other ways he was a law to himself; notably so in the following
+instance:  He kept one day of the year religiously, and kept it
+always in the same way.  Long years before, he had been blessed with
+a wife who both understood and loved him.  He had never forgotten
+this fact, and once a year, presumably on the anniversary of her
+death, it was his custom to go to the cemetery where she lay and to
+spend the whole day under the shadow of the stone he had raised to
+her memory.  No matter what the weather, no matter what the condition
+of his own health, he was always to be seen in this spot, at the hour
+of seven, leaning against the shaft on which his wife's name was
+written, eating his supper in the company of his dog.  It was a
+custom he had never omitted.  So well known was it to the boys and
+certain other curious individuals in the neighborhood that he never
+lacked an audience, though woe betide the daring foot that presumed
+to invade the precincts of the lot he called his, or the venturesome
+voice which offered to raise itself in gibe or jeer.  He had but to
+cast a glance at Rudge and an avenging rush scattered the crowd in
+a twinkling.  But he seldom had occasion to resort to this extreme
+measure for preserving the peace and quiet of his solemn watch.  As
+a rule he was allowed to eat his meal undisturbed, and to pass out
+unmolested even by ridicule, though his teeth might still be busy
+over some final tidbit.  Often the great tears might be seen hanging
+undried upon his withered cheeks.
+
+So much for one oddity which may stand as a sample of many others.
+
+One glance at the room into which he ushered me showed why he
+cherished so marked a dislike for visitors.  It was bare to the
+point of discomfort, and had it not been for a certain quaintness
+in the shape of the few articles to be seen there, I should have
+experienced a decided feeling of repulsion, so pronounced was the
+contrast between this poverty-stricken interior and the polished
+bearing of its owner.  He, I am sure, could have shown no more
+elevated manners if he had been doing the honors of a palace.  The
+organ, with the marks of home construction upon it, was the only
+object visible which spoke of luxury or even comfort.
+
+But enough of these possibly uninteresting details.  I did not dwell
+on them myself, except in a vague way and while waiting for him to
+open the conversation.  This he did as soon as he saw that I had no
+intention of speaking first.
+
+"And did you find any one in the old house?" he asked.
+
+Keeping him well under my eye, I replied with intentional brusqueness:
+
+"She has gone there once too often!"
+
+The stare he gave me was that of an actor who feels that some
+expression of surprise is expected from him.
+
+"She?" he repeated.  "Whom can you possibly mean by she?"
+
+The surprise I expressed at this bold attempt at ingenuousness was
+better simulated than his, I hope.
+
+"You don't know!" I exclaimed.  "Can you live directly opposite a
+place of such remarkable associations and not interest yourself in
+who goes in and out of its deserted doors?"
+
+"I don't sit in my front window," he peevishly returned.
+
+I let my eye roam toward a chair standing suspiciously near the
+very window he had designated.
+
+"But you saw the light?" I suggested.
+
+"I saw that from the door-step when I went out to give Rudge his
+usual five minutes' breathing spell on the stoop.  But you have not
+answered my question; whom do you mean by she?"
+
+"Veronica Jeffrey," I replied.  "She who was Veronica Moore.  She
+has visited this haunted house of hers for the last time."
+
+"Last time!"  Either he could not or would not understand me.
+
+"What has happened to my niece?" he cried, rising with an energy
+that displaced the great dog and sent him, with hanging head and
+trailing tail, to his own special sleeping-place under the table.
+"Has she run upon a ghost in those dismal apartments?  You interest
+me greatly.  I did not think she would ever have the pluck to visit
+this house again after what happened at her wedding."
+
+"She has had the pluck," I assured him; "and what is more, she has
+had enough of it not only to reenter the house, but to reenter it
+alone.  At least, such is the present inference.  Had you been
+blessed with more curiosity and made more frequent use of the chair
+so conveniently placed for viewing the opposite house, you might
+have been in a position to correct this inference.  It would help
+the police materially to know positively that she had no companion
+in her fatal visit."
+
+"Fatal?" he repeated, running his finger inside his neckband, which
+suddenly seemed to have grown too tight for comfort.  "Can it be
+that my niece has been frightened to death in that old place?  You
+alarm me."
+
+He did not look alarmed, but then he was not of an impressible
+nature.  Yet he was of the same human clay as the rest of us, and,
+if he knew no more of this occurrence than he tried to make out,
+could not be altogether impervious to what I had to say next.
+
+"You have a right to be alarmed," I assented.  "She was not
+frightened to death, yet is she lying dead on the library floor."
+Then, with a glance at the windows about me, I added lightly: "I
+take it that a pistol-shot delivered over there could not be heard
+in this room."
+
+He sank rather melodramatically into his seat, yet his face and
+form did not lose that sudden assumption of dignity which I had
+observed in him ever since my entrance into the house.
+
+"I am overwhelmed by this news," he remarked.  "She has shot
+herself?  Why?"
+
+"I did not say that she had shot herself," I carefully repeated.
+"Yet the facts point that way and Mr. Jeffrey accepts the suicide
+theory without question."
+
+"Ah,, Mr. Jeffrey is there!"
+
+"Most certainly; he was sent for at once."
+
+"And Miss Tuttle?  She came with him of course?"
+
+"She came, but not with him.  She is very fond of her sister."
+
+"I must go over at once," he cried, leaping again to his feet and
+looking about for his hat.  "It is my duty to make them feel at
+home; in short, to - to put the house at their disposal."  Here he
+found his hat and placed it on his head.  "The property is mine now,
+you know," he politely explained, turning, with a keen light in his
+gray eye, full upon me and overwhelming me with the grand air of a
+man who has come unexpectedly into his own.  "Mrs. Jeffrey's father
+was my younger brother - the story is an old and long one - and the
+property, which in all justice should have been divided between us,
+went entirely to him.  But he was a good fellow in the main and saw
+the injustice of his father's will as clearly as I did, and years
+ago made one on his own account bequeathing me the whole estate in
+case he left no issue, or that issue died.  Veronica was his only
+child; Veronica has died; therefore the old house is mine and all
+that goes with it, all that goes with it."
+
+There was the miser's gloating in this repetition of a phrase
+sufficiently expressive in itself, or rather the gloating of a man
+who sees himself suddenly rich after a life of poverty.  There was
+likewise a callousness as regarded his niece's surprising death
+which I considered myself to have some excuse for noticing.
+
+"You accept her death very calmly," I remarked.  "Probably you
+knew her to be possessed of an erratic mind."
+
+He was about to bestow an admonitory kick on his dog, who had been
+indiscreet enough to rise at his master's first move, but his foot
+stopped in mid air, in his anxiety to concentrate all his attention
+on his answer.
+
+"I am a man of few sentimentalities," he coldly averred.  "I have
+loved but one person in my whole life.  Why then should I be expected
+to mourn over a niece who did not care enough for me to invite me
+to her wedding?  It would be an affectation unworthy the man who has
+at last come to fill his rightful position in this community as the
+owner of the great Moore estate.  For great it shall be," he
+emphatically continued.  "In three years you will not know the house
+over yonder.  Despite its fancied ghosts and death-dealing fireplace,
+it will stand A Number One in Washington.  I, David Moore, promise you
+this; and I am not a man to utter fatuous prophecies.  But I must be
+missed over there."  Here he gave the mastiff the long delayed kick.
+"Rudge, stay here!  The vestibule opposite is icy.  Besides, your
+howls are not wanted in those old walls tonight even if you would go
+with me, which I doubt.  He has never been willing to cross to that
+side of the street," the old gentleman went on to complain, with his
+first show of irritation.  "But he'll have to overcome that prejudice
+soon, even if I have to tear up the old hearthstone and reconstruct
+the walls.  I can't live without Rudge, and I will not live in any
+other place than in the old home of my ancestors."
+
+I was by this time following him out.
+
+"You have failed to answer the suggestion I made you a minute
+since," I hazarded.  "Will you pardon me if I put it now as a
+question?  Your niece, Mrs. Jeffrey, seemed to have everything in
+the world to make her happy, yet she took her life.  Was there a
+taint of insanity in her blood, or was her nature so impulsive that
+her astonishing death in so revolting a place should awaken in you
+so little wonder?"
+
+A gleam of what had made him more or less feared by the very urchins
+who dogged his steps and made sport of him at a respectful distance
+shot from his eye as he glowered back at me from the open door.  But
+he hastily suppressed this sign of displeasure and replied with the
+faintest tinge of sarcasm:
+
+"There!  you are expecting from me feelings which belong to youth or
+to men of much more heart than understanding.  I tell you that I
+have no feelings.  My niece may have developed insanity or she may
+simply have drunk her cup of pleasure dry at twenty-two and come to
+its dregs prematurely.  I do not know and I do not care.  What
+concerns me is that the responsibility of a large fortune has fallen
+upon me most unexpectedly and that I have pride enough to wish to
+show myself capable of sustaining the burden.  Besides, they may be
+tempted to do some mischief to the walls or floors over there.  The
+police respect no man's property.  But I am determined they shall
+respect mine.  No rippings up or tearings down will I allow unless I
+stand by to supervise the job.  I am master of the old homestead now
+and I mean to show it."  And with a last glance at the dog, who
+uttered the most mournful of protests in reply, he shut the front
+door and betook himself to the other side of the street.
+
+As I noticed his assured bearing as he disappeared within the
+forbidding portal which, according to his own story, had for so long
+a time been shut against him, I asked myself if the candle which I
+had noticed lying on his mantel-shelf was of the same make and size
+as those I had found in my late investigations in the house he was
+then entering.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+GOSSIP
+
+
+Next morning the city was in a blaze of excitement.  All the burning
+questions of the hour - the rapid mobilization of the army and the
+prospect of a speedy advance on Cuba - were forgotten in the one
+engrossing topic of young Mrs. Jeffrey's death and the awful
+circumstances surrounding it.  Nothing else was in any one's mouth
+and but little else in any one's heart.  Her youth, her prominence,
+her union with a man of such marked attractions as Mr. Jeffrey, the
+tragedy connected with her marriage, thrown now into shadow by the
+still more poignant tragedy which had so suddenly terminated her
+own life, gave to the affair an interest which for those first
+twenty-four hours did not call for any further heightening by a
+premature suggestion of murder.
+
+Though I was the hero of the hour and, as such, subjected to an
+infinite number of questions, I followed the lead of my superiors
+in this regard and carefully refrained from advancing any theories
+beyond the obvious one of suicide.  The moment for self-exploitation
+was not ripe; I did not stand high enough in the confidence of the
+major, or, I may say, of the lieutenant of my own precinct, to risk
+the triumph I anticipated ultimately by a premature expression of
+opinion.
+
+I had an enemy at headquarters; or, rather, one of the men there
+had always appeared peculiarly interested in showing me up in the
+worst light.  The name of this man was Durbin, and it was he who
+had uttered something like a slighting remark when on that first
+night I endeavored to call the captain's attention to some of the
+small matters which had offered themselves to me in the light of
+clues.  Perhaps it was the prospect of surprising him some day
+which made me so wary now as well as so alert to fill my mind with
+all known facts concerning the Jeffreys.  One of my first acts was
+to turn over the files of the Star and reread the following account
+of the great wedding.  As it is a sensational description of a
+sensational event, I shall make no apology for the headlines which
+startled all Washington the night they appeared.
+
+"STARTLING TERMINATION OF THE JEFFREY-MOORE WEDDING.
+
+THE TRADITIONAL DOOM FOLLOWS THE OPENING OF
+THE OLD HOUSE ON WAVERLEY AVENUE.
+
+ONE OF THE GUESTS FOUND LYING DEAD ON THE LIBRARY HEARTHSTONE.
+
+LETTERS IN HIS POCKET SHOW HIM TO HAVE BEEN ONE W. PFEIFFER OF DENVER.
+
+NO INTERRUPTION TO THE CEREMONY FOLLOWS THIS GHASTLY DISCOVERY,
+BUT THE GUESTS FLY IN ALL DIRECTIONS AS SOON AS THE NUPTIAL KNOT IS TIED.
+
+"The festivities attendant upon the wedding of Miss Veronica Moore to
+Mr. Francis Jeffrey of this city met with a startling check to-day.
+As most of our readers know, the long-closed house on Waverley Avenue,
+which for nearly a century has been in possession of the bride's
+family, was opened for the occasion at the express wish of the bride.
+For a week the preparations for this great function have been going
+on.  When at an early hour this morning a line of carriages drew up
+in front of the historic mansion and the bridal party entered under
+its once gloomy but now seemingly triumphant portal, the crowds,
+which blocked the street from curb to curb, testified to the interest
+felt by the citizens of Washington in this daring attempt to brave
+the traditions which have marked this house out as solitary, and by
+a scene of joyous festivity make the past forgotten and restore
+again to usefulness the decayed grandeurs of an earlier time.  As
+Miss Moore is one of Washington's most charming women, and as this
+romantic effort naturally lent an extraordinary interest to the
+ceremony of her marriage, a  large number of our representative
+people assembled to witness it, and by high noon the scene was one
+of unusual brilliancy.
+
+"Halls which had moldered away in an unbroken silence for years
+echoed again with laughter and palpitated to the choicest strains
+of the Marine Band.  All doors were open save those of the library
+ - an exception which added a pleasing excitement to the occasion -
+and when by chance some of the more youthful guests were caught
+peering behind the two Corinthian pillars guarding these forbidden
+precincts the memories thus evoked were momentary and the shadow
+soon passed.
+
+"The wedding had been set for high noon, and as the clock in the
+drawing-room struck the hour every head was craned to catch the
+first glimpse of the bride coming down the old-fashioned staircase.
+But five minutes, ten minutes, a half-hour, passed without this
+expectation being gratified.  The crowd above and below was growing
+restless, when suddenly a cry was heard from beyond the gilded
+pillars framing the library door, and a young lady was seen rushing
+from the forbidden quarter, trembling with dismay and white with
+horror.  It was Miss Abbott of Stratford Circle, who in the interim
+of waiting had allowed her curiosity to master her dread, and by one
+peep into the room, which seemed to exercise over her the
+fascination of a Bluebeard's chamber, discovered the outstretched
+form of a man lying senseless and apparently dead on the edge of the
+hearthstone.  The terror which instantly spread amongst the guests
+shows the hold which superstition has upon all classes of humanity.
+Happily, however, an unseemly panic was averted, by the necessity
+which all felt of preserving some sort of composure till the ceremony
+for which they had assembled had been performed.  For simultaneously
+with this discovery of death in the library there had come from above
+the sound of the approaching bridal procession, and cries were hushed,
+and beating hearts restrained, as Miss Moore's charming face and
+exquisite figure appeared between the rows of flowering plants with
+which the staircase was lined.  No need for the murmur to go about,
+'Spare the bride!  Let nothing but cheer surround her till she is
+Jeffrey's wife!'  The look of joy which irradiated her countenance,
+and gave a fairy-like aspect to her whole exquisite person would
+have deterred the most careless and self-centered person there from
+casting a shadow across her pathway one minute sooner than necessity
+demanded.  The richness of the ancestral veil which covered her
+features and the natural timidity which prevents a bride from lifting
+her eyes from the floor she traverses saved her from observing the
+strange looks by which her presence was hailed.  She was consequently
+enabled to go through the ceremony in happy unconsciousness of the
+forced restraint which held that surging mass together.
+
+"But the bridesmaids were not so happy.  Miss Tuttle especially held
+herself upright simply by the exercise of her will; and though
+resplendent in `beauty, suffered so much in her anxiety for the
+bride that it was a matter of small surprise when she fainted at the
+conclusion of the ceremony.
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey showed more composure, but the inward excitement under
+which he was laboring made him trip more than once in his responses,
+as many there noted whose minds were not fixed too strongly on flight.
+
+"Only Doctor Auchincloss was quite himself, and by means of the
+solemnity with which he invested his words kept the hubbub down,
+which was already making itself heard on the outskirts of the crowd.
+But even his influence did not prevail beyond the moment devoted to
+the benediction.  Once the sacred words were said, such a stampede
+followed that the bride showed much alarm, and it was left for Mr.
+Jeffrey to explain to her the cause of this astonishing conduct on
+the part of her guests.  She bore the disclosure well, all things
+considered, and once she was fully assured that the unhappy man
+whose sudden death had thus interrupted the festivities was an
+intruder upon the scene, and quite unknown, not only to herself but
+to her newly-made husband, she brightened perceptibly, though, like
+every one around her, she seemed anxious to leave the house, and,
+indeed, did so as soon as Miss Tuttle's condition warranted it.
+
+"The fact that the bride went through the ceremony without her bridal
+bouquet is looked upon by many as an unfavorable omen.  In her
+anxiety not to impose any longer upon the patience of her guests, she
+had descended without it.
+
+"As to the deceased, but little is known of him.  Letters found on
+his person prove his name to be W. Pfeiffer, and his residence Denver.
+His presence in Miss Moores house at a time so inopportune is
+unexplained.  No such name is on the list of wedding guests, nor was
+he recognized as one of Miss Moore's friends either by Mr. Jeffrey
+or by such of her relatives and acquaintances as had the courage to
+enter the library to see him.
+
+"With the exception of the discolored mark on his temple, showing
+where his head had come in contact with the hearthstone, his body
+presents an appearance of natural robustness, which makes his sudden
+end seem all the more shocking.
+
+"His name has been found registered at the National Hotel."
+
+Turning over the files, I next came upon the following despatch from
+Denver:
+
+"The sudden death in Washington of Wallace Pfeiffer, one of our best
+known and most respected citizens, is deeply deplored by all who
+knew him and his unfortunate mother.  He is the last of her three
+sons, all of whom have died within the year.  The demise of Wallace
+leaves her entirely unprovided for.  It was not known here that Mr.
+Pfeiffer intended to visit Washington.  He was supposed to go in
+quite the opposite direction, having said to more than one that he
+had business in San Francisco.  His intrusion into the house of
+Miss Moore during the celebration of a marriage in which he could
+have taken no personal interest is explained in the following
+manner by such as knew his mental peculiarities:  Though a merchant
+by trade and latterly a miner in the Klondike, he had great
+interest in the occult and was a strong believer in all kinds of
+supernatural manifestations.  He may have heard of the unhappy
+reputation attaching to the Moore house in Washington and,
+fascinated by the mystery involved, embraced the opportunity
+afforded by open doors and the general confusion incident to so
+large a gathering to enter the interesting old place and investigate
+for himself the fatal library.  The fact of his having been found
+secluded in this very room, at a moment when every other person in
+the house was pushing forward to see the bride, lends color to this
+supposition; and his sudden death under circumstances tending to
+rouse the imagination shows the extreme sensitiveness of his nature.
+
+"He will be buried here."
+
+The next paragraph was short.  Fresher events were already crowding
+this three-days-old wonder to the wall.
+
+"Verdict in the case of Wallace Pfeiffer, found lying dead on the
+hearthstone of the old Moore house library.
+
+"Concussion of the brain, preceded by mental shock or heart failure.
+
+"The body went on to Denver to=day."
+
+And below, separated by the narrowest of spaces:
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Francis Jeffrey have decided to give up their wedding
+tour and spend their honeymoon in Washington.  They will occupy the
+Ransome house on K Street."
+
+The last paragraph brought me back to the question then troubling
+my mind.  Was it in the household of this newly married pair and in
+the possible secret passions underlying their union that one should
+look for the cause of the murderous crime I secretly imagined to be
+hidden behind this seeming suicide?  Or were these parties innocent
+and old David Moore the one motive power in precipitating a tragedy,
+the result of which had been to enrich him and impoverish them?
+Certainly, a most serious and important question, and one which any
+man might be pardoned for attempting to answer, especially if that
+man was a young detective lamenting his obscurity and dreaming of a
+recognition which would yield him fame and the wherewithal to marry
+a certain clever but mischievous little minx of whom you are
+destined to hear more.
+
+But how was that same young detective, hampered as he was, and held
+in thrall by a fear of ridicule and a total lack of record, to get
+the chance to push an inquiry requiring opportunities which could
+only come by special favor?  This was what I continually asked
+myself, and always without result.
+
+True, I might approach the captain or the major with my story of
+the tell-tale marks I had discovered in the dust covering the
+southwest chamber mantel-shelf, and, if fortunate enough to find
+that these had been passed over by the other detectives, seek to
+gain a hearing thereby and secure for myself the privileges I so
+earnestly desired.  But my egotism was such that I wished to be
+sure of the hand which had made these marks before I parted with
+a secret which, once told, would make or mar me.  Yet to obtain
+the slight concession of an interview with any of the principals
+connected with this crime would be difficult without the aid of
+one or both of my superiors.  Even to enter the house again where
+but a few hours before I had made myself so thoroughly at home
+would require a certain amount of pluck; for Durbin had been
+installed there, and Durbin was a watch-dog whose bite as well as
+his bark I regarded with considerable respect.  Yet into that
+house I must sooner or later go, if only to determine whether or
+not I had been alone in my recognition of certain clues pointing
+plainly toward murder.  Should I trust my lucky star and remain
+for the nonce quiescent?  This seemed a wise suggestion and I
+decided to adopt it, comforting myself with the thought that if
+after a day or two of modest waiting I failed in obtaining what I
+wished, I could then appeal to the lieutenant of my own precinct.
+He, I had sometimes felt assured, did not regard me with an
+altogether unfavorable eye.
+
+Meantime I spent all my available time in loitering around newspaper
+offices and picking up such stray bits of gossip as were offered.
+As no question had yet been raised of any more serious crime than
+suicide, these mostly related to the idiosyncrasies of the Moore
+family and the solitary position into which Miss Tuttle had been
+plunged by this sudden death of her only relative.  As this beautiful
+and distinguished young woman had been and still was a great belle
+in her special circle, her present homeless, if not penniless,
+position led to many surmises.  Would she marry, and, if so, to
+which of the many wealthy or prominent men who had openly courted
+her would she accord her hand?  In the present egotistic state of
+my mind I secretly flattered myself that I was right in concluding
+that she would say yes to no man's entreaty till a certain newly-made
+widower's year of mourning had expired.
+
+But this opinion received something of a check when in a quiet talk
+with a reporter I learned that it was openly stated by those who
+had courage to speak that the tie which had certainly existed at one
+time between Mr. Jeffrey and the handsome Miss Tuttle had been
+entirely of her own weaving, and that the person of Veronica Moore,
+rather than the large income she commanded, had been the attractive
+power which had led him away from the older sister.  This seemed
+improbable; for the charms of the poor little bride were not to be
+compared with those of her maturer sister.  Yet, as we all know,
+there are other attractions than those offered by beauty.  I have
+since heard it broadly stated that the peculiar twitch of the lip
+observable in all the Moores had proved an irresistible charm in
+the unfortunate Veronica, making her a radiant image when she
+laughed.  This was by no means a rare occurrence, so they said,
+before the fancy took her to be married in the ill-starred home of
+her ancestors.
+
+The few lines of attempted explanation which she had left behind
+for her husband seemed to impose on no one.  To those who knew the
+young couple well it was an open proof of her insanity; to those
+who knew them slightly, as well as to the public at large, it was
+a woman's way of expressing the disappointment she felt in her
+husband.
+
+That I might the more readily determine which of these two theories
+had the firmest basis in fact, I took advantage of an afternoon
+off and slipped away to Alexandria, where, I had been told, Mr.
+Jeffrey had courted his bride.  I wanted a taste of local gossip,
+you see, and I got it.  The air was fully charged with it, and being
+careful not to rouse antagonism by announcing myself a detective, I
+readily picked up many small facts.  Brought into shape and arranged
+in the form of a narrative, the result was as follows:
+
+John Judson Moore, the father of Veronica, had fewer oddities than
+the other members of this eccentric family.  It was thought, however,
+that he had shown some strain of the peculiar independence of his
+race when, in selecting a wife, he let his choice fall on a widow
+who was not only encumbered with a child, but who was generally
+regarded as the plainest woman in Virginia - he who might have had
+the pick of Southern beauty.  But when in the course of time this
+despised woman proved to be the possessor of those virtues and
+social graces which eminently fitted her to conduct the large
+establishment of which she had been made mistress, he was forgiven
+his lack of taste.  Little more was said of his peculiarities until,
+his wife having died and his child proved weakly, he made the will
+in his brother's favor which has since given that gentleman such
+deep satisfaction,.
+
+Why this proceeding should have been so displeasing to their friends
+report says not; but that it was so, is evident from the fact that
+great rejoicing took place on all sides when Veronica suddenly
+developed into a healthy child and the probability of David Moore's
+inheriting the coveted estate decreased to a minimum.  It was not a
+long rejoicing, however, for John Judson followed his wife to the
+grave before Veronica had reached her tenth year, leaving her and
+her half-sister, Cora, to the guardianship of a crabbed old bachelor
+who had been his father's lawyer.  This lawyer was morose and
+peevish, but he was never positively unkind.  For two years the
+sisters seemed happy enough when, suddenly and somewhat peremptorily,
+they were separated, Veronica being sent to a western school, where
+she remained, seemingly without a single visit east, till she was
+seventeen.  During this long absence Miss Tuttle resided in
+Washington, developing under masters into an accomplished woman.
+Veronica's guardian, severe in his treatment of the youthful owner
+of the large fortune of which he had been made sole executor, was
+unexpectedly generous to the penniless sister, hoping, perhaps, in
+his close, peevish old heart, that the charms and acquired graces
+of this lovely woman would soon win for her a husband in the
+brilliant set in which she naturally found herself.
+
+But Cora Tuttle was not easy to please, and the first men of
+Washington came and went before her eyes without awakening in her
+any special interest till she met Francis Jeffrey, who stole her
+heart with a look.
+
+Those who remember her that winter say that under his influence
+she developed from a handsome woman into a lovely one.  Yet no
+engagement was announced, and society was wondering what held
+Francis Jeffrey back from so great a prize, when Veronica Moore
+came home, and the question was forever answered.
+
+Veronica was now nearly eighteen, and during her absence had
+blossomed into womanhood.  She was not as beautiful as her sister,
+but she had a bright and pleasing expression with enough spice in
+her temperament to rob her girlish features of insipidity and make
+her conversation witty, if not brilliant.  Yet when Francis Jeffrey
+turned his attentions from Miss Tuttle and fixed them without
+reserve, or seeming shame, upon this pretty butterfly, but one
+term could be found to characterize the proceeding, and that was,
+fortune hunting.  Of small but settled income, he had hitherto shown
+a certain contentment with his condition calculated to inspire
+respect and make his attentions to Miss Tuttle seem both consistent
+and appropriate.  But no sooner did Veronica's bright eyes appear
+than he fell at the young heiress' feet and pressed his suit so
+close and fast that in two months they were engaged and at the end
+of the half-year, married - with the disastrous consequences just
+made known.
+
+So much for the general gossip of the town.  Now for the special.
+
+A certain gentleman, whom it is unnecessary to name, had been present
+at one critical instant in the lives of these three persons.  He was
+not a scandalmonger, and if everything had gone on happily, if
+Veronica had lived and Cora settled down into matrimony, he would
+never have mentioned what he heard and saw one night in the great
+drawing-room of a hotel in Atlantic City.
+
+It was at the time when the engagement was first announced between
+Jeffrey and the young heiress.  This and his previous attentions to
+Cora had made much talk, both in Washington and elsewhere, and there
+were not lacking those who had openly twitted him for his seeming
+inconstancy.  This had been over the cups of course, and Jeffrey
+had borne it well enough from his so-called friends and intimates.
+But when, on a certain evening in the parlor of one of the large
+hotels in Atlantic City, a fellow whom nobody knew and nobody liked
+accused him of knowing on which side his bread was buttered, and
+that certainly it was not on the side of beauty and superior
+attainments, Jeffrey got angry.  Heedless of who might be within
+hearing, he spoke up very plainly in these words: "You are all of a
+kind, rank money-worshipers and self-seeker, or you would not be so
+ready to see greed in my admiration for Miss Moore.  Disagreeable
+as I find it to air my sentiments in this public manner, yet since
+you provoke me to it, I will say once and for all, that I am ,deeply
+in love with Miss Moore, and that it is for this reason only I am
+going to marry her.  Were she the penniless girl her sister is, and
+Miss Tuttle the proud possessor of the wealth which, in ,your eyes,
+confers such distinction upon Miss Moore, you would still see me at
+the latter's feet, and at hers only.  Miss Tuttle's charms are not
+potent enough to hold the heart which has once been fixed by her
+sister's smile."
+
+This was pointed enough, certainly, but when at the conclusion of
+his words a tall figure rose from a year corner and Cora Tuttle
+passed the amazed group with a bow, I dare warrant that not one of
+the men composing it but wished himself a hundred miles away.
+
+Jeffrey himself was chagrined, and made a move to follow the woman
+he had so publicly scorned, but the look she cast back at him was
+one to remember, and he hesitated.  What was there left for him to
+say, or even to do?  The avowal had been made in all its bald
+frankness and nothing could alter it.  As for her, she behaved
+beautifully, and by no word or look, so far as the world knew, ever
+showed that her woman's pride, if not her heart, had been cut to
+the quick, by the one man she adored.
+
+With this incident filling my mind, I returned to Washington.  I
+had acquainted myself with the open facts of this family's history;
+but what of its inner life?  Who knew it?  Did any one?  Even the
+man who confided to me the contretemps in the hotel parlor could not
+be sure what underlay Mr. Jeffrey's warm advocacy of the woman he
+had elected to marry.  He could not even be certain that he had
+really understood the feeling shown by Cora Tuttle when she heard
+the man, who had once lavished attentions on her, express in this
+public manner a preference for her sister.  A woman has great
+aptness in concealing a mortal hurt, and, from what I had seen of
+this one, I thought it highly improbable that all was quiet in her
+passionate breast because she had turned an impassive front to the
+world.
+
+I was becoming confused in the maze of my own imaginings.  To escape
+the results of this confusion, I determined to drop theory and
+confine myself to facts.
+
+And thus passed the first few days succeeding the tragic discovery
+in the Moore house.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SLY WORK
+
+
+The next morning my duty led me directly in the way of that little
+friend of mine whom I have already mentioned.  It is strange how
+often my duty did lead me in her way.
+
+She is a demure little creature, with wits as bright 1s her eyes,
+which is saying a great deal; and while, in the course of our long
+friendship, I had admired without making use of the special abilities
+I saw in her, I felt that the time had now come when they might
+prove of inestimable value to me.
+
+Greeting her with pardonable abruptness, I expressed my wishes in
+these possibly alarming words:
+
+"Jinny, you can do something for me.  Find out - I know you can,
+and that, too, without arousing suspicion or compromising either of
+us - where Mr. Moore, of Waverley Avenue, buys his groceries, and
+when you have done that, whether or not he has lately resupplied
+himself with candles."
+
+The surprise which she showed had a touch of naivete in it which
+was very encouraging.
+
+"Mr. Moore?" she cried, "the uncle of her who - who -"
+
+"The very same," I responded, and waited for her questions without
+adding a single word in way of explanation.
+
+She gave me a look - oh, what a look! It was as encouraging to the
+detective as it was welcome to the lover; after which she nodded,
+once in doubt, once in question and once in frank and laughing
+consent, and darted off.
+
+I thanked Providence for such a self-contained little aide-decamp
+and proceeded on my way, in a state of great self-satisfaction.
+
+An hour later I came upon her again.  It is really extraordinary
+how frequently the paths of some people cross.
+
+"Well?" I asked.
+
+"Mr. Moore deals with Simpkins, just two blocks away from his house;
+and only a week ago he bought some candles there."
+
+I rewarded her with a smile which summoned into view the most
+exasperating of dimples.
+
+"You had better patronize Simpkins yourself for a little while," I
+suggested; and by the arch glance with which my words were received,
+I perceived that my meaning was fully understood.
+
+Experiencing from this moment an increased confidence, not only in
+the powers of my little friend, but in the line of investigation
+thus happily established, I cast about for means of settling the
+one great question which was a necessary preliminary to all future
+action:  Whether the marks detected by me in the dust of the mantel
+in the southwest chamber had been made by the hand of him who had
+lately felt the need of candles, albeit his house appeared to be
+fully lighted by gas?
+
+The subterfuge by which, notwithstanding my many disadvantages, I
+was finally enabled to obtain unmistakable answer to this query was
+the fruit of much hard thought.  Perhaps I was too proud of it.
+Perhaps I should have mistrusted myself more from the start.  But
+I was a great egotist in those days, and reckoned quite above their
+inherent worth any bright ideas which I could safely call my own.
+
+The point aimed at was this: to obtain without Moore's knowledge an
+accurate impression of his finger-tips.
+
+The task presented difficulties, but these served duly to increase
+my ardor.
+
+Confiding to the lieutenant of the precinct my great interest in
+the mysterious house with whose suggestive interior I had made
+myself acquainted under such tragic circumstances, I asked  him as
+a personal favor to obtain for me an opportunity of spending another
+night there.
+
+He was evidently surprised by the request, not cherishing, as I
+suppose, any great longings himself in this direction; but
+recognizing that for some reason I set great store on this
+questionable privilege, - I do not think that he suspected in the
+least what that reason was, - and being, as I have intimated,
+favorably disposed to me, he exerted himself to such good effect
+that I was formally detailed to assist in keeping watch over the
+premises that very night.
+
+I think that it was at this point I began to reckon on the success
+which, after many failures and some mischances, was yet to reward
+my efforts.
+
+As I prepared to enter the old house at nightfall, I allowed myself
+one short glance across the way to see if my approach had been
+observed by the man whose secret, if secret he had, I was laying
+plans to surprise.  I was met by a sight I had not expected.  Pausing
+on the pavement in front of me stood a handsome elderly gentleman
+whose appearance was so fashionable and thoroughly up to date, that
+I should have failed to recognize him if my glance had not taken in
+at the same instant the figure of Rudge crouching obstinately on the
+edge of the curb where he had evidently posted himself in distinct
+refusal to come any farther.  In vain his master, - for the
+well-dressed man before me was no less a personage than the whilom
+butt of all the boys between the Capitol and the Treasury building,
+ - signaled and commanded him to cross to his side; nothing could
+induce the mastiff to budge from that quarter of the street where
+he felt himself safe.
+
+Mr. Moore, glorying in the prospect of unlimited wealth, presented
+a startling contrast in more ways than one to the poverty-stricken
+old man whose curious garb and lonely habits had made him an object
+of ridicule to half the town.  I own that I was half amused and
+half awed by the condescending bow with which he greeted my offhand
+nod and the affable way in which he remarked:
+
+"You are making use of your prerogatives as a member of the police,
+I see."
+
+The words came as easily from his lips as if his practice in
+affability had been of the very longest.
+
+"I wonder how the old place enjoys its present distinction," he
+went on, running his eye over the dilapidated walls under which we
+stood, with very evident pride in their vast proportions and the air
+of gloomy grandeur which signalized them.  "If it partakes in the
+slightest degree of the feelings of its owner, I can vouch for its
+impatience at the free use which is made of its time-worn rooms and
+halls.  Are these intrusions necessary?  Now that Mrs. Jeffrey's
+body has been removed, do you feel that the scene of her demise need
+hold the attention of the police any longer?"
+
+"That is a question to put to the superintendent and not to me," was
+my deprecatory reply.  "The major has issued no orders for the watch
+to be taken off, so we men have no choice.  I am sorry if it offends
+you.  Doubtless a few days will end the matter and the keys will be
+given into your hand.  I suppose you are anxious to move in?"
+
+He cast a glance behind him at his dog, gave a whistle which passed
+unheeded, and replied with dignity, if but little heart:
+
+"When a man has passed his seventh decade he is not apt to be so
+patient with delay as when he has a prospect of many years before
+him.  I am anxious to enter my own house, yes; I have much to do
+there."
+
+I came very near asking him what, but feared to seem too familiar,
+in case he was the cold but upright man he would fain appear, and
+too interested and inquiring if he were the whited sepulcher I
+secretly considered him.  So with a nod a trifle more pronounced
+than if I had been unaffected by either hypothesis, I remounted the
+steps, carelessly remarking:
+
+"I'll see you again after taking a turn through the house.  If I
+discover anything - ghost marks or human marks which might be of
+interest to you - I'll let you know."
+
+Something like a growl answered me.  But whether it came from master
+or dog, I did not stop to inquire.  I had serious work before me;
+very serious, considering that it was to be done on my own
+responsibility and without the knowledge of my superiors.  But I
+was sustained by the thought that no whisper of murder had as yet
+been heard abroad or at headquarters, and that consequently I was
+interfering in no great case; merely trying to formulate one.
+
+It was necessary, for the success of my plan, that some time should
+elapse before I reapproached Mr. Moore.  I therefore kept my word to
+him and satisfied my own curiosity by taking a fresh tour through the
+house.  Naturally, in doing this, I visited the library.  Here all
+was dark.  The faint twilight still illuminating the streets failed
+to penetrate here.  I was obliged to light my lantern.
+
+My first glance was toward the fireplace.  Venturesome hands had
+been there.  Not only had, the fender been drawn out and the grate
+set aside, but the huge settle had been wrenched free from the mantel
+and dragged into the center of the room.  Rather pleased at this
+change, for with all my apparent bravado I did not enjoy too close a
+proximity to the cruel hearthstone, I stopped to give this settle a
+thorough investigation.  The result was disappointing.  To all
+appearance and I did not spare it the experiment of many a thump and
+knock - it was a perfectly innocuous piece of furniture, clumsy of
+build, but solid and absolutely devoid of anything that could explain
+the tragedies which had occurred so near it.  I even sat down on its
+musty old cushion and shut my eyes, but was unrewarded by alarming
+visions, or disturbance of any sort.  Nor did the floor where it had
+stood yield any better results to the inquiring eye.  Nothing was to
+be seen there but the marks left by the removal of its base from the
+blackened boards.
+
+Disgusted with myself, if not with this object of my present
+disappointment, I left that portion of the room in which it stood
+and crossed to where I had found the little table on the night of
+Mrs. Jeffrey's death.  It was no longer there.  It had been set back
+against the wall where it properly belonged, and the candelabrum
+removed.  Nor was the kitchen chair any longer to be seen near the
+book shelves.  This fact, small as it was, caused me an instant of
+chagrin.  I had intended to look again at the book which I had
+examined with such unsatisfactory results the time before.  A glance
+showed me that this book had been pushed back level with the others;
+but I remembered its title, and, had the means of reaching it been
+at hand, I should certainly have stolen another peep at it.
+
+Upstairs I found the same signs of police interference.  The shutter
+had been fastened in the southwest room, and the bouquet and wrap
+taken away from the bed.  The handkerchief, also, was missing from
+the mantel where I had left it, and when I opened the closet door,
+it was to find the floor bare and the second candelabrum and candle
+removed.
+
+"All gone," thought I; "each and every clue."
+
+But I was mistaken.  In another moment I came upon the minute filings
+I had before observed scattered over a small stand.  Concluding from
+this that they had been passed over by Durbin and his associates as
+valueless, I swept them, together with the dust in which they lay,
+into an old envelope I happily found in my pocket.  Then I crossed to
+the mantel and made a close inspection of its now empty shelf.  The
+scratches which I had made there were visible enough, but the
+impressions for which they stood had vanished in the handling which
+everything in the house had undergone.  Regarding with great
+thankfulness the result of my own foresight, I made haste to leave
+the room.  I then proceeded to take my first steps in the ticklish
+experiment by which I hoped to determine whether Uncle David had had
+any share in the fatal business which had rendered the two rooms I
+had just visited so memorable.
+
+First, satisfying myself by a peep through the front drawing-room
+window that he was positively at watch behind the vines, I went
+directly to the kitchen, procured a chair and carried it into the
+library, where I put it to a use that, to an onlooker's eye, would
+have appeared very peculiar.  Planting it squarely on the hearthstone,
+ - not without some secret perturbation as to what the results might
+be to myself, - I mounted it and took down the engraving which I have
+already described as hanging over this mantelpiece.
+
+Setting it on end against one of the jambs of the fireplace, I
+mounted the chair once more and carefully sifted over the high shelf
+the contents of a little package which I had brought with me for this
+purpose.
+
+Then, leaving the chair where it was, I betook myself out of the front
+door, ostentatiously stopping to lock it and to put the key in my
+pocket.
+
+Crossing immediately to Mr. Moore's side of the street, I encountered
+him as I had expected to do, at his own gateway.
+
+"Well, what now?" he inquired, with the same exaggerated courtesy I
+had noticed in him on a previous occasion.  "You have the air of a
+man bringing news.  Has anything fresh happened in the old house?"
+
+I assumed a frankness which seemed to impose on him.
+
+"Do you know," I sententiously informed him, "I have a wonderful
+interest in that old hearthstone; or rather in the seemingly innocent
+engraving hanging over it, of Benjamin Franklin at the Court of
+France.  I tell you frankly that I had no idea of what would be found
+behind the picture."
+
+I saw, by his quick look, that I had stirred up a hornets' nest.
+This was just what I had calculated to do.
+
+"Behind it!" he repeated.  "There is nothing behind it."
+
+I laughed, shrugged my shoulders, and backed slowly toward the door.
+
+"Of course, you should know," I retorted, with some condescension.
+Then, as if struck by a sudden remembrance: "Oh, by the way, have
+you been told that there is a window on that lower floor which does
+not stay fastened?  I speak of it that you may have it repaired as
+soon as the police vacate.  It's the last one in the hall leading
+to the negro quarters.  If you shake it hard enough, the catch falls
+back and any one can raise it even from the outside."
+
+"I will see to it," he replied, dropping his eyes, possibly to hide
+their curious twinkle.  "But what do you mean about finding something
+in the wall behind that old picture?  I've never heard"
+
+But though he spoke quickly and shouted the last words after me at
+the top of his voice, I was by this time too far away to respond
+save by a dubious smile and a semi-patronizing wave of the hand.  Not
+until I was nearly out of earshot did I venture to shout back the
+following words:
+
+"I'll be back in an hour.  If anything happens - if the boys annoy
+you, or any one attempts to enter the old house, telephone to the
+station or summon the officer at the corner.  I don't believe any
+harm will come from leaving the place to itself for a while."  Then
+I walked around the block.
+
+When I arrived in front again it was quite dark.  So was the house;
+but there was light in the library.  I felt assured that I should
+find Uncle David there, and I did.  When, after a noiseless entrance
+and a careful advance through the hall, I threw open the door beyond
+the gilded pillars, it was to see the tall figure of this old man
+mounted upon the chair I had left there, peering up at the nail from
+which I had so lately lifted the picture.  He started as I presented
+myself and almost fell from the chair.  But the careless laugh I
+uttered assured him of the little importance I placed upon this
+evidence of his daring and unappeasable curiosity, and he confronted
+me with an enviable air of dignity; whereupon I managed to say:
+
+"Really, Mr. Moore, I'm glad to see you here.  It is quite natural
+for you to wish to learn by any means in your power what that picture
+concealed.  I came back, because I suddenly remembered that I had
+forgotten to rehang it"
+
+Involuntarily he glanced again at the wall overhead, which was as
+bare as his hand, save for the nail he had already examined.
+
+"It has concealed nothing," he retorted.  "You can see yourself that
+the wall is bare and that it rings as sound as any chimneypiece ever
+made."  Here he struck it heavily with his fist.  "What did you
+imagine that you had found?"
+
+I smiled, shrugged my shoulders in tantalizing repetition of my
+former action upon a like occasion and then answered brusquely:
+
+"I did not come back to betray police secrets, but to restore this
+picture to its place.  Or perhaps you prefer to have it down rather
+than up?  It isn't much of an ornament"
+
+He scrutinized me darkly from over his shoulder, a wary gleam showing
+itself in his shrewd old eyes; and the idea crossed me that the
+moment might possess more significance than appeared.  But I did not
+step backward, nor give evidence in any way that I had even thought
+of danger.  I simply laid my hand on the picture and looked up at him
+for orders.
+
+He promptly signified that he wished it hung, adding as I hesitated
+these words: "The pictures in this house are supposed to stay on the
+walls where they belong.  There is a traditional superstition against
+removing them."
+
+I immediately lifted the print from the floor.  No doubt he had me
+at a disadvantage, if evil was in his heart, and my position on the
+hearth was as dangerous as previous events had proved it to be.  But
+it would not do to show the white feather at a moment when his fate,
+if not my own, hung in the balance; so motioning him to step down,
+I put foot on the chair and raised the picture aloft to hang it.  As
+I did so, he moved over to the huge settle of his ancestors, and,
+crossing his arms over its back, surveyed me with a smile I rather
+imagined than saw.
+
+Suddenly, as I strained to put the cord over the nail he called out:
+
+"Look out! you'll fall."
+
+If he had intended to give me a start in payment for my previous
+rebuff he did not succeed; for my nerves had grown steady and my arm
+firm at the glimpse I had caught of the shelf below me.  The fine
+brown powder I had scattered there had been displaced in five distinct
+spots, and not by my fingers.  I had preferred to risk the loss of my
+balance, rather than rest my hand on the shelf, but he had taken no
+such precaution.  The clue I so anxiously desired and for which I had
+so recklessly worked, was obtained.
+
+But when half an hour later I found an opportunity of measuring these
+marks and comparing them with those upstairs, I did not enjoy the full
+triumph I had promised myself.  For the two impressions utterly failed
+to coincide, thus proving that whoever the person was who had been in
+this house with Mrs. Jeffrey on the evening she died, it was not her
+uncle David.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+SLYER WOES
+
+
+Let me repeat.  The person who had left the marks of his presence
+in the upper chamber of the Moore house was not the man popularly
+known as Uncle David.  Who, then, had it been?  But one name
+suggested itself to me, - Mr. Jeffrey.
+
+It was not so easy for me to reach this man as it had been for me
+to reach his singular and unimaginative uncle.  In the first place,
+his door had been closed to every one since his wife's death.
+Neither friends nor strangers could gain admittance there unless
+they came vested with authority from the coroner.  And this, even
+if I could manage to obtain it, would not answer in my case.  What
+I had to say and do would better follow a chance encounter.  But
+no chance encounter with this gentleman seemed likely to fall to
+my lot, and finally I swallowed my pride and asked another favor
+of the lieutenant.  Would he see that I was given an opportunity
+for carrying some message, or of doing some errand which would lead
+to my having an interview with Mr. Jeffrey?  If he would, I stood
+ready to promise that my curiosity should stop at this point and
+that I would cease to make a nuisance of myself.
+
+I think he suspected me by this time; but he made no remark, and in
+a day or so I was summoned to carry a note to the house in K Street.
+
+Mrs. Jeffrey's funeral had taken place the day before and the house
+looked deserted.  But my summons speedily brought a neat-looking,
+but very nervous maid to the door, whose eyes took on an unmistakable
+expression of resistance when I announced my errand and asked to see
+Mr. Jeffrey.  The expression would not have struck me as peculiar
+if she had raised any objection to the interview I had solicited.
+But she did not.  Her fear and antipathy, consequently, sprang from
+some other source than her interest in the man most threatened by
+my visit.  Was it-could it be, on her own account?  Recalling what
+I had heard whispered about the station concerning a maid of the
+Jeffreys who always seemed on the point of saying something which
+never really left her lips, I stopped her as she was about to slip
+upstairs and quietly asked:
+
+"Are you Loretta?"
+
+The way she turned, the way she looked at me as she gave me a short
+affirmative, and then quickly proceeded on her way, convinced me
+that my colleagues were right as to her being a woman who had some
+cause for dreading police interference.  I instantly made up my mind
+that here was a mine to be worked and that I knew just the demure
+little soul best equipped to act the part of miner.
+
+In a moment she came back, and I had a chance to note again her
+pretty but expressionless features, among which the restless eyes
+alone bespoke character or decision.
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey is in the back room upstairs," she announced.  "He
+says for you to come up."
+
+"Is it the room Mrs. Jeffrey used to occupy?" I asked with open
+curiosity, as I passed her.
+
+An involuntary shudder proved that she was not without feeling.
+So did the quick disclaimer:
+
+"No, no!  Those rooms are closed.  He occupies the one Miss Tuttle
+had before she went away."
+
+"Oh, then, Miss Tuttle is gone?"
+
+Loretta disdained to answer.  She had already said enough to cause
+her to bite her lip as she disappeared down the basement stair.
+Decidedly the boys were right.  An uneasy feeling followed any
+conversation with this girl.  Yet, while there was slyness in her
+manner, there was a certain frank honesty visible in it too, which
+caused me to think that if she could ever be made to speak, her
+evidence could be relied on.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey was sitting with his back to the door when I entered,
+but turned as I spoke his name and held out his hand for the note
+I carried.  I had no expectation of his remembering me as one of
+the men who had stood about that night in the Moore house, and I
+was not disappointed.  To him I was merely a messenger, or common
+policeman; and he consequently paid me no attention, while I
+bestowed upon him the most concentrated scrutiny of my whole life.
+Till now I had seen him only in half lights, or under circumstances
+precluding my getting a very accurate idea of him as a man and a
+gentleman.  Now he sat with the broad daylight on his face, and I
+had every opportunity for noting both his features and expression.
+He was of a distinguished type; but the cloud enshrouding him was
+as heavy as any I had ever seen darkening about a man of his
+position and character.  His manner, fettered though it was by
+gloomy thoughts, was not just the manner I had expected to encounter.
+
+He had a large, clear eye, but the veil which hid the brightness of
+his regard was misty with suspicion, not with tears.  He appeared
+to shrink from observation, and shifted uneasily as long as I stood
+in front of him, though he said nothing and did not lift his eyes
+from the letter he was perusing till he heard me step back to the
+door I had purposely left open and softly close it.  Then he glanced
+up, with a keen, if not an alarmed look, which seemed an exaggerated
+one for the occasion, - that is, if he had no secret to keep.
+
+"Do you suffer so from drafts?" he asked, rising in a way which in
+itself was a dismissal.
+
+I smiled an amused denial, then with the simple directness I thought
+most likely to win me his confidence, entered straight upon my
+business in these plain words:
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Jeffrey, I have something to say which is not exactly
+fitted for the ears of servants."  Then, as he pushed his chair
+suddenly back, I added reassuringly: "It is not a police matter, sir,
+but an entirely personal one.  It may strike you as important, and it
+may not.  Mr. Jeffrey, I was the man who made the unhappy discovery in
+the Moore mansion, which has plunged this house into mourning."
+
+This announcement startled him and produced a visible change in his
+manner.  His eyes flew first to one door and then to another, as if
+it were he who feared intrusion now.
+
+"I beg your pardon for speaking on so painful a topic," I went on,
+as soon as I saw he was ready to listen to me.  "My excuse is that
+I came upon a little thing that same night which I have not thought
+of sufficient importance to mention to any one else, but which it
+may interest you to hear about."
+
+Here I took from a book I held, a piece of blotting-paper.  It was
+white on one side and blue on the other.  The white side I had
+thickly chalked, though this was not apparent.  Laying down this
+piece of blotting-paper, chalked side up, on the end of a large table
+near which we were standing, I took out an envelope from my pocket,
+and, shaking it gently to and fro, remarked:
+
+"In an upper room of the Moore house - you remember the southwest
+chamber, sir?"
+
+Ali! didn't he!  There was no misdoubting the quick emotion - the
+shrinking and the alarm with which he heard this room mentioned.
+
+"It was in that room that I found these."
+
+Tipping up the envelope, I scattered over the face of the blotter
+a few of the glistening particles I had collected from the place
+mentioned.
+
+He bent over them, astonished.  Then, as was natural, brushed them
+together in a heap with the tips of his fingers, and leaned to look
+again, just as I breathed a heavy sigh which scattered them far and
+wide.
+
+Instinctively, he withdrew his hand; whereupon I embraced the
+opportunity of turning the blotter over, uttering meanwhile the
+most profuse apologies.  Then, as if anxious not to repeat my
+misadventure, I let the blotter lie where it was, and pouring out
+the few remaining particles into my palm, I held them toward the
+light in such a way that he was compelled to lean across the table
+in order to see them.  Naturally, for I had planned the distance
+well, his finger-tips, white with the chalk he had unconsciously
+handled, touched the blue surface of the blotter now lying uppermost
+and left their marks there.
+
+I could have shouted in my elation at the success of this risky
+maneuver, but managed to suppress my emotion, and to stand quite
+still while he took a good look at the filings.  They seemed to have
+great and unusual interest for him and it was with no ordinary
+emotion that he finally asked:
+
+"What do you make out of these, and why do you bring them here?"
+
+My answer was written under his hand; but this it was far from my
+policy to impart.  So putting on my friendliest air, I returned,
+with suitable respect:
+
+"I don't know what to make of them.  They look like gold; but that
+is for you to decide.  Do you want them, sir?"
+
+"No," he replied, starting erect and withdrawing his hand from the
+blotter.  "It's but a trifle, not worth our attention.  But I
+thank you just the same for bringing it to my notice."
+
+And again his manner became a plain dismissal.
+
+This time I accepted it as such without question.  Carelessly
+restoring the piece of blotting-paper to the book from which I had
+taken it, I made a bow and withdrew toward the door.  He seemed to
+be thinking, and the deep furrows which I am sure had been lacking
+from his brow a week previous, became startlingly visible.  Finally
+he observed:
+
+"Mrs. Jeffrey was not in her right mind when she so unhappily took
+her life.  I see now that the change in her dates back to her
+wedding day, consequently any little peculiarity she may have shown
+at that time is not to be wondered at."
+
+"Certainly not," I boldly ventured; "if such peculiarities were
+shown after the fright given her by the catastrophe which took place
+in the library."
+
+His eyes, which were fixed on mine, flashed, and his hands closed
+convulsively.
+
+"We will not consider the subject," he muttered, reseating himself
+in the chair from which he had risen.
+
+I bowed again and went out.  I did not dwell on the interview in my
+own mind nor did I allow myself to draw any conclusions from it,
+till I had carried the blotter into the southwest chamber of the
+Moore house and carefully compared the impressions made on it with
+the marks I had scratched on the surface of the mantel-shelf.  This
+I did by laying the one over the other, after having made holes
+where his finger-tips had touched the blotter.
+
+The holes in the blotter and the marks outlined upon the shelf
+coincided exactly.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+JINNY
+
+
+I have already mentioned the man whom I secretly looked upon as
+standing between me and all preferment.  He was a good-looking
+fellow, but he wore a natural sneer which for some reason I felt to
+be always directed toward myself.  This sneer grew pronounced about
+this time, and that was the reason, no doubt, why I continued to
+work as long as I did in secret.  I dreaded the open laugh of this
+man, a laugh which always seemed hovering on his lips and which was
+only held in restraint by the awe we all felt of the major.
+
+Notwithstanding, I made one slight move.  Encountering the
+deputy-coroner, I ventured to ask if he was quite satisfied with
+the evidence collected in the Jeffrey case.
+
+His surprise did not prevent him from asking my reasons for this
+question.
+
+I replied to this effect:
+
+"Because I have a little friend, winsome enough and subtle enough
+to worm the truth out of the devil.  I hear that the girl Loretta
+is suspected of knowing more about this unfortunate tragedy than
+she is willing to impart.  If you wish this little friend of mine
+to talk to her, I will see that she does so and does so with effect."
+
+The deputy-coroner looked interested.
+
+"Whom do you mean by `little friend' and what is her name?"
+
+"I will send her to you."
+
+And I did.
+
+The next day I was standing on the corner of Vermont Avenue when I
+saw Jinny advancing from the house in K Street.  She was chipper,
+and she was smiling in a way which made me say to myself:
+
+"It is fortunate that Durbin is not here."
+
+For Jinny's one weakness is her lack of power to hide the
+satisfaction she takes in any detective work that comes her way.
+I had told her of this and had more than once tried to impress
+upon her that her smile was a complete give-away, but I noticed
+that if she kept it from her lips, it forced its way out of her
+eyes, and if she kept it out of her eyes, it beamed like an inner
+radiance from her whole face.  So I gave up the task of making her
+perfect and let her go on smiling, glad that she had such frequent
+cause for it.
+
+This morning her smile had a touch of pride in it as well as of
+delight, and noting this, I remarked:
+
+"You have made Loretta talk."
+
+Her head went up and a demure dimple appeared in her cheek.
+
+"What did she say?" I urged.  "What has she been keeping back?"
+
+"You will have to ask the coroner.  My orders were strict to bring
+the results of my interview immediately to him."
+
+"Does that include Durbin?"
+
+"Does it include you?"
+
+"I am afraid not."
+
+"You are right; but why shouldn't it include you?"
+
+"What do you mean, Jinny ?"
+
+"Why do you keep your own counsel so long?  You have ideas about
+this crime, I know.  Why not mention them?"
+
+"Jinny!"
+
+"A word to the wise is sufficient;" she laughed and turned her
+pretty face toward the coroner's once.  But she was a woman and
+could not help glancing back, and, meeting my dubious look, she
+broke into an arch smile and naively added this remark: "Loretta
+is a busybody ashamed of her own curiosity.  So much there can be
+no harm in telling you.  When one's knowledge has been gained by
+lingering behind doors and peeping through cracks, one is not so
+ready to say what one has seen and heard.  Loretta is in that box,
+and being more than a little scared of the police, was glad to let
+her anxiety and her fears overflow into a sympathizing ear.  Won't
+she be surprised when she is called up some fine day by the coroner!
+I wonder if she will blame me for it?"
+
+"She will never think of doing so," I basely assured my little
+friend, with an appreciative glance at her sparkling eye and dimpled
+cheek.
+
+The arch little creature started to move off again.  As she did so,
+she cried: "Be good, and don't let Durbin cut in on you;" but stopped
+for the second time when half across the street, and when, obedient
+to her look, I hastily rejoined her, she whispered demurely: "Oh, I
+forgot to tell you something that I heard this morning, and which
+nobody but yourself has any right to know.  I was following your
+commands and buying groceries at Simpkins', when just as I was coming
+out with my arms full, I heard old Mr. Simpkins mention Mr. Jeffrey's
+name and with such interest that I naturally wanted to hear what he
+had to say.  Having no real excuse for staying, I poked my finger
+into a bag of sugar I was carrying, till the sugar ran out and I had
+to wait till it was put up again.  This did not take long, but it
+took long enough for me to hear the old grocer say that he knew Mr.
+Jeffrey, and that that gentleman had come into his shop only a day
+or two before his wife's death, to buy - candles!"
+
+The archness with which this was said, together with the fact itself,
+made me her slave forever.  As her small figure faded from sight
+down the avenue, I decided to take her advice and follow up whatever
+communication she had to make to the coroner by a confession of my
+own suspicions and what they had led me into.  If he laughed - well,
+I could stand it.  It was not the coroner's laugh, nor even the
+major's, that I feared; it was Durbin's.
+
+X
+
+FRANCIS JEFFREY
+
+Jinny had not been gone an hour from the coroner's office when an
+opportunity was afforded for me to approach that gentleman myself.
+
+With few apologies and no preamble, I immediately entered upon my
+story which I made as concise and as much to the point as possible.
+I did not expect praise from him, but I did look for some slight
+show of astonishment at the nature of my news.  I was therefore
+greatly disappointed, when, after a moment's quiet consideration,
+he carelessly remarked:
+
+"Very good!  very good!  The one point you make is excellent and
+may prove of use to us.  We had reached the same conclusion, but
+by another road.  You ask, 'Who blew out the candle?'  We, 'Who
+tied the pistol to Mrs. Jeffrey's arm?'  It could not have been
+tied by herself.  Who was her accessory then?  Ah, you didn't think
+of that."
+
+I flushed as if a pail of hot water had been dashed suddenly over
+me.  He was right.  The conclusion he spoke of had failed to strike
+me.  Why?  It was a perfectly obvious one, as obvious as that the
+candle had been blown out by another breath than hers; yet,
+absorbed in my own train of thought, I had completely overlooked
+it.  The coroner observing my embarrassment, smiled, and my
+humiliation was complete or would have been had Durbin been there,
+but fortunately he was not.
+
+"I am a fool," I cried.  "I thought I had discovered something.  I
+might have known that there were keener minds than mine in this
+office -"
+
+"Easy!  easy!" was the good-natured interruption.  "You have done
+well.  If I did not think so, I would not keep you here a minute.
+As it is, I am disposed to let you see that in a case like this,
+one man must not expect to monopolize all the honors.  This matter
+of the bow of ribbon would strike any old and experienced official.
+I only wonder that we have not seen it openly discussed in the
+papers."
+
+Taking a box from his desk, he opened it and held it out toward me.
+A coil of white ribbon surmounted by a crisp and dainty bow met my
+eyes.
+
+"You recognize it?" he asked.
+
+Indeed I did.
+
+"It was cut from her wrist by my deputy.  Miss Tuttle wished him to
+untie it, but he preferred to leave the bow intact.  Now lift it out.
+Careful, man, don't soil it; you will see why in a minute."
+
+As I held the ribbon up, he pointed to some spots on its fresh white
+surface.  "Do you see those?" he asked.  "Those are dust-marks, and
+they were made as truly by some one's fingers, as the impressions
+you noted on the mantel-shelf in the upper chamber.  This pistol was
+tied to her wrist after the deed; possibly by that same hand."
+
+It was my own conclusion but it did not sound as welcome to me from
+his lips as I had expected.  Either my nature is narrow, or my
+inordinate jealousy lays me open to the most astonishing
+inconsistencies; for no sooner had he spoken these words than I
+experienced a sudden revulsion against my own theory and the
+suspicions which it threw upon the man whom an hour before I was
+eager to proclaim a criminal.
+
+But Coroner Z. gave me no chance for making such a fool of myself.
+Rescuing the ribbon from my hands, which no doubt were running a
+little too freely over its snowy surface, he smiled with the
+indulgence proper from such a man to a novice like myself, and
+observed quite frankly:
+
+"You will consider these observations as confidential.  You know
+how to hold your tongue; that you have proved.  Hold it then a
+little longer.  The case is not yet ripe.  Mr. Jeffrey is a man
+of high standing, with a hitherto unblemished reputation.  It won't
+do, my boy, to throw the doubt of so hideous a crime upon so fine
+a gentleman without ample reason.  That no such mistake may be made
+and that he may have every opportunity for clearing himself, I am
+going to have a confidential talk with him.  Do you want to be
+present?"
+
+I flushed again; but this time from extreme satisfaction.
+
+"I am obliged for your confidence," said I; then, with a burst of
+courage born of his good nature, I inquired with due respect if my
+little friend had answered his expectations.  "Was she as clever as
+I said?" I asked.
+
+"Your little friend is a trump," was his blunt reply.  "With what
+we have learned through her and now through you, we can approach Mr.
+Jeffrey to some purpose.  It appears that, before leaving the house
+on that Tuesday morning, he had an interview with his wife which
+ought in some way to account for this tragedy.  Perhaps he will tell
+us about it, and perhaps he will explain how he came to wander
+through the Moore house while his wife lay dying below.  At all
+events we will give him the opportunity to do so and, if possible,
+to clear up mysteries which provoke the worst kind of conjecture.
+It is time.  The ideas advanced by the papers foster superstition;
+and superstition is the devil.  Go and tell my man out there that
+I am going to K Street.  You may say 'we' if you like," he added
+with a humor more welcome to me than any serious concession.
+
+Did I feel set up by this?  Rather.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey was expecting us.  This was evident from his first look,
+though the attempt he made at surprise was instantaneous and very
+well feigned.  Indeed, I think he was in a constant state of
+apprehension during these days and that no inroad of the police
+would have astonished him.  But expectation does not preclude dread;
+indeed it tends to foster it, and dread was in his heart.  This he
+had no power to conceal.
+
+"To what am I indebted for this second visit from you?" he asked of
+Coroner Z., with an admirable presence of mind.  "Are you not yet
+satisfied with what we have been able to tell you of my poor wife's
+unhappy end?"
+
+"We are not," was the plain response.  "There are some things you
+have not attempted to explain, Mr. Jeffrey.  For instance, why you
+went to the Moore house previous to your being called there by the
+death of your wife."
+
+It was a shot that told; an arrow which found its mark.  Mr.
+Jeffrey flushed, then turned pale, rallied and again lost himself
+in a maze of conflicting emotions from which he only emerged to say:
+
+"How do you know that I was there?  Have I said so; or do those old
+walls babble in their sleep?"
+
+"Old walls have been known to do this," was the grave reply.
+"Whether they had anything to say in this case is at present quite
+immaterial.  That you were where I charge you with being is evident
+from your own manner.  May I then ask if you have anything to say
+about this visit.  When a person has died under such peculiar
+circumstances as Mrs. Jeffrey, everything bearing upon the case is
+of interest to the coroner."
+
+I was sorry he added that last sentence; sorry that he felt obliged
+to qualify his action by anything savoring of apology; for the time
+spent in its utterance afforded his agitated hearer an opportunity
+not only of collecting himself but of preparing an answer for which
+he would not have been ready an instant before.
+
+"Mrs. Jeffrey's death was a strange one," her husband admitted with
+tardy self-control.  "I find myself as much at a loss to understand
+it as you do, and am therefore quite ready to answer the question
+you have so openly broached.  Not that my answer has any bearing upon
+the point you wish to make, but because it is your due and my
+pleasure.  I did visit the Moore house, as I certainly had every
+right to do.  The property was my wife's, and it was for my interest
+to learn, if I could, the secret of its many crimes."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey looked quickly up.  "You think that an odd thing for me
+to do?"
+
+"At night.  Yes."
+
+"Night is the time for such work.  I did not care to be seen
+pottering around there in daylight."
+
+"No?  Yet it would have been so much easier.  You would not have
+had to buy candles or carry a pistol or -"
+
+"I did not carry a pistol.  The only pistol carried there was the
+one with which my demented wife chose to take her life.  I do not
+understand this allusion."
+
+"It grew out of a misunderstanding of the situation, Mr. Jeffrey;
+excuse me if I supposed you would be likely to provide yourself
+with some means of defense in venturing alone upon the scene of
+so many mysterious deaths."
+
+"I took no precaution."
+
+"And needed none, I suppose."
+
+"And needed none."
+
+"When was this visit paid, Mr. Jeffrey?  Before or after your wife
+pulled the trigger which ended her life?  You need not hesitate to
+answer."
+
+"I do not." The elegant gentleman before us had acquired a certain
+fierceness.  "Why should I?  Certainly, you don't think that I was
+there at the same time she was.  It was not on the same night, even.
+So much the walls should have told you and probably did, or my
+wife's uncle, Mr. David Moore.  Was he not your informant?"
+
+"No; Mr. Moore has failed to call our attention to this fact.  Did
+you meet Mr. Moore during the course of your visit to a neighborhood
+over which he seems to hold absolute sway?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge.  But his house is directly opposite, and as
+he has little to do but amuse himself with what he can see from his
+front window, I concluded that he might have observed me going in."
+
+"You entered by the front door, then?"
+
+"How else?"
+
+"And on what night?"
+
+
+Mr. Jeffrey made an effort.  These questions were visibly harassing
+him.
+
+"The night before the one - the one which ended all my earthly
+happiness," he added in a low voice.
+
+Coroner Z. cast a glance at me.  I remembered the lack of dust on
+the nest of little tables from which the upper one had been drawn
+forward to hold the candelabrum, and gently shook my head.  The
+coroner's eyebrows went up, but none of his disbelief crept into
+his voice as he made this additional statement
+
+"The night on which you failed to return to your own house."
+
+Instantly Mr. Jeffrey betrayed by a nervous action, which was quite
+involuntary, that his outward calm was slowly giving way under a
+fire of questions for which he had no ready reply.
+
+"It was odd, your not going home that night," the coroner coldly
+pursued.  "The misunderstanding you had with your wife immediately
+after breakfast must have been a very serious one; more serious
+than you have hitherto acknowledged."
+
+"I had rather not discuss the subject," protested Mr. Jeffrey.
+Then as if he suddenly recognized the official character of his
+interlocutor, he hastily added: "Unless you positively request me
+to do so; in which case I must."
+
+"I am afraid that I must insist upon it," returned the other.  "You
+will find that it will be insisted upon at the inquest, and if you
+do not wish to subject yourself to much unnecessary unpleasantness,
+you had better make clear to us to-day the cause of that
+special quarrel which to all intents and purposes led to your wife's
+death."
+
+"I will try to do so," returned Mr. Jeffrey, rising and pacing the
+room in his intense restlessness.  "We did have some words; her
+conduct the night before had not pleased me.  I am naturally
+jealous, vilely jealous, and I thought she was a little frivolous
+at the German ambassador's ball.  But I had no idea she would take
+my sharp speeches so much to heart.  I had no idea that she would
+care so much or that I should care so much.  A little jealousy is
+certainly pardonable in a bridegroom, and if her mind had not
+already been upset, she would have remembered how I loved her and
+hopefully waited for a reconciliation."
+
+"You did love your wife, then?  It was you and not she who had a
+right to be jealous?  I have heard the contrary stated.  It is a
+matter of public gossip that you loved another woman previous to
+your acquaintance with Miss Moore; a woman whom your wife regarded
+with sisterly affection and subsequently took into her new home."
+
+"Miss Tuttle?"  Mr. Jeffrey stopped in his walk to fling out this
+ejaculation.  "I admire and respect Miss Tuttle," he went on to
+declare, "but I never loved her.  Not as I did my wife," he finished,
+but with a certain hard accent, apparent enough to a sensitive ear.
+
+"Pardon me; it is as difficult for me to put these questions as it
+is for you to hear them.  Were you and Miss Tuttle ever engaged?"
+
+I started.  This was a question which half of Washington had been
+asking itself for the last three months.
+
+Would Mr. Jeffrey answer it?  or, remembering that these questions
+were rather friendly than official, refuse to satisfy a curiosity
+which he might well consider intrusive?  The set aspect of his
+features promised little in the way of information, and we were
+both surprised when a moment later he responded with a grim
+emphasis hardly to be expected from one of his impulsive temperament:
+
+"Unhappily, no.  My attentions never went so far."
+
+Instantly the coroner pounced on the one weak word which Mr.
+Jeffrey had let fall.
+
+"Unhappily?" he repeated.  "Why do you say, unhappily?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey flushed and seemed to come out of some dream.
+
+"Did I say unhappily?" he inquired.  "Well, I repeat it; Miss Tuttle
+would never have given me any cause for jealousy."
+
+The coroner bowed and for the present dropped her name out of the
+conversation.
+
+"You speak again of the jealousy aroused in you by your wife's
+impetuosities.  Was this increased or diminished by the tone of
+the few lines she left behind her?"
+
+The response was long in coming.  It was hard for this man to lie.
+The struggle he made at it was pitiful.  As I noted what it cost
+him, I began to have new and curious thoughts concerning him and
+the whole matter under discussion.
+
+"I shall never overcome the remorse roused in me by those few
+lines," he finally rejoined.  "She showed a consideration for me -"
+
+"What!"
+
+The coroner's exclamation showed all the surprise he felt.  Mr.
+Jeffrey tottered under it, then grew slowly pale as if only through
+our amazed looks he had come to realize the charge of inconsistency
+to which he had laid himself open.
+
+"I mean -" he endeavored to explain, "that Mrs. Jeffrey showed an
+unexpected tenderness toward me by taking all the blame of our
+misunderstanding upon herself.  It was generous of her and will
+do much toward making my memory of her a gentle one."
+
+He was forgetting himself again.  Indeed, his manner and attempted
+explanations were full of contradictions.  To emphasize this fact
+Coroner Z. exclaimed
+
+"I should think so!  She paid a heavy penalty for her professed
+lack of love.  You believe that her mind was unseated?"
+
+"Does not her action show it?"
+
+"Unseated by the mishap occurring at her marriage?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You really think that?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"By anything that passed between you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"May I ask you to tell us what passed between you on this point?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He had uttered the monosyllable so often it seemed to come
+unconsciously from his lips.  But he recognized almost as soon as
+we did that it was not a natural reply to the last question, and,
+making a gesture of apology, he added, with the same monotony of
+tone which had characterized these replies:
+
+"She spoke of her strange guest's unaccountable death more than
+once, and whenever she did so, it was with an unnatural excitement
+and in an unbalanced way.  This was so noticeable to us all that
+the subject presently was tabooed amongst us; but though she
+henceforth spared us all allusion to it, she continued to talk
+about the house itself and of the previous deaths which had occurred
+there till we were forced to forbid that topic also.  She was never
+really herself after crossing the threshold of this desolate house
+to be married.  The shadow which lurks within its walls fell at that
+instant upon her life.  May God have mercy -"
+
+The prayer remained unfinished.  His head which had fallen on his
+breast sank lower.
+
+He presented the aspect of one who is quite done with life, even
+its sorrows.
+
+But men in the position of Coroner Z. can not afford to be
+compassionate.  Everything the bereaved man said deepened the
+impression that he was acting a part.  To make sure that this was
+really so, the coroner, with just the slightest touch of sarcasm,
+quietly observed:
+
+"And to ease your wife's mind - the wife you were so deeply angered
+with - you visited this house, and, at an hour which you should have
+spent in reconciliation with her, went through its ancient rooms in
+the hope - of what?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey could not answer.  The words which came from his lips
+were mere ejaculations.
+
+"I was restless - mad - I found this adventure diverting.  I had
+no real purpose in mind."
+
+"Not when you looked at the old picture?"
+
+"The old picture?  What old picture?"
+
+"The old picture in the southwest chamber.  You took a look at that,
+didn't you?  Got up on a chair on purpose to do so?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey winced.  But he made a direct reply.
+
+"Yes, I gave a look at that old picture; got up, as you say, on a
+chair to do so.  Wasn't that the freak of an idle man, wandering, he
+hardly knows why, from room to room in an old and deserted house?"
+
+His tormentor did not answer.  Probably his mind was on his next
+line of inquiry.  But Mr. Jeffrey did not take his silence with the
+calmness he had shown prior to the last attack.  As no word came
+from his unwelcome guest, he paused in his rapid pacing and,
+casting aside with one impulsive gesture his hitherto imperfectly
+held restraint, he cried out sharply:
+
+"Why do you ask me these questions in tones of such suspicion?  Is
+it not plain enough that my wife took her own life under a
+misapprehension of my state of mind toward her, that you should feel
+it necessary to rake up these personal matters, which, however
+interesting to the world at large, are of a painful nature to me?"
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey," retorted the other, with a sudden grave assumption of
+dignity not without its effect in a case of such serious import, "we
+do nothing without purpose.  We ask these questions and show this
+interest because the charge of suicide which has hitherto been made
+against your wife is not entirely sustained by the facts.  At least
+she was not alone when she took her life.  Some one was in the house
+with her."
+
+It was startling to observe the effect of this declaration upon him.
+
+"Impossible!" he cried out in a protest as forcible as it was
+agonized.  "You are playing with my misery.  She could have had no
+one there; she would not.  There is not a man living before whom she
+would have fired that deadly shot; unless it was myself, - unless it
+was my own wretched, miserable self."
+
+The remorseful whisper in which those final words were uttered
+carried them to my heart, which for some strange and unaccountable
+reason had been gradually turning toward this man.  But my less
+easily affected companion, seeing his opportunity and possibly
+considering that it was this gentleman's right to know in what a
+doubtful light he stood before the law, remarked with as light a
+touch of irony as was possible:
+
+"You should know better than we in whose presence she would choose
+to die - if she did so choose.  Also who would be likely to tie the
+pistol to her wrist and blow out the candle when the dreadful deed
+was over."
+
+The laugh which seemed to be the only means of violent expression
+remaining to this miserable man was kept down by some amazing thought
+which seemed to paralyze him.  Without making any attempt to refute
+a suggestion that fell just short of a personal accusation, he sank
+down in the first chair he came to and became, as it were, lost in
+the vision of that ghastly ribbon-tying and the solitary blowing out
+of the candle upon this scene of mournful death.  Then with a
+struggling sense of having heard something which called for answer,
+he rose blindly to his feet and managed to let fall these words:
+
+"You are mistaken - no one was there, or if any one was - it was not
+I.  There is a man in this city who can prove it."
+
+But when Mr. Jeffrey was asked to give the name of this man, he
+showed confusion and presently was obliged to admit that he could
+neither recall his name nor remember anything about him, but that
+he was some one whom he knew well, and who knew him well.  He
+affirmed that the two had met and spoken near Soldiers' Home
+shortly after the sun went down, and that the man would be sure
+to remember this meeting if we could only find him.
+
+As Soldiers' Home was several miles from the Moore house and quite
+out of the way of all his accustomed haunts, Coroner Z. asked him
+how he came to be there.  He replied that he had just come from Rock
+Creek Cemetery.  That he had been in a wretched state of mind all
+day, and possibly being influenced by what he had heard of the
+yearly vigils Mr. Moore was in the habit of keeping there, had taken
+a notion to stroll among the graves, in search of the rest and peace
+of mind he had failed to find in his aimless walks about the city.
+At least, that was the way he chose to account for the meeting he
+mentioned.  Falling into reverie again, he seemed to be trying to
+recall the name which at this moment was of such importance to him.
+But it was without avail, as he presently acknowledged.
+
+"I can not remember who it was.  My brain is whirling, and I can
+recollect nothing but that this man and myself left the cemetery
+together on the night mentioned, just as the gate was being closed.
+As it closes at sundown, the hour can be fixed to a minute.  It was
+somewhere near seven, I believe; near enough, I am sure, for it to
+have been impossible for me to be at the Moore house at the time my
+unhappy wife is supposed to have taken her life.  There is no doubt
+about your believing this?" he demanded with sudden haughtiness, as,
+rising to his feet, he confronted us in all the pride of his
+exceptionally handsome person.
+
+"We wish to believe it," assented the coroner, rising in his turn.
+"That our belief may become certainty, will you let us know, the
+instant you recall the name of the man you talked with at the
+cemetery gate?  His testimony, far more than any word of yours, will
+settle this question which otherwise may prove a vexed one."
+
+Mr. Jeffrey's hand went up to his head.  Was he acting a part or
+did he really forget just what it was for his own best welfare to
+remember?  If he had forgotten, it argued that he was in a state of
+greater disturbance on that night than would naturally be occasioned
+by a mere lover's quarrel with his wife.
+
+Did the same thought strike my companion?  I can not say; I can only
+give you his next words.
+
+"You have said that your wife would not be likely to end her life
+in presence of any one but yourself.  Yet you must see that some one
+was with her.  How do you propose to reconcile your assertions with
+a fact so undeniable?"
+
+"I can not reconcile them.  It would madden me to try.  If I thought
+any one was with her at that moment -"
+
+"Well?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey's eyes fell; and a startling change passed over him.
+But before either of us could make out just what this change
+betokened he recovered his aspect of fixed melancholy and quietly
+remarked:
+
+"It is dreadful to think of her standing there alone, aiming a pistol
+at her young, passionate heart; but it is worse to picture her doing
+this under the gaze of unsympathizing eyes.  I can not and will not
+so picture her.  You have been misled by appearances or what in
+police parlance is called a clue."
+
+Evidently he did not mean to admit the possibility of the pistol
+having been fired by any other hand than her own.  This the coroner
+noted.  Bowing with the respect he showed every man before a jury
+had decided upon his guilt, he turned toward the door out of which
+I had already hurried.
+
+"We hope to hear from you in the morning," he called back
+significantly, as he stepped down the stairs.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey did not answer; he was having his first struggle with
+the new and terrible prospect awaiting him at the approaching inquest.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE LAW AND ITS VICTIM
+
+
+
+XI
+
+DETAILS
+
+
+The days of my obscurity were over.  Henceforth, I was regarded as
+a decided factor in this case - a case which from this time on,
+assumed another aspect both at headquarters and in the minds of
+people at large.  The reporters, whom we had hitherto managed to
+hold in check, now overflowed both the coroner's office and police
+headquarters, and articles appeared in all the daily papers with
+just enough suggestion in them to fire the public mind and make me,
+for one, anticipate an immediate word from Mr. Jeffrey calculated
+to establish the alibi he had failed to make out on the day we
+talked with him.  But no such word came.  His memory still played
+him false, and no alternative was left but to pursue the official
+inquiry in the line suggested by the interview just recounted.
+
+No proceeding in which I had ever been engaged interested me as did
+this inquest.  In the first place, the spectators were of a very
+different character from the ordinary.  As I wormed myself along to
+the seat accorded to such witnesses as myself, I brushed by men of
+the very highest station and a few of the lowest; and bent my head
+more than once in response to the inquiring gaze of some fashionable
+lady who never before, I warrant, had found herself in such a scene.
+By the time I reached my place all the others were seated and the
+coroner rapped for order.
+
+I was first to take the stand.  What I said has already been fully
+amplified in the foregoing pages.  Of course, my evidence was
+confined to facts, but some of these facts were new to most of the
+persons there.  It was evident that a considerable effect was
+produced by them, not only on the spectators, but upon the
+witnesses themselves.  For instance, it was the first time that the
+marks on the mantel-shelf had been heard of outside the major's
+office, or the story so told as to make it evident that Mrs. Jeffrey
+could not have been alone in the house at the time of her death.
+
+A photograph had been taken of those marks, and my identification
+of this photograph closed my testimony.
+
+As I returned to my seat I stole a look toward a certain corner
+where, with face bent down upon his hand, Francis Jeffrey sat
+between Uncle David and the heavily-veiled figure of Miss Tuttle.
+Had there dawned upon him as my testimony was given any suspicion of
+the trick by which he had been proved responsible for those marks?
+It was impossible to tell.  From the way Miss Tuttle's head was
+turned toward him, one might judge him to be laboring under an
+emotion of no ordinary character, though he sat like a statue and
+hardly seemed to realize how many eyes were at that moment riveted
+upon his face.
+
+I was followed by other detectives who had been present at the time
+and who corroborated my statement as to the appearance of this
+unhappy woman and the way the pistol had been tied to her arm.  Then
+the doctor who had acted under the coroner was called.  After a long
+and no doubt learned description of the bullet wound which had ended
+the life of this unhappy lady, - a wound which he insisted, with a
+marked display of learning, must have made that end instantaneous or
+at least too immediate for her to move foot or hand after it, - he
+was asked if the body showed any other mark of violence.
+
+To this he replied
+
+"There was a minute wound at the base of one of her fingers, the one
+which is popularly called the wedding finger."
+
+This statement made all the women present start with renewed interest;
+nor was it altogether without point for the men, especially when the
+doctor went on to say:
+
+"The hands were entirely without rings.  As Mrs. Jeffrey had been
+married with a ring, I noticed their absence."
+
+"Was this wound which you characterize as minute a recent one?"
+
+"It had bled a little.  It was an abrasion such as would be made if
+the ring she usually wore there had been drawn off with a jerk.
+That was the impression I received from its appearance.  I do not
+state that it was so made."
+
+A little thrill which went over the audience at the picture this
+evoked communicated itself to Miss Tuttle, who trembled violently.
+It even produced a slight display of emotion in Mr. Jeffrey, whose
+hand shook where he pressed it against his forehead.  But neither
+uttered a sound, nor looked up when the next witness was summoned.
+
+This witness proved to be Loretta, who, on hearing her name called,
+evinced great reluctance to come forward.  But after two or three
+words uttered in her ear by the friendly Jinny, who had been given
+a seat next her, she stepped into the place assigned her with a
+suddenly assumed air of great boldness, which sat upon her with
+scant grace.  She had need of all the boldness at her command, for
+the eyes of all in the room were fixed on her, with the exception
+of the two persons most interested in her testimony.  Scrutiny of
+any kind did not appear to be acceptable to her, if one could read
+the trepidation visible in the short, quick upheavals of the broad
+collar which covered her uneasy breast.  Was this shrinking on her
+part due to natural timidity, or had she failings to avow which,
+while not vitiating her testimony, would certainly cause her shame
+in the presence of so many men and women?  I was not able to decide
+this question immediately; for after the coroner had elicited her
+name and the position she held in Mr. Jeffrey's household he asked
+whether her duties took her into Mrs. Jeffrey's room; upon her
+replying that they did, he further inquired if she knew Mrs.
+Jeffrey's rings, and could say whether they were all to be found
+on that lady's toilet-table after the police came in with news of
+her death.  The answer was decisive.  They were all there, her
+rings and all the other ornaments she was in the daily habit of
+wearing, with the exception of her watch.  That was not there.
+
+"Did you take up those rings?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Did you see any one else take them up?"
+
+"No, sir; not till the officer did so."
+
+"Very well, Loretta, sit down again till we hear what Durbin has to
+say about these rings."
+
+And then the man I hated came forward, and though I shrank from
+acknowledging it even to myself, I could but observe how strong
+and quiet and self-possessed he seemed and how decisive was his
+testimony.  But it was equally brief.  He had taken up the rings
+and he had looked at them; and on one, the wedding-ring, he had
+detected a slight stain of blood.  He had called Mr. Jeffrey's
+attention to it, but that gentleman had made no comment.  This
+remark had the effect of concentrating general attention upon Mr.
+Jeffrey.  But he seemed quite oblivious of it; his attitude remained
+unchanged, and only from the quick stretching out and withdrawal of
+Miss Tuttle's hand could it be seen that anything had been said
+calculated to touch or arouse this man.  The coroner cast an uneasy
+glance in his direction; then he motioned Durbin aside and recalled
+Loretta.
+
+And now I began to be sorry for the girl.  It is hard to have one's
+weaknesses exposed, especially if one is more foolish than wicked.
+But there was no way of letting this girl off without sacrificing
+certain necessary points, and the coroner went relentlessly to work.
+
+"How long have you been in this house?"
+
+"Three weeks.  Ever since Mrs. Jeffrey's wedding day, sir."
+
+"Were you there when she first came as a bride from the Moore house?"
+
+"I was, sir."
+
+"And saw her then for the first time?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How did she look and act that first day?"
+
+"I thought her the gayest bride I had ever seen,, then I thought
+her the saddest, and then I did not know what to think.  She was so
+merry one minute and so frightened the next, so full of talk when
+she came running up the steps and so struck with silence the minute
+she got into the parlor, that I set her down as a queer one till
+some one whispered in my ear that she was suffering from a dreadful
+shock; that ill-luck had attended her marriage and much more about
+what had happened from time to time at the Moore house."
+
+"And you believed what was told you?"
+
+"Believed?"
+
+"Believed it well enough to keep a watch on your young mistress to
+see if she were happy or not?"
+
+"Oh, sir!"
+
+"It was but natural," the coroner suavely observed.  "Every one felt
+interested in this marriage.  You watched her of course.  Now what
+was the result?  Did you consider her well and happy?"
+
+The girl's voice sank and she cast a glance at her master which he
+did not lift his head to meet.
+
+"I did not think her happy.  She laughed and sang and was always in
+and out of the rooms like a butterfly, but she did not wear a happy
+look, except now and then when she was seated with Mr. Jeffrey alone.
+Then I have seen her flush in a way to make the heart ache; it was
+such a contrast, sir, to other times when she was by herself or -"
+
+"Or what?"
+
+"Or just with her sister, sir."
+
+The defiance with which this was said added point to what otherwise
+might have been an unimportant admission.  Those who had already
+scrutinized Miss Tuttle with the curiosity of an ill-defined suspicion
+now scrutinized her with a more palpable one, and those who had
+hitherto seen nothing in this heavily-veiled woman but the bereaved
+sister of an irresponsible suicide allowed their looks to dwell
+piercingly on that concealing veil, as if they would be glad to
+penetrate its folds and read in those beautiful features the meaning
+of an allusion uttered with such a sting in the tone.
+
+"You refer to Miss Tuttle?" observed the coroner.
+
+"Mrs. Jeffrey's sister?  Yes, sir."  The menace was gone from the
+voice now, but no one could forget that it had been there.
+
+"Miss Tuttle lived in the house with her sister, did she not?"
+
+"Yes, sir; till that sister died and was buried; then she went away."
+
+The coroner did not pursue this topic, preferring to return to the
+former one.
+
+"So you say that Mrs. Jeffrey showed uneasiness ever since her
+wedding day.  Can you give me any instance of this; mention, I mean,
+any conversations overheard by you which would show us just what you
+mean?"
+
+"I don't like to repeat things I hear.  But if you say that I must,
+I can remember once passing Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey in the hall, just
+as he was saying: 'You take it too much to heart!  I expected a
+happy honeymoon.  Somehow, we have failed -'  That was all I heard,
+sir.  But what made me remember his words was that she was dressed
+for some afternoon reception and looked so charming and so - and so,
+as if she ought to be happier."
+
+"Just so.  Now, when was this?  How long before her death?"
+
+"Oh, a week or so.  It was very soon after the wedding day."
+
+"And did matters seem to improve after that? Did she appear any
+better satisfied or more composed?"
+
+"I think she endeavored to.  But there was something on her mind,
+something which she tried to laugh off; something that annoyed Mr.
+Jeffrey and worried Miss Tuttle; something which caused a cloud in
+the house, for all the dances and dinners and goings and comings.
+I am sorry to speak of it, but it was so."
+
+"Something that showed an unsettled mind?"
+
+"Almost.  The glitter in her eye was not natural; neither was the
+way she looked at her sister and sometimes at her husband."
+
+"Did she talk much about the catastrophe which attended her wedding?
+Did her mind seem to run on that?"
+
+"Incessantly at first; but afterward not so much.  I think Mr.
+Jeffrey frowned on that subject."
+
+"Did he ever frown on her?"
+
+"No, sir - not - not when they were alone or with no one by but me.
+He seemed to love her then very much."
+
+"What do you mean by that, Loretta; that he lost patience with her
+when other people were present - Miss Tuttle, for instance?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  He used to change very much when - when - when Miss
+Tuttle came into the room."
+
+"Change toward his wife?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How ?"
+
+"He grew more distant, much more distant; got up quite fretfully
+from his seat, if he were sitting beside her, and took up some
+book or paper."
+
+"And Miss Tuttle?"
+
+"She never seemed to notice but"
+
+"But - ?"
+
+"She did not come in very often after this had happened once or
+twice; I mean into the room upstairs where they used to sit."
+
+"Loretta, I regret to put this question, but after your replies I
+owe it to the jury, if not to the parties themselves, to make Miss
+Tuttle's position in this household thoroughly understood.  Do you
+think she was a welcome visitor in this house?"
+
+The girl pursed up her lips, glanced at the lady and gentleman
+whose feelings she was supposed to pass comment on, and seemed to
+lose heart.  Then, as they failed to respond to her look of appeal,
+she strove to get the better of her sense of shame and, with a
+somewhat injured air, replied:
+
+"I can only repeat what I once heard said about this by Mr.
+Jeffrey himself.  Miss Tuttle had just left the diningroom and Mrs.
+Jeffrey was standing in one of her black moods, with her hand on
+the top of her chair, ready to go but forgetting to do so.  I was
+there, but neither of them noticed me; he was staring at her, and
+she was looking down.  Neither seemed at ease.  Suddenly he spoke
+and asked, 'Why must Cora remain with us?'  She started and her
+look grew strange and frightened.  'Because I want her to,' she
+cried.  'I can not live without Cora."'
+
+These words, so different from what we were expecting, caused a
+sensation in the room and consequently a stir.  As the noise of
+shifting feet and moving heads began to be heard in all directions,
+Miss Tuttle's head drooped a little, but Francis Jeffrey did not
+betray any sign of feeling or even of attention.  The coroner,
+embarrassed, perhaps, by this exhibition of silent misery so near
+him, hesitated a little before he put his next question.  Loretta,
+on the contrary, had gathered courage with every word she spoke and
+now looked ready for anything.
+
+"It was Mrs. Jeffrey, then, who clung most determinedly to her
+sister?" the coroner finally suggested.
+
+"I have told you what she said."
+
+"Yet these sisters spent but little time together?"
+
+"Very little; as little as two persons could who lived together
+in one house."
+
+This statement, which seemed such a contradiction to her former one,
+increased the interest; and much disappointment was covertly shown
+when the coroner veered off from this topic and brusquely inquired
+"Did you ever know Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey to have any open rupture?"
+
+The answer was a decided one.
+
+"Yes.  On Tuesday morning preceding her death they had a long and
+angry talk in their own room, after which Mrs. Jeffrey made no
+further effort to conceal her wretchedness.  Indeed, one may say
+she began to die from that hour."
+
+Mrs. Jeffrey's death had occurred on Wednesday evening.
+
+"Let us hear what you have to say about this quarrel and what
+happened after it."
+
+The girl, with a renewed flush, cast a deprecatory look at the mass
+of faces before her, and, meeting on all sides but one look of
+intense and growing interest, drew up her neat figure with a
+relieved air and began a story which I will proceed to transcribe
+for you in the fewest possible words.
+
+Tuesday morning's breakfast had been a silent one.  There had been a
+ball the night before at some great place on Massachusetts Avenue;
+but no one spoke of it.  Miss Tuttle made some remark about a friend
+she had met there, but as no one listened to her, she soon stopped
+and in a little while left the table.  Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey sat on,
+but neither said anything.  Finally Mr. Jeffrey rose and, speaking in
+a voice hardly recognizable, remarked that he had something to say to
+her, and led the way to their room.  Mrs. Jeffrey looked frightened
+as she followed him; so frightened that it was evident that something
+very serious had occurred or was about to occur between them.  As
+nothing of this kind had ever happened before, Loretta could not
+help waiting about till Mr. Jeffrey reappeared; and when he did so
+and she saw no signs of relief in his face or manner, she watched,
+with the silly interest of a girl who had nothing else to occupy her
+mind, to see if he would leave the house in such a mood, and without
+making peace with his young bride.  To her surprise, he did not go
+out at the usual time, but went to Miss Tuttle's room, where for a
+full half-hour he remained closeted with his sister-in-law, talking
+in excited and unnatural tones.  Then he went back for a few minutes
+to where he had left his wife, in her own boudoir.  But he could not
+have had much to say to her this time, for he presently came out
+again and ran hastily downstairs and out, almost without stopping
+to catch up his hat.
+
+As it was Mary's business, and not the witness', to make Mrs.
+Jeffrey's bed in the morning, Loretta could think of no excuse for
+approaching her mistress' room at this moment; but later, when
+letters came, followed by various messages and some visitors, she
+went more than a dozen times to Mrs. Jeffrey's door.  She was not
+admitted, nor were her appeals answered, except by a sharp "Go
+away!"
+
+Nor was Miss Tuttle received any better, though she tried more than
+once to see her sister, especially as night came on and the hour
+approached for Mr. Jeffrey's return.  Mrs. Jeffrey was simply
+determined to remain alone; and when dinner time arrived, and no
+Mr. Jeffrey, she could be induced to open her door only wide enough
+to take in the cup of tea which Miss Tuttle insisted upon sending
+her.
+
+The witness here confessed that she had been very much excited by
+these unusual proceedings and by the effect which they seemed to
+have on the lady just mentioned; so she was ready to notice that
+Mrs. Jeffrey's hand shook like that of an old and palsied woman when
+she reached out for the tray.
+
+Gladly would Loretta have caught one glimpse of her face, but it
+was hidden by the door; nor did Mrs. Jeffrey answer a single one of
+her questions.  She simply closed her door and kept it so till
+toward midnight, when Miss Tuttle, coming into the hall, ordered the
+house to be closed for the night.  Then the long-shut door softly
+swung open, but before any one could reach it, it was again pulled to
+and locked.
+
+The next day brought no relief.  Miss Tuttle, who had changed greatly
+during this unhappy day and night, succeeded no better than before in
+getting access to her sister, nor could Loretta gain the least word
+from her mistress till toward the latter part of the afternoon, when
+that lady, ringing her bell, gave her first order.
+
+"A substantial dinner," she cried; and when Loretta, greatly relieved,
+brought up the required meal she was astonished to find the door open
+and herself bidden to enter.  The sight which met her eyes staggered
+her.  From one end of the room to the other were signs of great
+nervous unrest and of terrible suffering.  The chairs were pushed
+into corners as if the wretched bride had tramped the floor in an
+agony of excitement.  Curtains were torn and the piano-cover was
+hanging half on and half off the open upright, as if she had clutched
+at it to keep herself from falling.  On the floor beneath lay several
+pieces of broken china, - vases of whose value Mrs. Jeffrey had often
+spoken, but which, jerked off with the cover, had been left where
+they fell; while immediately in front of the fireplace lay one of
+the rugs tossed into a heap, as if she had rolled in it on the floor
+or used it to smother her cries of pain or anger.
+
+So much for the state in which the witness found the boudoir.  The
+adjoining bed-room was not in much better case, though it was evident
+that the bed itself had not been lain in since it was made up the
+day before at breakfast time.  By this token Mrs. Jeffrey had not
+slept the night before, or if she had laid her head anywhere it had
+been on the rug already spoken of.
+
+These signs of extreme mental suffering, so much more extreme than
+any Loretta had ever before witnessed, frightened her so that the
+tray shook in her hand as she set it down on the table among the
+countless objects Mrs. Jeffrey always had about her.  The noise
+seemed to startle her mistress, who had walked to the window after
+opening the door, for she wheeled impetuously about and Loretta saw
+her face.  It was as if a blight had passed over it.  Once gay and
+animated beyond the power of any one to describe, it had become in
+twenty-four hours a ghost's face, with the glare of some awful
+resolve on it.  Or so it would appear from the way Loretta described
+it.  But such girls do not always see correctly, and perhaps all
+that can be safely stated is that Mrs. Jeffrey was unnaturally pale
+and had lost her butterfly-like way of incessant movement.
+
+Loretta, who was evidently accustomed to seeing her mistress arrayed
+in brilliant colors and much begemmed, laid great stress on the fact
+that, though it was on the verge of evening and she was evidently
+going out, she was dressed in black cloth and without even a diamond
+or a flower to relieve its severe simplicity.  Her hair, too, which
+was always her pride, was piled in a careless mass upon her head as
+if she had tried to arrange it herself and had forgotten what she
+was doing while her fingers were but half through their work.  There
+was a cloak lying on a chair near which she was standing, and she
+held a hat in her band; but Loretta saw no gloves.  As the maid's
+glance and that of her mistress crossed, Mrs. Jeffrey spoke, and the
+effort she made in doing so naturally frightened the girl still
+more.  "I am going out," were her words.  "I may not be home till
+late - What are you looking at?"
+
+Loretta declared that the words took her by surprise and that she
+did not know what to say, but managed to cover up her embarrassment
+by intimating that if her mistress would let her touch up her hair
+a bit she would make her look more natural.
+
+At this suggestion, Mrs. Jeffrey cast a glance in the glass and
+impetuously declared, "It doesn't matter."  But she seemed to think
+better of it the next minute; for, throwing herself in a chair, she
+bade the girl to bring a comb, and sat quiet enough, though evidently
+in a great tremor of haste and impatience, while Loretta combed her
+hair and put it up in the old way.
+
+But the old way was not as becoming as usual, and Loretta was
+wondering if she ought to call in Miss Tuttle, when Mrs. Jeffrey
+jumped to her feet and went over to the table and began to eat with
+the feverish haste of one who forces himself to take food in spite
+of hurry and distaste.
+
+This was the moment for Loretta to leave the room; but she did not
+know how to do so.  She felt herself fixed to the spot and stood
+watching Mrs. Jeffrey till that lady, suddenly becoming conscious
+of the girl's presence, turned, and in the midst of the moans which
+broke unconsciously from her lips, said with a pitiable effort at
+her old manner:
+
+"Go away, Loretta; I am ill; have been ill for two days.  I don't
+like people to look at me like that!"  Then, as the girl shrank
+back, added in a breaking voice: "When Mr. Jeffrey comes home -" and
+said no more for several minutes, during which she clutched her
+throat with both hands and struggled with herself till she got her
+voice back and found herself able to repeat: "When Mr. Jeffrey comes,
+ - if he does come, - tell him that I was right about the way that
+novel ended.  Remember that you are to say to him the moment you
+see him that I was right about the novel, and that he is to look and
+see if it did not end as I said it would.  And "Loretta -" here she
+rose and approached the speaker with a sweet, appealing look which
+brought tears to the impressionable girl's eyes, "don't go gossiping
+about me downstairs.  I sha'n't be sick long.  I am going to be
+better soon, very soon.  By the time you see me here again I shall
+be quite like my old self.  Forget how - how" - and Loretta said she
+seemed to have difficulty in finding the right word here - "how
+childish I have been."
+
+Of course Loretta promised, but she is not sure that she would have
+had the courage to keep all this to herself if she had not heard
+Mrs. Jeffrey stop in Miss Tuttle's room on her way out.  That
+relieved her, and enabled her to go downstairs to her own supper
+with more appetite than she had thought ever to have again.  Alas!
+it was the last good meal she was able to eat for days.  In three
+hours afterward a man came from the station house with the news of
+Mrs. Jeffrey's suicide in the horrible old house in which she had
+been married only two weeks before.
+
+As this had been a continuous narrative and concisely told, the
+coroner had not interrupted her.  When at this point a little gasp
+escaped Miss Tuttle and a groan broke from Francis Jeffrey's
+hitherto sealed lips, the feelings of the whole assemblage seemed
+to find utterance.  A young wife's misery culminating in death on
+the very spot where she had been so lately married!  What could be
+more thrilling, or appeal more closely to the general heart of
+humanity?  But the cause of that misery!  This was what every one
+present was eager to have explained.  This is what we now expected
+the coroner to bring out.  But instead of continuing on the line he
+had opened up, he proceeded to ask:
+
+"Where were you when this officer brought the news you mention?"
+
+"In the hall, sir.  I opened the door for him."
+
+"And to whom did he first mention his errand?"
+
+"To Miss Tuttle.  She had come in just before him and was standing
+at the foot of the stairs"
+
+"What!  Was Miss Tuttle out that evening?"
+
+"Yes; she went out very soon after Mrs. Jeffrey left.  When she
+came in she said that she had been around the block, but she must
+have gone around it more than once, for she was absent two hours."
+
+"Did you let her in?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And she said she had been around the block?"
+
+"Yes, sir"
+
+"Did she say anything else?"
+
+"She asked if Mr. Jeffrey had come in"
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"Then if Mrs. Jeffrey had returned."
+
+"To both of which questions you answered -"
+
+"A plain 'No.'"
+
+"Now tell us about the officer."
+
+"He rang the bell almost immediately after she did.  Thinking she
+would want to slip upstairs before I admitted any one, I waited a
+minute for her to go, but she did not do so, and when the officer
+stepped in she -"
+
+"Well!"
+
+"She shrieked."
+
+"What!  before he spoke?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Just at sight of him?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Did he wear his badge in plain view?"
+
+"Yes, on his breast."
+
+"So that you knew him to be a police officer?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And Miss Tuttle shrieked at seeing a police officer?"
+
+"Yes, and sprang forward."
+
+"Did she say anything?"
+
+"Not then."
+
+"What did she do?"
+
+"Waited for him to speak."
+
+"Which he did?"
+
+"At once, and very brutally.  He asked if she was Mrs. Jeffrey's
+sister, and when she nodded and gasped 'Yes,' he blurted out that
+Mrs. Jeffrey was dead; that he had just come from the old house in
+Waverley Avenue, where she had just been found."
+
+"And Miss Tuttle?"
+
+"Didn't know what to say; just hid her face.  She was leaning
+against the newel-post, so it was easy for her to do so.  I remember
+that the man stared at her for taking it so quietly and asking no
+questions."
+
+"And did she speak at all?"
+
+"Oh, yes, afterwards.  Her face was wrapped in the folds of her
+cloak, but I heard her whisper, as if to herself: 'No!  no!  That
+old hearth is not a lodestone.  She can not have fallen there.'
+And then she looked up quite wildly and cried: 'There is something
+more !  Something which you have not told me.' 'She shot herself,
+if that's what you mean.'  Miss Tuttle's arms went straight up over
+her head.  It was awful to see her.  'Shot herself?' she gasped.
+'Oh, Veronica, Veronica!'  'With a pistol,' he went on - I suppose
+he was going to say, 'tied to her wrist,' but he never got it out,
+for Miss Tuttle, at the word 'pistol' clapped her hands to her ears
+and for a moment looked quite distracted, so that he thought better
+of worrying her any more and only demanded to know if Mr. Jeffrey
+kept any such weapon.  Miss Tuttle's face grew very strange at this.
+'Mr. Jeffrey!  was he there?' she asked.  The man looked surprised.
+'They are searching for Mr. Jeffrey,' he replied.  'Isn't he here?
+'No,' came both from her lips and mine.  The man acted very
+impertinently.  'You haven't told me whether a pistol was kept here
+or not,' said he.  Miss Tuttle tried to compose herself, but I saw
+that I should have to speak if any one did, so I told him that Mr.
+Jeffrey did have a pistol, which he kept in one of his bureau
+drawers.  But when the officer wanted Miss Tuttle to go up and see
+if it was there, she shook her head and made for the front door,
+saying that she must be taken directly to her sister."
+
+"And did no one go up?  Was no attempt made to see if the pistol
+was or was not in the drawer?"
+
+"Yes; the officer went up with me.  I pointed out the place where
+it was kept, and he rummaged all through it, but found no pistol.
+I didn't expect him to -"  Here the witness paused and bit her lip,
+adding confusedly: "Mrs. Jeffrey had taken it, you see."
+
+The jurors, who sat very much in the shadow, had up to this point
+attracted but little attention.  But now they began to make their
+presence felt, perhaps because the break in the witness' words had
+been accompanied by a sly look at Jinny.  Possibly warned by this
+that something lay back of this hitherto timid witness' sudden
+volubility, one of them now spoke up.
+
+"In what room did you say this pistol was kept?"
+
+"In Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey's bed-room, sir; the room opening out of
+the sitting-room where Mrs. Jeffrey had kept herself shut up all
+day."
+
+"Does this bed-room of which you speak communicate with the hall as
+well as with the sitting room ?"
+
+"No, sir; it is the defect of the house.  Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey often
+spoke of it as a great annoyance.  You had to pass through the little
+boudoir in order to reach it."
+
+The juryman sank back, evidently satisfied with her replies, but we
+who marked the visible excitement with which the witness had answered
+this seemingly unimportant question, wondered what special interest
+surrounded that room and the pistol to warrant the heightened color
+with which the girl answered this new interlocutor.  We were not
+destined to know at this time, for the coroner, when he spoke again,
+pursued a different subject.
+
+"How long was this before Mr. Jeffrey came in."
+
+"Only a few minutes.  I was terribly frightened at being left there
+alone and was on my way to ask one of the other girls to come up and
+stay with me, when I heard his key in the lock and came back.  He had
+entered the house and was standing near the door talking to an
+officer, who had evidently come in with him.  It was a different
+officer from the one who had gone away with Miss Tuttle.  Mr. Jeffrey
+was saying, 'What's that?  My wife hurt!' 'Dead, sir!' blurted out
+the man.  I had expected to see Mr. Jeffrey terribly shocked, but
+not in so awful a way.  It really frightened me to see him and I
+turned to run, but found that I couldn't and that I had to stand
+still and look whether I wanted to or not.  Yet he didn't say a word
+or ask a question."
+
+"What did he do, Loretta?"
+
+"I can not say; he was on his knees and was white - Oh, how white!
+Yet he looked up when the man described how and where Mrs. Jeffrey,
+had been found and even turned toward me when I said something
+about his wife having left a message for him when she went out.
+This message, which I almost hesitated to give after the awful news
+of her death, was about the ending of some story, as you remember,
+and it seemed heartless to speak of it at a moment like this, but
+as she had told me to, I didn't dare to disobey her.  So, with the
+man listening to my every word, and Mr. Jeffrey looking as if he
+would fall to the ground before I could finish, I repeated her
+words to him and was surprised enough when he suddenly started
+upright and went flying upstairs.  But I was more surprised yet
+when, at the top of the first flight, he stopped and, looking over
+the balustrade, asked in a very strange voice where Miss Tuttle
+was.  For he seemed just then to want her more than anything else
+in the world and looked beaten and wild when I told him that she
+was already gone to Waverley Avenue.  But he recovered himself
+before the man could draw near enough to see his face, and rushed
+into the sitting-room above and shut the door behind him, leaving
+the officer and me standing down by the front door.  As I didn't
+know what to say to a man like him, and he didn't know what to
+say to me, the time seemed long, but it couldn't have been very
+many minutes before Mr. Jeffrey came back with a slip of paper
+in his hand and a very much relieved look on his face.  'The deed
+was premeditated,' he cried.  'My unfortunate wife has misunderstood
+my affection for her.'  And from being a very much broken-down man,
+he stood up straight and tall and prepared himself very quietly to
+go to the Moore house.  That is all I can tell about the way the
+news was received by him."
+
+Were these details necessary?  Many appeared to regard them as
+futile and uncalled for.  But Coroner Z. was never known to waste
+time on trivialities, and if he called for these facts, those who
+knew him best felt certain that they were meant as a preparation for
+Mr. Jeffrey's testimony, which was now called for.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THRUST AND PARRY
+
+
+When Francis Jeffrey's hand fell from his forehead and he turned to
+face the assembled people, an instinctive compassion arose in every
+breast at sight of his face, which, if not open in its expression,
+was at least surcharged with the deepest misery.  In a flash the
+scene took on new meaning.  Many remembered that less than a month
+before his eye had been joyous and his figure a conspicuous one
+among the favored sons of fortune.  And now he stood in sight of a
+crowd, drawn together mainly by curiosity, to explain as best he
+might why this great happiness and hope had come to a sudden
+termination, and his bride of a fortnight had sought death rather
+than continue to live under the same roof with him.
+
+So much for what I saw on the faces about me.  What my own face
+revealed I can not say.  I only know that I strove to preserve an
+impassive exterior.  If I secretly held this man's misery to be a
+mask hiding untold passions and the darkness of an unimaginable
+deed, it was not for me to disclose in this presence either my
+suspicions or my fears.  To me, as to those about me, he apparently
+was a man who at some sacrifice to his pride, would, yet be able
+to explain whatever seemed dubious in the mysterious case in which
+he had become involved.
+
+His wife's uncle, who to all appearance shared the general curiosity
+as to the effect which this woeful tragedy had had upon his niece's
+most interested survivor, eyed with a certain cold interest,
+eminently in keeping with his general character, the pallid forehead,
+sunken eyes and nervously trembling lip of the once "handsome
+Jeffrey" till that gentleman, rousing from his depression, manifested
+a realization of what was required of hire and turned with a bow
+toward the coroner.
+
+Miss Tuttle settled into a greater rigidity.  I pass over the
+preliminary examination of this important witness and proceed at once
+to the point when the coroner, holding out the two or three lines
+of writing which Mr. Jeffrey had declared to have been left him by
+his wife, asked:
+
+"Are these words in your wife's handwriting?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey replied hastily, and, with just d glance at the paper
+offered him:
+
+"They are."
+
+The coroner pressed the slip upon him.
+
+"Look at them carefully," he urged.  "The handwriting shows hurry
+and in places is scarcely legible.  Are you ready to swear that
+these words were written by your wife and by no other?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey, with just a slight contraction of his brow expressive
+of annoyance, did as he was bid.  He scanned, or appeared to scan,
+the small scrap of paper which he now took into his own hand.
+
+"It is my wife's writing," he impatiently declared.  "Written, as all
+can see, under great agitation of mind, but hers without any doubt."
+
+"Will you read aloud these words for our benefit?" asked the coroner:
+
+It was a cruel request, causing an instinctive protest from the
+spectators.  But no protest disturbed Coroner Z.  He had his reasons,
+no doubt, for thus trying this witness, and when Coroner Z. had
+reason for anything it took more than the displeasure of the crowd
+to deter him.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey, who had subdued whatever indignation he may have felt
+at this unmistakable proof of the coroner's intention to have his
+own way with him whatever the cost to his sensitiveness or pride,
+obeyed the latter's command in firmer tones than I expected.
+
+The lines he was thus called upon to read may bear repetition:
+
+"I find that I do not love you as I thought.  I can not live knowing
+this to be so.  Pray God you may forgive me!
+
+VERONICA."
+
+
+As the last word fell with a little tremble from Mr. Jeffrey's lips,
+the coroner repeated:
+
+"You still think these words were addressed to you by your wife;
+that in short they contain an explanation of her death?"
+
+"I do"
+
+There was sharpness in the tone.  Mr. Jeffrey was feeling the prick.
+There was agitation in it, too; an agitation he was trying hard to
+keep down.
+
+"You have reason, then," persisted the coroner, "for accepting this
+peculiar explanation of your wife's death; a death which, in the
+judgment of most people, was of a nature to call for the strongest
+provocation possible."
+
+"My wife was not herself.  My wife was in an over strained and
+suffering condition.  For one so nervously overwrought many
+allowances must be made.  She may have been conscious of not
+responding fully to my affection.  That this feeling was strong
+enough to induce her to take her life is a source of unspeakable
+grief to me, but one for which you must find explanation, as I have
+so often said, in the terrors caused by the dread event at the
+Moore house, which recalled old tragedies and emphasized a most
+unhappy family tradition."
+
+The coroner paused a moment to let these words sink into the ears
+of the jury, then plunged immediately into what might be called the
+offensive part of his examination.
+
+"Why, if your wife's death caused you such intense grief, did you
+appear so relieved at receiving this by no means consoling
+explanation?"
+
+At an implication so unmistakably suggestive of suspicion Mr.
+Jeffrey showed fire for the first time.
+
+"Whose word have you for that?  A servant's, so newly come into my
+house that her very features are still strange to me.  You must
+acknowledge that a person of such marked inexperience can hardly be
+thought to know me or to interpret rightly the feelings of my heart
+by any passing look she may have surprised upon my face."
+
+This attitude of defiance so suddenly assumed had an effect he
+little realized.  Miss Tuttle stirred for the first time behind her
+veil, and Uncle David, from looking bored, became suddenly quite
+attentive.  These two but mirrored the feelings of the general
+crowd, and mine especially.
+
+"We do not depend on her judgment alone," the coroner now remarked.
+"The change in you was apparent to many others.  This we can prove
+to the jury if they require it."
+
+But no man lifting a voice from that gravely attentive body, the
+coroner proceeded to inquire if Mr. Jeffrey felt like volunteering
+any explanations on this head.  Receiving no answer from him either,
+he dropped the suggestive line of inquiry and took up the
+consideration of facts.  The first question he now put was:
+
+"Where did you find the slip of paper containing these last words
+from your wife?"
+
+"In a book I picked out of the book-shelf in our room upstairs.
+When Loretta gave me my wife's message I knew that I should find
+some word from her in the novel we had just been reading.  As we had
+been interested in but one book since our marriage, there was no
+possibility of my making an' mistake as to which one she referred"
+
+"Will you give us the name of this novel?"
+
+"COMPENSATION."
+
+"And you found this book called COMPENSATION in your room upstairs?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"On the book-shelf?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where does this book-shelf stand?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey looked up as much as to say, "Why so many small questions
+about so simple a matter?" but answered frankly enough:
+
+"At the right of the door leading into the bedroom."
+
+"And at right angles to the door leading into the hall?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very good.  Now may I ask you to describe the cover of this book?"
+
+"The cover?  I never noticed the cover.  Why do you -.  Excuse me,
+I suppose you have your reasons for asking even these puerile and
+seemingly unnecessary questions.  The cover is a queer one I believe;
+partly red and partly green; and that is all I know about it."
+
+"Is this the book?"
+
+Mr. Jeffrey glanced at the volume the coroner held up before him.
+
+"I believe so; it looks like it."
+
+The book had a flaming cover, quite unmistakable in its character.
+
+"The title shows it to be the same," remarked the coroner.  "Is this
+the only book with a cover of this kind in the house?"
+
+"The only one, I should say."
+
+The coroner laid down the book.
+
+"Enough of this, then, for the present; only let the jury remember
+that the cover of this book is peculiar and that it was kept on a
+shelf at the right of the opening leading into the adjoining
+bed-room.  And now, Mr. Jeffrey, we must ask you to look at these
+rings; or, rather, at this one.  You have seen it before; it is the
+one you placed on Mrs. Jeffrey's hand when you were married to her
+a little over a fortnight ago.  You recognize it?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Do you also recognize this small mark of blood on it as having been
+here when it was shown to you by the detective on your return from
+seeing her dead body at the Moore house?"
+
+"I do; yes."
+
+"How do you account for that spot and the slight injury made to her
+finger?  Should you not say that the ring had been dragged from her
+hand?"
+
+"I should."
+
+"By whom was it dragged?  By you?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"By herself, then?"
+
+"It would seem so."
+
+"Much passion must have been in that act.  Do you think that any
+ordinary quarrel between husband and wife would account for the
+display of such fury?  Are we not right in supposing a deeper cause
+for the disturbance between you than the slight one you offer in
+way of explanation?"
+
+An inaudible answer; then a sudden straightening of Francis Jeffrey's
+fine figure.  And that was all.
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey, in the talk you had with your wife on Tuesday morning
+was Miss Tuttle's name introduced?"
+
+"It was mentioned; yes, sir."
+
+"With recrimination or any display of passion on the part of your
+wife?"
+
+"You would not believe me if I said no," was the unexpected rejoinder.
+
+The coroner, taken aback by this direct attack from one who had
+hitherto borne all his innuendoes with apparent patience, lost
+countenance for a moment, but, remembering that in his official
+capacity he was more than a match for the elegant gentleman, who
+under other circumstances would have found it only too easy to put
+him to the blush, he observed with dignity:
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey, you are on oath.  We certainly have no reason for not
+believing you."
+
+Mr. Jeffrey bowed.  He was probably sorry for his momentary loss
+of self-control, and gravely, but with eyes bent downward, answered
+with the abrupt phrase:
+
+"Well, then, I will say no."
+
+The coroner shifted his ground.
+
+"Will you make the same reply when I ask if the like forbearance
+was shown toward your wife's name in the conversation you had with
+Miss Tuttle immediately afterward?"
+
+A halt in the eagerly looked-for reply; a hesitation, momentary
+indeed, but pregnant with nameless suggestions, caused his answer,
+when it did come, to lose some of the emphasis he manifestly wished
+to put into it.
+
+"Miss Tuttle was Mrs. Jeffrey's half-sister.  The bond between them
+was strong.  Would she would I - be apt to speak of my young wife
+with bitterness?"
+
+"That is not an answer to my question, Mr. Jeffrey.  I must request
+a more positive reply."
+
+Miss Tuttle made a move.  The strain on all present was so great we
+could but notice it.  He noticed it too, for his brows came together
+with a quick frown, as he emphatically replied:
+
+"There were no recriminations uttered.  Mrs. Jeffrey had displeased
+me and I said so, but I did not forget that I was speaking of my
+wife and to her sister."
+
+As this was in the highest degree non-committal, the coroner could
+be excused for persisting.
+
+"The conversation, then, was about your wife?"
+
+"It was."
+
+"In criticism of her conduct?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"At the ambassador's ball?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Mr. Jeffrey was a poor hand at lying.  That last "yes" came with
+great effort.
+
+The coroner waited, possibly for the echo of this last "yes" to
+cease; then he remarked with a coldness which lifted at once the
+veil from his hitherto well disguised antagonism to this witness.
+
+"If you will recount to us anything which your wife said or did on
+that evening which, in your mind, was worthy of all this coil, it
+might help us to understand the situation."
+
+But the witness made no attempt to do so, and while many of us were
+ready to pardon him this show of delicacy, others felt that under
+the circumstances it would have been better had he been more open.
+
+Among the latter was the coroner himself, who, from this moment,
+threw aside all hesitation and urged forward his inquiries in a way
+to press the witness closer and closer toward the net he was secretly
+holding out for him.  First, he obliged him to say that his
+conversation with Miss Tuttle had not tended to smooth matters; that
+no reconciliation with his wife had followed it, and that in the
+thirty-six hours which elapsed before he returned home again he had
+made no attempt to soothe the feelings of one, who, according to his
+own story, he considered hardly responsible for any extravagances
+in which she might have indulged.  Then when this inconsistency had
+been given time to sink into the minds of the jury, Coroner Z.
+increased the effect produced by confronting Jeffrey with witnesses
+who testified to the friendly, if not lover-like relations which had
+existed between himself and Miss Tuttle prior to the appearance of
+his wife upon the scene; closing with a question which brought out
+the denial, by no means new, that an engagement had ever taken place
+between him and Miss Tuttle and hence that a bond had been canceled
+by his marriage with Miss Moore.
+
+But his manner and careful choice of words in making this denial
+did not satisfy those present of his entire candor; especially as
+Miss Tuttle, for all her apparent immobility, showed, by the violent
+locking of her hands, both her anxiety and the suffering she was
+undergoing during this painful examination.  Was the suffering merely
+one of outraged delicacy?  We felt justified in doubting it, and
+looked forward, with cruel curiosity I admit, to the moment when
+this renowned and universally admired beauty would be called on to
+throw aside her veil axed reveal the highly praised features which
+had been so openly scorned for the sake of one whose chief claims
+to regard lay in her great wealth.
+
+But this moment was as yet far distant.  The coroner was a man of
+method, and his plan was now to prove, as had been apparent to most
+of us from the first, that the assumption of suicide on the part of
+Mrs. Jeffrey was open to doubt.  The communication suggesting such
+an end to her troubles was the strongest proof Mr. Jeffrey could
+bring forward that her death had been the result of her own act.
+Consequently it was now the coroner's business to show that this
+communication was either a forgery, or a substitution, and that if
+she left some word in the book to which she had in so peculiar a
+manner directed his attention, it was not necessarily the one
+bewailing her absence of love for him and her consequent intention
+of seeking relief from her disappointment in death.
+
+Some hint of what the coroner contemplated had already escaped him
+in the persistent and seemingly inconsequent questions to which he
+had subjected this witness in reference to these very matters.  But
+the time had now come for a more direct attack, and the interest
+rose correspondingly high, when the coroner, lifting again to sight
+the scrap of paper containing the few piteous lines so often quoted,
+asked of the now anxious and agitated witness, if he had ever
+noticed any similarity between the handwriting of his wife and that
+of Miss Tuttle.
+
+An indignant "No!" was about to pass his lips, when he suddenly
+checked himself and said more mildly: "There may have been a
+similarity; I hardly know, I have seen too little of Miss Tuttle's
+hand to judge."
+
+This occasioned a diversion.  Specimens of Miss Tuttle's handwriting
+were produced, which, after having been duly proved, were passed
+down to the jury along with the communication professedly signed by
+Mrs. Jeffrey.  The grunts of astonishment which ensued as the knowing
+heads drew near over these several papers caused Mr. Jeffrey to
+flush and finally to cry out with startling emphasis:
+
+"I know that those words were written by my wife."
+
+But when the coroner asked him his reasons for this conviction, he
+could, or would not state them.
+
+"I have said," he stolidly repeated; and that was all.
+
+The coroner made no comment, but when, after some further inquiry,
+which added little to the general knowledge, he dismissed Mr.
+Jeffrey and recalled Loretta, there was that in his tone which warned
+us that the really serious portion of the day's examination was about
+to begin.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+CHIEFLY THRUST
+
+
+The appearance of this witness had undergone a change since she
+last stood before us.  She was shame-faced still, but her manner
+showed resolve and a feverish determination to face the situation
+which could but awaken in the breasts of those who had Mr. Jeffrey's
+honor and personal welfare at heart a nameless dread; as if they
+already foresaw the dark shadow which minute by minute was slowly
+sinking over a household which, up to a week ago, had been the envy
+and admiration of all Washington society.
+
+The first answer she made revealed both the cause of her shame and
+the reason of her firmness.  It was in response to the question
+whether she, Loretta, had seen Miss Tuttle before she went out on
+the walk she was said to have taken immediately after Mrs. Jeffrey's
+final departure from the house.
+
+Her words were these
+
+"I did sir.  I do not think Miss Tuttle knows it, but I saw her in
+Mrs. Jeffrey's room."
+
+The emphatic tone, offering such a contrast to her former manner of
+speech, might have drawn all eyes to the speaker had not the person
+she mentioned offered a still more interesting subject to the general
+curiosity.  As it was, all glances flew to that silent and seemingly
+impassive figure upon which all open suggestions and covert innuendo
+had hitherto fallen without creating more than a pressure of her
+interlaced fingers.  This direct attack, possibly the most
+threatening she had received, appeared to produce no more effect
+upon her than the others; less, perhaps, for no stir was visible in
+her now, and to some eyes she hardly seemed to breathe.
+
+Curiosity, thus baffled, led the gaze on to Mr. Jeffrey, and even
+to Uncle David; but the former had dropped his head again upon his
+hand, and the other - well, there was little to observe in Mr. Moore
+at any time, save the immense satisfaction he seemed to take in
+himself; so attention returned to the witness, who, by this time,
+had entered upon a consecutive tale.
+
+As near as I can remember, these are the words with which she
+prefaced it:
+
+"I am not especially proud of what I did that night, but I was led
+into it by degrees, and I am sure I beg the lady's pardon."  And
+then she went on to relate how, after she had seen Mrs. Jeffrey
+leave the house, she went into her room with the intention of putting
+it to rights.  As this was no more than her duty, no fault could be
+found with her; but she owned that when she had finished this task
+and removed all evidence of Mrs. Jeffrey's frenzied condition, she
+had no business to linger at the table turning over the letters she
+found lying there.
+
+Here the coroner stopped her and made some inquiries in regard to
+these letters, but as they seemed to be ordinary epistles from
+friends and quite foreign to the investigation, he allowed her to
+proceed.
+
+Her cheeks were burning now, for she had found herself obliged to
+admit that she had read enough of these letters to be sure that they
+had no reference to the quarrel then pending between her mistress
+and Mr. Jeffrey.  Her eyes fell and she looked seriously distressed
+as she went on to say that she was as conscious then as now of
+having no business with these papers; so conscious, indeed, that
+when she heard Miss Tuttle's step at the door, her one idea was to
+hide herself.
+
+That she could stand and face that lady never so much as occurred
+to her.  Her own guilty consciousness made her cheeks too hot for
+her to wish to meet an eye which had never rested on her any too
+kindly; so noticing how straight the curtains fell over one of the
+windows on the opposite side of the room, she dashed toward it and
+slipped in out of sight just as Miss Tuttle came in.  This window
+was one seldom used, owing to the fact that it overlooked an
+adjoining wall, so she had no fear of Miss Tuttle's approaching it.
+Consequently, she could stand there quite at her ease, and, as the
+curtains in falling behind her had not come quite together, she
+really could not help seeing just what that lady did.
+
+Here the witness paused with every appearance of looking for some
+token of disapprobation from the crowd.
+
+But she encountered nothing there but eager anxiety for her to
+proceed, so without waiting for the coroner's question, she added
+in so many words:
+
+"She went first to the book-shelves"
+
+We had expected it; but yet a general movement took place, and a
+few suppressed exclamations could be heard.
+
+"And what did she do there?"
+
+"Took down a book, after looking carefully up and down the shelves."
+
+"What color of book?"
+
+"A green one with red figures on it.  I could see the cover plainly
+as she took it down."
+
+"Like this one?"
+
+"Exactly like that one."
+
+"And what did she do with this book?"
+
+"Opened it, but not to read it.  She was too quick in closing it
+for that."
+
+"Did she take the book away?"
+
+"No; she put it back on the shelf."
+
+"After opening and closing it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Did you see whether she put anything into the book?"
+
+"I can not swear that she did; but then her back was to me, and I
+could not have seen it if she had."
+
+The implied suggestion caused some excitement, but the coroner,
+frowning on this, pressed the girl to continue, asking if Miss
+Tuttle left the room immediately after turning from the book-shelves.
+Loretta replied no; that, on the contrary, she stood for some minutes
+near them, gazing, in what seemed like a great distress of mind,
+straight upon the floor; after which she moved in an agitated way
+and with more than one anxious look behind her into the adjoining
+room where she paused before a large bureau.  As this bureau was
+devoted entirely to Mr. Jeffrey's use, Loretta experienced some
+surprise at seeing his wife's sister approach it in so stealthy a
+manner.  Consequently she was watching with all her might, when
+this young lady opened the upper drawer and, with very evident
+emotion, thrust her hand into it.
+
+What she took out, or whether she took out anything, this spy upon
+her movements could not say, for when Loretta heard the drawer being
+pushed back into place she drew the curtains close, perceiving that
+Miss Tuttle would have to face this window in coming back.  However,
+she ventured upon one other peep through them just as that lady was
+leaving the room, and remembered as if it were yesterday how
+clay-white her face looked, and how she held her left hand pressed
+close against the folds of her dress.  It was but a few minutes after
+this that Miss Tuttle left the house.
+
+As we all knew what was kept in that drawer, the conclusion was
+obvious.  Whatever excuse Miss Tuttle might give for going into her
+sister's room at this time, but one thought, one fear, or possibly
+one hope, could have taken her to Mr. Jeffrey's private drawer.  She
+wished to see if his pistol was still there, or if it had been taken
+away by her sister, - a revelation of the extreme point to which her
+thoughts had flown at this crisis, and one which effectually
+contradicted her former statement that she had been conscious of no
+alarm in behalf of her sister and had seen her leave the house
+without dread or suspicion of evil.
+
+The temerity which had made it possible to associate the name of
+such a man as Francis Jeffrey with an outrageous crime having been
+thus in a measure explained, the coroner recalled that gentleman and
+again thoroughly surprised the gaping public.
+
+Had the witness accompanied his wife to the Moore house?
+
+"No"
+
+Had he met her there by any appointment he had made with her or
+which had been made for them both by some third person?
+
+"No"
+
+Had he been at the Moore house on the night of the eleventh at any
+time previous to the hour when he was brought there by the officials?
+
+"No."
+
+Would he glance at this impression of certain finger-tips which had
+been left in the dust of the southwest chamber mantel?
+
+He had already noted them.
+
+Now would he place his left hand on the paper and see -
+
+"It is not necessary," he burst forth, in great heat.  "I own to
+those marks.  That is, I have no doubt they were made by my hand"
+Here, unconsciously, his eyes flew to the member thus referred to,
+as if conscious that in some way it had proved a traitor to him;
+after which his gaze traveled slowly my way, with an indescribable
+question in it which roused my conscience and made the trick by
+which I had got the impression of his hand seem less of a triumph
+than I had heretofore considered it.  The next minute he was
+answering the coroner under oath, very much as he had answered him
+in the unofficial interview at which I had been present.
+
+"I acknowledge having been in the Moore house and even having been
+in its southwest chamber, but not at the time supposed.  It was on
+the previous night."  He went on to relate how, being in a nervous
+condition and having the key to this old dwelling in his pocket, he
+had amused himself by going through its dilapidated interior.  All
+of this made a doubtful impression which was greatly emphasized
+when, in reply to the inquiry as to where he got the light to see
+by, he admitted that he had come upon a candle in an upstairs room
+and made use of that; though he could not remember what he had done
+with this candle afterward, and looked dazed and quite at sea, till
+the coroner suggested that he might have carried it into the closet
+of the room where his fingers had left their impression in the dust
+of the mantel-shelf.  Then he broke down like a man from whom some
+prop is suddenly snatched and looked around for a seat.  This was
+given him, while a silence, the most dreadful I ever experienced,
+held every one there in check.  But he speedily rallied and, with
+the remark that he was a little confused in regard to the incidents
+of that night, waited with a wild look in his averted eye for the
+coroner's next question.
+
+Unhappily for him it was in continuation of the same subject.  Had
+he bought candles or not at the grocer's around the corner?  Yes, he
+had.  Before visiting the house?  Yes.  Had he also bought matches?
+Yes.  What kind?  Common safety matches.  Had he noticed when he got
+home that the box he had just bought was half empty?  No.
+Nevertheless he had used many matches in going through this old
+house, had he not?  Possibly.  To light his way upstairs, perhaps?
+It might be.  Had he not so used them?  Yes.  Why had he done so,
+if he had candles in his pocket, which were so much easier to hold
+and so much more lasting than a lighted match?  Ah, he could not
+say; he did not know; his mind was confused.  He was awake when
+he should have been asleep.  It was all a dream to him.
+
+The coroner became still more persistent.
+
+"Did you enter the library on your solitary visit to this old house?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"What did you do there?"
+
+"Pottered around.  I don't remember."
+
+"What light did you use?"
+
+"A candle, I think."
+
+"You must know."
+
+"Well, I had a candle; it was in a candelabrum."
+
+"What candle and what candelabrum?"
+
+"The same I used upstairs, of course"
+
+"And you can not remember where you left this candle and candelabrum
+when you finally quitted the house?"
+
+"No.  I wasn't thinking about candles."
+
+"What were you thinking about?"
+
+"The rupture with my wife and the bad name of the house I was in."
+
+"Oh! and this was on Tuesday night?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How can you prove this to us?"
+
+
+"I can not"
+"But you swear -"
+
+"I swear that it was Tuesday night, the night immediately preceding
+the one when - when my wife's death robbed me of all earthly
+happiness."
+
+It was feelingly uttered, and several faces lightened; but the
+coroner repeating: "Is there no way you can prove this to our
+satisfaction?" the shadow settled again, and on no head more
+perceptibly than on that of the unfortunate witness.
+
+It was now late in the day and the atmosphere of the room had
+become stifling; but no one seemed to be conscious of any discomfort,
+and a general gasp of excitement passed through the room when the
+coroner, taking out a box from under a pile of papers, disclosed to
+the general gaze the famous white ribbon with its dainty bow, lying
+on top of the fatal pistol.
+
+That this special feature, the most interesting one of all connected
+with this tragedy, should have been kept so long in reserve and
+brought out just at this time, struck many of Mr. Jeffrey's closest
+friends as unnecessarily dramatic; but when the coroner, lifting out
+the ribbon, remarked tentatively, "You know this ribbon?" we were
+more struck by the involuntary cry of surprise which rose from some
+one in the crowd about the door, than by the look with which Mr.
+Jeffrey eyed it and made the necessary reply.  That cry had something
+more than nervous excitement in it.  Identifying the person who had
+uttered it as a certain busy little  woman well known in town, I
+sent an officer to watch her; then recalled my attention to the point
+the coroner was attempting to make.  He had forced Mr. Jeffrey to
+recognize the ribbon as the one which had fastened the pistol to
+his wife's arm; now he asked whether, in his opinion, a woman could
+tie such a bow to her own wrist, and when in common justice Mr.
+Jeffrey was obliged to say no, waited a third time before he put
+the general suspicion again into words:
+
+"Can not you, by some means or some witness, prove to us that it
+was on Tuesday night and not on Wednesday you spent the hours you
+speak of on this scene of your marriage and your wife's death?"
+
+The hopelessness which more than once had marked Mr. Jeffrey's
+features since the beginning of this inquiry, reappeared with renewed
+force as this suggestive question fell again upon his ears; and he
+was about to repeat his plea of forgetfulness when the coroner's
+attention was diverted by a request made in his ear by one of the
+detectives.  In another moment Mr. Jeffrey had been waved aside and
+a new witness sworn in.
+
+You can imagine every one's surprise, mine most of all, when this
+witness proved to be Uncle David.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+"TALLMAN!  LET US HAVE TALLMAN!"
+
+
+I do not know why the coroner had so long delayed to call this
+witness.  In the ordinary course of events his testimony should
+have preceded mine, but the ordinary course of events had not been
+followed, and it was only at the request of Mr. Moore himself that
+he was now allowed the privilege of appearing before this coroner
+and jury.
+
+I speak of it as a privilege because he himself evidently regarded
+it as such.  Indeed, his whole attitude and bearing as he addressed
+himself to the coroner showed that he was there to be looked at and
+that he secretly thought he was very well worth this attention.
+Possibly some remembrance of the old days, in which he had gone in
+and out before these people in a garb suggestive of penury, made
+the moment when he could appear before them in a guise more
+befitting his station one of incalculable importance to him.
+
+At all events, he confronted us all with an aspect which openly
+challenged admiration.  When, in answer to the coroner's inquiries,
+it became his duty to speak, he did so with a condescension which
+would have called up smiles if the occasion had been one of less
+seriousness, and his connection with it as unimportant as he would
+have it appear.
+
+What he said was in the way of confirming the last witness'
+testimony as to his having been at the Moore house on Tuesday
+evening.  Mr. Moore, who was very particular as to dates and days,
+admitted that the light which he had seen in a certain window of
+his ancestral home on the evening when he summoned the police was
+but the repetition of one he had detected there the evening before.
+It was this repetition which alarmed him and caused him to break
+through all his usual habits and leave his home at night to notify
+the police.
+
+"The old sneak!" thought I.  "Why didn't he tell us this before?"
+And I allowed myself afresh doubt of his candor which had always
+seemed to me somewhat open to question.  It is possible that the
+coroner shared my opinion, or that he felt it incumbent upon him to
+get what evidence he could from the sole person living within view
+of the house in which such ghastly events had taken place.  For,
+without betraying the least suspicion, and yet with the quiet
+persistence for which men in his responsible position are noted,
+he subjected this suave old man to such a rigid examination as to
+what he had seen, or had not seen, from his windows, that no
+possibility seemed to remain of his concealing a single fact which
+could help to the elucidation of this or any other mystery connected
+with the old mansion.
+
+He asked him if he had seen Mr. Jeffrey go in on the night in
+question; if he had ever seen any one go in there since the wedding;
+or even if he had seen any one loitering about the steps, or sneaking
+into the rear yard.  But the answer was always no; these same noes
+growing more and more emphatic, and the gentleman more and more
+impenetrable and dignified as the examination went on.  In fact, he
+was as unassailable a witness as I have ever heard testify before
+any jury.  Beyond the fact already mentioned of his having observed
+a light in the opposite house on the two evenings in question, he
+admitted nothing.  His life in the little cottage was so engrossing
+ - he had his organ - his dog - why should he look out of the window?
+Had it not been for his usual habit of letting his dog run the
+pavements for a quarter of an hour before finally locking up for
+the night, he would not have seen as much as he did.
+
+"Have you any stated hour for doing this?" the coroner now asked.
+
+"Yes; half-past nine"
+
+"And was this the hour when you caw that light?"
+
+"Yes, both times."
+
+As he had appeared at the station-house at a few minutes before ten
+he was probably correct in this statement.  But, notwithstanding
+this, I did not feel implicit confidence in him.  He was too
+insistent in his regret at not being able to give greater assistance
+in the disentanglement of a mystery so affecting the honor of the
+family of which he was now the recognized head.  His voice, nicely
+attuned to the occasion, was admirable; so was his manner; but I
+mentally wrote him down as one I should enjoy outwitting if the
+opportunity ever came my way.
+
+He wound up with such a distinct repetition of his former emphatic
+assertion as to the presence of light in the old house on Tuesday
+as well as Wednesday evening that Mr. Jeffrey's testimony in this
+regard received a decided confirmation.  I looked to see some open
+recognition of this, when suddenly, and with a persistence understood
+only by the police, the coroner recalled Mr. Jeffrey and asked him
+what proof he had to offer that his visit of Tuesday had not been
+repeated the next night and that he was not in the building when
+that fatal trigger was pulled.
+
+At this leading question, a lawyer sitting near me, edged himself
+forward as if he hoped for some sign from Mr. Jeffrey which would
+warrant him in interfering.  But Mr, Jeffrey gave no such sign.  I
+doubt if he even noticed this man's proximity, though he knew him
+well and had often employed him as his legal adviser in times gone
+by.  He was evidently exerting himself to recall the name which so
+persistently eluded his memory, putting his hand to his head and
+showing the utmost confusion.
+
+"I can not give you one," he finally stammered.  "There is a man
+who could tell - if only I could remember his name."  Suddenly with
+a loud cry which escaped him involuntarily, he gave a gurgling
+laugh and we heard the name "Tallman!" leap from his lips.
+
+The witness had at last remembered whom he had met at the cemetery
+gate at the hour, or near the hour, his wife lay dying in the lower
+part of the city.
+
+The effect was electrical.  One of the spectators - some country
+boor, no doubt - so far forgot himself as to cry out loud enough for
+all to hear:
+
+"Tallman! Let us have Tallman!"
+
+Of course he met with an instant rebuke, but I did not wait to hear
+it, or to see order restored, for a glance from the coroner had
+already sent me to the door in search of this new witness.
+
+My destination was the Cosmos Club, for Phil Tallman and his habits
+and haunts were as well known in Washington as the figure of Liberty
+on the summit of the Capitol dome.  When I saw him I did not wonder.
+Never have I seen a more amiable looking man, or one with a more
+absentminded expression.  To my query as to whether he had ever met
+Mr. Jeffrey at or near the entrance of Rock Creek Cemetery, he replied
+with an amazed look and the quick response:
+
+ "Of course I did.  It was the very night that his wife -  But what's
+up?  You look excited for a detective."
+
+"Come to the morgue and see.  This testimony of yours will prove
+invaluable to Mr. Jeffrey."
+
+I shall never forget the murmur of suppressed excitement which
+greeted us as I reappeared before coroner and jury accompanied by
+the gentleman who had been called for in such peremptory tones a
+short time before.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey, who had attempted to rise at our entrance, but seemed
+to lack the ability, gave a faint smile as Tallman's good-natured
+face appeared; and the coroner, feeling, perhaps, that some cords
+are liable to break if stretched too strongly, administered the oath
+and made the necessary inquiries with as little delay as was
+compatible with the solemnity of the occasion.
+
+The result was an absolute proof that Mr. Jeffrey had been near
+Soldiers' Home as late as seven, which was barely fifteen minutes
+previous to the hour Mrs. Jeffrey's watch was stopped by her fall
+in the old house on Waverley Avenue.  As the distance between the
+two places could not be compassed in that time, Mr. Jeffrey's alibi
+could be regarded as established.
+
+When we were all rising, glad of an adjournment which restored free
+movement and an open interchange of speech, a sudden check in the
+general rush called our attention back to Mr. Jeffrey.  He was
+standing facing Miss Tuttle, who was still sitting in a strangely
+immovable attitude in her old place.  He had just touched her on the
+arm, and now, with a look of alarm, he threw up the veil which had
+kept her face hidden from all beholders.
+
+A vision of loveliness greeted us, but that was not all.  It was an
+unconscious loveliness.  Miss Tuttle had fainted away, sitting
+upright in her chair.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+WHITE BOW AND PINK
+
+
+Mr. Jeffrey's examination and its triumphant conclusion created a
+great furor in town.  Topics which had hitherto absorbed all minds
+were forgotten in the discussion of the daring attempt which had
+been made by the police to fix crime upon one of Washington's most
+esteemed citizens, and the check which they had rightly suffered
+for this outrage.  What might be expected next?  Something equally
+bold and reprehensible, of course, but what?  It was a question
+which at the next sitting completely filled the inquest room.
+
+To my great surprise, Mr. Jeffrey was recalled to the stand.  He
+had changed since the night before.  He looked older, and while
+still handsome, for nothing could rob him of his regularity of
+feature and extreme elegance of proportion, showed little of the
+spirit which, in spite of the previous day's depression, had
+upheld him through its most trying ordeal and kept his eye bright,
+if only from excitement.  This was fact number one, and one which
+I stored away in my already well-furnished memory.
+
+Miss Tuttle sat in a less conspicuous position than on the previous
+day, and Mr. Moore, her uncle, was not thereat all.
+
+The testimony called for revived an old point which, seemingly, had
+not been settled to the coroner's satisfaction.
+
+Had Mr. Jeffrey placed the small stand holding the candelabrum on
+the spot where it had been found?  No.  Had he carried into the
+house, at the time of his acknowledged visit, the candles which had
+been afterward discovered there?  No.  He had had time to think
+since his hesitating and unsatisfactory replies of the day before,
+and he was now in a position to say that while he distinctly
+remembered buying candles on his way to the Moore house, he had not
+found them in his pocket on getting there and had been obliged to
+make use of the matches he always carried on his person in order to
+find his way to the upstairs room where he felt positive he would
+find a candle.
+
+This gave the coroner an opportunity to ask:
+
+"And why did you expect to find a candle there?"
+
+The answer astonished me and, I have no doubt, many others.
+
+"It was the room in which my wife had dressed for the ceremony.  It
+had not been disturbed since that time.  My wife had little ways of
+her own; one was to complete her toilet by using a curling iron on
+a little lock she wore over her temple.  When at home she heated
+this curling iron in the gas jet, but there being no gas in the Moore
+house, I naturally concluded that she had made use of a candle, as
+the curl had been noticeable under her veil."
+
+Oh, the weariness in his tone! I could scarcely interpret it.  Was
+he talking by rote, or was he utterly done with life and all its
+interests?  No one besides myself seemed to note this strange
+passivity.  To the masses he was no longer a suffering man, but an
+individual from whom information was to be got.  The next question
+was a vital one.
+
+He had accounted for one candle in the house; could he account for
+the one found in the tumbler or for the one lying crushed and
+battered on the closet floor?
+
+He could not.
+
+And now we all observed a change of direction in the inquiry.
+Witnesses were summoned to corroborate Mr. Jeffrey's statements,
+statements which it seemed to be the coroner's present wish to
+establish.  First came the grocer who had sold Mr. Jeffrey the
+candles.  He acknowledged, much to Jinny's discomfort, that an hour
+after Mr. Jeffrey had left the store, he had found on the counter
+the package which that gentleman had forgotten to take.  Poor Jinny
+had not stayed long enough to hear his story out.  The grocer
+finished his testimony by saying that immediately upon his
+discovery he had sent the candles to Mr. Jeffrey's house.
+
+This the coroner caused to be emphasized to such an extent that we
+were all convinced of its importance.  But as yet his purpose was
+not evident save to those who were more in his confidence than myself.
+
+The other witnesses were men from Rauchers, who had acted as waiters
+at the time of the marriage.  One of them testified that immediately
+on Miss Moore's arrival he had been sent for a candle and a box of
+matches.  The other, that he had carried up to her room a large
+candelabrum from the drawing-room mantel.  A pair of curling tongs
+taken from the dressing table of this room was next produced,
+together with other articles of toilet use which had been allowed
+to remain there uncared for, though they were of solid silver and
+of beautiful design.
+
+The next witness was a member of Mr. Jeffrey's own household.  Chloe
+was her name, and her good black face worked dolefully as she
+admitted that the package of candles which the grocer boy had left
+on the kitchen table, with the rest of the groceries on the morning
+of that dreadful day when "Missus" killed herself, was not to be
+found when she came to put the things away.  She had looked and
+looked for it, but it was not there.
+
+Further inquiry brought out the fact that but one other member of
+the household was in the kitchen when these groceries were delivered;
+and that this person gave a great start when the boy shouted out,
+"The candles there were bought by Mr. Jeffrey," and hurried over to
+the table and handled the packages, although Chloe did not see her
+carry any of them away.
+
+"And who was this person?"
+
+"Miss Tuttle."
+
+With the utterance of this name the veil fell from the coroner's
+intentions and the purpose of this petty but prolonged inquiry stood
+revealed.  It was to all a fearful and impressive moment.  To me it
+was as painful as it was triumphant.  I had not anticipated such an
+outcome when I put my wits to work to prove that murder, and not
+suicide, was answerable for young Mrs. Jeffrey's death.
+
+When the murmur which had hailed this startling turn in the inquiry
+had subsided, the coroner drew a deep breath, and, with an uneasy
+glance at the jury, who, to a man, seemed to wish themselves well
+out of this job, he dismissed the cook and summoned a fresh witness.
+
+Her name made the people stare.
+
+"Miss Nixon."
+
+Miss Nixon!  That was a name well known in Washington; almost as
+well known as that of Uncle David, or even of Mr. Tallman.  What
+could this quaint and characteristic little body have to do with
+this case of doubtful suicide?  A word will explain.  She was the
+person who, on the day before, had made that loud exclamation when
+the box containing the ribbon and the pistol had been disclosed to
+the jury.
+
+As her fussy little figure came forward, some nudged and some
+laughed, possibly because her bonnet was not of this year's style,
+possibly because her manner was peculiar and as full of oddities
+as her attire.  But they did not laugh long, for the little lady's
+look was appealing, if not distressed.  The fact that she was
+generally known to possess one of the largest bank accounts in the
+District, made any marked show of disrespect toward her a matter
+of poor judgment, if not of questionable taste.
+
+The box in the coroner's hand prepared us for what was before us.
+As he opened it and disclosed again the dainty white bow which, as
+I have before said, was of rather a fantastic make, the whole
+roomful of eager spectators craned forward and were startled enough
+when he asked:
+
+"Did you ever see a bow like this before?"
+
+Her answer came in the faintest of tones.
+
+"Yes, I have one like it; very like it; so like it that yesterday
+I could not suppress an exclamation on seeing this one."
+
+"Where did you get the one you have?  Who fashioned it, I mean, or
+tied it for you, if that is what I ought to say?"
+
+"It was tied for me by - Miss Tuttle.  She is a friend of mine, or
+was - and a very good one; and one day while watching me struggling
+with a piece of ribbon, which I wanted made into a bow, she took it
+from my hand and tied a knot for which I was very much obliged to
+her.  It was very pretty."
+
+"And like this?"
+
+"Almost exactly, sir."
+
+"Have you that knot with you?"
+
+She had.
+
+"Will you show it to the jury?"
+
+Heaving a sigh which she had much better have suppressed, she opened
+a little bag she carried at her side and took out a pink satin bow.
+It had been tied by a deft hand; and more than one pair of eyes fell
+significantly at sight of it.
+
+Amid a silence which was intense, two or three other witnesses were
+called to prove that Miss Tuttle's skill in bow-tying was exceptional,
+and was often made use of, not only by members of her household, but,
+as in Miss Nixon's case, by outsiders; the special style shown in the
+one under consideration being the favorite.
+
+During all this, I kept my eyes on Mr. Jeffrey.  It had now become
+so evident which way the coroner's inquiries tended that I wished to
+be the first to note their effect on him.  It was less marked than I
+had anticipated.  The man seemed benumbed by accumulated torment and
+stared at the witnesses filing before him as if they were part of
+some wild phantasmagoria which confused, without enlightening him.
+When finally several persons of both sexes were brought forward to
+prove that his attentions to Miss Tuttle had once been sufficiently
+marked for an announcement of their engagement to be daily looked
+for, he let his head fall forward on his breast as if the creeping
+horror which had seized him was too much for his brain if not for
+his heart.  The final blow was struck when the man whom I had myself
+seen in Alexandria testified to the contretemps which had occurred
+in Atlantic City; an additional point being given to it by the
+repetition of some old conversation raked up for the purpose, by
+which an effort was made to prove that Miss Tuttle found it hard to
+forgive injuries even from those nearest and dearest to her.  This
+subject might have been prolonged, but some of the jury objected,
+and the time being now ripe for the great event of the day, the
+name of the lady herself was called.
+
+After so significant a preamble, the mere utterance of Miss Tuttle's
+name had almost the force of an accusation; but the dignity with
+which she rose calmed all minds, and subdued every expression of
+feeling.  I could but marvel at her self-poise and noble equanimity,
+and asked myself if, in the few days which had passed since first
+the murmur of something more serious than suicide had gone about,
+she had so schooled herself for all emergencies that nothing could
+shake her self-possession, not even the suggestion that a woman of
+her beauty and distinction could be concerned in a crime.  0r had
+she within herself some great source of strength, which sustained
+her in this most dreadful ordeal?  All were on watch to see.  When
+the veil dropped from before her features and she stepped into the
+full sight of the expectant crowd, it was not the beauty of her
+face, notable and conspicuous as that was, which roused the hum of
+surprise that swept from one end of the room to the other, but the
+calmness, almost the elevation of her manner, a calmness and
+elevation so unlooked for in the light of the strange contradictions
+offered by the evidence to which we had been listening for a day and
+a half, that all were affected; many inclined even to believe her
+innocent of any undue connection with her sister's death before she
+had stretched forth her hand to take the oath.
+
+I was no exception to the rest.  Though I had exerted myself from
+the first to bring matters to a climax - but not to this one - I
+experienced such a shock under the steady gaze of her sad but
+gentle eyes, that I found myself recoiling before my own presumption
+with something like secret shame till I was relieved by the thought
+that a perfectly innocent woman would show more feeling at so false
+and cruel a position.  I felt that only one with something to conceal
+would turn so calm a front upon men ready, as she knew, to fix upon
+her a great crime.  This conviction steadied me and made me less
+susceptible to her grace and to the tone of her quiet voice and the
+far-away sadness of her look.  She faltered only when by chance she
+glanced at the shrinking figure of Francis Jeffrey.
+
+Her name which she uttered without emphasis and yet in a way to
+arouse attention sank into all hearts with more or less disturbance.
+"Alice Cora Tuttle!"  How in days gone by, and not so long gone by,
+either, those three words had aroused the enthusiasm of many a
+gallant man and inspired the toast at many a gallant feast! They
+had their charm yet, if the heightened color observable on many a
+cheek there was a true index to the quickening heart below.
+
+"How are you connected with the deceased Mrs. Jeffrey?"
+
+"I am the child of her mother by a former husband.  We were
+half-sisters."
+
+No bitterness in this statement, only an infinite sadness.  The
+coroner continued to question her.  He asked for an account of her
+childhood, and forced her to lay bare the nature of her relations
+with her sister.  But little was gained by this, for their relations
+seemed to have been of a sympathetic character up to the time of
+Veronica's return from school, when they changed somewhat; but how
+or why, Miss Tuttle was naturally averse to saying.  Indeed she
+almost refused to do so, and the coroner, feeling his point gained
+more by this refusal than by any admission she might have made, did
+not press this subject but passed on to what interested us more: the
+various unexplained actions on her part which pointed toward crime.
+
+His first inquiry was in reference to the conversation held between
+her and Mr. Jeffrey at the time he visited her room.  We had
+listened to his account of it and now we wished to hear hers.  But
+the cue which had been given her by this very account had been
+invaluable to her, and her testimony naturally coincided with his.
+We found ourselves not an inch advanced.  They had talked of her
+sister's follies and she had advised patience, and that was all she
+could say on the subject - all she would say, as we presently saw.
+
+The coroner introduced a fresh topic.
+
+"What can you tell us about the interview you had with you sister
+prior to her going out on the night of her death?"
+
+"Very little, except that it differed entirely from what is generally
+supposed.  She did not come to my room for conversation but simply
+to tell me that she had an engagement.  She was in an excited mood
+but said nothing to alarm me.  She even laughed when she left me;
+perhaps to put me off my guard, perhaps because she was no longer
+responsible."
+
+"Did she know that Mr. Jeffrey had visited you earlier in the day?
+Did she make any allusion to it, I mean?"
+
+"None at all.  She shrugged her shoulders when I asked if she was
+well, and anticipated all further questions by running from the room.
+She was always capricious in her ways and never more so than at that
+moment.  Would to God that it had been different!  Would to God that
+she had shown herself to be a suffering woman!  Then I might have
+reached her heart and this tragedy would have been averted."
+
+The coroner favored the witness with a look of respect, perhaps
+because his next question must necessarily be cruel.
+
+"Is that all you have to say concerning this important visit, the
+last you held with your sister before her death?"
+
+"No, sir, there is something else, something which I should like to
+relate to this jury.  When she came into my room, she held in her
+hand a white ribbon; that is, she held the two ends of a long satin
+ribbon which seemed to come from her pocket.  Handing those two ends
+to me, she asked me to tie them about her wrist.  'A knot under and
+a bow on top,' she said, 'so that it can not slip off.'  As this was
+something I had often been called on to do for her, I showed no
+hesitation in complying with her request.  Indeed, I felt none.  I
+thought it was her fan or her bouquet she held concealed in the folds
+of her dress, but it proved to be - Gentlemen, you know what.  I pray
+that you will not oblige me to mention it."
+
+It was such a stroke as no lawyer would have advised her to make, - I
+heard afterward that she had refused the offices of a dozen lawyers
+who had proffered her their services.  But uttered as it was with a
+noble air and a certain dignified serenity, it had a great effect upon
+those about her and turned in a moment the wavering tide of favor in
+her direction.
+
+The coroner, who doubtless was perfectly acquainted with the
+explanation with which she had provided herself, but who perhaps did
+not look for it to antedate his attack, bowed in quiet acknowledgment
+of her request and then immediately proceeded to ignore it.
+
+"I should be glad to spare you," said he, "but I do not find it
+possible.  You knew that Mr. Jeffrey had a pistol?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"That it was kept in their apartment?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In the upper drawer of a certain bureau?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Now, Miss Tuttle, will you tell us why you went to that drawer - if
+you did go to that drawer - immediately after Mrs. Jeffrey left the
+house?"
+
+She had probably felt this question coming, not only since the
+coroner began to speak but ever since the evidence elicited from
+Loretta proved that her visit to this drawer had been secretly
+observed.  Yet she had no answer ready.
+
+"I did not go for the pistol," she finally declared.  But she did
+not say what she had gone for, and the coroner did not press her.
+
+Again the tide swung back.
+
+She seemed to feel the change but did not show it in the way
+naturally looked for.  Instead of growing perturbed or openly
+depressed she bloomed into greater beauty and confronted with
+steadier eye, not us, but the men she instinctively faced as the
+tide of her fortunes began to lower.  Did the coroner perceive this
+and recognize at last both the measure of her attractions and the
+power they were likely to carry with them?  Perhaps, for his voice
+took an acrid note as he declared:
+
+"You had another errand in that room?"
+
+She let her head droop just a trifle.
+
+"Alas!" she murmured.
+
+"You went to the book-shelves and took out a book with a peculiar
+cover, a cover which Mr. Jeffrey has already recognized as that of
+the book in which he found a certain note."
+
+"You have said it," she faltered.
+
+"Did you take such a book out?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"For what purpose, Miss Tuttle?"
+
+She had meant to answer quickly.  But some consideration made her
+hesitate and the words were long in coming; when she did speak, it
+was to say:
+
+"My sister asked another favor of me after I had tied the ribbon.
+Pausing in her passage to the door, she informed me in a tone quite
+in keeping with her whole manner, that she had left a note for her
+husband in the book they were reading together.  Her reason for
+doing this, she said, was the very natural one of wishing him to
+come upon it by chance, but as she had placed it in the front of
+the book instead of in the back where they were reading, she was
+afraid that he would fail to find it.  Would I be so good as to take
+it out for her and insert it again somewhere near the end?  She was
+in a hurry or she would return and do it herself.  As she and Mr.
+Jeffrey had parted in anger, I hailed with joy this evidence of her
+desire for a reconciliation, and it was in obedience to her request,
+the singularity of which did not strike me as forcibly then as now,
+that I went to the shelves in her room and took down the book."
+
+"And did you find the note where she said?"
+
+"Yes, and put it in toward the end of the story."
+
+"Nothing more?  Did you read the note?"
+
+"It was folded," was Miss Tuttle's quiet answer.  Certainly this
+woman was a thoroughbred or else she was an adept in deception such
+as few of us had ever encountered.  The gentleness of her manner,
+the easy tone, the quiet eyes, eyes in whose dark depths great
+passions were visible, but passions that were under the control of
+an equally forcible will, made her a puzzle to all men's minds; but
+it was a fascinating puzzle that awoke a species of awe in those
+who attempted to understand her.  To all appearances she was the
+unlikeliest woman possible to cherish criminal intents, yet her
+answers were rather clever than convincing, unless you allowed
+yourself to be swayed by the look of her beautiful face or the music
+of her rich, sad voice.
+
+"You did not remain before these book-shelves long?" observed the
+coroner.
+
+"You have a witness who knows more about that than I do," she
+suggested; and doubtless aware of the temerity of this reply, waited
+with unmoved countenance, but with a visibly bounding breast, for
+what would doubtless prove a fresh attack.
+
+It was a violent one and of a character she was least fitted to meet.
+Taking up the box I have so often mentioned, the coroner drew away
+the ribbon lying on top and disclosed the pistol.  In a moment her
+hands were over her ears.
+
+"Why do you do that?" he asked.  "Did you think I was going to
+discharge it?"
+
+She smiled pitifully as she let her hands fall again.
+
+"I have a dread of firearms," she explained.  "I always have had.
+Now they are simply terrible to me, and this one -"
+
+"I understand," said the coroner, with a slight glance in the
+direction of Durbin.  They had evidently planned this test together
+on the strength of an idea suggested to Durbin by her former action
+when the memory of this shot was recalled to her.
+
+"Your horror seems to lie in the direction of the noise they make,"
+continued her inexorable interlocutor.  "One would say you had
+heard this pistol discharged."
+
+Instantly a complete breaking-up of her hitherto well maintained
+composure altered her whole aspect and she vehemently cried:
+
+"I did, I did.  I was on Waverley Avenue that night, and I heard
+the shot which in all probability ended my sister's life.  I walked
+farther than I intended; I strolled into the street which had such
+bitter memories for us and I heard - No, I was not in search of my
+sister.  I had not associated my sister's going out with any
+intention of visiting this house; I was merely troubled in mind and
+anxious and - and -"
+
+She had overrated her strength or her cleverness.  She found herself
+unable to finish the sentence, and so did not try.  She had been
+led by the impulse of the moment farther than she had intended, and,
+aghast at her own imprudence, paused with her first perceptible loss
+of courage before the yawning gulf opening before her.
+
+I felt myself seized by a very uncomfortable dread lest her
+concealments and unfinished sentences hid a guiltier knowledge of
+this crime than I was yet ready to admit.
+
+The coroner, who is an older man than myself, betrayed a certain
+satisfaction but no dread.  Never did the unction which underlies
+his sharpest speeches show more plainly than when he quietly
+remarked:
+
+"And so under a similar impulse you, as well as Mr. Jeffrey, chose
+this uncanny place to ramble in.  To all appearance that old hearth
+acted much more like a lodestone upon members of your family than
+you were willing at one time to acknowledge"
+
+This reference to words she had herself been heard to use seemed to
+overwhelm her.  Her calmness fled and she cast a fleeting look of
+anguish at Mr. Jeffrey.  But his face was turned from sight, and,
+meeting with no help there, or anywhere, indeed, save in her own
+powerful nature, she recovered as best she could the ground she had
+lost and, with a trembling question of her own, attempted to put
+the coroner in fault and reestablish herself.
+
+"You say 'ramble through.'  Do you for a moment think that I entered
+that old house?"
+
+"Miss Tuttle," was the grave, almost sad reply, "did you not know
+that in some earth, dropped from a flower-pot overturned at the
+time when a hundred guests flew in terror from this house, there is
+to be seen the mark of a footstep, - a footstep which you are at
+liberty to measure with your own?"
+
+"Ah!" she murmured, her hands going up to her face.
+
+But in another moment she had dropped them and looked directly at
+the coroner.
+
+"I walked there - I never said that I did not walk there - when I
+went later to see my sister and in sight of a number of detectives
+passed straight through the halls and into the library."
+
+"And that this footstep," inexorably proceeded the coroner, "is not
+in a line with the main thoroughfare extending from the front to the
+back of the house, but turned inwards toward the wall as if she who
+made it had stopped to lean her head against the partition?"
+
+Miss Tuttle's head drooped.  Probably she realized at this moment,
+if not before, that the coroner and jury had ample excuse for
+mistrusting one who had been so unmistakably caught in a
+prevarication; possibly her regret carried her far enough to wish
+she had not disdained all legal advice from those who had so
+earnestly offered it.  But though she showed alike her shame and
+her disheartenment, she did not give up the struggle.
+
+"If I went into the house," she said, "it was not to enter that room.
+I had too great a dread of it.  If I rested my head against the wall
+it was in terror of that shot.  It came so suddenly and was so
+frightful, so much more frightful than anything you can conceive."
+
+"Then you did enter the house?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"And it was while you were inside, instead of outside, that you
+heard the shot?"
+
+"I must admit that, too.  I was at the library door."
+
+"You acknowledge that?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"But you did not enter the library?"
+
+"No, not then; not till I was taken back by the officer who told me
+of my sister's death"
+
+"We are glad to hear this precise statement from you.  It encourages
+me to ask again the nature of the freak which took you into this
+house.  You say that it was not from any dread on your sister's
+account?  What, then, was it?  No evasive answer will satisfy us,
+Miss Tuttle."
+
+She realized this as no one else could.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey's reason for his visit there could not be her reason,
+yet what other had she to give?  Apparently none.
+
+"I can not answer," she said.
+
+And the deep sigh which swept through the room was but an echo of
+the despair with which she saw herself brought to this point.
+
+"We will not oblige you to," said the coroner with apparent
+consideration.  But to those who knew the law against forcing a
+witness to incriminate himself, this was far from an encouraging
+concession.
+
+"However," he now went on, with suddenly assumed severity, "you
+may answer this.  Was the house dark or light when you entered it?
+And, how did you get in?"
+
+"The house was dark, and I got in through the front door, which I
+found ajar."
+
+"You are more courageous than most women!  I fear there are few of
+your sex who could be induced to enter it in broad daylight and
+under every suitable protection."
+
+She raised her figure proudly.
+
+"Miss Tuttle, you have heard Chloe say that you were in the kitchen
+of Mr. Jeffrey's house when the grocer boy delivered the candles
+which had been left by your brother-in-law on the counter of the
+store where he bought them.  Is this true?"
+
+"Yes, sir, it is true."
+
+"Did you see those candles?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"You did not see them?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Yet you went over to the table?"
+
+"Yes, sir, but I did not meddle with the packages.  I had really
+no business with them."
+
+The coroner, surveying her sadly, went quickly on as if anxious to
+terminate this painful examination.
+
+"You have not told us what you did when you heard that pistol-shot."
+
+"I ran away as soon as I could move; I ran madly from the house."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Home."
+
+"But it was half-past ten when you got home."
+
+"Was it?"
+
+"It was half-past ten when the man came to tell you of your
+sister's death."
+
+"It may have been."
+
+"Your sister is supposed to have died in a few minutes.  Where were
+you in the interim?"
+
+"God knows.  I do not."
+
+A wild look was creeping into her face, and her figure was swaying.
+But she soon steadied it.  I have never seen a more admirable
+presence maintained in the face of a dreadful humiliation.
+
+"Perhaps I can help you," rejoined the coroner, not unkindly.  "Were
+you not in the Congressional Library looking up at the lunettes and
+gorgeously painted walls?"
+
+"I?"  Her eyes opened wide in wondering doubt.  "If I was, I did
+not know it.  I have no remembrance of it."
+
+She seemed to lose sight of her present position, the cloud under
+which she rested, and even the construction which might be put upon
+such a forgetfulness at a time confessedly prior to her knowledge
+of the purpose and effect of the shot from which she had so
+incontinently fled.
+
+"Your condition of mind and that of Mr. Jeffrey seem to have been
+strangely alike," remarked the coroner.
+
+"No, no!" she protested.
+
+"Arguing a like source."
+
+"No, no," she cried again, this time with positive agony.  Then with
+an effort which awakened respect for her powers of mind, if for
+nothing else, she desperately added: "I can not say what was in his
+heart that night, but I know what was in mine - dread of that old
+house, to which I had been drawn in spite of myself, possibly by the
+force of the tragedy going on inside it, culminating in a delirium
+of terror, which sent me flying in an opposite direction from my home
+and into places I had been accustomed to visit when my heart was
+light and untroubled."
+
+The coroner glanced at the jury, who unconsciously shook their heads.
+He shook his, too, as he returned to the charge.
+
+"Another question, Miss Tuttle.  When you heard a pistol-shot
+sounding from the depths of that dark library, what did you think it
+meant?"
+
+She put her hands over her ears - it seemed as if she could not
+prevent this instinctive expression of recoil at the mention of the
+death-dealing weapon -and in very low tones replied:
+
+"Something dreadful; something superstitious.  It was night, you
+remember, and at night one has such horrible thoughts."
+
+"Yet an hour or two later you declared that the hearth was no
+lodestone.  You forgot its horrors and your superstition upon
+returning to your own house."
+
+"It might be;" she murmured; "but if so, they soon returned.  I
+had reason for my horror, if not for my superstition, as the event
+showed."
+
+The coroner did not attempt to controvert this.  He was about to
+launch a final inquiry.
+
+"Miss Tuttle; upon the return of yourself and Mr. Jeffrey to your
+home after your final visit to the Moore house, did you have any
+interview that was without witnesses?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did you exchange any words?"
+
+"I think we did exchange some words; it would be only natural."
+
+"Are you willing to state what words?"
+
+She looked dazed and appeared to search her memory.
+
+"I don't think I can," she objected.
+
+"But something was said by you and some answer was made by him?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"Can not you say definitely?"
+
+"We did speak."
+
+"In English?"
+
+"No, in French."
+
+"Can not you translate that French for us?"
+
+"Pardon me, sir; it was so long ago my memory fails me."
+
+"Is it any better for the second and longer interview between you
+the next day?"
+
+"No-sir."
+
+"You can not give us any phrase or word that was uttered there?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Is this your final reply on this subject?"
+
+"It is."
+
+She never had been subjected to an interrogation like this before.
+It made her proud soul quiver in revolt, notwithstanding the
+patience with which she had fortified herself.  With red cheeks
+and glistening eyes she surveyed the man who had made her suffer so,
+and instantly every other man there suffered with her; excepting
+possibly Durbin, whose heart was never his strong point.  But our
+hearts were moved, our reasons were not convinced, as was presently
+shown, when, with a bow of dismissal, the coroner released her, and
+she passed back to her seat.
+
+Simultaneously with her withdrawal the gleam of sensibility left
+the faces of the jury, and the dark and brooding look which had
+marked their countenances from the beginning returned, and returned
+to stay.
+
+What would their verdict be?  There were present two persons who
+affected to believe that it would be one of suicide occasioned by
+dementia.  These were Miss Tuttle and Mr. Jeffrey, who, now that
+the critical period had come, straightened themselves boldly in
+their seats and met the glances concentrated upon them with dignity,
+if not with the assurance of complete innocence.  But from the
+carefulness with which they avoided each other's eyes and the almost
+identical expression mirrored upon both faces, it was visible to
+all that they regarded their cause as a common one, and that the
+link which they denied, as having existed between them prior to
+Mrs. Jeffrey's death, had in some way been supplied by that very
+tragedy; so that they now unwittingly looked with the same eyes,
+breathed with the same breath, and showed themselves responsive to
+the same fluctuations of hope and fear.
+
+The celerity with which that jury arrived at its verdict was a shock
+to us all.  It had been a quiet body, offering but little assistance
+to the coroner in his questioning; but when it fell to these men to
+act, the precision with which they did so was astonishing.  In a
+half-hour they returned from the room into which they had adjourned,
+and the foreman gave warning that he was prepared to render a verdict.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey and Miss Tuttle both clenched their hands; then Miss
+Tuttle pulled down her veil.
+
+"We find," said the solemn foreman, "that Veronica Moore Jeffrey, who
+on the night of May eleventh was discovered lying dead on the floor
+of her own unoccupied house in Waverley Avenue, came to her death by
+means of a bullet, shot from a pistol connected to her wrist by a
+length of white satin ribbon.
+
+"That the first conclusion of suicide is not fully sustained by the
+facts;
+
+"And that attempt should be made to identify the hand that fired
+this pistol."
+
+It was as near an accusation of Miss Tuttle as was possible without
+mentioning her name.  A groan passed through the assemblage, and Mr.
+Jeffrey, bounding to his feet, showed an inclination to shout aloud
+in his violent indignation.  But Miss Tuttle, turning toward him,
+lifted her hand with a commanding gesture and held it so till he sat
+down again.
+
+It was both a majestic and an utterly incomprehensible movement on
+her part, giving to the close of these remarkable proceedings a
+dramatic climax which set all hearts beating and, I am bound to say,
+all tongues wagging till the room cleared.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+AN EGOTIST OF THE FIRST WATER
+
+
+Had the control of affairs been mine at this moment I am quite
+positive that I should have found it difficult to deny these two
+the short interview which they appeared to crave and which would
+have been to them such an undeniable comfort.  But a sterner spirit
+than mine was in charge, and the district attorney, into whose hands
+the affair had now fallen, was inexorable.  Miss Tuttle was treated
+with respect, with kindness, even, but she was not allowed any
+communication with her brother-in-law beyond the formal "Good
+afternoon" incident upon their separation; while he, scorning to
+condemn his lips to any such trite commonplace, said nothing at all,
+only looked a haggard inquiry which called forth from her the most
+exalted look of patience and encouraging love it has ever been my
+good fortune to witness.  Durbin was standing near and saw this
+look as plainly as I did, but it did not impose on him, he said.
+But what in the nature of human woe could impose on him?  Durbin is
+a machine - a very reliable and useful machine, no doubt, yet when
+all is said, a simple contrivance of cogs and wheels; while I - well,
+I hope that I am something more than that; or why was I a changed
+man toward her from the moment I saw the smile which marked this
+accused woman's good by to Francis Jeffrey.  No longer believing in
+her guilt, I went about my business with tumult in brain and heart,
+asking in my remorse for an opportunity to show her some small
+courtesy whereby to relieve the torture I felt at having helped the
+coroner in the inquiries which had brought about what looked to me
+now like a cruel and unwarranted result.
+
+That it should be given to Durbin to hold such surveillance over her
+as her doubtful position demanded added greatly to my discomfort.
+But I was enabled to keep my lips firmly shut over any expression of
+secret jealousy or displeasure; and this was fortunate, as otherwise
+I might have failed to obtain the chance of aiding her later on, in
+other and deeper matters.
+
+Meanwhile, and before any of us had left this room, one fact had
+become apparent.  Mr. Jeffrey was not going to volunteer any fresh
+statement in face of the distinct disapproval of his sister-in-law.
+As his eye fell upon the district attorney, who had lingered near,
+possibly in the hope of getting something more from this depressed
+and almost insensible man, he made one remark, but it was an
+automatic one, calculated to produce but little effect on the
+discriminating ears of this experienced official.
+
+"I do not believe that my wife was murdered."  This was what he said.
+"It was a wicked verdict.  My wife killed herself.  Wasn't the pistol
+found tied to her?"
+
+Either from preoccupation or a dazed condition of mind, he seemed to
+forget that Miss Tuttle had owned to tying on this pistol; and that
+nothing but her word went to prove that this was done before and not
+after the shot had been delivered in the Moore house library.  I
+thought I understood him and was certain that I sympathized with his
+condition; but in the ears of those less amiably disposed toward him,
+his statements had lost force and the denial went for little.
+
+Meanwhile a fact which all had noted and commented on had recurred to
+my mind and caused me to ask a brother officer who was walking out
+beside me what he thought of Mr. Moore's absence from an inquiry
+presumably of such importance to all members of this family.
+
+The fellow laughed and said:
+
+"Old Dave has lost none of his peculiarities in walking into his
+fortune.  This is his day at the cemetery.  Didn't you know that?
+He will let nothing on earth get in the way of his pilgrimage to
+that spot on the twenty-third of May, much less so trivial an
+occurrence as an inquest over the remains of his nearest relative."
+
+I felt my gorge rise; then a thought struck me and I asked how long
+the old gentleman kept up his watch.
+
+"From sunrise to sundown, the boys say.  I never saw him there myself.
+My beat lies in an opposite direction."
+
+I left him and started for Rock Creek Cemetery.  There were two good
+hours yet before sundown and I resolved to come upon Uncle David at
+his post.
+
+It took just one hour and a quarter to get there by the most direct
+route I could take.  Five minutes more to penetrate the grounds to
+where a superb vehicle stood, drawn by two of the finest horses I
+had seen in Washington for many a long day.  As I was making my way
+around this equipage I came upon a plot in a condition of upheaval
+preparatory to new sodding and the planting of several choice shrubs.
+In the midst of the sand thus exposed a single head-stone rose.  On
+his knees beside this simple monument I saw the figure of Uncle
+David, dressed in his finest clothes and showing in his oddly
+contorted face the satisfaction of great prosperity, battling with
+the dissatisfaction of knowing that one he had so loved had not
+lived to share his elevation.  He was rubbing away the mold from the
+name which, by his own confession, was the only one to which his
+memory clung in sympathy or endearment.  At his feet lay an open
+basket, in which I detected the remains of what must have been a
+rather sumptuous cold repast.  To all appearance he had foregone
+none of his ancient customs; only those customs had taken on elegance
+with his rise in fortune.  The carriage and the horses, and most of
+all, the imperturbable driver, seemed to awaken some awe in the boys.
+They were still in evidence, but they hung back sheepishly and eyed
+the basket of neglected food as if they hoped he would forget to take
+it away.  Meanwhile the clattering of chains against the harness, the
+pawing of the horses and the low exclamations of the driver caused me
+the queerest feelings.  Advancing quite unceremoniously upon the
+watcher by the grave, I remarked aloud;
+
+"The setting sun will soon release you, Mr. Moore.  Are you going
+immediately into town?"
+
+He paused in his rubbing, which was being done with a very tender
+hand, and as if he really loved the name he was endeavoring to bring
+into plainer view.  Scowling a little, he turned and met me
+point-blank with a look which had a good deal of inquiry in it.
+
+"I am not usually interrupted here," he emphasized; "except by the
+boys," he added more mildly.  "They sometimes approach too closely,
+but I am used to the imps and scarcely notice them.  Ah!  there are
+some of my old friends now!  Well, it is time they knew that a
+change has taken place in my fortunes.  Hi, there!  Hands up and
+catch this, and this, and this!" he shouted.  "But keep quiet about
+it or next year you will get pennies again."
+
+And flinging quarters right and left, he smiled in such a pompous,
+self-satisfied way at the hurrah and scramble which ensued, that it
+was well worth my journey there just to see this exhibition of
+combined vanity and good humor.
+
+"Now go!" he vociferated; and the urchins, black and white, flew
+away, flinging up their heels in delight and shouting: "Bully for you,
+Uncle David!  We'll come again next year, not for twenty-fives but
+fifties."
+
+"I will make it dollars if I only live so long," he muttered.  And
+deigning now to remember the question I had put to him, he grandly
+remarked:
+
+"I am going straight into town.  Can I do anything for you?"
+
+"Nothing.  I thought you might like to know what awaits you there.
+The city is greatly stirred up.  The coroner's jury in the
+Jeffrey-Moore case has just brought in a verdict to the effect that
+suicide has not been proved.  Naturally, this is equivalent to one
+of murder."
+
+"Ah!" he ejaculated, slightly taken aback for one so invariably
+impassive.
+
+"And to whom is the guilt of this crime ascribed?" he presently
+ventured.
+
+"There was mention of no name; but the opprobrium naturally falls
+on Miss Tuttle."
+
+"Miss Tuttle?  Ah!"
+
+"Since Mr. Jeffrey is proved to have been too far away at the time
+to have fired that shot, while she -"
+
+"I am following you -"
+
+"Was in the very house - at the door of the library in fact - and
+heard the pistol discharged, if she did not discharge it herself -
+which some believe, notably the district attorney.  You should have
+been there, Mr. Moore."
+
+He looked surprised at this suggestion.
+
+"I never am anywhere but here on the twenty-third of May," he
+declared.
+
+"Miss Tuttle needed some adviser."
+
+"Ah, probably."
+
+"You would have been a good one."
+
+"And a welcome one, eh?"
+
+I hardly thought he would have been a welcome one, but I did not
+admit the fact.  Nevertheless he seized on the advantage he evidently
+thought he had gained and added, mildly enough, or rather without any
+display of feeling:
+
+"Miss Tuttle likes me even less than Veronica did.  I do not think
+she would have accepted, certainly she would not have desired, my
+presence in her counsels.  But of one thing I wish her to be assured,
+her and the world in general.  Any money she may need at this - at
+this unhappy crisis in her life, she will find amply supplied.  She
+has no claims on me, but that makes little difference where the
+family honor is concerned.  Her mother's husband was my brother - the
+girl shall have all she needs.  I will write her so."
+
+He was moving toward his carriage.
+
+"Fine turnout?" he interrogatively remarked.
+
+I assented with all the surprise, - with all the wonder even - which
+his sublime egotism seemed to invite.
+
+"It is the best that Downey could raise in the time I allotted him.
+When I really finger the money, we shall see, we shall see."
+
+His foot was on the carriage-step.  He looked up at the west.  The
+sun was almost down but not quite.  "Have you any special business
+with me?" he asked, lingering with what I thought a surprising
+display of conscientiousness till the last ray of direct sunlight
+had disappeared.
+
+I glanced up at the coachman sitting on his box as rigid as any
+stone.
+
+"You may speak," said he; "Caesar neither hears nor sees anything
+but his horses when he drives me."
+
+The black did not wink.  He was as completely at home on the box
+and as quiet and composed in his service as if he had driven this
+man for years.
+
+"He understands his duty," finished the master, but with no outward
+appearance of pride.  "What have you to say to me?"
+
+I hesitated no longer.
+
+"Miss Tuttle is supposed to have secretly entered the Moore house
+on the night you summoned us.  She even says she did.  I know that
+you have sworn to having seen no one go into that house; but
+notwithstanding this, haven't you some means at your disposal for
+proving to the police and to the world at large that she never
+fired that fatal shot?  Public opinion is so cruel.  She will be
+ruined whether innocent or guilty, unless it can be very plainly
+shown that she did not enter the library prior to going there with
+the police."
+
+"And how can you suppose me to be in a position to prove that?  Say
+that I had sat in my front window all that evening, and watched with
+uninterrupted assiduity the door through which so many are said to
+have passed between sunset and midnight - something which I did not
+do, as I have plainly stated on oath - how could you have expected
+me to see what went on in the black interior of a house whose
+exterior is barely discernible at night across the street?"
+
+"Then you can not aid her?" I asked.
+
+With a light bound he leaped into the carriage.  As he took his seat
+he politely remarked:
+
+"I should be glad to, since, though not a Moore, she is near enough
+the family to affect its honor.  But not having even seen her enter
+the house I can not testify in any way in regard to her.  Home,
+Caesar, and drive quickly.  I do not thrive under these evening damps."
+
+And leaning back, with an inexpressible air of contentment with
+himself, his equipage and the prospect of an indefinite enjoyment of
+the same, the last representative of the great Moore family was
+quietly driven away.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+A FRESH START
+
+
+I was far from being good company that night.  I knew this without
+being told.  My mind was too busy.  I was too full of regrets and
+plans, seasonings and counter reasonings.  In my eyes Miss Tuttle
+had suddenly become innocent, consequently a victim.  But a victim
+to what?  To some exaggerated sense of duty?  Possibly; but to what
+duty?  That was the question, to answer which offhand I would, in
+my present excitement, have been ready to sacrifice a month's pay.
+
+For I was moved, not only by the admiration and sympathy which all
+men must feel for a beautiful woman caught in such a deadly snare
+of circumstantial evidence, but by the conviction that Durbin, whose
+present sleek complacency was more offensive to me than the sneering
+superiority of a week ago, believed her to be a guilty woman, and as
+such his rightful prey.  This alone would have influenced me to take
+the opposite view; for we never ran along together, and in a case
+where any division of opinion was possible, always found ourselves,
+consciously or unconsciously, on different sides.  Yet I did not
+really dislike Durbin, who is a very fine fellow.  I only hated his
+success and the favor which rewarded it.
+
+I know that I have some very nasty failings and I do not shrink from
+owning them.  My desire is to represent myself as I am, and I must
+admit that it was not entirely owing to disinterested motives that
+I now took the secret stand I did in Miss Tuttle's favor.  To prove
+her innocent whom once I considered the cause of, if not the guilty
+accessory to her sister's murder, now became my dream by night and
+my occupation by day.  Though I seemed to have no sympathizer in
+this effort and though the case against her was being pushed very
+openly in the district attorney's office, yet I clung to my
+convictions with an almost insensate persistence, inwardly declaring
+her the victim of circumstances, and hoping against hope that some
+clue would offer itself by means of which I might yet prove her so.
+But where was I to seek for this clue?
+
+Alas, no ready answer to this very important query was forthcoming.
+All possible evidence in this case seemed to have been exhausted save
+such as Mr. Jeffrey and Miss Tuttle withheld.  And so the monstrous
+accusation stood, and before it all Washington - my humble self
+included - stood in a daze of mingled doubt and compassion, hunting
+for explanations which failed to appear and seeking in vain for
+some guiltier party, who evermore slipped from under our hand.  Had
+Mr. Jeffrey's alibi been less complete he could not have stood up
+against the suspicions which now ran riot.  But there was no
+possibility of shifting the actual crime back to him after the
+testimony of so frank and trustworthy a man as Tallman.  If the
+stopping of Mrs. Jeffrey's watch fixed the moment of her death as
+accurately as was supposed, - and I never heard the least doubt
+thrown out in this regard, - he could not by any means of transit
+then known in Washington have reached Waverley Avenue in time to
+fire that shot.  The gates of the cemetery were closed at sundown;
+sundown took place that night at one minute past seven, and the
+distance into town is considerable.  His alibi could not be gainsaid.
+So his name failed to be publicly broached in connection with the
+shooting, though his influence over Miss Tuttle could not be
+forgotten, suggesting to some that she had acted as his hand in the
+deed which robbed him of an undesirable wife.  But this I would not
+believe.  I preferred to accept the statement that she had stopped
+short of the library door in her suspicious visit there, and that
+the ribbon-tying, which went for so much, had been done at home.
+That these facts, especially the latter, called for more than common
+credulity, I was quite ready to acknowledge; and had her feeling for
+Francis Jeffrey shown less unselfishness, I should certainly have
+joined my fellows in regarding these assertions as very lame attempts
+to explain what could only be explained by a confession of guilt.
+
+So here was a tangle without a frayed end to pull at, unless the
+impervious egotism of Uncle David afforded one, which I doubted.  For
+how could any man with a frightful secret in his breast show that
+unmixed delight in his new equipage and suddenly acquired position,
+which had so plainly beamed from that gentleman's calm eye and
+assured bearing?  When he met my scrutiny in the sacred precincts
+where the one love of his heart lay buried, he did so without a
+quiver or any sign of inner disturbance.  His tone to Caesar as he
+drove off had been the tone of a man who can afford to speak quietly
+because he is conscious of being so undeniably the master; and when
+his foot rose to the carriage step it was with the confidence of one
+who had been kept out of his rights for most of his natural life,
+but who feels in his present enjoyment of them no apprehension of a
+change.  His whole bearing and conversation on that day were, as I
+am quite ready to admit, an exhibition of prodigious selfishness;
+but it was also an exhibition of mental poise incompatible with a
+consciousness of having acquired his fortune by any means which laid
+him open to the possibility of losing it.  Or so I judged.
+
+Finding myself, with every new consideration of the tantalizing
+subject, deeper and deeper in the quagmire of doubt and uncertainty,
+I sought enlightenment by making a memorandum of the special points
+which must have influenced the jury in their verdict, as witness:
+
+1.  The relief shown by Mr. Jeffrey at finding an apparent
+communication from his wife hinting at suicide.
+
+2.  The possibility, disclosed by the similarity between the sisters'
+handwriting, of this same communication being a forgery substituted
+for the one really written by Mrs. Jeffrey.
+
+3.  The fact that, previous to Mr. Jeffrey's handling of the book
+in which this communication was said to have been hidden, it had
+been seen in Miss Tuttle's hands.
+
+4.  That immediately after this she had passed to the drawer where
+Mr. Jeffrey's pistol was kept.
+
+5.  That while this pistol had not been observed in her hand, there
+was as yet no evidence to prove that it had been previously taken
+from the drawer, save such as was afforded by her own acknowledgment
+that she had tied some unknown object, presumably the pistol, to her
+sister's wrist before that sister left the house.
+
+6.  That if this was so, the pistol and the ribbon connecting it
+with Mrs. Jeffrey's wrist had been handled again before the former
+was discharged, and by fingers which had first touched dust - of
+which there was plenty in the old library.
+
+7.  That Miss Tuttle had admitted, though not till after much
+prevarication and apparent subterfuge, that she had extended her
+walk on that fatal night not only as far as the Moore house, but
+that she had entered it and penetrated as far as the library door
+at the very moment the shot was fired within.
+
+8.  That in acknowledging this she had emphatically denied
+having associated the firing of this shot with any idea of harm to
+her sister; yet was known to have gone from this house in a
+condition of mind so serious that she failed to recollect the places
+she visited or the streets she passed through till she found herself
+again in her sister's house face to face with an officer.
+
+9.  That her first greeting of this officer was a shriek, betraying
+a knowledge of his errand before he had given utterance to a word.
+
+10.  That the candles found in the Moore house were similar to those
+bought by Mr. Jeffrey and afterward delivered at his kitchen door.
+
+11.  That she was the only member of the household besides the cook
+who was in the kitchen at the time, and that it was immediately
+after her departure from the room that the package containing the
+candles had been missed.
+
+12.  That opportunities of coming to an understanding with Mr.
+Jeffrey after his wife's death had not been lacking and it was not
+until after such opportunities had occurred that any serious inquiry
+into this matter had been begun by the police.  To which must be
+added, not in way of proof but as an important factor in the case,
+that her manner, never open, was such throughout her whole public
+examination as to make it evident to all that only half of what had
+occurred in the Jeffreys' house since the wedding had been given
+out by her or by the man for whose release from a disappointing
+matrimonial entanglement she was supposed to have worked; this,
+though the suspicion hanging over them both called for the utmost
+candor.
+
+Verily, a serious list; and opposed to this I had as yet little to
+offer but my own belief in her innocence and the fact, but little
+dwelt on and yet not without its value, that the money which had
+come to Mr. Jeffrey, and the home which had been given her, had both
+been forfeited by Mrs. Jeffrey's death.
+
+As I mused and mused over this impromptu synopsis, in my vain
+attempt to reach some fresh clue to a proper understanding of the
+inconsistencies in Miss Tuttle's conduct by means of my theory of
+her strong but mistaken devotion to Mr. Jeffrey, a light suddenly
+broke upon me from an entirely unexpected quarter.  It was a faint
+one, but any glimmer was welcome.  Remembering a remark made by Mr.
+Jeffrey in his examination, that Mrs. Jeffrey had not been the same
+since crossing the fatal doorstep of the Moore house, I asked myself
+if we had paid enough attention to the mental condition and conduct
+of the bride prior to the alarm which threw a pall of horror over
+her marriage; and caught by the idea, I sought for a fuller account
+of the events of that day than had hitherto been supplied by
+newspaper or witness.
+
+Hunting up my friend, the reporter, I begged him to tell me where
+he had obtained the facts from which he made that leading article
+in the Star which had so startled all Washington on the evening of
+the Jeffrey wedding.  That they had come from some eye-witness I
+had no doubt, but who was the eye-witness?  Himself?  No.  Who then?
+At first he declined to tell me, but after a fuller understanding of
+my motives he mentioned the name of a young lady, who, while a
+frequent guest at the most fashionable functions, was not above
+supplying the papers with such little items of current gossip as
+came under her own observation.
+
+How I managed to approach this lady and by what means I succeeded
+in gaining her confidence are details quite unnecessary to this
+narrative.  Enough that I did obtain access to her and that she
+talked quite frankly to me, and in so doing supplied me with a clue
+which ultimately opened up to me an entirely new field of inquiry.
+We had been discussing Mr. Jeffrey and Miss Tuttle, when suddenly,
+and with no apparent motive beyond the natural love of gossip which
+was her weakness, she launched out into remarks about the bride.
+The ceremony had been late; did I know it?  A half-hour or
+three-quarters past the time set for it.  And why?  Because Miss
+Moore was not ready.  She had chosen to array herself in the house
+and had come early enough for the purpose; but she would not accept
+any assistance, not even that of her maid, and of course she kept
+every one waiting.  "Oh, there was no more uneasy soul in the whole
+party that morning than the bride!"  Let other people remark upon
+the high look in Cora Tuttle's face, or gossip about the anxious
+manner of the bridegroom; she, the speaker, could tell things about
+the bride which would go to show that she was not all right even
+before that ominous death's-head reared itself into view at her
+marriage festival.  Why, the fact that she came downstairs and was
+married without her bridal bouquet was enough.  Had there not been
+so much else to talk about, people would have talked about that.
+But the big event had so effectually swallowed up the little that
+only herself, and possibly two other ladies she might name, seemed
+to retain any memory of the matter.
+
+"What ladies?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter what ladies.  Two of the very best sort.  I
+know they noticed it, because I heard them talking about it.  We
+were all standing in the upper hall and were all crowded into a
+passage leading to the room where the bride was dressing.  It was
+before the alarm had gone around of what had been discovered in the
+library, and we were all impatient enough for the appearance of the
+bride, who, we had been told, intended to wear the old point in
+which her great-grandmother was married.  I have a weakness for old
+point and I was determined to stand where I could see her come out,
+even if I lost sight of the ceremony itself.  But it would have been
+tedious enough waiting in that close hall if the ladies behind me
+had not kept up a conversation, which I, of course, pretended not
+to hear.  I remember it, every word, for it was my sole amusement
+for half an hour.  What was it?  Oh, it was about that same bouquet,
+which, by the way, I had the privilege of staring at all the time
+they chatted.  For the boy who brought it had not been admitted
+into Miss Moore's room, and, not knowing what else to do with it,
+was lingering before her door, with the great streamers falling
+from his hands, and the lilies making the whole place heavy with a
+sickening perfume.  From what I heard the ladies say, he had been
+standing there an hour, and the timid knock he gave from time to
+time produced in me an odd feeling which those ladies behind me
+seemed to share.
+
+"'It's a shame!' I heard one of them cry.  'Veronica Moore has no
+excuse for such thoughtlessness.  It is an hour now that she has
+been shut up in her room alone.  She won't have even her maid in.
+She prefers to dress alone, she says.  Peculiar in a bride, isn't
+it?  But one thing is certain: she can not put on her veil without
+help.  She will have to call some one in for that.'  At which the
+other volunteered that the Moores were all queer, and that she
+didn't envy Francis Jeffrey.  'What!  not with fifty thousand a
+year to lighten her oddities?' returned her companion with a shrug
+which communicated itself to me, so closely were we packed together.
+'I have a son who could bear with them under such circumstances.'
+Indeed she has, and all Washington knows it, but the remark passed
+without comment, for they had not yet exhausted the main event, and
+the person they now attacked was Miss Tuttle.  'Why doesn't she
+come and see that that bouquet is taken in?  I declare it's not
+decent.  Mr. Jeffrey would not feel complimented if he knew the fate
+of those magnificent lilies and roses.  I presume he furnished the
+bouquet.'
+
+"'Miss Tuttle has looked out of her room once,' I heard the other
+reply.  'She is in splendid beauty to-day, but pale.  But she
+never could control Veronica.'  'Hush!  you speak louder than you
+think'  This amused me, and I do believe that in another moment I
+should have laughed outright if another boy had not appeared in
+the hall before us, who, shoving aside the first, rapped on the
+door with a spirit which called for answer.  But he was no more
+successful than the other boy had been; so, being a brisk fellow,
+with no time for nonsense, he called out, 'Your bouquet, Miss, and
+a message, which I am to give you before you go downstairs!  The
+gentleman is quite particular about it.'  These words were
+literally shouted at the door, but in the hubbub of voices about
+us I don't believe any one heard them but ourselves and the bride.
+I know that she heard them, for she opened the door a very little
+way, - such a very little way that the boy had to put his lips to
+the crack when he spoke, and then turn and place his ear where his
+lips had been in order to catch her reply.  This, for some reason,
+seemed a long time in coming, and the fellow grew so impatient that
+he amused himself by snatching the bouquet from the other boy and
+thrusting it in through the crack, to the very great detriment of
+its roses and lilies.  When she took it he bawled for his answer,
+and when he got it, he stared and muttered doubtfully to himself as
+he worked his way out again through the crowd, which by this time
+was beginning to choke up all the halls and stairways.
+
+"But why have I told you all this nonsense?" she asked quite suddenly.
+"It isn't of the least consequence that Veronica Moore kept a boy
+waiting at her door while she dressed herself for her wedding; but
+it shows that she was queer even then, and I for one believe in the
+theory of suicide, and in that alone, and in the excuse she gave for
+it, too; for if she had really loved Francis Jeffrey she would not
+have been so slow to take in the magnificent bouquet he had provided
+for her."
+
+But comment, even from those who had known these people well, was
+not what I wanted at this moment, but facts.  So, without much
+attention to these words, I said:
+
+"You will excuse me if I suggest that you are going on too fast.
+The door of the bride's room has just been shut upon the boy who
+brought her a message.  When was it opened again?"
+
+"Not for a good half-hour; not till every one had grown nervous and
+Miss Tuttle and one or two of her most intimate friends had gone
+more than once to her door; not, in fact, till the hour for the
+ceremony had come and gone and Mr. Jeffrey had crossed the hall
+twice under the impression that she was ready for him.  Then, when
+weariness was general and people were asking what kept the bride
+and how much longer they were to be kept waiting, her door suddenly
+opened and I caught a glimpse of her face and heard her ask at
+last for her maid.  O, I repeat that Veronica Moore was not all
+right that day, and though I have heard no one comment on the fact,
+it has been a mystery to me ever since why she gave that sudden
+recoil when Francis Jeffrey took her hand after the benediction.
+It was not timidity, nor was it fear, for she did not know till a
+minute afterward what had happened in the house.  Did some sudden
+realization of what she had done in marrying a man whom she
+herself declared she did not love come when it was too late?
+What do you think?"
+
+Miss Freeman had forgotten herself; but the impetuosity which had
+led her into asking my opinion made her forget in another moment
+that she had done so.  And when in my turn I propounded a question
+and inquired whether she ever again saw the boy who besieged the
+bride's door with a message, she graciously replied:
+
+"The boy; let me see.  Yes, I saw him twice; once in a back hall
+talking earnestly to Mr. Jeffrey, and secondly at the carriage
+door just before the bridal party rode away.  It was Mrs. Jeffrey
+who was talking to him then, and I wondered to see him look so
+pleased when everybody in and about the house was pale as ashes."
+
+"Do you know the name of that boy?" I carelessly inquired.
+
+"His name?  O no.  He is one of Raucher's waiters; the curly-haired
+one.  You see him everywhere; but I don't know his name.  Do you
+flatter yourself that he can tell you anything that other people
+don't know?  Why, if he knew the least thing that wasn't in
+everybody's mouth, you would have heard from him long ago.  Those
+men are the greatest gossips in town" - I wonder what she thought
+of herself, - "and so proud to be of any importance."  This was true
+enough, though I did not admit it at the time; and when the interview
+was closed and I went away, I have no doubt she considered me quite
+the most heavy person she had ever met.  But this did not disturb me.
+The little facts she had stated were new to me and, repeating my
+former method, I was already busy arranging them in my mind.  Witness
+the result:
+
+1.  The ceremony of marriage between Francis Jeffrey and Veronica
+Moore was fully three-quarters of an hour late.
+
+2.  This was owing to the caprice of the bride, who would not have
+any one in the room with her, not even her maid.
+
+3.  The bridal bouquet did not figure in the ceremony.  In the flurry
+of the moment it was forgotten or purposely left behind by the bride.
+As this bouquet was undoubtedly the gift of Mr. Jeffrey, the fact
+may be significant.
+
+4.  She received a message of a somewhat peremptory character before
+going below.  From whom?  Her bridegroom?  It would so appear from
+the character of the message.
+
+5.  The messenger showed great astonishment at the reply he was
+given to carry back.  Yet he has not been known to mention the
+matter.  Why?  When every one talked he was silent.  Through whose
+influence?  This was something to find out.
+
+6.  Though at the time the benediction was pronounced every one was
+in a state of alarm except the bride, it was noticed that she gave
+an involuntary recoil when her bridegroom stooped for the customary
+kiss.  Why?  Were the lines of her last farewell true then, and did
+she experience at that moment a sudden realization of her lack of
+love?
+
+7.  She did not go again upstairs, but very soon fled from the
+house with the rest of the bridal party.
+
+Petty facts, all, but possibly more significant than appeared.  I
+made up my mind to find the boy who brought the bouquet and also
+the one who carried back her message.
+
+But here a surprise, if not a check, awaited me.  The florist's boy
+had left his place and no one could tell where he had gone.  Neither
+could I find the curly-haired waiter at Raucher's.  He had left also,
+but it was to join the volunteers at San Antonio.
+
+Was there meaning in this coincidence?  I resolved to know.  Visiting
+the former haunts of both boys, I failed to come upon any evidence
+of an understanding between them, or of their having shown any
+special interest in the Jeffrey tragedy.  Both seemed to have been
+strangely reticent in regard to it, the florist's boy showing
+stupidity and the waiter such satisfaction in his prospective
+soldiering that no other topic was deemed worthy his attention.  The
+latter had a sister and she could not say enough of the delight her
+brother had shown at the prospect of riding a horse again and of
+fighting in such good company.  He had had some experience as a
+cowboy before coming to Washington, and from the moment war was
+declared had expressed his intention of joining the recruits for
+Cuba as soon as he could see her so provided for that his death would
+not rob her of proper support.  How this had come about she did not
+know.  Three weeks before he had been in despair over the faint
+prospect of doing what he wished; then suddenly, and without any
+explanation of how the change had come about, he had rushed in upon
+her with the news that he was going to enlist in a company made up
+of bronco busters and rough riders from the West, that she need not
+worry about herself or about him, for he had just put five hundred
+dollars to her account in bank, and that as for himself he possessed
+a charmed life and was immune, as she well knew, and need fear
+bullets no more than the fever.  By this he meant that he had had
+yellow fever years before in Louisiana, and that a ball which had
+once been fired at him had gone clean through his body without
+taking his life.
+
+"What was the date of the evening on which be told you he had placed
+money in bank for you?"
+
+"April the twenty-ninth."
+
+Two days after the Jeffrey-Moore wedding!
+
+Convinced now that his departure from town was something more than
+a coincidence, I pursued my inquiries and found that he had been
+received, just as she had said, into the First Volunteer Corps under
+Colonel Wood.  This required influence.  Whose was the influence?
+It took me some time to find out, but after many and various
+attempts, most of which ended in failure, I succeeded in learning
+that the man who had worked and obtained for him a place in this
+favored corps was FRANCIS JEFFREY.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+IN THE GRASS
+
+
+I did some tall thinking that night.  I remembered that this man had
+held some conversation with the Jeffreys at their carriage door
+previous to their departure from the Moore house, and found myself
+compelled to believe that only a matter of importance to themselves
+as well as to him would have detained them at such a minute.  Oh,
+that Tampa were not so far off or that I had happened on this clue
+earlier!  But Tampa was at that moment a far prospect for me and I
+could only reason from such facts as I had been able to collect in
+Washington.
+
+Fixing my mind now on Mrs. Jeffrey, I asked the cause of the many
+caprices which had marked her conduct on her wedding morning.  Why
+had she persisted in dressing alone, and what occasioned the
+absorption which led to her ignoring all appeals at her door at a
+time when a woman is supposed to be more than usually gracious?  But
+one answer suggested itself.  Her heart was not in her marriage, and
+that last hour of her maidenhood had been an hour of anguish and
+struggle.  Perhaps she not only failed to love Francis Jeffrey, but
+loved some other man.  This seemed improbable, but things as strange
+as this have happened in our complex society and no reckoning can be
+made with a woman's fancy.  If this was so - and what other theory
+would better or even so well account for her peculiar behavior both
+then and afterward?  The hour usually given by brides to dress and
+gladsome expectation was with her one of farewell to past hopes and
+an unfortunate, if not passionate, attachment.  No wonder that she
+wished to be alone.  No wonder that interruption angered her.
+Perhaps it had found her on her knees.  Perhaps -  Here I felt
+myself seized by a strong and sudden excitement.  I remembered the
+filings I had gathered up from the small stand by the window, filings
+which had glittered and which must have been of gold.  What was the
+conclusion?  In this last hour of her maiden life she had sought to
+rid herself of some article of jewelry which she found it undesirable
+to carry into her new life.  What article of jewelry?  In
+consideration of the circumstances and the hour, I could think of
+but one.  A ring! the symbol of some old attachment.
+
+The slight abrasion at the base of her third finger, which had been
+looked upon as the result of too rough and speedy a withdrawing of
+the wedding-ring on the evening of her death, was much more likely
+to have been occasioned by the reopening of some little wound made
+two weeks before by the file.  If Durbin and the rest had taken into
+account these filings, they must have come to very much the same
+conclusion; but either they had overlooked them in their search
+about the place, or, having noted them, regarded them as a clue
+leading nowhere.
+
+But for me they led the way to a very definite inquiry.  Asking to
+see the rings Mrs. Jeffrey had left behind her on the night she
+went for the last time to the Moore house, I looked them carefully
+over, and found that none of them showed the least mark of the file.
+This strengthened my theory, and I proceeded to take my next step
+with increased confidence.  It seemed an easy one, but proved
+unexpectedly difficult.  My desire was to ascertain whether she had
+worn previous to her marriage any rings which had not been seen on
+her finger since, and it took me one whole week to establish the
+fact that she had.
+
+But that fact once learned, the way cleared before me.  Allowing my
+fancy full rein, I pictured to myself her anxious figure standing
+alone in that ancient and ghostly room filing off this old ring
+from her dainty finger.  Then I asked myself what she would be
+likely to do with this ring after disengaging it from her hand?
+Would she keep it?  Perhaps; but if so, why could it not be found?
+None such had been discovered among her effects.  Or had she thrown
+it away, and if so, where?  The vision of her which I had just seen
+in my mind's eye came out with a clearness at this, which struck
+me as providential.  I could discern as plainly as if I had been a
+part of the scene the white-clad form of the bride bending toward
+the light which came in sparsely through the half-open shutter she
+had loosened for this task.  This was the shutter which had never
+again been fastened and whose restless blowing to and fro had first
+led attention to this house and the crime it might otherwise have
+concealed indefinitely.  Had some glimpse of the rank grass growing
+underneath this window lured her eye and led her to cast away the
+ring which she had no longer any right to keep?  It would be like
+a woman to yield to such an impulse; and on the strength of the
+possibility I decided to search this small plot for what it might
+very reasonably conceal.
+
+But I did not wish to do this openly.  I was not only afraid of
+attracting Durbin's attention by an attempt which could only awaken
+his disdain, but I hesitated to arouse the suspicion of Mr. Moore,
+whose interest in his newly acquired property made him very properly
+alert to any trespass upon it.
+
+The undertaking, therefore, presented difficulties.  But it was my
+business to overcome these, and before long I conceived a plan by
+which every blade of grass in the narrow strip running in front of
+this house might be gone over without rousing anything more serious
+than Uncle David's ire.
+
+Calling together a posse of street urchins, I organized them into
+a band, with the promise of a good supper all around if one of them
+brought me the pieces of a broken ring which I had lost in the grass
+plot of a house where I had been called upon to stay all night.
+That they might win the supper in the shortest possible time and
+before the owner of this house, who lived opposite, could interfere,
+I advised them to start at the fence in a long line and, proceeding
+on their knees, to search, each one, the ground before him to the
+width of his own body.  The fortunate one was to have the privilege
+of saying what the supper should consist of.  To give a plausible
+excuse for this search, a ball was to be tossed up and down the
+street till it lighted in the Moore house inclosure.
+
+It was a scheme to fire the street boy's soul, and I was only afraid
+of failure from the over-enthusiasm it aroused.  But the injunctions
+which I gave them to spare the shrubs and not to trample the grass
+any more than was necessary were so minute and impressive that they
+moved away to their task in unexpected order and with a subdued
+cheerfulness highly promising of success.
+
+I did not accompany them.  Jinny, who has such an innocent air on
+the street, took my place and promenaded up and down the block, just
+to see that Mr. Moore did not make too much trouble.  And it was
+well she did so, for though he was not at home, - I had chosen the
+hour of his afternoon ride, his new man-servant was; and he no sooner
+perceived this crowd of urchins making for the opposite house than
+he rushed at them, and would have scattered them far and wide in a
+twinkling if the demure dimples of my little ally had not come into
+play and distracted his attention so completely as to make him
+forget the throng of unkempt hoodlums who seemed bound to invade
+his master's property.  She was looking for Mr. Moore's house, she
+told him.  Did he know Mr. Moore, and his house which was somewhere
+near?  Not his new, great, big house, where the horrible things
+took place of which she had read in the papers, but his little old
+house, which she had heard was soon to be for rent, and which she
+thought would be just the right size for herself and mother.  Was
+that it?  That dear little place all smothered in vines?  How
+lovely!  and what would the rent be, did he think?  and had it a
+back-yard with garden-room enough for her to raise pinks and
+nasturtiums?  and so on, and so on, while he stared with delighted
+eyes, and tried to put in a word edgewise, and the boys - well,
+they went through that strip of grass in just ten minutes.  My
+brave little Jinny had just declared with her most roguish smile
+that she would run home and tell her mother all about this sweetest
+of sweet little places, when a shout rose from the other side of
+the street, and that collection of fifteen or twenty boys scampered
+away as if mad, shouting in joyous echo of the boy at their head:
+
+"It's to be chicken, heaping plates of ice cream and sponge cake."
+
+By which token she knew that the ring had been found.
+
+*******
+
+When they brought this ring to me I would not have exchanged places
+with any man on earth.  As Jinny herself was curious enough to
+stroll along about this time, I held it out where we both could see
+it and draw our conclusions.
+
+It was a plain gold circlet set with a single small ruby.  It was
+cut through and twisted out of shape, just as I had anticipated;
+and as I examined it I wondered what part it had played and was
+yet destined to play in the drama of Veronica Jeffrey's mysterious
+life and still more mysterious death.  That it was a factor of some
+importance, arguing some early school-girl love, I could but gather
+from the fact that its removal from her finger was effected in
+secrecy and under circumstances of such pressing haste.  How could
+I learn the story of that ring and the possible connection between
+it and Mr. Jeffrey's professed jealousy of his wife and the
+disappointing honeymoon which had followed their marriage?  That
+this feeling on his part had antedated the ambassador's ball no one
+could question; but that it had started as far back as the wedding
+day was a new idea to me and one which suggested many possibilities.
+Could this idea be established, and, if so, how?  But one avenue of
+inquiry offered itself.  The waiter, who had been spirited away so
+curiously immediately after the wedding; might be able to give us
+some information on this interesting point.  He had been the medium
+of the messages which had passed between her and Mr. Jeffrey just
+prior to the ceremony; afterward he had been seen talking earnestly
+to that gentleman and later with her.  Certainly, it would add to
+our understanding of the situation to know what reply she had sent
+to the peremptory demand made upon her at so critical a time; an
+understanding so desirable that the very prospect of it was almost
+enough to warrant a journey to Tampa.  Yet, say that the results
+were disappointing, how much time lost and what a sum of money!  I
+felt the need of advice in this crisis, yet hesitated to ask it.
+My cursed pride and my no less cursed jealousy of Durbin stood very
+much in my way at this time.
+
+A week had now passed since the inquest, and, while Miss Tuttle
+still remained at liberty, it was a circumscribed liberty which
+must have been very galling to one of her temperament and habits.
+She rode and she walked, but she entered no house unattended nor
+was she allowed any communication with Mr. Jeffrey.  Nevertheless
+she saw him, or at least gave him the opportunity of seeing her.
+Each day at three o'clock she rode through K Street, and the
+detective who watched Mr. Jeffrey's house said that she never
+passed it without turning her face to the second-story window,
+where he invariably stood.  No signs passed between them; indeed,
+they scarcely nodded; but her face, as she lifted it to meet his
+eye, showed so marked a serenity and was so altogether beautiful
+that this same detective had a desire to see if it maintained
+like characteristics when she was not within reach of her
+brother-in-law.  Accordingly, the next day he delegated his place
+to another and took his stand farther down the street.  Alas!  it
+was not the same woman's face he saw; but a far different and sadder
+one.  She wore that look of courage and brave hope only in passing
+Mr. Jeffrey's house.  Was it simply an expression of her secret
+devotion to him or the signal of some compact which had been
+entered into between them?
+
+Whichever it was, it touched my heart, even in his description of
+it.  After advising with Jinny I approached the superintendent, to
+whom, without further reserve, I opened my heart.
+
+The next day I found myself on the train bound for Tampa, with full
+authority to follow Curly Jim until I found him.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+THE HOUSE OF DOOM
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+IN TAMPA
+
+
+When I started on this desperate search after a witness, war had
+been declared, but no advance as yet ordered on Cuba.  But during
+my journey south the long expected event happened, and on my
+arrival in Tampa I found myself in the midst of departure and
+everything in confusion.
+
+Of course, under such conditions it was difficult to find my man on
+the instant.  Innumerable inquiries yielded no result, and in the
+absence of any one who would or could give me the desired information
+I wandered from one end of the camp to the other till I finally
+encountered a petty officer who gave signs of being a Rough Rider.
+Him I stopped, and, with some hint of my business, asked where
+James Calvert could be found.
+
+His answer was a stare and a gesture toward the hospital tents.
+
+Nothing could have astonished me more.
+
+"Sick?" I cried.
+
+"Dying," was his answer.
+
+Dying!  Curly Jim!  Impossible.  I had misled my informant as to
+the exact man I wanted, or else there were two James Calverts in
+Tampa.  Curly Jim, the former cowboy, was not the fellow to succumb
+in camp before he had ever smelt powder.
+
+"It is James Calvert of the First Volunteer Corps I am after," said
+I.  "A sturdy fellow -"
+
+"No doubt, no doubt.  Many sturdy fellows are down.  He's down to
+stay.  Typhoid, you know.  Bad case.  No hope from the start.  Pity,
+but -"
+
+I heard no more.  Dying!  Curly Jim.  He who was considered to be
+immune!  He who held the secret -
+
+"Let me see him," I demanded.  "It is important - a police matter
+ - a word from him may save a life.  He is still breathing?"
+
+"Yes, but I do not think there is any chance of his speaking.  He
+did not recognize his nurse five minutes ago."
+
+As bad as that!  But I did not despair.  I did not dare to.  I had
+staked everything on this interview, and I was not going to lose
+its promised results from any lack of effort on my own part.
+
+"Let me see him," I repeated.
+
+I was taken in.  The few persons I saw clustered about a narrow cot
+in one corner gave way and I was cut to the heart to see that they
+did this not so much out of consideration for me or my errand there
+as from the consciousness that their business at the bedside of
+this dying man was over.  He was on the point of breathing his
+last.  I pressed forward, and after one quick scrutiny of the closed
+eyes and pale face I knelt at his side and whispered a name into
+his ear.  It was that of Veronica Moore.
+
+He started; they all saw it.  On the threshold of death, some
+emotion - we never knew what one - drew him back for an instant,
+and the pale cheek showed a suspicion of color.  Though the eyes
+did not open, the lips moved, and I caught these words:
+
+"Kept word - told no one - she was so -"
+
+And that was all.  He died the next instant.
+
+Well!  I was woefully done up by this sudden extinction of all my
+hopes.  They had been extravagant, no doubt, but they had sustained
+me through all my haps and mishaps, trials and dangers, till now,
+here, they ended with the one inexorable fact-death.  Was I doomed
+to defeat, then?  Must I go back to the major with my convictions
+unchanged but with no fresh proof, no real evidence to support them?
+I certainly must.  With the death of this man, all means of reaching
+the state of Mrs. Jeffrey's mind immediately preceding her marriage
+were gone.  I could never learn now what to know would make a man
+of me and possibly save Cora Tuttle.
+
+Bending under this stroke of Providence, I passed out.  A little
+boy was sobbing at the tent door.  I stared at him curiously, and
+was hurrying on, when I felt myself caught by the hand.
+
+"Take me with you," cried a choked and frightened voice in my ear.
+"I have no friend here, now he is gone; take me back to Washington."
+
+Washington!  I turned and looked at the lad who, kneeling in the
+hot sand at the door of the tent, was clutching me with imploring
+hands.
+
+"Who are you?" I asked; "and how came you here?  Do you belong to
+the army?"
+
+"I helped care for his horse," he whispered.  "He found me smuggled
+on board the train - for I was bound to go to the war - and he was
+sorry for me and used to give me bits of his own rations, but - but
+now no one will give me anything.  Take me back; she won't care.
+She's dead, they say.  Besides, I wouldn't stay here now if she was
+alive and breathing.  I have had enough of war since he - Oh, he
+was good to me -I never cared for any one so much."
+
+I looked at the boy with an odd sensation for which I have no name.
+
+"Whom are you talking about?" I asked.  "Your mother your sister?"
+
+"Oh, no;" the tone was simplicity itself.  "Never had no mother.
+I mean the lady at the big house; the one that was married.  She
+gave me money to go out of Washington, and, wanting to be a soldier,
+I followed Curly Jim.  I didn't think he'd die - he looked so
+strong -  What's the matter, sir?  Have I said anything I shouldn't?"
+
+I had him by the arm.  I fear that I was shaking him.
+
+"The lady!" I repeated.  "She who was married - who gave you money.
+Wasn't it Mrs. Jeffrey?"
+
+"Yes, I believe that was the name of the man she married.  I didn't
+know him; but I saw he r-"
+
+"Where?  And why did she give you money?  I will take you home with
+me if you tell me the truth about it."
+
+He glanced back at the tent from which I had slightly drawn him
+and a hungry look crept into his eyes.
+
+"Well, it's no secret now," he muttered.  "He used to say I must
+keep my mouth shut; but he wouldn't say so now if he knew I could
+get home by telling.  He used to be sorry for me, he used.  What
+do you want to know?"
+
+"Why Mrs. Jeffrey gave you money to leave Washington."
+
+The boy trembled, drew a step away, and then came back, and under
+those hot Florida skies, in the turmoil of departing troops, I
+heard these words:
+
+"Because I heard what she said to Jim."
+
+I felt my heart go down, then up, up, beyond anything I had ever
+experienced in my whole life.  The way before me was not closed
+then.  A witness yet remained, though Jim was dead.  The boy was
+oblivious of my emotion; he was staring with great mournfulness
+t the tent.
+
+"And what was that?" said I.
+
+His attention, which had been wandering, came back, and it was
+with some surprise he said:
+
+"It was not much.  She told him to take the gentleman into the
+library.  But it was the library where men died, and he just went
+and died there, too, you remember, and Jim said he wasn't ever going
+to speak of it, and so I promised not to, neither, but - but - when
+do you think you will be starting, sir?"
+
+I did not answer him.  I was feeling very queer, as men feel, I
+suppose, who in some crisis or event recognize an unexpected
+interposition of Providence.
+
+"Are you the boy who ran away from the florist's in Washington?"
+I inquired when ready to speak.  "The boy who delivered Miss Moore's
+bridal bouquet?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I let go of his hand and sat down.  Surely there was a power greater
+than chance governing this matter.  Through what devious ways and
+from what unexpected sources had I come upon this knowledge?
+
+"Mrs. Jeffrey, or Miss Moore, as she was then, told Jim to seat the
+gentleman in the library," I now said.  "Why?"
+
+"I do not know.  He told her the gentleman's name and then she
+whispered him that.  I heard her, and that was why I got money, too.
+But it's all gone now.  Oh, sir, when are you going back?"
+
+I started to my feet.  Was it in answer to this appeal or because
+I realized that I had come at last upon a clue calling for immediate
+action?
+
+"I am going now," said I, "and you are going with me.  Run!  for
+the train we take leaves inside of ten minutes.  My business here
+is over."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+"THE COLONEL'S OWN"
+
+Words can not express the tediousness of that return journey.  The
+affair which occupied all my thoughts was as yet too much enveloped
+in mystery for me to contemplate it with anything but an anxious
+and inquiring mind.  While I clung with new and persistent hope to
+the thread which had been put in my hand, I was too conscious of
+the maze through which we must yet pass, before the light could be
+reached, to feel that lightness of spirit which in itself might
+have lessened the hours, and made bearable those days of forced
+inaction.  To beguile the way a little, I made a complete analysis
+of the facts as they appeared to me in the light of this latest bit
+of evidence.  The result was not strikingly encouraging, yet I will
+insert it, if only in proof of my diligence and the extreme interest
+I experienced in each and every stage of this perplexing affair.  It
+again took the form of a summary and read as follows:
+
+Facts as they now appear:
+
+1.  The peremptory demand for an interview which had been delivered
+to Miss Moore during the half-hour preceding her marriage had come,
+not from the bridegroom as I had supposed, but from the so-called
+stranger, Mr. Pfeiffer.
+
+2.  Her reply to this demand had been an order for that gentleman
+to be seated in the library.
+
+3.  The messenger carrying this order had been met and earnestly
+talked with by Mr. Jeffrey either immediately before or immediately
+after the aforementioned gentleman had been so seated.
+
+4.  Death reached Mr. Pfeiffer before the bride did.
+
+5.  Miss Moore remained in ignorance of this catastrophe till after
+her marriage, no intimation of the same having been given her by
+the few persons allowed to approach her before she descended to her
+nuptials; yet she was seen to shrink unaccountably when her husband's
+lips touched hers, and when informed of the dreadful event before
+which she beheld all her guests fleeing, went from the house a
+changed woman.
+
+6.  For all this proof that Mr. Pfeiffer was well known to her, if
+not to the rest of the bridal party, no acknowledgment of this was
+made by any of them then or afterward, nor any contradiction given
+either by husband or wife to the accepted theory that this seeming
+stranger from the West had gone into this fatal room of the Moores'
+to gratify his own morbid curiosity.
+
+7.  On the contrary, an extraordinary effort was immediately made
+by Mr. Jeffrey to rid himself of the only witnesses who could tell
+the truth concerning those fatal ten minutes; but this brought no
+peace to the miserable wife, who never again saw a really happy
+moment.
+
+8.  Extraordinary efforts at concealment argue extraordinary causes
+for fear.  Fully too understand the circumstances of Mrs. Jeffrey's
+death, it would be necessary first to know what had happened in the
+Moore house when Mr. Jeffrey learned from Curly Jim that the man,
+whose hold upon his bride had been such that he dared to demand an
+interview with her just as she was on the point of descending to
+her nuptials, had been seated, or was about to be seated, in the
+room where death had once held its court and might easily be
+persuaded to hold court again.
+
+This was the limit of my conclusions.  I could get no further, and
+awaited my arrival in Washington with the greatest impatience.
+But once there, and the responsibility of this new inquiry shifted
+to broader shoulders than my own, I was greatly surprised and as
+deeply chagrined to observe the whole affair lag unaccountably and
+to note that, in spite of my so-called important discoveries,
+the prosecution continued working up the case against Miss Tuttle
+in manifest intention of presenting it to the grand jury at its
+fall sitting.
+
+Whether Durbin was to blame for this I could not say.  Certainly
+his look was more or less quizzical when next we met, and this
+nettled me so that I at once came to the determination that whatever
+was in his mind, or in the minds of the men whose counsels he
+undoubtedly shared, I was going to make one more great effort on my
+own account; not to solve the main mystery, which had passed out of
+my hands, but to reach the hidden cause of the equally unexplained
+deaths which had occurred from time to time at the library fireplace.
+
+For nothing could now persuade me that the two mysteries were not
+indissolubly connected, or that the elucidation of the one would not
+lead to the elucidation of the other.
+
+To be sure, it was well accepted at headquarters that all possible
+attempts had been made in this direction and with nothing but
+failure as a result.  The floor, the hearth, the chimney, and, above
+all, the old settle, had been thoroughly searched.  But to no avail.
+The secret had not been reached and had almost come to be looked
+upon as insolvable.
+
+But I was not one to be affected by other men's failures.  The
+encouragement afforded me by my late discoveries was such that I
+felt confident that nothing could hinder my success save the
+necessity of completely pulling down the house.  Besides, all
+investigation had hitherto started, if it had not ended, in the
+library.  I was resolved to begin work in quite a different spot.
+I had not forgotten the sensations I had experienced in the
+southwest chamber.
+
+During my absence this house had been released from surveillance.
+But the major still held the keys and I had no difficulty in
+obtaining them.  The next thing was to escape its owner's vigilance.
+This I managed to do through the assistance of Jinny, and when
+midnight came and all lights went out in the opposite cottage I
+entered boldly upon the scene.
+
+As before, I went first of all to the library.  It was important
+to know at the outset that this room was in its normal condition.
+But this was not my only reason for prefacing my new efforts by a
+visit to this scene of death and mysterious horror.  I had another,
+so seemingly puerile, that I almost hesitate to mention it and
+would not if the sequel warranted its omission.
+
+I wished to make certain that I had exhausted every suspected, as
+well as every known clue, to the information I sought.  In my long
+journey home and the hours of thought it had forced upon me, I had
+more than once been visited by flitting visions of things seen in
+this old house and afterward nearly forgotten.  Among these was
+the book which on that first night of hurried search had given
+proofs of being in some one's hand within a very short period.  The
+attention I had given it at a moment of such haste was necessarily
+cursory, and when later a second opportunity was granted me of
+looking into it again, I had allowed a very slight obstacle to
+deter me.  This was a mistake I was anxious to rectify.  Anything
+which had been touched with purpose at or near the time of so
+mysterious a tragedy, - and the position of this book on a shelf so
+high that a chair was needed to reach it proved that it had been
+sought and touched with purpose, held out the promise of a clue which
+one on so blind a trail as myself could not afford to ignore.
+
+But when I had taken the book down and read again its totally
+uninteresting and unsuggestive title and, by another reference to
+its dim and faded leaves, found that my memory had not played me
+false and that it contained nothing but stupid and wholly irrelevant
+statistics, my confidence in it as a possible aid in the work I had
+in hand departed just as it had on the previous occasion.  I was
+about to put it back on the shelf, when I bethought me of running
+my hand in behind the two books between which it had stood.  Ah!
+that was it! Another book lay flat against the wall at the back of
+the shelf; and when, by the removal of those in front I was enabled
+to draw this book out, I soon saw why it had been relegated to
+such a remote place of concealment on the shelves of the Moore
+library.
+
+It was a collection of obscure memoirs written by an English woman,
+but an English woman who had been in America during the early part
+of the century, and who had been brought more or less into contact
+with the mysteries connected with the Moore house in Washington.
+Several passages were marked, one particularly, by a heavy
+pencil-line running the length of the margin.  As the name of Moore
+was freely scattered through these passages as well as through two
+or three faded newspaper clippings which I discovered pasted on the
+inside cover, I lost no time in setting about their perusal.
+
+The following extracts are from the book itself, taken in the order
+in which I found them marked:
+
+"It was about this time that I spent a week in the Moore house;
+that grand and historic structure concerning which and its occupants
+so many curious rumors are afloat.  I knew nothing then of its
+discreditable fame; but from the first moment of my entrance into
+its ample and well lighted halls I experienced a sensation which I
+will not call dread, but which certainly was far from being the
+impulse of pure delight which the graciousness of my hostess and
+the imposing character of the place itself were calculated to
+produce.  This emotion was but transitory, vanishing, as was natural,
+in the excitement of my welcome and the extraordinary interest I
+took in Callista Moore, who in those days was a most fascinating
+little body.  Small to the point of appearing diminutive, and lacking
+all assertion in manner and bearing, she was nevertheless such a
+lady that she easily dominated all who approached her, and produced,
+quite against her will I am sure, an impression of aloofness
+seasoned with kindness, which made her a most surprising and
+entertaining study to the analytic observer.  Her position as nominal
+mistress of an establishment already accounted one of the finest in
+Washington, - the real owner, Reuben Moore, preferring to live
+abroad with his French wife, - gave to her least action an importance
+which her shy, if not appealing looks, and a certain strained
+expression most difficult to characterize, vainly attempted to
+contradict.  I could not understand her, and soon gave up the
+attempt; but my admiration held firm, and by the time the evening
+was half over I was her obedient slave.  I think from what I know
+of her now that she would have preferred to be mine.
+
+"I was put to sleep in a great chamber which I afterward heard
+called 'The Colonel's Own.' It was very grand and had a great bed
+in it almost royal in its size and splendor.  I believe that I
+shrank quite unaccountably from this imposing piece of furniture
+when I first looked at it; it seemed so big and so out of
+proportion to my slim little body.  But admonished by the look
+which I surprised on Mistress Callista's high-bred face, I quickly
+recalled an expression so unsuited to my position as guest, and,
+with a gush of well-simulated rapture, began to expatiate upon
+the interesting characteristics of the room, and express myself
+as delighted at the prospect of sleeping there.
+
+"Instantly the nervous look left her, and, with the quiet remark,
+'It was my father's room,' she set down the candles with which both
+her hands were burdened, and gave me a kiss so warm and surcharged
+with feeling that it sufficed to keep me happy and comfortable for
+a half-hour or more after she passed out.
+
+"I had thought myself a very sleepy girl, but when, after a somewhat
+lengthened brooding over the dying embers in the open fireplace, I
+lay down behind the curtains of the huge bed, I found myself as far
+from sleep as I had ever been in my whole life.
+
+"And I did not recover from this condition for the entire night.
+For hours I tossed from one side of the bed to the other in my
+efforts to avoid the persistent eyes of a scarcely-to-be-perceived
+drawing facing me from the opposite wall.  It had no merit as a
+picture, this drawing, but seen as it was under the rays of a
+gibbous moon looking in through the half-open shutter, it exercised
+upon me a spell such as I can not describe and hope never again to
+experience.  Finally I rose and pulled the curtains violently
+together across the foot of the bed.  This shut out the picture;
+but I found it worse to imagine it there with its haunting eyes
+peering at me through the intervening folds of heavy damask than
+to confront it openly; so I pushed the curtains back again, only
+to rise a half-hour later and twitch them desperately together
+once more.
+
+"I fidgeted and worried so that night that I must have looked quite
+pale when my attentive hostess met me at the head of the stairs the
+next morning.  For her hand shook quite perceptibly as she grasped
+mine, and her voice was pitched in no natural key as she inquired
+how I had slept.  I replied, as truth, if not courtesy, demanded,
+'Not as well as usual,' whereupon her eyes fell and she remarked
+quite hurriedly; 'I am so sorry; you shall have another room
+tonight,' adding, in what appeared to be an unconscious whisper:
+'There is no use; all feel it; even the young and the gay;' then
+aloud and with irrepressible anxiety: 'You didn't see anything,
+dear?'
+
+"'No!' I protested in suddenly awakened dismay; 'only the strange
+eyes of that queer drawing peering at me through the curtains of my
+bed.  Is it - is it a haunted room?'
+
+"Her look was a shocked one, her protest quite vehement.  'Oh, no!
+No one has ever witnessed anything like a ghost there, but every
+one finds it impossible to sleep in that bed or even in the room.
+I do not know why, unless it is that my father spent so many weary
+years of incessant wakefulness inside its walls.'
+
+"'And did he die in that bed?' I asked.
+
+"She gave a startled shiver, and drew me hurriedly downstairs. As
+we paused at the foot, she pressed my hand and whispered:
+
+"'Yes; at night; with the full of the moon upon him.'
+
+"I answered her look with one she probably understood as little as
+I did hers.  I had heard of this father of hers.  He had been a
+terrible old man and had left a terrible memory behind him.
+
+"The next day my room was changed according to her promise, but in
+the light of the charges I have since heard uttered against that
+house and the family who inhabit it, I am glad that I spent one night
+in what, if it was not a haunted chamber, had certainly a very
+thrilling effect upon its occupants."
+
+Second passage; the italics showing where it was most heavily marked.
+
+"The house contained another room as interesting as the one I have
+already mentioned.  It went by the name of the library and its walls
+were heavily lined with books; but the family never sat there, nor
+was I ever fortunate enough to see it with its doors unclosed except
+on the occasion of the grand reception Mistress Callista gave in my
+honor.  I have a fancy for big rooms and more than once urged my
+hostess to tell me why this one stood neglected.  But the lady was
+not communicative on this topic and it was from another member of
+the household I learned that its precincts had been forever clouded
+by the unexpected death within them of one of her father's friends,
+a noted army officer.
+
+"Why this should have occasioned a permanent disuse of the spot I
+could not understand, and as every one who conversed on this topic
+invariably gave the impression of saying less than the subject
+demanded, my curiosity soon became too much for me and I attacked
+Miss Callista once again in regard to it.  She gave me a quick smile,
+for she was always amiable, but shook her head and introduced another
+topic.  But one night when the wind was howling in the chimneys and
+the sense of loneliness was even greater than usual in the great
+house, we drew together on the rug in front of my bedroom fire, and,
+as the embers burned down to ashes before us, Miss Callista became
+more communicative.
+
+"Her heart was heavy, she told me; had been heavy for years.  Perhaps
+some ray of comfort would reach her if she took a friend into her
+confidence.  God knew that she needed one, especially on nights like
+this, when the wind woke echoes all over the house and it was hard
+to tell which most to fear, the sounds which came from no one knew
+where, or the silence which settled after.
+
+"She trembled as she said this, and instinctively drew nearer my
+side so that our heads almost touched over the flickering flame from
+whose heat and light we sought courage.  She seemed to feel grateful
+for this contact, and the next minute, flinging all her scruples to
+the wind, she began a relation of events which more or less answered
+my late unwelcome queries.
+
+"The death in the library, about which her most perplexing memory
+hung, took place when she was a child and her father held that high
+governmental position which has reflected so much credit upon the
+family.  Her father and the man who thus perished had been intimate
+friends.  They had fought together in the War of 1812 and received
+the same distinguishing marks of presidential approval afterward.
+They were both members of an important commission which brought them
+into diplomatic relations with England.  It was while serving on this
+commission that the sudden break occurred which ended all intimate
+relations between them,, and created a change in her father that was
+equally remarked at home and abroad.  What occasioned this break no
+one knew.  Whether his great ambition had received some check through
+the jealousy of this so-called friend - a supposition which did not
+seem possible, as he rose rapidly after this - or on account of other
+causes darkly hinted at by his contemporaries, but never breaking
+into open gossip, he was never the same man afterwards.  His children,
+who used to rush with effusion to greet him, now shrank into corners
+at his step, or slid behind half open doors, whence they peered with
+fearful interest at his tall figure, pacing in moody silence the
+halls of his ancestral home, or sitting with frowning brows over the
+embers dying away on the great hearthstone of his famous library.
+
+"Their mother, who was an invalid, did not share these terrors.  The
+father was ever tender of her, and the only smile they ever saw on
+his face came with his entrance into her darkened room.
+
+"Such were Callista Moore's first memories.  Those which followed
+were more definite and much more startling.  President Jackson, who
+had a high opinion of her father's ability, advanced him rapidly.
+Finally a position was given him which raised him into national
+prominence.  As this had been the goal of his ambition for years,
+he was much gratified by this appointment, and though his smiles
+came no more frequently, his frowns lightened, and from being
+positively threatening, became simply morose.
+
+"Why this moroseness should have sharpened into menace after an
+unexpected visit from his once dear, but long estranged
+companion-in-arms, his daughter, even after long years of constant
+brooding upon this subject, dares not decide.  If she could she
+might be happier.
+
+"The general was a kindly man, sharp of face and of a tall thin
+figure, but with an eye to draw children and make them happy with
+a look.  But his effect on the father was different.  From the
+moment the two met in the great hall below, the temper of the host
+betrayed how little he welcomed this guest.  He did not fail in
+courtesy - the Moores are always gentlemen - but it was a hard
+courtesy, which cut while it flattered.  The two children, shrinking
+from its edge without knowing what it was that hurt them, slunk to
+covert, and from behind the two pillars which mark the entrance to
+the library, watched the two men as they walked up and down the
+halls discussing the merits of this and that detail of the freshly
+furnished mansion.  These two innocent, but eager spies, whom fear
+rather than curiosity held in hiding, even caught some of the
+sentences which passed between tire so-called friends; and though
+these necessarily conveyed but little meaning to their childish
+minds, the words forming them were never forgotten, as witness
+these phrases confided to me by Mistress Callista twenty-five years
+afterward.
+
+"'You have much that most men lack,' remarked the general, as they
+paused to admire some little specimen of Italian art which had been
+lately received from Genoa.  'You have money - too much money, Moore,
+by an amount I might easily name - a home which some might call
+palatial, a lovely, if not altogether healthy wife, two fine
+children, and all the honor which a man in a commonwealth like this
+should ask for.  Drop politics.'
+
+"'Politics are my life,' was the cold response.  'To bid me drop
+them is to bid me commit suicide.'  Then, as an afterthought to
+which a moment of intervening silence added emphasis, 'And for you
+to drive me from them would be an act little short of murder.'
+
+"'Justice dealt upon a traitor is not murder,' was the stern and
+unyielding reply.  'By one black deed of treacherous barter and sale,
+of which none of your countrymen is cognizant but myself, you have
+forfeited the confidence of this government.  Were I, who so
+unhappily surprised your secret, to allow you to continue in your
+present place of trust, I myself would be a traitor to the republic
+for which I have fought and for which I am ready to die.  That is
+why I ask you to resign before -'
+
+"The two children did not catch the threat latent in that last
+word, but they realized the force of it from their father's look
+and were surprised when he quietly said:
+
+"'You declare yourself to be the only man on the commission who is
+acquainted with the facts you are pleased to style traitorous?'
+
+"The general's lips curled.  'Have I not said?' he asked.
+
+"Something in this stern honesty seemed to affect the father.  His
+face turned away and it was the other's voice which was next heard.
+A change had taken place in it and it sounded almost mellow as it
+gave form to these words:
+
+"'Alpheus, we have been friends.  You shall have two weeks in which
+to think over my demand and decide.  If at the end of that time you
+have not returned to domestic life you may expect another visit from
+me which can not fail of consequences.  You know my temper when
+roused.  Do not force me into a position which will cause us both
+endless regret.'
+
+"Perhaps the father answered; perhaps he did not.  The children
+heard nothing further, but they witnessed the gloom with which he
+rode away to the White House the next day.  Remembering the general's
+threat, they imagined in their childish hearts that their father had
+gone to give up his post and newly acquired honors.  But he returned
+at night without having done so, and from that day on carried his
+head higher and showed himself more and more the master, both at home
+and abroad.
+
+"But he was restless, very restless, and possibly to allay a great
+mental uneasiness, he began having some changes made in the house;
+changes which occupied much of his time and with which he never
+seemed satisfied.  Men working one day were dismissed the next and
+others called in until this work and everything else was interrupted
+by the return of his late unwelcome guest, who kept his appointment
+to a day.
+
+"At this point in her narrative Mistress Callista's voice fell and
+the flame which had thrown a partial light on her countenance died
+down until I could but faintly discern the secretly inquiring look
+with which she watched me as she went on to say
+
+"'Reuben and I,' - Reuben was her brother, - 'were posted in the
+dark corner under the stairs when my father met the general at the
+door.  We had expected to hear high words, or some explosion of
+bitter feeling between them, and hardly knew whether to be glad or
+sorry when our father welcomed his guest with the same elaborate
+bow we once saw him make to the president in the grounds of the
+White House.  Nor could we understand what followed.  We were
+summoned in to supper.  Our mother was there - a great event in
+those days - and toasts were drunk and our father proposed one to
+the general's health.  This Reuben thought was an open signal of
+peace, and turned upon me his great round eyes in surprise; but I,
+who was old enough to notice that this toast was not responded to
+and that the general did not even touch his lips to the glass he
+had lifted in compliment to our mother, who had lifted hers, felt
+that there was something terrifying rather than reassuring in this
+attempt at good fellowship.
+
+Though unable to reason over it at the time, I have often done so
+since, and my father's attitude and look as he faced this strange
+guest has dwelt so persistently in my memory that scarcely a year
+passes without the scene coming up in my dreams with its accompanying
+emotions of fear and perplexity.  For - perhaps you know the story -
+that hour was the general's last.  He died before leaving the house;
+died in that same dark library concerning which you have asked so
+many questions.
+
+"'I remember the circumstances well, how well down to each and every
+detail.  Our mother had gone back to her room, and the general and
+my father, who did not linger over their wine - why should they,
+when the general would not drink? - had withdrawn to the library at
+the suggestion of the general, whose last words are yet lingering
+in my ears.
+
+"'The time has come for our little talk,' said he.  'Your reception
+augurs -'
+
+"'You do not look well,' my father here broke in, in what seemed an
+unnaturally loud voice.  'Come and sit down -'
+
+"'Here the door closed.
+
+"'We had hung about this door, curious children that we were, in
+hopes of catching a glimpse of the queer new settle which had been
+put into place that day.  But we scampered away at this, and were
+playing in and out of the halls when the library door agin opened
+and my father came out.
+
+"'Where's Samba?' he cried.  'Tell him to carry a glass of wine in
+to the general.  1 do not like his looks.  I am going upstairs for
+some medicine.'  This he whispered in choked tones as he set foot
+on the stairs.  Why I remember it I do not know, for Reuben, who
+was standing where he could look into the library when our father
+came out and saw the settle and the general sitting at one end of
+it, was chattering about it in my ear at the very moment our father
+was giving his orders.
+
+"'Reuben is a man now, and I have asked him more than once since
+then how the general looked at that critical instant.  It is
+important to me, very, very important, and to him, too, now that
+he has come to know a man's passions and temptations.  But he will
+never tell me, never relieve my mind, and I can only hope that
+there were real signs of illness on the general's brow; for then I
+could feel that all had been right and that his death was the
+natural result of the great distress he felt at opposing my father
+in the one desire of his heart.  That glimpse which Reuben had of
+him before he fell has always struck me with strange pathos.  A
+little child looking in upon a man, who, for all his apparent
+health, will in another moment be in eternity - I do not wonder he
+does not like to talk of it, and yet -
+
+"'It was Samba who came upon the general first.  Our father had not
+yet descended.  When he did, it was with loud cries and piteous
+ejaculations.  Word had gone upstairs and surprised him in the room
+with my mother.  I recollect wondering in all childish simplicity
+why he wrung his hands so over the death of a man he so hated and
+feared.  Nor was it till years had passed and our mother had been
+laid in the grave and the house had settled into a gloom too heavy
+and somber for Reuben to endure, that I recognized in my father the
+signs of a settled remorse.  These I endeavored to account for by
+the fact that he had been saved from what he looked upon as political
+death by the sudden but opportune decease of his best friend.  This
+caused a shock to his feelings which had unnerved him for life.
+Don't you think this the true explanation of his invariably moody
+brow and the great distaste he always showed for this same library?
+Though he would live in no other house, he would not enter that
+room nor look at the gloomy settle from which the general had fallen
+to his death.  The place was virtually tabooed, and though, as the
+necessity arose, it was opened from time to time for great
+festivities, the shadow it had acquired never left it and my father
+hated its very door until he died.  Is it not natural that his
+daughter should share this feeling?'
+
+"It was, and I said so; but I would say no more, though she cast me
+little appealing looks which acquired an eery significance from the
+pressure of her small fingers on my arm and the wailing sound of
+the wind which at that moment blew down in one gust, scattering the
+embers and filling the house with banshee calls.  I simply kissed
+her and advised her to go back with me to England and forget this
+old house and all its miserable memories.  For that was the sum of
+the comfort at my poor command.  When, after another restless night,
+I crept down in the early morning to peer into the dim and unused
+room whose story I had at last learned, I can not say but that I
+half expected to behold the meager ghost of the unfortunate general
+rise from the cushions of the prodigious bench which still kept its
+mysterious watch over the deserted hearthstone."
+
+So much for the passages culled from the book itself.  The newspaper
+excerpts, to which I next turned, bore a much later date, and read
+as follows:
+
+"A strange coincidence marks the death of Albert Moore in his
+brother's house yesterday.  He was discovered lying with his head
+on the identical spot where General Lloyd fell forty years before.
+It is said that this sudden demise of a man hitherto regarded as a
+model of physical strength and endurance was preceded by a violent
+altercation with his elder brother.  If this is so, the excitement
+incident upon such a break in their usually pleasant relations may
+account for his sudden death.  Edward Moore, who, unfortunately,
+was out of the room when his brother succumbed - some say that he
+was in his grandfather's room above - was greatly unnerved by this
+unexpected end to what was probably merely a temporary quarrel,
+and now lies in a critical condition.
+
+"The relations between him and the deceased Albert have always been
+of the most amicable character until they unfortunately fell in
+love with the same woman."
+
+Attached to this was another slip, apparently from a later paper.
+
+"The quarrel between the two brothers Moore, just prior to the
+younger one's death, turns out to have been of a more serious nature
+than was first supposed.  It has since leaked out that an actual
+duel was fought at that time between these two on the floor of the
+old library; and that in this duel the elder one was wounded.  Some
+even go so far as to affirm that the lady's hand was to be the
+reward of him who drew the first blood; it is no longer denied that
+the room was in great disorder when the servants first rushed in at
+the sound he made in falling.  Everything movable had been pushed
+back against the wall and an open space cleared, in the center of
+which could be seen one drop of blood.  What is certain is that
+Mr. Moore is held to the house by something even more serious than
+his deep grief, and that the young lady who was the object of this
+fatal dispute has left the city."
+
+Pasted under this was the following short announcement:
+
+"Married on the twenty-first of January, at the American consulate
+in Rome, Italy, Edward Moore, of Washington, D. C., United States
+of America, to Antoinette Sloan, daughter of Joseph Dewitt Sloan,
+also of that city."
+
+With this notice my interest in the book ceased and I prepared to
+step down from the chair on which I had remained standing during
+the reading of the above passages.
+
+As I did so I spied a slip of paper lying on the floor at my feet.
+As it had not been there ten minutes before there could be little
+doubt that it had slipped from the book whose leaves I had been
+turning over so rapidly.  Hastening to recover it, I found it to
+be a sheet of ordinary note paper partly inscribed with words in
+a neat and distinctive handwriting.  This was a great find, for
+the paper was fresh and the handwriting one which could be readily
+identified.  What I saw written there was still more remarkable.
+It had the look of some of the memoranda I had myself drawn up
+during the most perplexing moments of this strange case.  I
+transcribe it just as it read:
+
+"We have here two separate accounts of how death comes to those
+who breathe their last on the ancestral hearthstone of the Moore
+house library.
+
+"Certain facts are emphasized in both:
+
+"Each victim was alone when he fell.
+
+"Each death was preceded by a scene of altercation or violent
+controversy between the victim and the alleged master of these
+premises.
+
+"In each case the master of the house reaped some benefit, real or
+fancied, from the other's death."
+
+A curious set of paragraphs.  Some one besides myself was searching
+for the very explanation I was at that moment intent upon.  I should
+have considered it the work of our detectives if the additional
+lines I now came upon could have been written by any one but a Moore.
+But no one of any other blood or associations could have indited the
+amazing words which followed.  The only excuse I could find for them
+was the difficulty which some men feel in formulating their thoughts
+otherwise than with pen and paper, they were so evidently intended
+for the writer's eye and understanding only, as witness:
+
+"Let me recall the words my father was uttering when my brother
+rushed in upon us with that account of my misdeeds which changed
+all my prospects in life.  It was my twenty-first birthday and the
+old man had just informed me that as the eldest son I might expect
+the house in which we stood to be mine one day and with it a secret
+which has been handed down from father to son ever since the Moores
+rose to eminence in the person of Colonel Alpheus.  Then he noted
+that I was now of age and immediately went on to say: 'This means
+that you must be told certain facts, without the knowledge of which
+you would be no true Moore.  These facts you must hereafter relate
+to your son or whoever may be fortunate enough to inherit from you.
+It is the legacy which goes with this house and one which no
+inheritor as yet has refused either to receive or to transmit.
+Listen.  You have often noted the gold filigree ball which I wear
+on my watch-guard.  This ball is the talisman of our house, of this
+house.  If, in the course of your life you find yourself in an
+extremity from which no issue seems possible mind the strictness
+of the injunction - an extremity from which no issue seems possible
+(I have never been in such a case; the gold filigree ball has never
+been opened by me)you will take this trinket from its chain, press
+upon this portion of it so, and use what you will find inside, in
+connection with -'  Alas! it was at this point John Judson came
+rushing in and those disclosures were made which lost me my father's
+regard and gave to the informer my rightful inheritance, together
+with the full secret of which I only got a part.  But that part
+must help me now to the whole.  I have seen the filigree ball many
+times; Veronica has it now.  But its contents have never been shown
+me.  If I knew what they were and why the master of this secret
+always left the library - "
+
+Here the memorandum ceased with a long line straggling from the
+letter y as if the writer had been surprised at his task.
+
+The effect upon me of these remarkable words was to heighten my
+interest and raise me into a state of renewed hope, if not of
+active expectation.
+
+Another mind than my own had been at work along the only groove
+which held out any promise of success, and this mind, having at
+its command certain family traditions, had let me into a most
+valuable secret.  Another mind!  Whose mind?  That was a question
+easily answered.  But one man could have written these words; the
+man who was thrust aside in early life in favor of his younger
+brother, and who now, by the sudden death of that brother's
+daughter, had come again into his inheritance.  Uncle David, and
+he only, was the puzzled inquirer whose self-communings I had just
+read.  This fact raised a new problem far me to work upon, and I
+could but ask when these lines were written - before or after Mr.
+Pfeiffer's death and whether he had ever succeeded in solving the
+riddle he had suggested, or whether it was still a baffling
+mystery to him.  I was so moved by the suggestion conveyed in his
+final and half-finished sentence, that I soon lost sight of these
+lesser inquiries in the more important one connected with the
+filigree ball.  For I had seen this filigree ball.  I had even
+handled it.  From the description given I was very certain that
+it had been one of the many trinkets I had observed lying on the
+dressing table when I made my first hasty examination of the room
+on the evening of Mrs. Jeffrey's death.  Why had no premonition
+of its importance as a connecting link between these tragedies and
+their mysterious cause come to me at the time when it was within
+reach of my hand? It was too late now.  It had been swept away with
+the other loose objects littering the place, and my opportunity for
+pursuing this very promising investigation was gone for the night.
+
+Yet it was with a decided feeling of triumph that I finally locked
+the door of this old mansion behind me.  Certainly I had taken a
+step forward since my entrance there, to which I had but to add
+another of equal importance to merit the attention of the
+superintendent himself.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+THE HEART OF THE PUZZLE.
+
+
+The next morning I swallowed my pride and sought out Durbin.  He
+had superintended the removal of Mrs. Jeffrey's effects from the
+southwest chamber, and should know, if any one, where this filigree
+ball was now to be found.  Doubtless it had been returned with the
+other things to Mr. Jeffrey, and yet, who knows?  Durbin is sly and
+some inkling of its value as a clue may have entered his mind.  If
+so, it would be anywhere but in Mr. Jeffrey's or Miss Tuttle's
+possession.
+
+To test my rival's knowledge of and interest in this seemingly
+trivial object, I stooped to what I can but consider a pardonable
+subterfuge.  Greeting him in the offhand way least likely to develop
+his suspicion, I told him that I had a great idea in connection
+with the Jeffrey case and that the clue to it lay in a little gold
+ball which Mrs. Jeffrey sometimes wore and upon which she set great
+store.  So far I spoke the truth.  It had been given her by some
+one - not Mr. Jeffrey - and I believed, though I did not know, that
+it contained a miniature portrait which it might be to our advantage
+to see.
+
+I expected his lip to curl; but for a wonder it maintained its
+noncommittal aspect, though I was sure that I caught a slight, very
+slight, gleam of curiosity lighting up for a moment his calm, gray
+eye.
+
+"You are on a fantastic trail," he sneered, and that was all.
+
+But I had not expected more.  I had merely wished to learn what
+place, if any, this filigree ball held in his own suspicions, and
+in case he had overlooked it, to jog his curiosity so that he would
+in some way betray its whereabouts.
+
+That, for all its seeming inconsequence, it did hold some place in
+his mind was evident enough to those who knew him; but that it was
+within reach or obtainable by any ordinary means was not so plain.
+Indeed, I very soon became convinced that he, for one, had no idea
+where it was, or after the suggestive hint I had given him he would
+never have wasted a half-hour on me.  What was I to do then?  Tell
+my story to the major and depend on him to push the matter to its
+proper conclusion?  "Not yet," whispered pride.  "Durbin thinks you
+a fool.  Wait till you can show your whole hand before calling
+attention to your cards."  But it was hard not to betray my
+excitement and to act the fool they considered me when the boys
+twitted me about this famous golden charm and asked what great
+result had followed my night in the Moore house.  But remembering
+that he who laughs last laughs best, and that the cause of mirth
+was not yet over between Durbin and myself, I was able to preserve
+an impassive exterior even when I came under the major's eye.  I
+found myself amply repaid when one of the boys who had studiously
+avoided chaffing me dropped the following words in my ear:
+
+"I don't know what your interest is in the small gold charm you
+were talking about, but you have done some good work in this case
+and I don't mind telling you what I know about it.  That little
+gold ball has caused the police much trouble.  It is on the list
+of effects found in the room where the candle was seen burning; but
+when all these petty belongings of Mrs. Jeffrey's were gathered up
+and carried back to her husband, this special one was not to be
+found amongst them.  It was lost in transit, nor has it ever been
+seen since.  And who do you think it was who called attention to
+this loss and demanded that the article be found?  Not Mr. Jeffrey,
+who seems to lay little or no stress upon it, but the old man they
+call Uncle David.  He who, to all appearance, possessed no interest
+in his niece's personal property, was on hand the moment these
+things were carried into her husband's house, with the express
+intention, it seems, of inquiring for this gold ball, which he
+declared to be a family heirloom.  As such it belonged to him as
+the present holder of the property, and to him only.  Attention
+being thus called to it, it was found to be missing, and as no one
+but the police seemed to be to blame for its loss the matter was
+hushed up and would have been regarded as too insignificant for
+comment, the trinket being intrinsically worthless, if Mr. Moore
+had not continued to make such a fuss about it.  This ball, he
+declared, was worth as much to a Moore as all the rest of his
+property, which was bosh, you know; and the folly of these
+assertions and the depth of the passions he displayed whenever
+the subject was mentioned have made some of us question if he is
+the innocent inheritor he has tried to make himself out.  At all
+events, I know for a certainty that the district attorney holds
+his name in reserve, if the grand jury fails to bring in an
+indictment against Miss Tuttle."
+
+"The district attorney is wise," I remarked, and fell athinking.
+
+Had this latent suspicion against Mr. Moore any solid foundation?
+Was he the guilty man?  The memorandum I had come across in the
+book which had been lately pulled down from the library shelves
+showed that, notwithstanding his testimony to the contrary, he
+had been in that house close upon that fatal night, if not on the
+very night itself.  It also showed his extreme interest in the
+traditions of the family.  But did it show anything more?  Had he
+interrupted his writing to finish his query in blood, and had one
+of his motives for this crime been the acquisition of this
+filigree ball?  If so, why had he left it on the table upstairs?
+A candle had been lit in that room - could it have been by him in
+his search for this object?  It would be a great relief to believe
+so.  What was the reason then that my mind refused so emphatically
+to grasp this possibility and settle upon him as the murderer of
+Mrs. Jeffrey?  I can not tell.  I hated the man, and I likewise
+deeply distrusted him.  But I could not, even after this revelation
+of his duplicity, connect him in my thoughts with absolute crime
+without a shock to my intuitions.  Happily, my scruples were not
+shared by my colleagues.  They had listed him.  Here I felt my
+shoulder touched, and a newspaper was thrust into my hand by the
+man who had just addressed me.
+
+"Look down the lost and found column," said he.  "The third
+advertisement you will see there came from the district attorney's
+office; the next one was inserted by Mr. Moore himself."
+
+I followed his pointing finer and read two descriptions of the
+filigree ball.  The disproportion in the rewards offered was
+apparent.  That promised by Uncle David was calculated to rouse
+any man's cupidity and should have resulted in the bauble's
+immediate return.
+
+"He got ahead of the police that time," I laughed.  "When did
+these advertisements appear?"
+
+"During the days you were absent from Washington."
+
+"And how sure are you that he did not get this jewel back?"
+
+"Oh, we are sure.  His continued anxiety and still active interest
+prove this, even if our surveillance had been less perfect."
+
+"And the police have been equally unsuccessful?"
+
+"Equally."
+
+"After every effort?"
+
+"Every."
+
+"Who was the man who collected and carried out those things from
+the southwest chamber?"
+
+He smiled.
+
+"You see him," said he.
+
+"It was you?"
+
+"Myself."
+
+"And you are sure this small ball was among them?"
+
+"No.  I only know that I have seen it somewhere, but that it
+wasn't among the articles I delivered to Mr. Jeffrey."
+
+"How did you carry them?"
+
+"In a hand-bag which I locked myself."
+
+"Before leaving the southwest chamber?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then it is still in that room?"
+
+"Find it," was his laconic reply.
+
+Here most men would have stopped, but I have a bulldog's tenacity
+when once I lay hold.  That night I went back to the Moore house
+and, taking every precaution against being surprised by the
+sarcastic Durbin or some of his many flatterers, I ransacked the
+southwest chamber on my own behalf for what certainly I had
+little reason to expect to find there.
+
+It seemed a hopeless cause from the first, but I acted as if no
+one had hunted for this object before.  Moving every article, I
+sought first on the open floor and then in every possible cranny
+for the missing trinket.  But I failed to find it and was about
+to acknowledge myself defeated when my eye fell on the long
+brocaded curtains which I had drawn across the several windows to
+hide every gleam of light from the street.  They were almost free
+from folds, but I shook them well, especially the one nearest the
+table, and naturally with no effect.
+
+"Folly," I muttered, yet did not quite desist.  For the great
+tassels still hung at the sides and -  Well!  you may call it an
+impossible find or say that if the bauble was there it should have
+been discovered in the first search for it!  I will not say no.  I
+can only tell you what happened.  When I took one of those tassels
+in my band, I thought, as it twirled under my touch, that I saw
+something gleam in its faded old threads which did not belong there.
+Startled, and yet not thoroughly realizing that I had come upon the
+object of my search, I picked at this thing and found it to be a
+morsel of gold chain that had become entangled in it.  When I had
+pulled it out, it showed a small golden ball at one end, filigreed
+over and astonishingly heavy for its size and apparent delicacy.
+
+How it came there - whether it rolled from the table, or was swept
+off inadvertently by the detective's hand, and how it came to be
+caught by this old tassel and held there in spite of the many
+shakings it must have received, did not concern me at this momentous
+instant.  The talisman of this old family was found.  I had but to
+discover what it held concealed to understand what had baffled Mr.
+Moore and made the mystery he had endeavored to penetrate so
+insolvable.  Rejoicing in my triumph, but not wasting a moment in
+self-congratulation, I bent over the candle with my prize and sought
+for the clasp or fastening which held its two parts together.  I
+have a knack at clasps and curious fastenings and was able at first
+touch to spring this one open.  And what did I find inside?
+Something so different from what I expected, something so trivial
+and seemingly harmless, that it was not until I recalled the final
+words of Uncle David's memorandum that I realized its full import
+and the possibilities it suggested.  In itself it was nothing but
+a minute magnifying glass; but when used in connection with - what?
+Ah, that was just what Uncle David failed to say, possibly to know.
+Yet this was now the important point, the culminating fact which
+might lead to a full understanding of these many tragedies.  Could
+I hope to guess what presented itself to Mr. Moore as a difficult
+if not insolvable problem?  No; guessing would not answer.  I must
+trust to the inspiration of the moment which suggested with almost
+irresistible conviction:
+
+The picture!  That inane and seemingly worthless drawing over the
+fireplace in The Colonel's Own, whose presence in so rich a room
+has always been a mystery!
+
+Why this object should have suggested itself to me and with such
+instant conviction, I can not readily say.  Whether, from my
+position near the bed, the sight of this old drawing recalled the
+restless nights of all who had lain in face of its sickly smile,
+or whether some recollection of that secret law of the Moores
+which forbade the removal of any of their pictures from the
+time-worn walls, or a remembrance of the curiosity which this
+picture excited in every one who looked at it - Francis Jeffrey
+among the number - I no sooner asked myself what object in this
+house might possibly yield counsel or suggest aid when subjected
+to the influence of a magnifying glass, than the answer, which I
+have already given, sprang instantly into my mind: The picture!
+
+Greatly excited, I sprang upon a chair, took down the drawing from
+the wall and laid it face up on the bed.  Then I placed the glass
+over one of the large coils surrounding the insipid face, and was
+startled enough, in spite of all mental preparation, to perceive
+the crinkly lines which formed it, resolve themselves into script
+and the script into words, some of which were perfectly legible.
+
+The drawing, simple as it looked, was a communication in writing
+to those who used a magnifying glass to read it.  I could hardly
+contain my triumph, hardly find the self-control necessary to a
+careful study of its undulating and often conflicting lines and to
+the slow picking out of the words therein contained.
+
+But when I had done this, and had copied the whole of the wandering
+scrawl on a page of my note book the result was of value.
+
+Read, and judge for yourself.
+
+"Coward that I am, I am willing to throw upon posterity the shadow
+of a crime whose consequences I dare not incur in life.  Confession
+I must make.  To die and leave no record of my deed is impossible.
+Yet how tell my story so that only my own heirs may read and they
+when at the crisis of their fate?  I believe I have found the way
+by this drawing and the injunction I have left to the holders of
+the filigree ball.
+
+"No man ever wished his enemy dead more than I did, and no man
+ever spent more cunning on the deed.  Master in my own house, I
+contrived a device by which the man who held my fate in his hands
+fell on my library hearth with no one near and no sign by which
+to associate me with the act.  Does this seem like the assertion
+of a madman?  Go to the old chamber familiarly called "The Colonel's
+Own."  Enter its closet, pull out its two drawers, and in the
+opening thus made seek for the loophole at the back, through which,
+if you stoop low enough, you can catch a glimpse of the library
+hearth and its great settle.  With these in view, slip your finger
+along the wall on your right and when it touches an obstruction
+ - pass it if it is a handle, for that is only used to rewind the
+apparatus and must be turned from you until it can be turned no
+farther; but if it is a depression you encounter, press, and press
+hard on the knob concealed within it.  But beware when any one you
+love is seated in that corner of the settle where the cushion
+invites rest, lest it be your fate to mourn and wail as it is mine
+to curse the hour when I sought to clear my way by murder.  For
+the doom of the man of blood is upon me.  The hindrance is gone
+from my life, but a horror has entered it beyond the conception
+of any soul that has not yielded itself to the unimaginable
+influences emanating from an accomplished crime.  I can not be
+content with having pressed that spring once.  A mania is upon me
+which, after thirty years of useless resistance and superhuman
+struggle, still draws me from bed and sleep to rehearse in ghastly
+fashion that deed of my early manhood.  I can not resist it.  To
+tear out the deadly mechanism, unhinge weight and drum and rid the
+house of every evidence of crime would but drive me to shriek my
+guilt aloud and act in open pantomime what I now go through in
+fearsome silence and secrecy.  When the hour comes, as come it
+must, that I can not rise and enter that fatal closet, I shall
+still enact the deed in dreams, and shriek aloud in my sleep and
+wish myself dead and yet fear to die lest my hell be to go through
+all eternity, slaying over and over my man, in ever growing horror
+and repulsion.
+
+"Do you wish to share my fate?  Try to effect through blood a
+release from the difficulties menacing you."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+A THREAD IN HAND
+
+
+There are moments which stand out with intense force and clearness
+in every man's life.  Mine was the one which followed the reading
+of these lines which were meant for a warning, but which in
+more than one case had manifestly served to open the way to a
+repetition of the very crime they deplored.  I felt myself under
+the same fascination.  I wanted to test the mechanism; to follow
+out then and there the instructions given with such shortsighted
+minuteness and mark the result.  But a sense of decorum prevented.
+It was clearly my duty to carry so important a discovery as this
+to the major and subject myself to his commands before making the
+experiment suggested by the scroll I had so carefully deciphered.
+Besides, it would be difficult to carry out this experiment alone,
+and with no other light ht than that afforded by my lantern.
+Another man and more lights were needed.
+
+Influenced by these considerations, I restored the picture to its
+place, and left the building.  As I did so, the first signs of
+dawn became visible in the east.  I had expended three hours in
+picking out the meaning concealed in the wavy lines of the old
+picture.
+
+I was early at headquarters that morning, but not so early as to
+find the superintendent alone.  A group of men were already
+congregated about him in his small office, and when, on being
+admitted, I saw amongst them the district attorney, Durbin and
+another famous detective, I instinctively knew what matter was
+under discussion.
+
+I was allowed to remain, possibly because I brought news in my
+face, possibly because the major felt more kindly toward me than
+I thought.  Though Durbin, who had been speaking, had at first
+sight of me shut his mouth like a trap, and even went so far as
+to drum an impatient protest with his fingers on the table before
+which he stood, neither the major nor the district attorney turned
+an unkindly face toward me, and my amiable friend was obliged to
+accept my presence with what grace he could.
+
+There was with them a fourth man, who stood apart.  On him the
+general attention had been concentrated at my entrance and to him
+it now returned.  He was an unpretentious person of kindly aspect.
+To any one accustomed to Washington residents, he bore the
+unmistakable signs of being one of the many departmental employees
+whose pay is inadequate to the necessities of his family.  Of his
+personal peculiarities I noted two.  He blinked when he talked,
+and stuttered painfully when excited.  Notwithstanding these
+defects he made a good impression, and commanded confidence.
+This I soon saw was of importance, for the story he now entered
+upon was one calculated to make me forget my own errand and even
+to question my own convictions.
+
+The first intimation I received of the curious nature of his
+communication was through the following questions, put to him by
+the major:
+
+"You are sure this gentleman is identical with the one pointed out
+to you last night?"
+
+"Very sure, sir.  I can swear to it."
+
+I omit all evidence of the defect in his speech above mentioned.
+
+"You recognize him positively?"
+
+"Positively.  I should have picked him out with the same assurance,
+if I had seen him in some other city and in a crowd of as
+fine-looking gentlemen as himself.  His face made a great impression
+on me.  You see I had ample time to study it in the few minutes we
+stood so close together."
+
+"So you have said.  Will you be kind enough to repeat the
+circumstance?  I should like the man who has just come in to hear
+your description of this scene.  Give the action, please.  It is
+all very interesting."
+
+The stranger glanced inquisitively in my direction, and turned to
+obey the superintendent.
+
+"I was returning to my home in Georgetown, on the evening of May
+the eleventh, the day of the great tragedy.  My wife was ill, and
+I had been into town to see a physician and should have gone
+directly home; but I was curious to see how high the flood was
+running - you remember it was over the banks that night.  So I
+wandered out on the bridge, and came upon the gentleman about whom
+you have been questioning me.  He was standing all alone leaning
+on the rail thus."  Here the speaker drew up a chair, and, crossing
+his arms over its back, bent his head down over them.  "I did not
+know him, but the way he eyed the water leaping and  boiling in a
+yellow flood beneath was not the way of a curious man like myself,
+but of one who was meditating some desperate deed.  He was handsome
+and well dressed, but he looked a miserable wretch and was in a
+state of such complete self-absorption that he did not notice me,
+though I had stopped not five feet from his side.  I expected to
+see him throw himself over, but instead of that, he suddenly
+raised his head and, gazing straight before him, not at the heavy
+current, but at some vision in his own mind, broke forth in these
+words, spoken as I had never heard words spoken before - "
+
+Here the speaker's stuttering got the better of him and the
+district attorney had time to say:
+
+"What were these words?  Speak them slowly; we have all the time
+there is."
+
+Instantly the man plucked up heart and, eying us all impressively,
+was able to say:
+
+"They were these: 'She must die!  she must die!'  No name, but just
+the one phrase twice repeated, 'She must die!'  This startled me,
+and hardly knowing whether to lay hands on him, or to turn about
+and run, I was moving slowly away, when he drew his arms from the
+rail, like this, and, still staring into space, added, in the same
+hard and determined voice, this one word more, 'To-night!' ; and,
+wheeling about, passed me with one blank and wholly unconscious
+look and betook himself toward the city.  As he went by, his lips
+opened for the third time.  'Which means - ' he cried, between a
+groan and a shriek, 'a bullet for her and - ' I wish I had heard
+the rest, but he was out of my hearing before his sentence was
+finished."
+
+"What time was this?"
+
+"As near half-past five as possible.  It was six when I reached
+home a few minutes later."
+
+"Ah, he must have gone to the cemetery after this."
+
+"I am quite sure of it."
+
+"Why didn't you follow the man?" grumbled Durbin.
+
+"It wasn't my business.  He was a stranger and possibly mad.  I
+didn't know what to do."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"Went home and kept quiet; my wife was very ill that night and I
+had my own cause for anxiety."
+
+"You, however, read the papers next morning?"
+
+"No, sir, nor for many days.  My wife grew constantly worse and
+for a week I didn't leave her, not knowing but that every breath
+would be her last.  I was dead to everything outside the sick-room
+and when she grew better, which was very gradually, we had to take
+her away, so that I had no opportunity of speaking of this
+occurrence to any one till a week ago, when some remark, published
+in connection with Mrs. Jeffrey's death, recalled that encounter
+on the bridge.  I told a neighbor that I believed the man I had
+seen there was Mr. Jeffrey, and we looked up the papers and ran
+over them till we came upon his picture.  That settled it, and I
+could no longer - being free from home anxieties now - hold my
+tongue and the police heard - "
+
+"That will do, Mr. Gelston," broke in the major.  "When we want
+you again, we will let you know, Durbin, see Mr. Gelston out"
+
+I was left alone with the major and the district attorney.
+
+There was a moment's silence, during which my own heart beat so
+loud that I was afraid they would hear it.  Since taking up Miss
+Tuttle's cause I had never really believed in Mr. Jeffrey's
+innocence in spite of the alibi he had brought forward, and now
+I expected to hear these men utter the same conviction.  The major
+was the first to speak.  Addressing the district attorney, he
+remarked: "This will strengthen your case very materially.  We
+have proof now that Mrs. Jeffrey's death was actually determined
+upon.  If Miss Tuttle had not shot her, he would.  I wonder if it
+was a relief to him on reaching his door to find that the deed
+was done."
+
+I could not suppress my surprise.
+
+"Miss Tuttle!" I repeated.  "Is it so unmistakably evident that
+Mr. Jeffrey did not get to the Moore house in time to do the
+shooting himself?"
+
+The major gave me a quick look.
+
+"I thought you considered Miss Tuttle the guilty one."
+
+I felt that the time had come to show my colors.
+
+"I have changed my mind," said I.  "I can give you no good reason
+for this; something in the woman herself, I suppose.  She does not
+look nor act like a criminal.  While not desirous of raising myself
+in opposition to the judgment of those so greatly my superior in
+all respects, I have had this feeling, and I am courageous enough
+to avow it.  And yet, if Mr. Jeffrey could not have left the
+cemetery gates and reached the Moore house in time to fulfil all
+the conditions of this tragedy, the case does look black against
+the woman.  She admits to having been there when the pistol was
+fired, unless - "
+
+"Unless what?  You have something new to tell us.  That I have seen
+ever since you entered the room.  What is it?"
+
+I cast a glance at the door.  Should I be able to finish my story
+before Durbin returned?  I thought it possible, and, though still
+upset by this new evidence, which I could now see was not entirely
+in Miss Tuttle's favor, I spoke up with what spirit I might.
+
+"I have just come from spending another night in the Moore house.
+All the efforts heretofore made to exhaust its secrets have been
+founded upon a theory that has brought us nowhere.  I had another
+in mind, and I was anxious to test it before resting from all
+further attempt to solve this riddle.  And it has not failed me.
+By pursuing a clue apparently so trivial that I allowed it to go
+neglected for weeks, I have come upon the key to the many mysterious
+crimes which have defiled the library hearthstone.  And where do
+you think it lies?  Not in the hearthstone itself and not in the
+floor under the settle; not, in fact, in the library at all, but
+in the picture hanging upstairs in the southwest chamber."
+
+"The picture!  that faded-out sketch, fit only for the garret?"
+
+"Yes.  To you and to most people surveying it, it is just what you
+say and nothing more.  But to the initiated few - pray Heaven they
+may have been few - it is writing, conveying secret instructions.
+The whole combination of curves which go to make up this sketch is
+a curious arrangement of words inscribed with the utmost care, in
+the smallest of characters.  Viewed with a magnifying glass, the
+uncertain outlines of a shadowy face surmounted by a mass of
+piled-up hair resolve themselves into lines of writing, the words
+of which are quite intelligible and full of grim and unmistakable
+purpose.  I have read those lines; and what is more, I have
+transcribed them into plain copy.  Will you read them?  They
+contain a most extraordinary confession; a confession that was
+manifestly intended as a warning, but which unfortunately has had
+very different results.  It may explain the death of the man from
+Denver, even if it cast no light upon the other inexplicable
+features of the remarkable case we are considering."
+
+As I spoke I laid open on the table before me the transcription of
+which I spoke.  Instantly the two men bent over it.  When they
+looked up again, their countenances showed not excitement only but
+appreciation; and in the one minute of triumph which I then enjoyed,
+all that had wounded or disturbed me in the past was forgotten.
+
+"You are a man in a thousand," was the major's first enthusiastic
+comment; at which I was conscious of regretting, with very pardonable
+inconsistency, that Durbin had not returned in time to hear these
+words.
+
+The major now proposed that we should go at once to the old house.
+"A family secret like this does not crop up every day even in a city
+so full of surprises as Washington.  We will hunt for the spring
+under the closet drawers and see what happens, eh?  And on our way
+there" - here he turned to me "I should like to hear the particulars
+concerning the little clue just mentioned.  By the way, Mr. Jeffrey's
+interest in this old drawing is now explained.  He knew its
+diabolical secret."
+
+This was self-evident, and my heart was heavy for Miss Tuttle, who
+seemed to be so deep in her brother-in-law's confidence.
+
+It grew still heavier when Durbin, joining us, added his incredulity
+to the air of suspicion assumed by the others.  Through all the
+explanations I now entered into, I found myself inwardly repeating
+with somewhat forced iteration, "I will not believe her guilty under
+any circumstances.  She carries the look of innocence, and innocent
+she must be proved, whatever the result may be to Francis Jeffrey."
+
+To such an extent had I been influenced by the lofty expression
+which I had once surprised on her face.
+
+Had Mr. David Moore been sitting open-eyed behind his vines that
+morning, he would have been much surprised to see so many of his
+natural enemies intrude on his property at so early an hour.  But,
+happily, he had not yet risen, and we were able to enter upon our
+investigations without being watched or interrupted by him.
+
+Our first move was to go in a body to the southwest chamber, take
+down the picture, examine it with a magnifying-glass and satisfy
+ourselves that the words I had picked out of its mazy lines were
+really to be found there.  This done and my veracity established,
+we next proceeded to the closet where, according to the
+instructions embodied in this picture, the secret spring was to be
+found by which some unknown and devilish machinery would be released
+in the library below.
+
+To my great satisfaction the active part in this experiment was
+delegated to me.  Durbin continued to be a mere looker-on.  Drawing
+out the two large drawers from their place at the end of this closet,
+I set them aside.  Then I hunted for and found the small loophole
+which we had been told afforded a glimpse of the library hearthstone;
+but seeing nothing through it, I called for a light to be placed in
+the room below.
+
+I heard Durbin go down, then the major, and finally, the district
+attorney.  Nothing could stay their curiosity now, not even the
+possibility of danger, which as yet was a lurking and mysterious one.
+But when a light shot up from below, and the irregular opening
+before me became a loophole through which I could catch a very wide
+glimpse of the library beneath, I found that it was not necessary
+for me to warn them to keep away from the hearth, as they were all
+clustered very near the door - a precaution not altogether uncalled
+for at so hazardous a moment.
+
+"Are you ready?" I called down.
+
+"Ready!" rose in simultaneous response from below.
+
+"Then look out!"
+
+Reaching for the spring cleverly concealed in the wall at my right
+I vigorously pressed it.
+
+The result was instantaneous.  Silently, but with unerring certainty,
+something small, round, and deadly, fell plumb from the library
+ceiling to where the settle had formerly stood against the
+hearthstone.  Finding nothing there but vacancy to expend itself
+upon, it swung about for a moment on what looked like a wire or a
+whip-cord, then slowly came to rest within a foot or so from the
+floor.
+
+A cry from the horrified officials below was what first brought me
+to myself.  Withdrawing from my narrow quarters I hastened down to
+them and added one more white face to the three I found congregated
+in the doorway.  In the diabolical ingenuity we had seen displayed,
+crime had reached its acme and the cup of human depravity seemed
+full.  When we had regained in some measure our self-possession, we
+all advanced for a closer look at the murderous object dangling
+before us.  We found it to be a heavy leaden weight painted on its
+lower end to match the bosses of stucco-work which appeared at
+regular intervals in the ornamentation of the ceiling.  When drawn
+up into place, that is, when occupying the hole from which it now
+hung suspended, the portion left to protrude would evidently bear
+so small a proportion to its real bulk as to justify any eye in
+believing it to be the mate, and the harmless mate, of all the
+others.
+
+"It hangs just where the settle stood," observed Durbin,
+significantly.
+
+"And just at the point where the cushions invite rest, as the
+colonel so suggestively puts it in his strange puzzle of a
+confession," added the district attorney.
+
+"Replace the old seat," ordered the major, "and let us make sure of
+this."
+
+Ready hands at once grasped it, and, with some effort, I own, drew
+it carefully back into position.
+
+"You see!" quoth Durbin.
+
+We did.
+
+"Devilish!" came from the major's lips.  Then with a glance at the
+ball which, pushed aside by the seat, now hung over its edge a foot
+or so from the floor, he added briskly: "The ball has fallen to the
+full length of the cord.  If it were drawn up a little - "
+
+"Wait," I eagerly interposed.  "Let me see what I can do with it."
+
+And I dashed back upstairs and into the closet of "The Colonel's Own."
+
+With a single peep down to see if they were still on the watch, I
+seized the handle whose position I had made sure of when searching
+for the spring, and began to turn; when instantly - so quick was
+the response - the long cord stiffened and I saw the ball rise into
+sight above the settle top.
+
+"Stop!" called out the major.  "Let go and press the spring again."
+
+I hastened to obey and, though the back of the settle hid the result
+from me, I judged from the look and attitude of those below that
+the old colonel's calculations had been made with great exactness,
+and that the one comfortable seat on the rude and cumbersome bench
+had been so placed that this leaden weight in descending would at
+the chosen moment strike the head of him who sat there, inflicting
+death.  That the weight should be made just heavy enough to produce
+a fatal concussion without damaging the skull was proof of the
+extreme care with which this subtle apparatus had been contrived.
+An open wound would have aroused questions, but a mere bruise might
+readily pass as a result of the victim's violent contact with the
+furnishings of the hearth toward which the shocked body would
+naturally topple.  The fact that a modern jury had so regarded it
+shows how justified he was in this expectation.
+
+I was expending my wonder on this and on a new discovery which,
+with a very decided shock to myself I had just made in the closet,
+when the command came to turn the handle again and to keep on
+turning it till it would turn no farther.
+
+I complied, but with a trembling hand, and though I did not watch
+the result, the satisfaction I heard expressed below was significant
+of the celerity and precision with which the weight rose, foot by
+foot, to the ceiling and finally slunk snugly and without seeming
+jar into its lair.
+
+When, a few minutes later, I rejoined those below, I found them all,
+with eyes directed toward the cornice, searching for the hole
+through which I had just been looking.  It was next to imperceptible,
+so naturally had it been made to fit in with the shadows of the
+scroll work; and even after I had discovered it and pointed it out
+to them, I found difficulty in making them believe that they really
+looked upon an opening.  But when once convinced of this, the
+district attorney's remark was significant.
+
+"I am glad that my name is not Moore."
+
+The superintendent made no reply; his eye had caught mine, and he
+had become very thoughtful.
+
+"One of the two candelabra belonging to the parlor mantel was found
+lying on that closet floor," he observed.  "Somebody has entered
+there lately, as lately as the day when Mr. Pfeiffer was seated
+here."
+
+"Pardon me," I impetuously cried.  "Mr. Pfeiffer's death is quite
+explained." And, drawing forward my hand, which up to this moment
+I had held tight-shut behind my back, I slowly unclosed it before
+their astonished eyes.
+
+A bit of lace lay in my palm, a delicate bit, such as is only worn
+by women in full dress.
+
+"Where did you find that?" asked the major, with the first show of
+deep emotion I have ever observed in him.
+
+My agitation was greater than his as I replied:
+
+"In the rough boarding under those drawers.  Some woman's arm and
+hand has preceded mine in stealthy search after that fatal spring.
+A woman who wore lace, valuable lace."
+
+There was but one woman connected with this affair who rightly
+answered these conditions.  The bride!  Veronica Moore.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+WORDS IN THE NIGHT
+
+
+Had I any premonition of the astounding fact thus suddenly and, I
+may say, dramatically revealed to us during the weeks I had devoted
+to the elucidation of the causes and circumstances of Mrs. Jeffrey's
+death?  I do not think so.  Nothing in her face, as I remembered it;
+nothing in the feeling evinced toward her by husband or sister, had
+prepared me for a disclosure of crime so revolting as to surpass all
+that I had ever imagined or could imagine in a woman of such dainty
+personality and unmistakable culture.  Nor was the superintendent
+or the district attorney less confounded by the event.  Durbin only
+tried to look wise and strut about, but it was of no use; he
+deceived nobody.  Veronica Moore's real connection with Mr. Pfeiffer's
+death, - a death which in some inscrutable way had in so short a time
+led to her own, - was an overwhelming surprise to every one of us.
+
+The superintendent, as was natural, recovered first.
+
+"This throws quite a new light upon the matter," said he.  "Now we
+can understand why Mr. Jeffrey uttered that extraordinary avowal
+overheard on the bridge: 'She must die!'  She had come to him with
+blood on her hands."
+
+It seemed incredible, nay more, unreal.  I recalled the sweet
+refined face turned up to me from the bare boards of this same floor,
+the accounts I had read of the vivacity of her spirits and the wild
+charm of her manner till the shadow of this old house fell upon her.
+I marveled, still feeling myself in the dark, still clinging to my
+faith in womankind, still asking to what depths her sister had
+followed her in the mazes of crime we were forced to recognize but
+could not understand.
+
+Durbin had no such feelings and no such scruples, as was shown by
+the sarcastic comment which now left his lips.
+
+"So!" he cried, "we have to do with three criminals instead of two.
+Nice family, the Moore-Jeffreys !"
+
+But no one paid any attention to him.  Addressing the major, the
+district attorney asked when he expected to hear from Denver, adding
+that it had now become of the first importance to ascertain the
+exact relations existing between the persons under suspicion and the
+latest victim of this deadly mechanism.
+
+The major's answer was abrupt.  He had been expecting a report for
+days.  He was expecting one yet.  If it came in at any time, night
+or day, he was to be immediately notified.  Word might be sent him
+in an hour, in a minute.
+
+Were his remarks a prophecy?  He had hardly ceased speaking when
+an officer appeared with a telegram in his hand.  This the major
+eagerly took and, noting that it was in cipher, read it by means
+of the code he carried in his pocket.  Translated, it ran thus:
+
+Result of open inquiry in Denver.
+
+Three brothers Pfeiffer; all well thought of, but plain in their
+ways and eccentric.  One doing business in Denver.  Died June,
+'97.  One perished in Klondike, October, same year; and one, by
+name Wallace, died suddenly three months since in Washington.
+
+Nothing further gained by secret inquiry in this place.
+
+Result of open inquiry in Owosso.
+
+A man named Pfeiffer kept a store in Owosso during the time V. M.
+attended school there.  He was one of three brothers, home Denver,
+name Wallace.  Simultaneously with V. M.'s leaving school, P.
+broke up business and at instigation of his brother William, who
+accompanied him, went to the Klondike.  No especial relation between
+lady and this same P. ever noted.  V. M. once heard to laugh at his
+awkward ways.
+
+Result of secret inquiry in Owosso.
+
+V. M. very intimate with schoolmate who has since died.  Often rode
+together; once gone a long time.  This was just before V. M. left
+school for good.  Date same as that on which a marriage occurred in
+a town twenty miles distant.  Bride, Antoinette Moore; groom, W.
+Pfeiffer of Denver; witness, young girl with red hair.  Schoolmate
+had red hair.  Had V. M. a middle initial, and was that initial A?
+
+We all looked at each other; this last question was one none of us
+could answer.
+
+"Go for Mr. Jeffrey at once," ordered the major, "and let another
+one of you bring Miss Tuttle.  No word to either of what has occurred
+and no hint of their possible meeting here."
+
+It fell to me to fetch Miss Tuttle.  I was glad of this, as it gave
+me a few minutes by myself in which to compose my mind and adjust my
+thoughts to the new conditions opened up by the amazing facts which
+had just come to light.  But beyond the fact that Mrs. Jeffrey had
+been answerable for the death which had occurred in the library at
+the time of her marriage - that, in the words of the district
+attorney, she had come to her husband with blood on her hands, my
+thoughts would not go; confusion followed the least attempt to
+settle the vital question of how far Miss Tuttle and Mr. Jeffrey
+had been involved in the earlier crime and what the coming interview
+with these two would add to our present knowledge.  In my anxiety to
+have this question answered I hastened my steps and was soon at the
+door of Miss Tuttle's present dwelling place.
+
+I had not seen this lady since the inquest, and my heart beat high
+as I sat awaiting her appearance in the dim little parlor where I
+had been seated by the person who held her under secret surveillance.
+The scene I had just been through, the uncertain nature of the
+relations held by this beautiful woman both toward the crime just
+discovered and the one long associated with her name, lent to these
+few moments of anticipation an emotion which poorly prepared me for
+the touching sight of the patient smile with which she presently
+entered.
+
+But I doubt if she noticed my agitation.  She was too much swayed
+by her own.  Advancing upon me in all the unconscious pride of her
+great beauty, she tremulously remarked:
+
+"You have a message for me.  Is it from headquarters?  Or has the
+district attorney still more questions to ask?"
+
+"I have a much more trying errand than that," I hastened to say,
+with some idea of preparing her for an experience that could not
+fail to be one of exceptional trial.  "For reasons which will be
+explained to you by those in greater authority than myself, you are
+wanted at the house where - " I could not help stammering
+under the light of her melancholy eyes - " where I saw you once
+before," I lamely concluded.
+
+"The house in Waverley Avenue?" she objected wildly, with the first
+signs of positive terror I had ever beheld in her.
+
+I nodded, dropping my eyes.  What call had I to penetrate the
+conscience of this woman?
+
+"Are they there?  all there?" she presently asked again.  "The
+police and - and Mr. Jeffrey?"
+
+"Madam," I respectfully protested, "my duty is limited to
+conducting you to the place named.  A carriage is waiting.  May I
+beg that you will prepare yourself to go at once to Waverley Avenue?"
+
+For answer she subjected me to a long and earnest look which I found
+it impossible to evade.  Then she hastened from the room, but with
+very unsteady steps.  Evidently the courage which had upborne her so
+long was beginning to fail.  Her very countenance was changed.  Had
+she recognized, as I meant she should, that the secret of the Moore
+house was no longer a secret confined to her own breast and to that
+of her unhappy brother-in-law?
+
+When she returned ready for her ride this change in her spirits was
+less observable, and by the time we had reached the house in Waverley
+Avenue she had so far regained her old courage as to move and speak
+with the calmness of despair if not of mental serenity.
+
+The major was awaiting us at the door and bowed gravely before her
+heavily veiled figure.
+
+"Miss Tuttle," he asked, without any preamble, the moment she was
+well inside the house, "may I inquire of you here, and before I
+show you what will excuse us for subjecting you to the distress of
+entering these doors, whether your sister, Mrs. Jeffrey, had any
+other name or was ever known by any other name than that of Veronica?"
+
+"She was christened Antoinette, as well as Veronica; but the person
+in whose memory the former name was given her was no honor to the
+family and she very soon dropped it and was only known as Veronica.
+Oh, what have I done?" she cried, awed and frightened by the silence
+which followed the utterance of these simple words.
+
+No one answered her.  For the first time in her presence, the minds
+of those who faced her were with another than herself.  The bride!
+the unhappy bride - no maiden but a wife!  nay, a wife one minute,
+a widow the next, and then again a newly-wedded bride before the
+husband lying below was cold!  What wander that she shrank when her
+new-made bridegroom's lips approached her own!  or that their
+honeymoon was a disappointment!  Or that the shadow which fell upon
+her on that evil day never left her till she gave herself wholly up
+to its influence and returned to die on the spot made awful by her
+own crime.
+
+Before any of us were quite ready to speak, a tap at the door told
+us that Durbin had arrived with Mr. Jeffrey.  When they had been
+admitted and the latter saw Miss Tuttle standing there, he, too,
+seemed to realize that a turn had come in their affairs, and that
+courage rather than endurance was the quality most demanded from
+him.  Facing the small group clustered in the dismal hall fraught
+with such unutterable associations, he earnestly prayed:
+
+"Do not keep me in suspense.  Why am I summoned here?"
+
+The reply was as grave as the occasion warranted.
+
+"You are summoned to learn the murderous secret of these old walls,
+and who it was that last made use of it.  Do you feel inclined to
+hear these details from my lips, or are you ready to state that you
+already know the means by which so many persons, in times past as
+well as in times present, have met death here?  We do not require
+you to answer us."
+
+"I know the means," he allowed, recognizing without doubt that the
+crisis of crises had come, and that denial would be worse than
+useless.
+
+"Then it only remains for us to acquaint you with the identity of
+the person who last pressed the fatal spring.  But perhaps you know
+that, too?"
+
+"I - "  He paused; words were impossible to him; and in that pause
+his eyes flashed helplessly in the direction of Miss Tuttle.
+
+But the major was quick on his feet and was already between him and
+that lady.  This act forced from Mr. Jeffrey's lips the following
+broken sentence:
+
+"I should - like - you - to - tell - me."  Great gasps came with
+each heavily spoken word.
+
+"Perhaps this morsel of lace will do it in a gentler manner than
+I could," responded the district attorney, opening his hand, in
+which lay the scrap of lace that, an hour or so before, I had
+plucked away from the boarding of that fatal closet.
+
+Mr. Jeffrey eyed it and understood.  His hands went up to his face
+and he swayed to the point of falling.  Miss Tuttle came quickly
+forward.
+
+"Oh!" she moaned, as her eyes fell on the little white shred.  "The
+providence of God has found us out.  We have suffered, labored and
+denied in vain."
+
+"Yes," came in dreary echo from the man none of us had understood
+till now; "so great a crime could not be hid.  God will have
+vengeance.  What are we that we should hope to avert it by any act
+or at any cost?"
+
+The major, with his eyes fixed piercingly on this miserable man,
+replied with one pregnant, sentence:
+
+"Then you forced your wife to suicide?"
+
+"No," he began; but before another word could follow, Miss Tuttle,
+resplendent in beauty and beaming with new life, broke in with the
+fervid cry:
+
+"You wrong him and you wrong her by such a suggestion.  It was not
+her husband but her conscience that forced her to this retributive
+act.  What Mr. Jeffrey might have done had she proved obdurate and
+blind to the enormity of her own guilt, I do not know.  But that he
+is innocent of so influencing her is proved by the shock he suffered
+at finding she had taken her punishment into her own hands."
+
+"Mr. Jeffrey will please answer the question," insisted the major.
+Whereupon the latter, with great effort, but with the first
+appearance of real candor yet seen in him, said earnestly:
+
+"I did nothing to influence her.  I was in no condition to do so.
+I was benumbed - dead.  When first she told me, - it was in some
+words muttered in her sleep - I thought she was laboring under some
+fearful nightmare; but when she persisted, and I questioned her,
+and found the horror true, I was like a man turned instantly into
+stone, save for one intolerable throb within.  I am still so;
+everything passes by me like a dream.  She was so young, seemingly
+so innocent and light-hearted.  I loved her!  Gentlemen, you have
+thought me guilty of my wife's death, - this young fairy-like
+creature to whom I ascribed all the virtues!  and I was willing,
+willing that you should think so, willing even to face the distrust
+and opprobrium of the whole world, - and so was her sister, the
+noble woman whom you see before you - rather than that the full
+horror of her crime should be known and a name so dear be given up
+to execration.  We thought we could keep the secret - we felt that
+we must keep the secret - we took an oath - in French - in the
+carriage with the detectives opposite us.  She kept it - God bless
+her!  I kept it.  But it was all useless - a tiny bit of lace is
+found hanging to a lifeless splinter, and all our efforts, all the
+hopes and agony of weeks are gone for naught.  The world will soon
+know of her awful deed - and I - "
+
+He still loved her!  That was apparent in every look, in every word
+he uttered.  We marveled in awkward silence, and were glad when the
+major said:
+
+"The deed, as I take it, was an unpremeditated one on her part.  Is
+that why her honor was dearer to you than your own, and why you
+could risk the reputation if not the life of the woman who you say
+sacrificed herself to it?"
+
+"Yes, it was unpremeditated; she hardly realized her act.  If you
+must know her heart through all this dreadful business, we have her
+words to show you - words which she spent the last miserable day of
+her life in writing.  The few lines which I showed the captain and
+which have been published to the world was an inclosure meant for
+the public eye.  The real letter, telling the whole terrible truth,
+I kept for myself and for the sister who already knew her sin.  Oh,
+we did everything we could!"  And he again moaned: "But it was in
+vain; quite in vain."
+
+There were no signs of subterfuge in him now, and we all, unless I
+except Durbin, began to yield him credence.  Durbin never gives
+credence to anybody whose name he has once heard associated with
+crime.
+
+"And this Pfeiffer was contracted to her?  A man she had secretly
+married while a school-girl and who at this very critical instant
+had found his way to the house."
+
+"You shall read her letter.  It was meant for me, for me only - but
+you shall see it.  I can not talk of him or of her crime.  It is
+enough that I have been unable to think of anything else since first
+those dreadful words fell front her lips in sleep, thirty-six hours
+before she died."  Then with the inconsistency of great anguish he
+suddenly broke forth into the details he shrank from and cried
+"She muttered, lying there, that she was no bigamist.  That she had
+killed one husband before she married the other.  Killed him in the
+old house and by the method her ancestors had taught her.  And I,
+risen on my elbow, listened, with the sweat oozing from my forehead,
+but not believing her, oh, not believing her, any more than any one
+of you would believe such words uttered in a dream by the darling of
+your heart.  But when, with a long-drawn sigh, she murmured,
+'Murderer!' and raised her fists - tiny fists, hands which I had
+kissed a thousand times - and shook them in the air, an awful terror
+seized me, and I sought to grasp them and hold them down, but was
+hindered by some nameless inner recoil under which I could not speak,
+nor gasp, nor move.  Of course, it was some dream-horror she was
+laboring under, a nightmare of unimaginable acts and thoughts, but
+it was one to hold me back; and when she lay quiet again and her
+face resumed its old sweetness in the moonlight, I found myself
+staring at her almost as if it were true - what she had said - that
+word - that awful word which no woman could use with regard to
+herself, even in dreams, unless - Something, an echo from the
+discordant chord in our two weeks' married life, rose like the
+confirmation of a doubt in my shocked and rebellious breast.  From
+that hour till dawn nothing in that slowly brightening room seemed
+real, not her face lying buried in its youthful locks upon the
+pillow, not the objects well-known and well-prized by which we were
+surrounded - not myself - most of all, not myself, unless the icy
+dew oozing from the roots of my lifted hair was real, unless that
+shape, fearsome, vague, but persistent, which hovered in the
+shadows above us, drawing a line of eternal separation between me
+and my wife, was a thing which could be caught and strangled and -
+Oh!  I rave!  I chatter like a madman; but I did not rave that
+night.  Nor did I rave when, in the bright, broad sunlight, her eye
+slowly unclosed and she started to see me bending so near her, but
+not with my usual kiss or glad good morning.  I could not question
+her then; I dared not.  The smile which slowly rose to her lips was
+too piteous - it showed confidence. I waited till after breakfast.
+Then, while she was seated where she could not see my face, I
+whispered the question: 'Do you know that you have had a horrible
+dream?'  She shrieked and turned.  I saw her face and knew that what
+she had uttered in her sleep was true.'
+
+"I have no remembrance of what I said to her. She tried to tell me
+how she had been tempted and how she had not realized her own act,
+till the moment I bent down to kiss her lips as her husband.  But I
+did not stop to listen - I could not.  I flew immediately to Miss
+Tuttle with the violent demand as to whether she knew that her
+sister was already a wife when she married me, and when she cried
+out 'No!' and showed great dismay, I broke forth with the dreadful
+tale and cowered in unmanly anguish at her feet, and went mad and
+lost myself for a little while.  Then I went back to my wretched
+wife and asked her how the awful deed had been done.  She told me,
+and again I did not believe her and began to look upon it all as
+some wild dream or the distempered fancies of a disordered brain.
+This thought calmed me and I spoke gently to her and even tried to
+take her hand.  But she herself was raving now, and clung about my
+knees, murmuring words of such anguish and contrition that my worst
+fears returned and, only stopping to take the key of the Moore
+house from my bureau, I left the house and wandered madly - I know
+not where.
+
+"I did not go back that day.  I could not face her again till I
+knew how much of her confession was fancy and how much was fact.
+I roamed the streets, carrying that key from one end of the city to
+the other, and at night I used it to open the house which she had
+declared contained so dreadful a secret.
+
+"I had bought candles on my way there but, forgetting to take them
+from the store, I had no light with which to penetrate the horrible
+place that even the moon refused to illumine. I realized this when
+once in, but would not go back.  All I have told about using matches
+to light me to the southwest chamber is true, also my coming upon
+the old candelabrum there, with a candle in one of its sockets. This
+candle I lit, my sole reason for seeking this room being my desire
+to examine the antique sketch for the words which she had said could
+be found there.
+
+"I had failed to bring a magnifying-glass with me, but my eyes are
+phenomenally sharp.  Knowing where to look, I was able to pick out
+enough words here and there in the lines composing the hair, to feel
+quite sure that my wife had neither deceived me nor been deceived
+as to certain directions being embodied there in writing.  Shaken in
+my last lingering hope, but not yet quite convinced that these words
+pointed to outrageous crime, I flew next to the closet and drew out
+the fatal drawer.
+
+"You have been there and know what the place is, but no one but
+myself can ever realize what it was for me, still loving, still
+clinging to a wild inconsequent belief in my wife, to grope in that
+mouth of hell for the spring she had chattered about in her sleep,
+to find it, press it, and then to hear, down in the dark of the
+fearsome recess, the sound of something deadly strike against what
+I took to be the cushions of the old settle standing at the edge
+of the library hearthstone.
+
+"I think I must have fainted.  For when I found myself possessed
+of sufficient consciousness to withdraw from that hole of death,
+the candle in the candelabrum was shorter by an inch than when I
+first thrust my head into the gap made by the removed drawers.
+In putting back the drawers I hit the candelabrum with my foot,
+upsetting it and throwing out the burning candle.  As the flames
+began to lick the worm-eaten boarding of the floor a momentary
+impulse seized me to rush away and leave the whole place to burn.
+But I did not.  With a sudden frenzy, I stamped out the flame,
+and then finding myself in darkness, griped my way downstairs and
+out.  If I entered the library I do not remember it.  Some lapses
+must be pardoned a man involved as I was."
+
+"But the fact which you dismiss so lightly is an important one,"
+insisted the major.  "We must know positively whether you entered
+this room or not."
+
+"I have no recollection of doing so"
+
+"Then you can not tell us whether the little table was standing
+there, with the candelabrum upon it or - "
+
+"I can tell you nothing about it."
+
+The major, after a long look at this suffering man, turned toward
+Miss Tuttle.
+
+"You must have loved your sister very much," he sententiously
+remarked.
+
+She flushed and for the first time her eyes fell from their
+resting-place on Mr. Jeffrey's face.
+
+"I loved her reputation," was her quiet answer, "and - "  The
+rest died in her throat.
+
+But we all - such of us, I mean, who were possessed of the least
+sensibility or insight, knew how that sentence sounded as finished
+in her heart" and I loved him who asked this sacrifice of me."
+
+Yet was her conduct not quite clear.
+
+"And to save that reputation you tied the pistol to her wrist?"
+insinuated the major.
+
+"No," was her vehement reply.  "I never knew what I was tying to
+her.  My testimony in that regard was absolutely true.  She held
+the pistol concealed in the folds of her dress.  I did not dream
+ - I could not - that she was contemplating any such end to the
+atrocious crime - to which she had confessed.  Her manner was too
+light, too airy and too frivolous - a manner adopted, as I now see,
+to forestall all questions and hold back all expressions of
+feeling on my part.  'Tie these hanging ends of ribbon to my
+wrist,' were her words.  'Tie them tight; a knot under and a bow
+on top.  I am going out - There, don't say anything -  What you
+want to talk about will keep till tomorrow.  For one night more I
+am going to make merry - to - to enjoy myself.'  She was laughing.
+I thought her horribly callous and trembled with such an
+unspeakable repulsion that I had difficulty in making the knot.
+To speak at all would have been impossible.  Neither did I dare
+to look in her face.  I was touching the hand and she kept on
+laughing - such a hollow laugh covering up such an awful resolve!
+When she turned to give me that last injunction about the note,
+this resolve glared still in her eyes."
+
+"And you never suspected?"
+
+"Not for an instant.  I chid not do justice either to her misery or
+to her conscience.  I fear that I have never done her justice in
+anyway.  I thought her light, pleasure-loving.  I did not know that
+it was assumed to hide a terrible secret."
+
+"Then you had no knowledge of the contract she had entered into
+while a school-girl?"
+
+"Not in the least.  Another woman, and not myself, had been her
+confidante; a woman who has since died.  No intimation of her first
+unfortunate marriage had ever reached me till Mr. Jeffrey rushed
+in upon me that Tuesday morning with her dreadful confession on
+his lips."
+
+The district attorney, who did not seem quite satisfied on a certain
+point passed over by the major, now took the opportunity of saying:
+
+"You assure us that you had no idea that this once lighthearted
+sister of yours meditated suicide when she left you?"
+
+"And I repeat it, sir."
+
+"Then why did you immediately go to Mr. Jeffrey's drawer, where
+you could have no business, unless it was to see if she had taken
+his pistol with her?"
+
+Miss Tuttle's head fell and a soft flush broke through the pallor
+of her cheek.
+
+"Because I was thinking of him.  Because I was terrified for him.
+He had left the house the morning before in a half-maddened condition
+and had not come back to sleep or eat since.  I did not know what a
+man so outraged in every sacred feeling of love and honor might be
+tempted to do.  I thought of suicide.  I remembered the old house
+and how he had said, 'I don't believe her.  I don't believe she ever
+did so cold-blooded an act, or that any such dreadful machinery is
+in that house.  I never shall believe it till I have seen and handled
+it myself.  It is a nightmare, Cora.  We are insane.'  I thought of
+this, sirs, and when I went into her room, to change the place of
+the little note in the book, I went to his bureau drawer, not to
+look for the pistol - I did not think of that then, - but to see if
+the keys of the Moore house were still there.  I knew that they were
+kept in this drawer, for I had been present in the room when they
+were brought in after the wedding.  I had also been short-sighted
+enough to conclude that if they were gone it was he who had taken
+them.  They were gone, and that was why I flew immediately from the
+house to the old place in Waverley Avenue.  I was concerned for Mr.
+Jeffrey!  I feared to find him there, demented or dead"
+
+"But you had no key."
+
+"No.  Mr. Jeffrey had taken one of them and my sister the other.
+But the lack of a key or even of a light - for the missing candles
+were not taken by me* - could not keep me at home after
+
+I was once convinced that he had gone to this dreadful house.  If I
+could not get in I could at least hammer at the door or rouse the
+neighbors.  Something must be done.  I did not think what; I merely
+flew."
+____________________________________________________________________
+
+*We afterwards found that these candles were never delivered  at the
+house at all; that they had been placed in the wrong basket and left
+in a neighboring kitchen.
+____________________________________________________________________
+
+"Did you know that the house had two keys?"
+
+"Not then."
+
+"But your sister did?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+"And finding the only key, as you supposed, gone, you flew to the
+Moore house?"
+
+"Immediately."
+
+"And now what else?"
+
+"I found the door unlocked."
+
+"That was done by Mrs. Jeffrey?"
+
+"Yes, but I did not think of her then."
+
+"And you went in?"
+
+"Yes; it was all dark, but I felt my way till I came to the gilded
+pillars."
+
+"Why did you go there?"
+
+"Because I felt - I knew - if he were anywhere in that house he
+would be there!"
+
+"And why did you stop?"
+
+Her voice rose above its usual quiet pitch in shrill protest:
+
+"You know!  you know!  I heard a pistol-shot from within, then a
+fall.  I don't remember anything else.  They say I went wandering
+about town.  Perhaps I did; it is all a blank to me - everything is
+a blank till the policeman said that my sister was dead and I
+learned for the first time that the shot I had heard in the Moore
+house was not the signal of his death, but hers.  Had I been myself
+when at that library door," she added, after a moment of silence,
+"I would have rushed in at the sound of that shot and have received
+my sister's dying breath"
+
+"Cora!"  The cry was from Mr. Jeffrey, and seemed to be quite
+involuntary.  "In the weeks during which we have been kept from
+speaking together I have turned all these events over in my mind
+till I longed for any respite, even that of the grave.  But in all
+my thinking I never attributed this motive to your visit here.
+Will you forgive me?"
+
+There was a new tone in his voice, a tone which no woman could
+hear without emotion.
+
+"You had other things to think of," she said, and her lips trembled.
+Never have I seen on the human face a more beautiful expression than
+I saw on hers at that moment; nor do I think Mr. Jeffrey had either,
+for as he marked it his own regard softened almost to tenderness.
+
+The major had no time for sentimentalities.  Turning to Mr. Jeffrey,
+he said:
+
+"One more question before we send for the letter which you say will
+give us full insight into your wife's crime.  Do you remember what
+occurred on the bridge at Georgetown just before you came into town
+that night?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Did you meet any one there?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"Can you remember your state of mind?"
+
+"I was facing the future."
+
+"And what did you see in the future?"
+
+"Death.  Death for her and death for me!  A crime was on her soul
+and she must die, and if she, then myself.  I knew no other course.
+I could not summon the police, point out my bride of a fortnight
+and, with the declaration that she had been betrayed into killing a
+man, coldly deliver her up to justice.  Neither could I live at her
+side knowing the guilty secret which parted us; or live anywhere in
+the world under this same consciousness.  Therefore, I meant to kill
+myself before another sun rose.  But she was more deeply stricken
+with a sense of her own guilt than I realized.  When I returned home
+for the pistol which was to end our common misery I found that she
+had taken her punishment into her own hands.  This strangely affected
+me, but when I found that, in doing this, she had remembered that I
+should have to face the world after she was gone, and so left a few
+lines for me to show in explanation of her act, my revolt against
+her received a check which the reading of her letter only increased.
+But the lines she thus wrote and left were not true lines.  All her
+heart was mine, and if it was a wicked heart she has atoned - "
+
+He paused, quite overcome.  Others amongst us were overcome, too,
+but only for a moment.  The following remark from the district
+attorney soon recalled us to the practical aspects of the case.
+
+"You have accounted for many facts not hitherto understood.  But
+there is still a very important one which neither yourself nor
+Miss Tuttle has yet made plain.  There was a candle on the scene
+of crime; it was out when this officer arrived here.  There was
+also one found burning in the upstairs room, aside from the one you
+professedly used in your tour of inspection there.  Whence came
+those candles?  And did your wife blow out the one in the library
+herself, previous to the shooting, or was it blown out afterward
+and by other lips?"
+
+"These are questions which, as I have already said, I have no means
+of answering," repeated Mr. Jeffrey.  "The courage which brought
+her here may have led her to supply herself with light; and, hard
+as it is to conceive, she may even have found nerve to blow out the
+light before she lifted the pistol to her breast:"
+
+The district attorney and the major looked unconvinced, and the
+latter, turning toward Miss Tuttle, asked if she had any remark to
+make on the subject.
+
+But she could only repeat Mr. Jeffrey's statement.
+
+"These are questions I can not answer either.  I have said that I
+stopped at the library door, which means that I saw nothing of what
+passed within."
+
+Here the major asked where Mrs. Jeffrey's letter was to be found.
+It was Mr. Jeffrey who replied:
+
+"Search in my room for a book with an outside cover of paper still
+on it.  You will probably find it on my table.  The inner cover is
+red.  Bring that book here.  Our secret is hidden in it."
+
+Durbin disappeared on this errand.  I followed him as far as the
+door, but I did not think it necessary to state that I had seen
+this book lying on the table when I paid my second visit to Mr.
+Jeffrey's room in company with the coroner.  The thought that my
+hand had been within reach of this man's secret so many weeks
+before was sufficiently humiliating without being shared.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+TANTALIZING TACTICS
+
+I made my way to the front door, but returned almost immediately.
+Drawing the major aside, I whispered a request, which led to a
+certain small article being passed over to me, after which I
+sauntered out on the stoop just in time to encounter the spruce
+but irate figure of Mr. Moore, who had crossed from the opposite
+side.
+
+"Ah!" said I.  "Good morning!" and made him my most deferential bow.
+
+He glared and Rudge glared from his place on the farther curb.
+Evidently the police were not in favor with the occupants of the
+cottage that morning.
+
+"When is this to cease?" he curtly demanded.  "When are these
+early-morning trespasses upon an honest citizen's property coming
+to an end?  I wake with a light heart, expecting that my house,
+which is certainly as much mine as is any man's in Washington, would
+be handed over this very day for my habitation, when what do I see
+ - one police officer leaving the front door and another sunning
+himself in the vestibule.  How many more of you are within I do not
+presume to ask.  Some half-dozen, no doubt, and not one of you smart
+enough to wind up this matter and have done with it."
+
+"Ah!  I don't know about that," I drawled, and looked very wise.
+
+His curiosity was aroused.
+
+"Anything new?" he snapped.
+
+"Possibly," I returned, in a way to exasperate a saint.
+
+He stepped on to the porch beside me.  I was too abstracted to
+notice; I was engaged in eying Rudge.
+
+"Do you know," said I, after an instant of what I meant should be
+one of uncomfortable suspense on his part, "that I have a greater
+respect than ever for that animal of yours since learning the very
+good reason he has for refusing to cross the street?"
+
+"Ha!  what's that?" he asked, with a quick look behind him at the
+watchful brute straining toward him with nose over the gutter.
+
+"He sees farther than we can.  His eyes penetrate walls and
+partitions," I remarked.  Then, carelessly and with the calm drawing
+forth of a folded bit of paper which I held out toward him, I added:
+"By the way, here is something of yours"
+
+His hand rose instinctively to take it; then dropped.
+
+"I don't know what you mean," he remarked.  "You have nothing of
+mine."
+
+"No?  Then John Judson Moore had another brother."  And I thrust
+the paper back into my pocket.
+
+He followed it with his eye.  It was the memorandum I had found in
+the old book of memoirs plucked from the library shelf within, and
+he recognized it for his and saw that I did also.  But he failed
+to show the white feather.
+
+"You are good at ransacking," he observed; "pity that it can not
+be done to more purpose."
+
+I smiled and made a fresh start.  With my hand thrust again into my
+pocket, I remarked, without even so much as a glance at him:
+
+"I fear that you do some injustice to the police.  We are not such
+bad fellows; neither do we waste as much time as you seem to think."
+And drawing out my hand, with the little filigree ball in it, I
+whirled the latter innocently round and round on my finger.  As it
+flashed under his eye, I cast him a penetrating look.
+
+He tried to carry the moment off successfully; I will give him so
+much credit.  But it was asking too much of his curiosity, and
+there was no mistaking the eager glitter which lighted his glance
+as he saw within his reach this article which a moment before he
+had probably regarded as lost forever.
+
+"For instance," I went on, watching him furtively, though quite
+sure from his very first look that he knew no more now of the secret
+of this little ball than he knew when he jotted down the memorandum
+I had just pocketed before his eyes, "a little thing - such a little
+thing as this," I repeated, giving the bauble another twist - "may
+lead to discoveries such as no common search would yield in years.
+I do not say that it has; but such a thing is possible, you know:
+who better?"
+
+My nonchalance was too much for him.  He surveyed me with covert
+dislike, and dryly observed "Your opportunities have exceeded mine,
+even with my own effects.  That petty trinket which you have
+presumed to flaunt in my face - and of whose value I am the worst
+judge in the world since I have never had it in my hand - descended
+to me with the rest of Mrs. Jeffrey's property.  Your conduct,
+therefore, strikes me in the light of an impertinence, especially
+as no one could be supposed to have more interest than myself in
+what has been for many years recognized as a family talisman."
+
+"Ah," I remarked.  "You own to the memorandum then.  It was made
+on the spot, but without the benefit of the talisman."
+
+"I own to nothing," he snapped.  Then, realizing that denial in this
+regard was fatal, he added more genially: "What do you mean by
+memorandum?  If you mean that recapitulation of old-time mysteries
+and their accompanying features with which I once whiled away an
+idle hour, I own to it, of course.  Why shouldn't I?  It is only a
+proof of my curiosity in regard to this old mystery which every
+member of my family must feel.  That curiosity has not been appeased.
+If it would not be indiscreet on your part, may I now ask if you
+have found out what that little golden ball of mine which you sport
+so freely before my eyes is to be used in connection with?"
+
+"Read the papers," I said; "read tomorrow's papers, Mr. Moore; or,
+better still, tonight's.  Perhaps they will inform you."
+
+He was as angry as I had expected him to be, but as this ire proved
+conclusively that his strongest emotion had been curiosity rather
+than fear, I felt assured of my ground, and turned to reenter the
+house.  Mr. Moore did not accompany me.
+
+The major was standing in the hall.  The others had evidently
+retreated to the parlor.
+
+"The man opposite knows what he knows," said I; "but this does not
+include the facts concerning the picture in the southwest chamber
+or the devilish mechanism."
+
+"You are sure?"
+
+"As positive as one of my inexperience can be.  But, Major, I am
+equally positive that he knows more than he should of Mrs. Jeffrey's
+death.  I am even ready to state that in my belief he was in the
+house when it occurred."
+
+"Has he acknowledged this?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Then what are your reasons for this belief?"
+
+"They are many"
+
+"Will you state them?"
+
+"Gladly, if you will pardon the presumption.  Some of my conclusions
+can not be new to you.  The truth is that I have possibly seen more
+of this old man than my duty warranted, and I feel quite ready to
+declare that he knows more of what has taken place in this house
+than he is ready to avow.  I am sure that he has often visited it
+in secret and knows about a certain broken window as well as we do.
+I am also sure that he was here on the night of Mrs. Jeffrey's
+suicide.  He was too little surprised when I informed him of what
+had happened not to have had some secret inkling of it beforehand,
+even if we had not the testimony of the lighted candle and the book
+he so hurriedly replaced.  Besides, he is not the man to drag
+himself out at night for so simple a cause as the one with which
+he endeavored to impose upon us.  He knew what we should find in
+this house."
+
+"Very good.  If Mr. Jeffrey's present explanations are true, these
+deductions of yours are probably correct.  But Mr. Moore's denial
+has been positive.  I fear that it will turn out a mere question of
+veracity."
+
+"Not necessarily," I returned.  "I think I see a way of forcing
+this man to acknowledge that he was in or about this house on that
+fatal night"
+
+"You do?"
+
+"Yes, sir; I do not want to boast, and I should be glad if you
+did not oblige me to confide to you the means by which I hope to
+bring this out.  Only give me leave to insert an advertisement in
+both evening and morning papers and in two days I will report
+failure or success"
+
+The major eyed me with an interest that made my heart thrill.
+Then he quickly said: "You have earned the privilege; I will give
+you two days."
+
+At this moment Durbin reappeared.  As I heard his knock and turned
+to open the door for him, I cast the major an entreating if not
+eloquent look.
+
+He smiled and waved his hand with friendly assurance.  The state of
+feeling between Durbin and myself was evidently well known to him.
+
+My enemy entered with a jaunty air, which changed ever so slightly
+when he saw me in close conference with the superintendent.
+
+He had the book in his pocket.  Taking it out, he handed it to the
+major, with this remark:
+
+"You won't find anything there; the gent's been fooling you."
+
+The major opened the book, shook it, looked under the cover, found
+nothing, and crossed hastily to the drawing-room.  We as hastily
+followed him.  The district attorney was talking with Miss Tuttle;
+Mr. Jeffrey was nervously pacing the floor.  The latter stopped as
+we all entered and his eyes flashed to the book.
+
+"Let me take it," said he.
+
+"It is absolutely empty," remarked the major.  "The letter has
+been abstracted, probably without your knowledge."
+
+"I do not think so," was Mr. Jeffrey's unexpected retort.  "Do you
+suppose that I would intrust a secret, for the preservation of
+which I was ready to risk life and honor, to the open pages of a
+book?  When I found myself threatened with all sorts of visits from
+the police and realized that at any moment my effects might be
+ransacked, I sought a hiding place for this letter, which no man
+without superhuman insight could discover.  Look!"
+
+And, pulling off the outside wrapper, he inserted the point of
+his penknife under the edge of the paper lining the inside cover
+and ripped it off with a jerk.
+
+"I pasted this here myself," he cried, and showed us where between
+this paper and the boards, in a place thinned out to hold it, there
+lay a number of folded sheets, which, with a deep sigh, he handed
+over to the major's inspection.  As he did so he remarked:
+
+"I had rather have died any natural death than have had my miserable
+wife's secret known.  But since the crime has come to light, this
+story of her sin and her repentance may serve in some slight degree
+to mitigate public opinion.  She was sorely tempted and she
+succumbed; the crime of her ancestors was in her blood"
+
+He again walked off.  The major unfolded the sheets.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+"WHO WILL TELL THE MAN INSIDE THERE
+
+
+Later I saw this letter.  It was like no other that has ever come
+under my eye.  Written at intervals, as her hand had power or her
+misery found words, it bore on its face all the evidences of that
+restless, suffering spirit which for thirty-six hours drove her in
+frenzy about her room, and caused Loretta to say, in her effort to
+describe her mistress' face as it appeared to her at the end of
+this awful time: "It was as if a blight had passed over it.  Once
+gay and animated beyond the power of any one to describe, it had
+become a ghost's face, with the glare of some awful resolve upon
+it."  I give this letter just as it was written-disjointed
+paragraphs, broken sentences, unfinished words and all.  The
+breaks show where she laid down her pen, possibly for that wild
+pacing of the floor which left such unmistakable signs behind it.
+It opens abruptly:
+
+"I killed him.  I am all that I said I was, and you can never again
+give me a thought save in the way of cursing and to bewail the day
+I came into your life.  But you can not hate me more than I hate
+myself, my wicked self, who, seeing an obstacle in the way to
+happiness, stamped it out of existence, and so forfeited all right
+to happiness forever.
+
+"It was so easy!  Had it been a hard thing to do; had it been
+necessary to lay hand on knife or lift a pistol, I might have
+realized the act and paused.  But just a little spring which a
+child's hand could manage - Who, feeling for it, could help pressing
+it, if only to see -
+
+"I was always a reckless girl, mad for pleasure and without any
+thought of consequences.  When school bored me, I took all my books
+out of my desk, called upon my mates to do the same, and, stacking
+them up into a sort of rostrum in a field where we played, first
+delivered an oration from them in which reverence for my teachers
+had small part, then tore them into pieces and burned them in full
+sight of my admiring school-fellows.  I was dismissed, but not with
+disgrace.  Teachers and scholars bewailed my departure, not because
+they liked me, or because of any good they had found in me, but
+because my money had thrown luster on them and on the whole
+establishment.
+
+This was when I was twelve, and it was on account of this reckless
+escapade that I was sent west and kept so long from home and all
+my flatterers.  My guardian meant well by this, but in saving me
+from one pitfall he plunged me into another.  I grew up without
+Cora and also without any idea of the requirements of my position
+or what I might anticipate from the world when the time came for me
+to enter it.  I knew that I had money; so did those about me; but I
+had little or no idea of the amount, nor what that money would do
+for me when I returned to Washington.  So, in an evil day, and when
+I was just eighteen, I fell in love, or thought I did, with a man
+ - (Oh, Francis, imagine it, now that I have seen you!) - of
+sufficient attraction to satisfy one whose prospects were limited
+to a contracted existence in some small town, but no more fitted
+to content me after seeing Washington life than if he had been a
+common farm hand or the most ordinary of clerks in a country store.
+But I was young, ignorant and self-willed, and thought because my
+cheek burned under his look that he was the man of men, and suited
+to be my husband.  That is, if I thought at all, which is not likely;
+for I was in a feverish whirl, and just followed the impulse of the
+moment, which was to be with him whenever I could without attracting
+the teacher's attention.  And this, alas!  was only too often, for
+he was the brother of one of our storekeepers, a visitor in Owosso,
+and often in the store where we girls went.  Why the teachers did
+not notice how often we needed things there, I do not know.  But
+they did not, and matters went on and -
+
+"I can not write of those days, and you do not want to hear about
+them.  They seem impossible to me now, and almost as if it had all
+happened to some one else, so completely have I forgotten the man
+except as the source and cause of an immeasurable horror.  Yet he
+was not bad himself; only ordinary and humdrum.  Indeed, I believe
+he was very good in ways, or so his brother once assured me.  We
+would not have been married in the way we were if he had not wanted
+to go to the Klondike for the purpose of making money and making
+it quickly, so that his means might match mine.
+
+"I do not know which of us two was most to blame for that marriage.
+He urged it because he was going so far away and wanted to be sure
+of me.  I accepted it because it seemed to be romantic and because
+it pleased me to have my own way in spite of my hard old guardian
+and the teachers, who were always prying about, and the girls, who
+went silly over him - for he was really handsome in his way - and
+who thought, (at least many of them did,) that he cared for them
+when he cared only for me.
+
+"I have hated black eyes for a year.  He had black eyes.
+
+"I forgot Cora, or, rather, I did not let any remembrance of her
+hinder me.  She was a very shadowy person to me in those days.  I
+had not seen her since we were both children, and as for her
+letters - they were almost a bore to me; she lived such a
+different life from mine and wrote of so many things I had no
+interest in.  On my knees I ask her pardon now.  I never understood
+her.  I never understood myself.  I was light as thistledown and
+blown by every breeze.  There came a gust one day which blew me
+into the mouth of hell.  I am hovering there yet and am sinking,
+Francis, sinking - Save me!  I love you - I - I -
+
+"It was all planned by him - I have no head for such things.
+Sadie helped him - Sadie was my friend - but Sadie had not much to
+say about it, for he seemed to know just how to arrange it all so
+that no one at the seminary should know or even suspect what had
+occurred till we got ready to tell them.  He did not even take
+his brother into his confidence, for Wallace kept store and
+gossiped very much with his customers.  Besides, he was very busy
+just then selling out, for he was going to the Klondike with
+William, and he had too much on his mind to be bothered, or so
+William said.  All this I must tell you or you will never
+understand the temptation which assailed me when, having returned
+to Washington, I awoke to my own position and the kind of men whom
+I could now hope to meet.  I was the wife - oh, the folly of it
+ - but this was known to so few, and those were so far removed,
+and one even - my friend Sadie - being dead -  Why not ignore the
+miserable secret ceremony and cheat myself into believing myself
+free, and enjoy this world of pleasure and fashion as Cora was
+enjoying it and - trust.  Trust what?  Why the Klondike!  That
+swallower-up of men.  Why shouldn't it swallow one more -  Oh, I
+know that it sounds hateful.  But I was desperate; I had seen you.
+
+"I had one letter from him after he reached Alaska, but that was
+before I left Owosso.  I never got another.  And I never wrote to
+him.  He told me not to do so until he could send me word how and
+where to write; but when these directions came my heart had changed
+and my only wish was to forget his existence.  And I did forget it
+ - almost.  I rode and danced with you and went hither and yon,
+lavishing money and time and heart on the frivolities which came in
+my way, calling myself Veronica and striving by these means to crush
+out every remembrance of the days when I was known as Antoinette
+and Antoinette only.  For the Klondike was far and its weather
+bitter, and men were dying there every day, and no letters came (I
+used to thank God for this), and I need not think - not yet - whither
+I was tending.  One thing only made me recall my real position.
+That was when your eyes turned on mine - your true eyes, so bright
+with confidence and pride.  I wanted to meet them full, and when I
+could not, I suddenly knew why, and suffered.
+
+"Do you remember the night when we stood together on the balcony
+at the Ocean View House and you laid your hand on my arm and
+wondered why I persisted in looking at the moon instead of into
+your expectant face?  It was because the music then being played
+within recalled another night and the pressure of another hand on
+my arm - a hand whose touch I hoped never to feel again, but which
+at that moment was so much more palpable than yours that I came
+near screaming aloud and telling you in one rush of maddened
+emotion my whole abominable secret.
+
+"I did not accept your attentions nor agree to marry you, without
+a struggle.  You know that.  You can tell, as no one else can, how
+I held back and asked for time and still for time, thus grieving
+you and tearing my own breast till a day came - you remember the
+day when you found me laughing like a mad woman in a circle of
+astonished friends?  You drew me aside and said words which I
+hardly waited for you to finish, for at last I was free to love
+you, free to love and free to say so.  The morning paper had brought
+news.  A telegraphic despatch from Seattle told how a man had
+struggled into Nome, frozen, bleeding and without accouterments or
+companion.  It was with difficulty he had kept his feet and turned
+in at the first tent he came to.  Indeed, he had only time to
+speak his name before he fell dead.  This name was what made this
+despatch important to me.  It was William Pfeiffer.  For me there
+was but one William Pfeiffer in the Klondike - my husband - and he
+was dead!  That was why you found me laughing.  But not in mirth.
+I am not so bad as that; but because I could breathe again without
+feeling a clutch about my throat.  I did not know till then how
+nearly I had been stifled.
+
+"We were not long in marrying after that.  I was terrified at delay,
+not because I feared any contradiction of the report which had given
+this glorious release, but because I dreaded lest some hint of my
+early folly should reach you and dim the pride with which you
+regarded me.  I wanted to feel myself yours so closely and so dearly
+that you would not mind if any one told you that I had once cared,
+or thought I had cared, for another.  The week of our marriage came;
+I was mad with gaiety and ecstatic with hope.  Nothing had occurred
+to mar my prospects.  No letter from Denver - no memento from the
+Klondike, no word even from Wallace, who had gone north with his
+brother.  Soon I should be called wife again, but by lips I loved,
+and to whose language my heart thrilled.  The past, always vague,
+would soon be no more than a forgotten dream - an episode quite
+closed.  I could afford from this moment on to view life like other
+girls and rejoice in my youth and the love which every day was
+becoming more and more to me.
+
+"But God had His eye upon me, and in the midst of my happiness and
+the hurry of our final preparations His bolt fell.  It struck me
+while I was at the - don't laugh; rather shudder - at the
+dressmaker's shop in Fourteenth Street.  I was leaning over a table,
+chattering like a magpie over the way I wanted a gown trimmed, when
+my eye fell on a scrap of newspaper in which something had come
+rolled to madame.  It was torn at the edge, but on the bit lying
+under my eyes I saw my husband's name, William Pfeiffer, and that
+the paper was a Denver one.  There was but one William Pfeiffer
+in Denver - and he was my husband.  And I read - feeling nothing.
+Then I read again, and the world, my world, went from under my feet;
+for the man who had fallen dead in the camp at Nome was Wallace,
+William's brother, and not William himself.  William had been left
+behind on the road by his more energetic brother, who had pushed
+on for succor through the worst storm and under the worst conditions
+possible even in that God-forsaken region.  With the lost one in
+mind, the one word that Wallace uttered in sight of rescue, was
+William.  A hope was expressed of finding the latter alive and a
+party had started out - Did I read more? I do not think so.
+Perhaps there was no more to read; here was where the paper was
+torn across.  But it was no matter.  I had seen enough.  It was
+Wallace who had fallen dead, and while William might have perished
+also, and doubtless had, I had no certainty of it.  And my wedding
+day was set for Thursday.
+
+"Why didn't I tell Cora; why didn't I tell you? Pride held my tongue;
+besides, I had had time to think before I saw either of you, and to
+reason a bit and to feel sure that if Wallace had been spent enough
+to fall dead on reaching the camp, William could never have survived
+on the open road.  For Wallace was the stronger of the two and the
+most hardy every way.  Free I certainly was.  Some later paper would
+assure me of this.  I would hunt them up and see - but I never did.
+I do not think I dared.  I was afraid I should see some account of
+his rescue.  I was afraid of being made certain of what was now but
+a possibility, and so I did nothing.  But for three nights I did not
+sleep.
+
+"The caprice which had led me to choose the old Moore house to be
+married in led me to plan dressing there on my wedding morning.  It
+was early when we started, Cora and I, for Waverley Avenue, but not
+too early for the approaches to that dreadful house to be crowded
+with people, eager to see the daring bride.  Why I should have
+shrunk so from that crowd I can not say.  I trembled at sight of
+their faces and at the sound of their voices, and if by chance a
+head was thrust forward farther than the rest I cowered back
+instinctively and nearly screamed.  Did I dread to recognize a too
+familiar face?  The paper I had seen bore a date six months back.
+A man could arrive here from Alaska in that time.  Or was my
+conscience aroused at last and clamoring to be heard when it was
+too late?  On the corner of N Street the carriage suddenly stopped.
+A man had crossed in front of it.  I caught one glimpse of this
+man and instantly the terrors of a lifetime were concentrated into
+one instant of agonizing fear.  It was William Pfeiffer.  I knew
+the look; I knew the gait.  He was gone in a moment and the
+carriage rolled on.  But I knew my doom as well that minute as I
+did an hour later.  My husband was alive and he was here.  He had
+escaped the perils of the Klondike and wandered east to reclaim
+his recreant wife.  There had been time for him to do this since
+the rescue party left home in search of him; time for him to
+recover, time for him to reach home, time for him to reach the
+east.  He had heard of my wedding; it was in all the papers, and I
+should find him at the house when I got there, and you would know
+and Cora would know, and the wedding would stop and my name be
+made a by-word the world over.  Instead of the joy awaiting me a
+moment since, I should have to go away with him into some wilderness
+or distant place of exile where my maiden name would never be heard,
+and all the memories of this year of stolen delights be effaced.
+Oh, it was horrible!  And all in a minute!  And Cora sat there,
+pale, calm and beautiful as an angel, beaming on me with tender
+eyes whose expression I have never understood!  Hell in my heart,
+ - and she, in happy ignorance of this, brooding over my joy and
+smiling to herself while the soft tears rose!
+
+"You were waiting at the curb when I arrived, and I remember how my
+heart stood still when you laid your hand on the carriage door and
+confronted me with that light on your face I had never seen
+disturbed since we first pledged ourselves to marry.  Would he see
+it, too, and come forward from the secret place where he held
+himself hidden?  Was I destined to behold a struggle in the streets,
+an unseemly contest of words in sight of the door I had expected
+to enter so joyously?  In terror of such an event, I seized the
+hand which seemed my one refuge in this hour of mortal trouble,
+and hastened into the house which, for all its doleful history,
+had never received within its doors a heart more burdened or
+rebellious.  As this thought rushed over me, I came near crying
+out, 'The house of doom!  The house of doom!'  I had thought to
+brave its terrors and its crimes and it has avenged itself.  But
+instead of that, I pressed your hand with mine and smiled.  O
+God!  if you could have seen what lay beneath that smile!  For,
+with my entrance beneath those fatal doors a thought had come.
+I remembered my heritage.  I remembered how I had been told by
+my father when I was a very little girl, - I presume when he first
+felt the hand of death upon him, - that if ever I was in great
+trouble, - very great trouble, he had said, where no deliverance
+seemed possible - I was to open a little golden ball which he
+showed me and take out what I should find inside and hold it close
+up before a picture which had hung from time immemorial in the
+southwest corner of this old house.  He could not tell me what I
+should encounter there this I remember his saying - but something
+that would assist me, something which had passed with good effect
+from father down to child for many generations.  Only, if I would
+be blessed in my undertakings, I must not open the golden ball nor
+endeavor to find out its mystery unless my trouble threatened death
+or some great disaster.  Such a trouble had indeed come to me, and
+ - startling coincidence - I was at this moment in the very house
+where this picture hung, and - more startling fact yet - the
+golden ball needed to interpret its meaning was round my neck - for
+with such jealousy was this family trinket always guarded by its
+owner.  Why then not test their combined effect?  I certainly needed
+help from some quarter.  Never would William allow me to be married
+to another while he lived.  He would yet appear and I should need
+thus great assistance (great enough to be transmitted from father to
+son) as none of the Moores had needed it yet; though what it was I
+did not know and did not even try to guess.
+
+"Yet when I got to the room I did not drag out the filigree ball at
+once nor even take more than one fearful side-long look at the
+picture.  In drawing off my glove I had seen his ring - the ring you
+had once asked about.  It was such a cheap affair; the only one he
+could get in that obscure little town where we were married.  I
+lied when you asked me if it was a family jewel; lied but did not
+take it off, perhaps because it clung so tightly, as if in
+remembrance of the vows it symbolized.  But now the very sight of
+it gave me a fright.  With his ring on my finger I could not defy
+him and swear his claim to be false the dream of a man maddened by
+his experiences in the Klondike.  It must come off.  Then, perhaps,
+I should feel myself a free woman.  But it would not come off.  I
+struggled with it and tugged in vain; then I bethought me of using
+a nail file to sever it.  This I did, grinding and grinding at it
+till the ring finally broke, and I could wrench it off and cast it
+away out of sight and, as I hoped, out of my memory also.  I
+breathed easier when rid of this token, yet choked with terror
+whenever a step approached the door.  I was clad in my bridal dress,
+but not in my bridal veil or ornaments, and naturally Cora, and
+then my maid, came to assist me.  But I would not let them in.  I
+was set upon testing the secret of the filigree ball and so
+preparing myself for what my conscience told me lay between me and
+the ceremony arranged for high noon.
+
+"I did not guess that the studying out of that picture would take
+so long.  The contents of the ball turned out to be a small
+magnifying-glass, and the picture a maze of written words.  I did
+not decipher it all; I did not decipher the half.  I did not need
+to.  A spirit of divination was given me in that awful hour which
+enabled me to grasp its full meaning from the few sentences I did
+pick out.  And that meaning!  It was horrible, inconceivable.
+Murder was taught; but murder from a distance, and by an act too
+simple to awake revulsion.  Were the wraiths of my two ancestors
+who had played with the spring hidden in the depths of this old
+closet, drawn up in mockery beside me during the hour when I stood
+spellbound in the middle of the floor, thinking of what I had just
+read, and listening - listening for something less loud than the
+sound of carriages now beginning to roll up in front or the stray
+notes of the band tuning up below? - less loud, but meaning what?
+A step into the empty closet yawning so near - an effort with a
+drawer - a - a -  Do not ask me to recall it.  I did not shudder
+when the moment came and I stood there.  Then I was cold as marble.
+But I shudder now in thinking of it till soul and body seem
+separating, and the horror which envelopes me gives me such a
+foretaste of hell that I wonder I can contemplate the deed which,
+if it releases me from this earthly anguish, will only plunge me
+into a possibly worse hereafter.  Yet I shall surely take my life
+before you see me again, and in that old house.  If it is despair
+I feel, then despair will take me there.  If it is repentance,
+then repentance will suffice to drive me to the one expiation
+possible to me - to perish where I caused an innocent man to
+perish, and so relieve you of a wife who was never worthy of you
+and whom it would be your duty to denounce if she let another sun
+rise upon her guilt.
+
+"I did not stand there long between the wraiths of my murderous
+ancestors.  A message was shouted through the door - the message for
+which my ears had been strained in dreadful anticipation for the
+last two hours.  A man named Pfeiffer wanted to see me before I
+went down to be married.  A man named Pfeiffer!
+
+"I looked closely at the boy who delivered this message.  He showed
+no excitement, nor any feeling greater than impatience at being kept
+waiting a minute or so at the door.  Then I glanced beyond him, at
+the people chatting in the hall.  No alarm there; nothing but a very
+natural surprise that the bride should keep so big a crowd waiting.
+I felt that this fixed the event.  He who had sent me this quiet
+message was true to himself and to our old compact.  He had not
+published below what would have set the house in an uproar in a
+moment.  He had left his secret to be breathed into my ear alone.
+I could recall the moment he passed me his word, and his firm look
+as he said, with his hand lifted to Heaven 'You have been good to
+me and given me your precious self while I was poor and a nobody.
+In return, I swear to keep our marriage a secret till great success
+shows me to be worthy of you or till you with your own lips express
+forgiveness of my failure and grant me leave to speak.  Nothing but
+death or your permission shall ever unseal my lips.'  When I heard
+that he was dead I feared lest he might have spoken, but now that
+I had seen him alive, I knew that in no other breast, save his, my
+own and that of the unknown minister in an almost unknown town,
+dwelt any knowledge of the fact which stood between me and the
+marriage which all these people had come here to see.  My confidence
+in his rectitude determined me.  Without conscious emotion, without
+fear even, - the ending of suspense had ended all that, - I told
+the boy to seat the gentleman in the library.  Then "I am haunted
+now, I am haunted always, by one vision, horrible but persistent.
+It will not leave me; it rises between us now; it has stood between
+us ever since I left that house with the seal of your affection on
+my lips.  Last night it terrified me into unconscious speech.  I
+dreamed that I saw again, and plainly, what I caught but a shadowy
+glimpse of in that murderous hour: a man's form seated at the end
+of the old settle, with his head leaning back, in silent
+contemplation.  His face was turned the other way - I thanked God
+for that - no, I did not thank God; I never thought of God in that
+moment of my blind feeling about for a chink and a spring in the
+wall.  I thought only of your impatience, and the people waiting,
+and the pleasure of days to come when, free from this intolerable
+bond, I could keep my place at your side and bear your name
+unreproved and taste to the full the awe and delight of a passion
+such as few women ever feel, because few women were ever loved by
+a man like you.  Had my thoughts been elsewhere, my fingers might
+have forgotten to fumble along that wall, and I had been simply
+wretched to-day, - and innocent.  Innocent!  O, where in God's
+universe can I be made innocent again and fit to look in your face
+and to love - heart-breaking thought - even to love you again?
+
+"To turn and turn a miserable crank after those moments of frenzied
+action and silence that was the hard part-that was what tried my
+nerve and first robbed me of calmness.  But I dared not leave that
+fearful thing dangling there; I had to wind.  The machinery squeaked,
+and its noise seemed to fill the house, but no one came nor did the
+door below open.  Sometimes I have wished that it had.  I should not
+then have been lured on and you would not have become involved in
+my ruin.
+
+"I have heard many say that I looked radiant when I came down to be
+married.  The radiance was in their thoughts.  Or if my face did
+shine, and if I moved as if treading on air, it was because I had
+triumphed over all difficulties and could pass down to the altar
+without fear of that interrupting voice crying out: `I forbid!  She
+is mine!  The wife of William Pfeiffer can not wed another!'  No
+such words could be dreaded now.  The lips which might have spoken
+them were dumb.  I forgot that fleshless lips gibber loudest, and
+that a lifetime, long or short, lay before me, in which to hear
+them mumble and squeak their denunciation and threats.  Oh, but I
+have been wretched!  At ball and dinner and dance those lips have
+been ever at my ear, but most when we have sat alone together; most
+then; Oh, most then!
+
+"He is avenged; but you!  Who will avenge you, and where will you
+ever find happiness?
+
+"To blot myself from your memory I would go down deeper into the
+vale of suffering than ever I have gone yet.  But no, no!  do not
+quite forget me.  Remember me as you saw me one night - the night
+you took the flower out of my hair and kissed it, saying that
+Washington held many beautiful women, but that none of them save
+myself had ever had the power to move your inmost heart-strings.
+Ah, low was your voice and eloquent your eyes that hour, and I
+forgot, - for a moment I forgot - everything but this pure love;
+and the heartbeat it called up and the hope, never to be realized
+ - that I should live to hear you repeat the same sweet words in
+our old age, in just such a tone and with just such a look.  I
+was innocent at that moment, innocent and good.  I am willing
+that you should remember me as I was that night.
+
+"When I think of him lying cold and dead in the grave I myself
+dug for him, my heart is like stone, but when I think of you -
+
+"I am afraid to die; but I am more afraid of failing in courage.
+I shall have the pistol tied to me; this will make it seem
+inevitable to use it.  Oh!  that the next twenty-four hours could
+be blotted out of time!  Such horror can not be.  I was born for
+joy and gaiety; yet no dismal depth of misery and fear has been
+spared me!  But all on account of my own act.  I do not accuse
+God; I do not accuse man; I only accuse myself, and my thoughtless
+grasping after pleasure.
+
+"I want Cora to read this as well as you.  She must know me dead as
+she never knew me living.  But I can not tell her that I have left
+a confession behind me.  She must come upon it unexpectedly, just
+as I mean you to do.  Only thus can it reach either of you with any
+power.  If I could but think of some excuse for sending her to the
+book where I propose to hide it!  that would give her a chance of
+reading it before you do, and this would be best.  She may know how
+to prepare or comfort you - I hope so.  Cora is a noble woman, but
+the secret which kept my thoughts in such a whirl has held us apart.
+
+"You did what I asked.  You found a place for Rancher's waiter in
+the volunteer corps.  Surprised as you were at the interest I
+expressed in him, you honored my first request and said nothing.
+Would you have shown the same anxious eagerness if you had known why
+I whispered those few words to him from the carriage door?  Why I
+could neither rest nor sleep till he and the other boy were safely
+out of town?
+
+"I must leave a line for you to show to people if they should wonder
+why I killed myself so soon after my seemingly happy marriage.  You
+will find it in the same book with this letter.  Some one will tell
+you to look in the book - I can not write any more.
+
+"I can not help writing.  It is all that connects me now with life
+and with you.  But I have nothing more to say except, forgive -
+forgive -
+
+"Do you think that God looks at his wretched ones differently from
+what men do?  That He will have tenderness for one so sorry - that
+He will even find place -  But my mother is there!  my father!  Oh,
+that makes it fearful to go - to meet -  But it was my father who
+led me into this - only he did not know -  There!  I will think
+only of God.
+
+"Good by - good by - good - "
+
+That was all.  It ended, as it began, without name and without date,
+- the final heart-throbs of a soul, awakened to its own act when it
+was quite too late.  A piteous memorial which daunted each one of
+us as we read it, and when finished, drew us all together in the
+hall out of the sight and hearing of the two persons most intimately
+concerned in it.
+
+Possibly because all had one thought - a thrilling one, which the
+major was the first to give utterance to.
+
+"The man she killed was buried under the name of Wallace.  How's
+that, if he was her husband, William?"
+
+An officer we had not before noted was standing near the front door.
+He came forward at this and placed a second telegram in the
+superintendent's hand.  It was from the same source as the one
+previously received and appeared to settle this very question.
+
+"I have just learned that the man married was not the one who kept
+store in Owosso, but his brother William, who afterward died in
+Klondike.  It is Wallace whose death you are investigating."
+
+"What snarl is here?" asked the major.
+
+"I think I understand," I ventured to put in.  "Her husband was the
+one left on the road by the brother who staggered into camp for aid.
+He was a weak man - the weaker of the two she said - and probably
+died, while Wallace, after seemingly collapsing, recovered.  This
+last she did not know, having failed to read the whole of the
+newspaper slip which told about it, and so when she saw some one
+with the Pfeiffer air and figure and was told later that a Mr.
+Pfeiffer was waiting to see her, she took it for granted that it
+was her husband, believing positively that Wallace was dead.  The
+latter, moreover, may have changed to look more like his brother
+in the time that had elapsed."
+
+"A possible explanation which adds greatly to the tragic aspects
+of the situation.  She was probably a widow when she touched the
+fatal spring.  Who will tell the man inside there?  It will be his
+crowning blow."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+RUDGE
+
+I never saw any good reason for my changing the opinion just
+expressed.  Indeed, as time went on and a further investigation
+was made into the life and character of these two brothers, I came
+to think that not only had the unhappy Veronica mistaken the person
+of Wallace Pfeiffer for that of her husband William, but also the
+nature of the message he sent her and the motives which actuated
+it; that the interview he so peremptorily demanded before she
+descended to her nuptials would, had she but understood it properly,
+have yielded her an immeasurable satisfaction instead of rousing
+in her alarmed breast the criminal instincts of her race; that it
+was meant to do this; that he, knowing William's secret - a secret
+which the latter naturally would confide to him at a moment so
+critical as that which witnessed their parting in the desolate
+Klondike pass - had come, not to reproach her with her new nuptials,
+but to relieve her mind in case she cherished the least doubt of
+her full right to marry again, by assurances of her husband's death
+and of her own complete freedom.  To this he may have intended to
+add some final messages of love and confidence from the man she
+had been so ready to forget; but nothing worse.  Wallace Pfeiffer
+was incapable of anything worse, and if she had only resigned
+herself to her seeming fate and consented to see this man -
+
+But to return to fact and leave speculation to the now doubly
+wretched Jeffrey.
+
+On the evening of the day which saw our first recognition of this
+crime as the work of Veronica Moore, the following notice appeared
+in the Star and all the other local journals:
+
+"Any person who positively remembers passing through Waverley
+Avenue between N and M Streets on the evening of May the eleventh
+at or near the hour of a quarter past seven will confer a favor on
+the detective force of the District by communicating the same to F.
+at the police headquarters in C street."
+
+I was "F.," and I was soon deep in business.  But I was readily
+able to identify those who came from curiosity, and as the persons
+who had really fulfilled the conditions expressed in my advertisement
+were few, an evening and morning's work sufficed to sift the whole
+matter down to the one man who could tell me just what I wanted to
+know.  With this man I went to the major, and as a result we all
+met later in the day at Mr. Moore's door.
+
+This gentleman looked startled enough when he saw the number and
+character of his visitors; but his grand air did not forsake him
+and his welcome was both dignified and cordial.  But I did not like
+the way his eye rested on me.
+
+But the slight venom visible in it at that moment was nothing to
+what he afterwards displayed when at a slight growl from Rudge,
+who stood in an attitude of offense in the doorway beyond, I drew
+the attention of all to the dog by saying sharply:
+
+"There is our witness, sirs.  There is the dog who will not cross
+the street even when his master calls him, but crouches on the
+edge of the curb and waits with eager eyes but immovable body,
+till that master comes back.  Isn't that so, Mr. Moore?  Have I
+not heard you utter more than one complaint in this regard?"
+
+"I can not deny it," was the stiff reply, "but what - "
+
+I did not wait for him to finish.
+
+"Mr. Correan,'' I asked, "is this the animal you gassed between the
+hours of seven and eight on the evening of May the eleventh,
+crouching in front of this house with his nose to the curbstone?"
+
+"It is; I noted him particularly; he seemed to be watching the
+opposite house."
+
+Instantly I turned upon Mr. Moore.
+
+"Is Rudge the dog to do that," I asked, "if his master were not
+there?  Twice have I myself seen him in the self-same place and
+with the self-same air of expectant attention, and both times
+you had crossed to the house which you acknowledge he will
+approach no nearer than the curb on this side of the street."
+
+"You have me," was the short reply with which Mr. Moore gave up
+the struggle.  "Rudge, go back to your place.  When you are wanted
+in the court-room I will let you know."
+
+The smile with which he said this was sarcastic enough, but it was
+sarcasm directed mainly against himself.  We were not surprised
+when, after some sharp persuasion on the part of the major, he
+launched into the following recital of his secret relation to what
+he called the last tragedy ever likely to occur in the Moore family.
+
+"I never thought it wrong to be curious about the old place; I never
+thought it wrong to be curious about its mysteries.  I only
+considered it wrong, or at all events ill judged, to annoy Veronica,
+in regard to them, or to trouble her in any way about the means by
+which I might effect an entrance into its walls.  So I took the one
+that offered and said nothing.
+
+"I have visited the old house many times during my sojourn in this
+little cottage.  The last time was, as one of your number has so
+ably discovered on the most memorable night in its history; the one
+in which Mrs. Jeffrey's remarkable death occurred there.  The
+interest roused in me by the unexpected recurrence of the old
+fatality attending the library hearthstone reached its culmination
+when I perceived one night the glint of a candle burning in the
+southwest chamber.  I did not know who was responsible for this
+light, but I strongly suspected it to be Mr. Jeffrey; for who else
+would dare to light a candle in this disused house without first
+seeing that all the shutters were fast?  I did not dislike Mr.
+Jeffrey or question his right to do this.  Nevertheless I was very
+angry.  Though allied to a Moore he was not one himself and the
+difference in our privileges affected me strongly.  Consequently I
+watched till he came out and upon positively recognizing his figure
+vowed in my wrath and jealous indignation to visit the old house
+myself on the following night and make one final attempt to learn
+the secret which would again make me the equal of this man, if not
+his superior.
+
+"It was early when I went; indeed it was not quite dark, but knowing
+the gloom of those old halls and the almost impenetrable nature of
+the darkness that settles over the library the moment the twilight
+set in, I put in my pocket two or three candles, sirs, about which
+you have made such a coil.  My errand was twofold.  I wanted first
+to see what Mr.  Jeffrey had been up to the night before, and next,
+to spend an hour over a certain book of old memoirs which in
+recalling the past might explain the present.  You remember a door
+leading into the library from the rear room.  It was by this door
+I entered, bringing with me from the kitchen the chair you afterwards
+found there.
+
+I knew where the volume of memoirs I speak of was to be found - you
+do, too, I see - for it was my hand which had placed it in its
+present concealment.  Quite determined to reread such portions of
+it, as I had long before marked as pertinent to the very attempt I
+had in mind, I brought in the candelabrum from the parlor and drew
+out a table to hold it.  But I waited a few moments before taking
+down the book itself.  I wanted first to learn what Mr. Jeffrey had
+been doing upstairs the night before. So leaving the light burning
+in the library, I proceeded to the southwest chamber, holding an
+unlit candle in my hand, the light feebly diffused through the
+halls from some upper windows being sufficient for me to see my way.
+But in the chamber itself all was dark.
+
+The wind had not yet risen and the shutter which a half-hour later
+moved so restlessly on its creaking hinges, hugged the window so
+tightly that I imagined Mr. Jeffrey had fastened it the night before.
+Looking for some receptacle in which to set the candle I now lit,
+I failed to find anything but an empty tumbler, so I made use of
+that.  Then I glanced about me, but seeing nothing worth my attention
+ - Mrs. Jeffrey's wedding fixings did not interest me, and everything
+else about the room looking natural except the overturned chair,
+which struck me as immaterial.  I hurried downstairs again, leaving
+the candle burning behind me in case I should wish to return aloft
+after I had refreshed my mind with what had been written about this
+old room.
+
+"Not a sound disturbed the house as I seated myself to my reading
+in front of the library shelves.  I was as much alone under that
+desolate roof as mortal could be with men anywhere within reach of
+him.  I enjoyed the solitude and was making a very pretty theory
+for myself on a scrap of paper I tore from another old book when
+a noise suddenly rose in front, which, slight as it was, was quite
+unmistakable to ears trained in listening.  Some one was unlocking
+the front door.
+
+"Naturally I thought it to be Mr. Jeffrey returning for a second
+visit to his wife's house, and knowing what I might expect if he
+surprised me on the premises, I restored the book hastily to its
+place and as hastily blew out the candle.  Then, with every
+intention of flight, I backed toward the door by which I had
+entered.  But some impulse stronger than that of escape made me
+stop just before I reached it.  I could see nothing; the place was
+dark as Tophet; but I could listen.  The person - Mr. Jeffrey, or
+some other - was coming my way and in perfect darkness.  I could
+hear the faltering steps - the fingers dragging along the walls;
+then a rustle as of skirts, proving the intruder to be a woman - a
+fact which greatly surprised me - then a long drawn sigh or gasp.
+
+"The last determined me.  The situation was too intense for me to
+leave without first learning who the woman was who in terror and
+shrinking dared to drag her half resisting feet through these empty
+halls and into a place cursed with such unwholesome memories.  I
+did not think of Veronica.  No one looks for a butterfly in the
+depths of a dungeon. But I did think of Miss Tuttle - that woman of
+resolute will.  Without attempting to imaging the reason for her
+presence, I stood my ground and harkened till the heavy mahogany door
+at the other end of the room began to swing in by jerks under the
+faint and tremulous push of a terrified hand.  Then there came
+silence - a long silence - followed by a moan so agonized that I
+realized that whatever was the cause of this panting woman's
+presence here, it was due to no mere errand of curiosity.  This
+whetted my purpose.  Anything done in this house was in a way done
+to me; so I remained quiet and watched.  But the sounds which now
+and then came from the remote corner upon which my attention was
+concentrated were very eloquent.
+
+I heard sighs and bitter groans, with now and then a murmured
+prayer, broken by a low wailing, in which I caught the name of
+Francis.  And still, possibly on account of the utterance of this
+name, I thought the woman near me to be Miss Tuttle, and even went
+so far as to imagine the cause of her suffering if not the nature
+of her retribution.  Words succeeded cries and I caught phrases
+expressive of fear and some sort of agonized hesitation.  Once
+these broken ejaculations were interrupted by a dull sound.
+Something had dropped to the bare floor.  We shall never know what
+it was, but I have no doubt that it was the pistol, and that the
+marks of dust to be found on the connecting ribbon were made by her
+own fingers in taking it again in her hand.  (You will remember
+that these same fingers had but a few minutes previous groped their
+way along the walls.)  For her voice soon took a different tone,
+and such unintelligible phrases as these could be heard issuing
+from her partly paralyzed lips:
+
+"'I must! - I can never meet his eye again alive.  He would despise
+ -  Brave enough to - to - another's blood - coward - when - own.
+Oh, God!  forgive!'  Then another silence during which I almost
+made up my mind to interfere, then a loud report and a flash so
+startling and unexpected that I recoiled, during which the room
+leaped into sudden view - she too - Veronica - with baby face drawn
+and set like a woman's - then darkness again and a heavy fall which
+shook the floor, if not my hard old heart.  The flash and that fall
+enlightened me.  I had just witnessed the suicide of the last Moore
+saving myself; a suicide for which I was totally unprepared and one
+which I do not yet understand.
+
+"I did not go over to her.  She was as dead when she fell as she
+ever would be.  In the flash which lit everything, I had seen where
+her pistol was pointed.  Why disturb her then?  Nor did I return
+upstairs.  I had small interest now in anything but my own escape
+from a situation more or less compromising.
+
+Do you blame me for this?  I was her heir and I was where I had no
+legal right to be.  Do you think that I was called upon to publish
+my shame and tell how I lingered there while my own niece shot
+herself before my eyes?  That shot made me a millionaire.  This
+certainly was excitement enough for one day - besides, I did not
+leave her there neglected.  I notified you later - after I had got
+my breath and had found some excuse.  That wasn't enough?  Ah, I
+see that you are all models of courage and magnanimity.  You would
+have laid yourselves open to every reproach rather than let a
+little necessary perjury pass your lips.  But I am no model.  I
+am simply an old man who has been too hardly dealt with for seventy
+long years to possess every virtue.  I made a mistake - I see it
+now - trusted a dog when I shouldn't - but if Rudge had not seen
+ghosts - well, what now?"
+
+We had, one and all, with an involuntary impulse, turned our backs
+upon him.
+
+"What are you doing?" he hotly demanded.
+
+"Only what all Washington will do to-morrow, and afterwards the
+whole world," gravely returned the major.  Then, as an ejaculation
+escaped the astonished millionaire, he impressively added: "A
+perjury which allows an innocent man and woman to remain under the
+suspicion of murder for five weeks is one which not only the law
+has a right to punish, but which all society will condemn.
+Henceforth you will find yourself under a ban, Mr. Moore."*
+
+My story ends here.  The matter never came before the grand jury.
+Suicide had been proved, and there the affair rested.  Of myself it
+is enough to add that I sometimes call in Durbin to help me in a
+big case.
+
+___________________________________________________________________
+
+* Time amply verified this prophecy.  Mr.  Moore is living in great
+style in the Moore house, and drives horses which are conspicuous
+even in Washington.  But no one accepts his invitations, and he is
+as much of a recluse in his present mansion as he ever was in the
+humble cottage in which his days of penury were spent.
+____________________________________________________________________
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+YOU HAVE COME!  YOU RAVE SOUGHT ME!"
+
+
+These are some words from a letter written a few months after the
+foregoing by one Mrs. Edward Truscott to a friend in New York:
+
+"Edinburgh, May 7th, 1900.
+
+"Dear Louisa: - You have always accused me of seeing more and
+hearing more than any other person of your acquaintance.  Perhaps
+I am fortunate in that respect.  Certainly I have been favored
+today with an adventure of some interest which I make haste to
+relate to you.
+
+"Being anxious to take home with me some sketches of the
+exquisite ornamentation in the Rosslyn chapel about which I wrote
+you so enthusiastically the other day, I took advantage of Edward's
+absence this morning to visit the place again and this time alone.
+The sky was clear and the air balmy, and as I approached the spot
+from the near-by station I was not surprised to see another woman
+straying quietly about the exterior of the chapel gazing at walls
+which, interesting as they are, are but a rough shell hiding the
+incomparable beauties within.  I noticed this lady; I could not
+help it.  She was one to attract any eye.  Seldom have I seen such
+grace, such beauty, and both infused by such melancholy.  Her
+sadness added wonderfully to her charm, and I found it hard enough
+to pass her with the single glance allowable to a stranger,
+especially as she gave evidence of being one of my own countrywomen:
+
+"However, I saw no alternative, and once within the charmed edifice,
+forgot everything in the congenial task I had set for myself.  For
+some reason the chapel was deserted at this moment by all but me.
+As the special scroll-work I wanted was in a crypt down a short
+flight of steps at the right of the altar, I was completely hidden
+from view to any one entering above and was enjoying both my
+seclusion and the opportunity it gave me of carrying out my purpose
+unwatched when I heard a light step above and realized that the
+exquisite beauty which had so awakened my admiration had at last
+found its perfect setting.  Such a face amid such exquisite
+surroundings was a rare sight, and interested as I always am in
+artistic effects I was about to pocket pencil and pad and make my
+way up to where she moved among the carved pillars when I heard a
+soft sigh above and caught the rustle of her dress as she sat down
+upon a bench at the head of the steps near which I stood.  Somehow
+that sigh deterred me.  I hesitated to break in upon a melancholy
+so invincible that even the sight of all this loveliness could not
+charm it away, and in that moment of hesitation something occurred
+above which fixed me to my place in irrepressible curiosity.
+
+"Another step had entered the open door of the chapel - a man's
+step - eager and with a purpose in it eloquent of something deeper
+than a mere tourist's interest in this loveliest of interiors.  The
+cry which escaped her lips, the tone in which he breathed her name
+in his hurried advance, convinced me that this was a meeting of two
+lovers after a long heart-break and that I should mar the supreme
+moment of their lives by intruding into it the unwelcome presence
+of a stranger.  So I lingered where I was and thus heard what
+passed between them at this moment of all moments ire their lives.
+
+"It was she who spoke first.
+
+" Francis, you have come!  You have sought me!'
+
+"To which he replied in choked accents which yet could not conceal
+the inexpressible elation of his heart:
+
+"'Yes I have come, I have sought you.  Why did you fly?  Did you not
+see that my whole soul was turning to you as it never turned even
+to - to her in the best days of our unshaken love; and that I could
+never rest till I found you and told you how the eyes which have
+once been blind enjoy a passion of seeing unknown to others - a
+passion which makes the object seem so dear - so dear - '
+
+"He paused, perhaps to look at her, perhaps to recover his own
+self-possession, and I caught the echo of a sigh of such utter
+content and triumph from her lips that I was surprised when in
+another moment she exclaimed in a tone so thrilling that I am sure
+no common circumstances had separated this pair:
+
+"'Have we a right to happiness while she -  Oh, Francis, I can not!
+She loved you.  It was her love for you which drove her - '
+
+"'Cora!' came with a sort of loving authority, 'we have buried our
+erring one and passionately as I loved her, she is no more mine,
+but God's.  Let her woeful spirit rest.  You who suffered,
+supported - who sacrificed all that woman holds dear to save what,
+in the nature of things, could not be saved - have more than right
+to happiness if it is in my power to give it to you; I, who have
+failed in so much, but never in anything more than in not seeing
+where true worth and real beauty lay.  Cora, there is but one hand
+which can lift the shadow from my life.  That hand I am holding
+now - do not draw it away - it is my anchor, my hope.  I dare not
+confront life without the promise it holds out.  I should be a
+wreck - '
+
+"His emotion stopped him and there was silence; then I heard him
+utter solemnly, as befitted the place: 'Thank God!' and I knew that
+she had turned her wonderful eyes upon him or nestled her hand in
+his clasp as only a loving woman may.
+
+"The next moment I heard them draw away and leave the place.
+
+"Do you wonder that I long to know who they are and what their story
+is and whom they meant by 'the erring one?'"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Filigree Ball, Anna Katherine Green
+
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