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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75577 ***
+
+
+Footprints
+
+by Kay Cleaver Strahan
+
+published 1929 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
+Copyright, 1928, 1929, by The Butterick Publishing Co.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+  I
+
+The heavy glass and bronze door revolved, and released from its
+sections, out of the grizzly November mist and into the rosy and
+fragrant hotel lobby, malice and envy, joy and enthusiasm, vanity and
+greed. Fear, masked with dignity, wrapped in sealskin and topped with
+a charming bright red hat, came quickly and alone.
+
+Two egg-shaped matrons glanced, lengthened and set their glances.
+
+Purple-and-henna breathed, “Beautiful wrap.”
+
+“I’ll tell you about her in a minute.” Brown-and-gold spoke from her
+throat.
+
+Their gazes followed the sealskin down the long strip of Mosul to the
+mahogany desk behind which a glossy clerk suddenly discovered
+reverence and added it to his attitude.
+
+“She’s one of the Quilters,” Brown-and-gold informed. “They are among
+the best-known families here in Oregon. They have an enormous ranch
+over east of the mountains in Quilter County; half of that country
+over there seems to be named for them. They’re millionaires. Ken says
+everything they touch turns into money.
+
+“I’ve never met her—exactly; that’s why I didn’t speak. But she was at
+a tea where I was, two years ago; it was given for the blind. Quilters
+are supposed to be very charitable; but why shouldn’t they be? As I
+told Ken, a dollar doesn’t mean any more to them than a thin dime does
+to us.” She paused to sigh.
+
+“Does she live here at this hotel?”
+
+“No. No—she lives out at the ranch. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to
+live away from things, like that. The ranch is beautiful, though;
+quite a show place. Too bad you’re leaving so soon—we might motor over
+to see it. Her brother, Neal Quilter, has been stopping here for a
+couple of days. I suppose she is here to see him. I’ve seen him twice
+lately in the dining room. He is awfully handsome—a bachelor, too.
+Will you look at the bellhop sliding to ring the elevator bell for
+her? I’m always allowed to ring it for myself. I hope she has to wait
+as long for that elevator as I usually do. The service here seems to
+be getting worse and worse; and, considering the prices they ask——”
+
+“She’s as slim as an old maid. Or is she married?”
+
+“She’s a widow. Judith Quilter Whitefield. Has been, for years and
+years. Funny she’s never married again, with her money. She’s kind of
+sweet looking yet, don’t you think? I guess she just didn’t want to
+marry. I don’t blame her; why should she? She toured Europe last year
+with her sister, Lucy Quilter Cerini, and her husband——”
+
+“Oh! Is that who she is? I didn’t connect the names at all. I reviewed
+one of Lucy Quilter Cerini’s books for our ladies’ literary society,
+back home, last year. I remember I found then that she was born in
+Oregon, but I didn’t place her at first. So she’s her sister?”
+
+“Yes. I’ve never read any of her works. Was the book you read good?”
+
+“Well—yes. You know she’s very highly spoken of——”
+
+The elevator door slid open, clinked shut.
+
+Judith looked into the panelled mirror. She was too pale. She ducked
+her head and pinched pink into her cheeks with trembling fingers.
+
+“Fifth floor, madam. To your right.”
+
+Five hundred and two—buckle my shoe. Five hundred and four—shut the
+door. Five hundred and——How slyly, furtively soft these felt-padded
+carpets were. They had turned her into a sleuth, creeping, sneaking up
+on Neal. She wished that her advent might have been heralded by at
+least the smart clicking of heels. One could not, of course, whistle
+down hotel corridors. Perhaps she should have asked the clerk to
+telephone. But no, last night and again this morning she had thought
+and thought of that, and had rejected it.
+
+Five hundred and sixteen. She paused, unfastened her fur collar and
+set it back from her firm white throat. She unclasped her handbag,
+took from it a gold locket of the sort that dangled from long bead
+chains in the eighteen nineties, and snapped it open. In one of its
+circles was the picture of an old gentleman with a white, squarely cut
+beard, a wide brow, small sensitive nostrils, and a humorous quirk
+near the eyes that miraculously saved the face from the frailty of
+saintliness. In the opposite circle, printed in tiny letters, was,
+Judith had long thought, a truer portrait of her grandfather. He had
+called it a rule of conduct, and had given it to her during the
+happiest period of her life: just after she and Gregory Whitefield had
+announced their engagement; months before the suspicion that “Greg’s
+bad cold” could be serious.
+
+“Judith Quilter,” the words read. “Achieve tranquillity.”
+
+Greg had never fully understood. Once, during those tremulous months
+in Colorado, when all life’s worth hung on the slender thread of
+mercury in the clinical thermometer, he had asked, when she had opened
+the locket: “What’s the magic of it, dear? How does it make things
+better for you?”
+
+“It doesn’t,” she had declared. “Not a bit. All it does is to make me
+better for things.”
+
+Twenty-eight years ago; and now, still: “Judith Quilter. Achieve
+tranquillity.”
+
+She closed the locket, tucked it into the perfumed silk of her bag,
+pulled off her glove. At any rate, her knock should not sound
+surreptitious.
+
+She snatched her hand from the door and put its knuckles to her parted
+lips. “Oh, dear!” she whispered. How could she have done that? How
+could she have produced that insultingly authoritative racket, which
+must, because of its very quarrelsomeness, be met with the rebuke of
+this smothering silence?
+
+“Judy! You doggone pesty little hound!” The kiss prickled at the
+sides, but it was heavily, satisfactorily, smokily Neal.
+
+“Golly, but you’re pretty, Jude. Been pinching your cheeks, I’ll bet a
+dollar——”
+
+“Look, dear. My new hat.”
+
+“Yes, at your age! Running around buying gaudy red hats and smelling
+of violets—no, of one violet. Stand off; let’s have a look at you—you
+friendly little Jezebel, you!”
+
+“But, Neal, don’t you like the new hat?”
+
+“Not much. It’s too shockingly becoming. But, whither, Judy? I thought
+I left you at home forcing Lucy’s babies to entertain your guest?”
+
+“I brought Ursula with me, silly. We felt the need for some shopping
+so we motored over yesterday evening. We got in late, and rose rather
+late this morning. But there’s been time for the hat, and some toys,
+and luncheon. Then I happened to think you might have tea with us,
+later; so I’ve run up to ask you.”
+
+“Your naïveté is faultless, darling.”
+
+“Neal! If you have to be a killjoy, you might try to be a humane one.”
+
+Achieve tranquillity. Do not notice the shadow, dimming the splendid
+blondness, the averted eyes, the contracted shoulders.
+
+“Judith, how did you know that I was here?”
+
+“But, dear, where should you be? You have never stayed at another
+hotel in Portland, have you? I felt a traitor myself. But I did wish
+to impress Ursula with the glories of the Trensonian. I think, though,
+Neal, that before you left you might have stuck a note on your
+pincushion, or——”
+
+“Drop it, Jude. Is Ursula going back to Q 2 with you?”
+
+“Did she bore you? Was it she who drove you away, silly?”
+
+“Heavy tact. You know and I know; so, what’s the use? I’m mad about
+her. Repellent, isn’t it? A man of my age. I’m forty-six damn years
+old.”
+
+“Yes, so you say. But Ursula isn’t a young girl. She has been a widow
+for eight years. She loves our West, and our Q 2, and——”
+
+“You’re as sentimental as a hammock.”
+
+“I don’t care. She does. And she loves you, too, and has for the past
+three years. You’d have known it if you hadn’t been blind. Neal—— What
+is it?”
+
+Merely a dream: a preposterous dream, about an absurd play in which a
+man, who looked like Neal, went towering, shaking blond fists at his
+own shoulders; went muttering, giving an amusingly over-acted
+performance of rage. Neal, who was always gentle and funny and kind,
+would laugh at such exaggerations and say, “the cross-patch,” or
+something of the sort. Though, if Neal were ill, he might—— Lucy said
+that Neal was ill, very ill. Lucy was a genius. She should be here.
+Judith was a simple, stupid old woman. Judith Quilter. Achieve
+tranquillity.
+
+“Sorry, Neal, if I was inept. Something seems to be quite the trouble.
+Perhaps, if you’d care to tell me, I might understand.”
+
+“Understand?” he accepted the word and seemed for a moment to caress
+it. “Understand!” he snarled it to pieces and flung it back, a
+shattered brutality. “Try understanding this, then. And, when you’ve
+finished with it, give it to the graceful Ursula, and see whether she
+can understand——”
+
+“Neal, dear! Don’t!”
+
+“Don’t! I thought not. You’ve guessed it, of course. You and Lucy
+guessed it years ago, together. And now you tell me—don’t. Don’t tell
+the truth. Keep my secret, since I’ve kept it only a lifetime. God,
+what I’ve lived through! Sorry. Almost began on that foxy Spartan
+stuff. No matter. I’ve kept my mouth shut. I promised. Or—did I?
+Sometimes I think my life has been pinned shut with a promise.
+Sometimes I think it has been fear, pride—— Take your choice. I’ve
+kept my secret. And I would have kept it if you’d let me alone. It’s
+your fault. You brought Ursula. Bent on your matchmaking mummery. I
+came away, didn’t I? Here you are, with Ursula in the offing. Tracking
+me down, sneaking—— Sorry. You’re sweet, Judy. But I tell you, you’ve
+forced a confidence. You’ve forced me, and I’m glad of it, into the
+luxury of a confession. Take it!
+
+“I killed Father. I did, I tell you. I knew about the insurance. It
+seemed the only way out. I fooled them all. I cut the red mask from
+Olympe’s satin frock. I—— Judy, don’t look like that. Put your new hat
+on. Stop rumpling your hair. Lovely gray hair you have, Judy. See,
+dear, it needn’t matter a lot now—about the murder. We’ll never tell
+it—you and I? It needn’t matter at all—except for Ursula. I can’t
+marry her. I can’t ever marry, Jude. That needn’t matter. I’ve never
+cared a lot about marrying. Loathed women, mostly. All but you girls,
+and—Ursula.
+
+“Think we’d better tell Ursula? Think that’s the immediate decency
+required? She’ll run away back to her Italy, then, and thank her stars
+she’s well out of this. She wouldn’t tell on me, do you think? I’d
+hate being hanged, you know. All the aspects—personal and public, is
+that the way it goes?—of hanging I’d hate——”
+
+“Neal——”
+
+“Wait, Judy. I want the straight of this. The low-down on it. Am I
+mad? Wasn’t that why Lucy had the psychiatrist visiting at Q 2? No,
+not what you are thinking. I committed the murder. I’m guilty—guilty
+as a dog. But am I mad? I might well be, having done in a member of
+the family. Do you remember, wasn’t Aunt Gracia a bit mad? All that
+bunk of her religion—that Siloamite stuff? We none of us ever admitted
+it, of course. And Father—— I wonder whether normal, sane people ever
+do kill? What I’m getting at is, there may be a strain of insanity in
+the family. Oh, for the Lord’s sake, Judy, won’t you stop pushing the
+waves all out of your hair?”
+
+“Yes, dear, of course. I was trying to think about this madness. I’m
+sure that you are mistaken. Aunt Gracia was a mystic. But you must
+remember how sane and wise she was. There may have been something a
+bit bleak about her wisdom, but it was deliberate. Father killed the
+man exactly as he might have killed a rattlesnake coiled to strike at
+Mother. But you, Neal, forgive me, don’t seem entirely sane to me
+to-day.”
+
+“Convenient insanity?”
+
+“No, no, Neal. Why be cruel? You suggested it; but I did say it
+stupidly. I should have said that you are quite sane, but that your
+memory isn’t. The whole trouble is merely a question of memory. If you
+will remember, it is absolutely impossible that you could have killed
+Father. I don’t mean morally impossible—that, too, of course—but
+physically impossible. Remember. You were locked in your room at the
+time. Within two minutes after the shot was heard, Lucy came running
+from her room into yours, through the connecting door, and found you
+trying to batter down your door, that led into the hall, with a
+chair.”
+
+“Lucy was only a kid at the time. She was much too frightened to know
+what she saw.”
+
+“Not at all, Neal. Lucy was twelve, and unusually precocious.”
+
+“Yes, and I was eighteen, and—unusually precocious. I tell you, I did
+it. But I’m not going to tell even you how I managed it. If the thing
+should be raked up, and come to a trial, you wouldn’t wish to know.
+And, in the event of a trial, I’d like my little alibi.”
+
+“Dear me, Neal! Really, you are talking now like a book; a third-rate
+detective thing.”
+
+“Third rate, nothing of the sort. They are sweeter than the sex stuff,
+and a pile more interesting. I’ve been going in for them lately; and
+pausing to thank my lucky stars that we didn’t have a French or a
+Thorndike at Q 2 Ranch in 1900. It wouldn’t have taken one of those
+birds long to see through seven doors being locked with ten keys, or
+the rope from our own attic being swung out of Father’s window, or
+Olympe’s being killed the same way Father was——”
+
+“See, Neal, how false your memory is? Olympe was not killed that
+night. She lived for years after that. Since your memory has begun to
+play tricks of this sort, why won’t you trust our memories—my memory?
+I know, and all the others know, that there is no possibility of your
+having had anything to do with Father’s murder.”
+
+“You weren’t there, Judy; so, naturally, you’d remember all about it.
+Yes, you bet. But that’s what I want you to know, just the same. You,
+and the others. It hasn’t mattered much, until Ursula——”
+
+“Marry Ursula, and it won’t matter then.”
+
+“Chris’s duplex psychology?”
+
+“I suppose so. I’m not clever with it. Come home with us this
+afternoon. Tell Chris what you’ve told me. He’ll straighten it out for
+you.”
+
+“For me—or for Irene?”
+
+“Shame on you, Neal.”
+
+“Surely. Sorry. But it has always bothered Chris a lot, you know,
+having that dapper honour of his sort of uncreased, as it were, by the
+fact that Irene was out straying around loose in the hall that night
+when the rest of us were locked up. If you don’t mind, that is, a lot,
+I think I’ll ask you not to mention this to Chris—nor to anyone.”
+
+“I shouldn’t have, in any case.”
+
+“Ursula?”
+
+“I think not. Since it is unimportant and false, it couldn’t interest
+her particularly. I regard it, rather, as a wave you’ve done, or had
+done, to your memory. You know, exactly like those horrid permanent
+kinks that Irene had put in her hair a few years ago. It is artificial
+and false and ugly. But, like the hair kinks, it will grow out
+straight in time. Until then, the less attention we call to it the
+better, I should say.”
+
+“I should say so, too; for that reason, or—another.”
+
+“About going home, dear. We had planned to leave shortly after tea,
+have dinner at that delightful new place on the highway, and spend the
+night there. Then, with easy driving, we should be at the ranch in
+time for luncheon to-morrow. Would that suit you?”
+
+“On the square, Judy, I am sick of it here. But, if I go back with
+you, will you ship Ursula as soon as you can?”
+
+“Yes, Neal. If that seems fair to you, I will.”
+
+“Damn that red hat, Jude. It is the same colour that the mask was. I
+hate red, anyway.”
+
+“Sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll have to endure it. It cost too much.
+Will you join us for tea?”
+
+“I think not. Thanks, all that. Did you drive over, or did you bring
+George?”
+
+“We brought George. He was so avid to show off Irene’s conception of a
+proper uniform for a chauffeur that I hadn’t the courage to refuse
+him. He’s a perfect guy in it, Neal; but as happy as Hallelujah.”
+
+“Fine. I’ll ride in front with him, then. Be sure to fix it that way,
+will you, honey?”
+
+“Yes, I will. Shall we come by for you at half-past five?”
+
+“Wait, Judy, listen. No, I mean really listen. You remember the snow
+the night Father was killed? Well, if anyone from the outside had done
+it, there’d have been bound to be footprints——”
+
+“Neal, dear, that was twenty-eight years ago. Need we go over it all,
+again, right now? I’ve always believed that, by the time any of you
+had regained your senses enough to look for footprints, the
+new-falling snow had covered them.”
+
+“It won’t go, Jude. The snow had stopped before we heard the shot. We
+looked within half an hour. The footprints Chris made, going to the
+barn, were there plain as print in the morning. That is—— Weren’t
+they?”
+
+“So you wrote to me, Neal. In all your letters you made a particular
+point of the absence of footprints in the snow. Do you think you would
+have written like that if you’d been trying to hide your own guilt?”
+
+“I don’t know. I don’t know anything; except that, sometimes, I think
+I’ve brooded over this too long. I admit that I do get hazy about it
+now. Only——There is this, Judy. If I didn’t do it, who did?”
+
+“Well, Neal, I believe that is what we are going to have to find out.”
+
+“Golly, Judy, you’re the prettiest thing I ever saw when you poke up
+pert like that.”
+
+“You’d be especially fit to look at yourself, dear, if you would
+shave. Half-past five, then? Good-bye.”
+
+No, she could not stop and lean against the wall. She must walk
+steadily, oblivious of reeling worlds. She must keep her chin high;
+she must point her toes out—no, straight in front; she had been
+mistaught about toes. She must not snatch the hideous, vivid thing
+from her head and throw it on the elevator’s floor. She must———What
+was that thing? Achieve tranquillity. But how was that possible? What
+did tranquillity mean?
+
+
+  II
+
+If the taxicab would stop bouncing her up and down through the
+streaming city she could make up her mind what she must say, or, more
+important, what she must not say to Dr. Joe. “We are concerned about
+Neal.” No. “Neal, of late, hasn’t seemed quite well.” No. Neal. Neal.
+Neal.
+
+The not too tall, very fat man, whose white hair crowned his pink
+baldness childishly like a daisy wreath, took her shivering hands into
+a grasp that was tight, and warm, and secure.
+
+She said: “Dr. Joe, I’ve found Neal. I mean—Neal has been here in the
+city for the past two days. I mean—Neal.”
+
+“Sure, I know, Judy. Here, let me help you with that coat. Too hot in
+this office for a fur coat. Pretty lining. That’s a pretty hat, too.
+Cheerful, but small—that’s the rule for a hat.”
+
+Ten twirling minutes later he said: “Look, Judy. What is it you want
+me to do? I’ll drive over to Q 2 for the week-end, and only too glad
+of an excuse. But Neal will be fit as a fiddle. I guess you know that
+his trouble is mental, not physical.”
+
+“But, Dr. Joe, after all, is there a difference?”
+
+“Hello, there! Been taking up Watson?”
+
+“He is so beautifully utilitarian. Sort of in defence, you know,
+against Chris’s everlasting Freud, and Jung, and the rest.”
+
+“Now you let your cousin Christopher alone. He’s a good boy. He’s
+getting better all the time. How old is Chris by now?”
+
+“In his late fifties. He doesn’t look it.”
+
+“He couldn’t. He’s a Quilter. Judy, here’s what I’ve been thinking.
+You had that psychiatrist—the Vienna man—at your place for quite a
+while last year, didn’t you?”
+
+“For six weeks. He was a friend of Lucy’s, you know. But we weren’t
+positive, then, that anything was really wrong with Neal. So we
+wouldn’t allow Dr. Koreth to hector him. He and Chris had a splendid
+time together; but, as far as Neal was concerned, Dr. Koreth’s visit
+was useless.”
+
+“You can’t blame him for that, Judy. I couldn’t cut out a man’s
+tonsils if I wasn’t allowed to let him know that anything was the
+matter with him.”
+
+“I know. But what could we do? Neal’s prejudices are so strong that he
+never would have submitted to an analysis, nor to any treatments along
+that line. That is what is going to make it so frightfully difficult
+now. I—I——”
+
+“Now, now, now, Judy. Keep a stiff upper lip. There’s more than one
+way into the woods—and out of them. That’s what I’ve learned by being
+an old mutt of a general practitioner for forty-five years. We were
+talking about a certain Watson just now. Since then I’ve been thinking
+of another one—better known. Sherlock Holmes’s Dr. Watson.
+
+“Look. What I believe is that this murder business in 1900 has just
+plum got the best of Neal. He was eighteen. Adolescence is a tricky
+time. What I’m betting is, that if we could find out who did kill
+Dick, and prove it to Neal, he would come through with banners flying.
+That’s common sense, so I guess it is good psychology.”
+
+“But——”
+
+“Yes, I know, Judy. But you wait a minute. There’s a woman down in
+’Frisco, and from what I’ve read about her I think she’s all right. I
+think she’s a good woman; a real nice one. She’s a Miss Lynn
+MacDonald, and she calls herself a crime analyst. Now suppose we could
+get her to come up to Q 2? Lot of us oldsters are still hanging around
+who could post her up. Look, Judy. Neal doesn’t believe in
+psychoanalysis, but I’ll bet a cooky he believes in Craig Kennedy.
+Last time I saw him, about three months ago, he was down at Gill’s
+Bookstore buying mystery by the pound like it was bacon.
+
+“Why not have her up to the ranch, Judy? Get her to outline a good
+case—you know how they do it. Getting evidence, and piling up proofs
+from here, there, and everywhere. Then give the result to Neal. He’ll
+be satisfied, and behave himself and get married, like he should have
+done twenty years ago, and have some babies.”
+
+“Father was killed twenty-eight years ago last month, Dr. Joe.”
+
+“I know it. But, look, how I mean—— In some ways that will make it
+easier instead of harder.”
+
+“You mean imaginary proofs to find an imaginary culprit? No, Dr. Joe,
+that wouldn’t do. It is difficult to understand, but most of the time
+Neal is the keenest one of the family—the most clear-headed and
+sensible. These queernesses of his come on in flashes—and are gone.
+Entirely gone. One moment he will be—well, odd. And, in the next
+moment, he will be wholly himself again.”
+
+“No, that isn’t hard to understand, Judy. Most of them—lots of them
+are like that. We couldn’t fool Neal on anything he was sane about.
+But I think we could fool him on something he is——”
+
+“Finish it, Dr. Joe. Do you think that Neal is actually insane?”
+
+“Look, my girl. We can’t say that Neal is sensible on the subject of
+Dick’s death, can we? Jehoshaphat, Judy, I wish we could get him
+straightened out pretty quick now! Jehoshaphat, but I do!”
+
+“He’ll not get better, you think, Dr. Joe?”
+
+“Well, look, Judy. You’re asking me. He has been getting steadily
+worse for two—almost three—years now. Of course, you haven’t told me
+what he said to you to-day. But I’ve made my living by guessing for
+the last forty-odd years. Man ought to be a good guesser by that time,
+if he’s ever going to be. So I guess I know what Neal said to-day that
+sent you up here in the condition you were in when you came. That’s
+what I’ve been getting at. I want you to bring this Lynn MacDonald
+woman up to the ranch, and have her prove to Neal that he didn’t
+murder his own father.”
+
+“He didn’t, Dr. Joe.”
+
+“Bless my soul to glory, Judith Quilter! What are you telling me that
+for? Telling me like that, I mean?”
+
+“Dr. Koreth had much to say about a faculty called empathy. You
+know—putting one’s self in the place of another. Identifying, I think
+he called it. That is what Neal has done; has overdone. He has put
+himself in the place of some other member of the family.”
+
+“Talk’s cheap. You could never make me believe that. Boy and man, I’ve
+known the Quilter family for the last fifty years. Of course, lots of
+people wouldn’t agree with me; but, you know, I think I’m a darn good
+man. I think I’ve poked along, slow, and done a lot of good in the
+world. I think I’ve led a darn decent life. Most of my goals have been
+pretty flat, I guess. Most of my Rubicons—ditches, maybe. But what I’m
+getting at is this: The reason I am any good on earth is because your
+grandfather, Thaddeus Quilter, took me in hand when I was a lad. It
+should begin a biography, or be put in a preface, or something. ‘I
+owe——’ You know how they do it. Well, he was in the house that night.
+Do you think that he killed Dick?”
+
+“Dr. Joe!”
+
+“That’s the worst blasphemy I ever uttered, Judith. I ask the Lord’s
+and your forgiveness. But, look. Your Aunt Gracia was there that
+night. Think that she——”
+
+“Dr. Joe!”
+
+“What did I tell you, Judy? It isn’t right for you to say what you
+said. It’s damn wicked for you to think it. It’s worse than wicked;
+it’s unhealthy. You’ll be getting yourself where Neal is. What makes
+you think like that, talk like that, my girl?”
+
+“Because—— How well do you remember the details, Dr. Joe?”
+
+“Well enough. Well enough.”
+
+“Well enough to remember that the ground was covered with freshly
+fallen snow, and that no footprints leading away from the house were
+found that night, or later? That Aunt Gracia and Grandfather, with all
+the others, searched the house with their thoroughness, all during the
+night?”
+
+“Yes, yes. I remember that footprint stuff. Fooey, for your
+footprints! I’m sorry to say it, Judith, but I thought better of you
+than this. The house at Q 2 is bigger than six barns. Couldn’t some
+damn scoundrel have hidden there, before and after, even if those poor
+souls, sick with grief and useless from shock and fear and excitement,
+did search the house, or try to? I don’t know what’s got hold of you.
+But it would take more than the absence of footprints to make me, an
+outsider, doubt a member of your family, or any friend of theirs.”
+
+“It would take more than that to make me doubt, too, Dr. Joe.”
+
+“You don’t say! Look, Judith, you’re getting me sore. I’m warning you.
+By Gad, I wouldn’t let another person sit there in my chair and say
+what you’re saying. I’d slap them over!”
+
+“Yes, I’m sure you would, Dr. Joe. But—— No matter. I think that your
+suggestion about engaging this crime analyst is an excellent one. She
+was the woman who got to the bottom of that dreadful Hollywood affair,
+wasn’t she? I remember the name. Only—I’ll want the truth from her.
+Neal, mentally disabled, is so much keener than most mentally sound
+people that he’d reject a falsity. I know it.”
+
+“Like you said just now, Judy, it was all over twenty-eight years ago.
+Look, we couldn’t go to anybody—not to Sherlock Holmes himself—and
+say, ‘There was a murder on the Q 2 Ranch back in 1900. Some few
+oldsters are living yet who were around at the time and could tell you
+something about it—what they can remember. The house is still there,
+though it has been remodelled and refurnished a couple of times. A
+good many people studied over the case in 1900, but they all had to
+give it up. People have been studying over it ever since, for that
+matter; but they can’t get any place with it at all. What we want from
+you, now, is for you to get the thing straightened out as soon as
+possible, and produce, or anyway name, the guilty wretch or
+wretches.’”
+
+“Dr. Joe, Greg and I went to Colorado in March, 1900. Lucy, with her
+passion for writing, wrote long letters to me until late September.
+Father was killed on the eighth of October. On the tenth of October,
+Neal took up the letter writing. (I couldn’t leave Greg alone, and, of
+course, I couldn’t bring him home to the horror there.)”
+
+“I should say you couldn’t. You were a good wife, Judy. Greg was a
+fine, true husband. But you should have married again—had babies.”
+
+“Perhaps. About the letters, Dr. Joe. I have read and reread them. To
+me they seem tremendously significant. Significant, maybe, by
+omission; but significant, nevertheless. This is particularly true of
+Lucy’s letters. Queer things, very queer things began to happen at Q 2
+long before Father was killed. The family discord—— But I won’t go
+into that. There were other things. The accident, in which Father
+narrowly escaped with his life. The absurdity of his baptism——”
+
+“How old was Lucy when she was writing you all this truck?”
+
+“She was twelve years old. Yes, I know—but you must remember that Lucy
+was a genius, even then. Dr. Koreth said, one evening, that modern
+criminologists are coming to value the accuracy of children’s
+testimony. From Lucy I may well have what may have been the motivating
+factor, or factors. From Neal, with a man’s intelligence and a boy’s
+honesty and eagerness, I have the results. A day-by-day account, for
+several weeks, of all the findings, the suspicions, the theories,
+and—well, the clues.
+
+“Like Lucy and Chris, Neal was a born scribbler. He never had time to
+give to it, but he loved even the physical act of writing. He began
+his letters to me with the avowal that he was writing them in order
+that I might, with the facts placed before me, help him to discover
+Father’s murderer. He thought it was the truth. But the letters show
+that his real reason for writing to me was to have an outlet for the
+stuff that was torturing his mind. What I am trying to say, Dr. Joe,
+and am saying so stupidly, is that Neal gave me, unconsciously, more
+than a bare recountal of facts. It seems possible, at least, that a
+mind trained in criminal analysis could take these letters, and
+Lucy’s, and read the truth from them. I can’t decipher the most simple
+code. But the Rosetta stone has been deciphered.”
+
+“Didn’t the other folks write you letters during that time, too?”
+
+“None that I kept. They were all troubled at home, and their letters
+weren’t like them. I kept Lucy’s because—well, because they were
+Lucy’s, I suppose. At the time, it seemed more loyal to destroy the
+others. Then, after Father’s death, none of them told me the truth—so
+I destroyed them. But I have Lucy’s, and I have Neal’s. Three hours
+ago I wouldn’t have given them to a stranger—no, not to a friend—to
+read for anything in the world. But now——”
+
+“I don’t believe you need to, Judy. Look. If we, backed up by this
+crime analyst, could make believe that something was the truth—why
+wouldn’t that do? No, you won’t have it? Well, look, I’m going to have
+to be pretty mean. I’m going to have to tell you that I think that
+will be the best we can do. I don’t believe anybody, trained analyst
+or not, could get at the fact of Dick’s murder at this late date; not
+from a packet of letters, twenty-eight years old, written by a couple
+of kids.”
+
+“You wouldn’t diagnose the simplest case without seeing the patient.
+Those letters are here in my safety-deposit vault at the bank. I’m
+going now and get them and bring them to you. Will you read them? And
+will you come to Q 2 over the week-end, and tell me what you think of
+them? I’d come to the city, but I don’t like to leave Neal——”
+
+“Look, Judy. I’d read the complete works of Ouida if you asked me to,
+and you know it. I’ve been dying to come to the ranch all fall. I’ve
+been kind of bashful, though, hanging back and waiting for an
+invitation. There, there, never mind about that. Run along, and be a
+good girl. You’ll have to hop to it to make the bank before three——”
+
+“Thank you, Dr. Joe. Thank you, and——”
+
+“You run along now, like I told you, or I’ll send you a bill!”
+
+
+  III
+
+Judith watched the fire twisting around the oak logs in the
+living-room fireplace and wondered why Dr. Joe had created a niece for
+himself since she had seen him in his office last Wednesday.
+
+Irene, faultlessly blonde, buoyantly obtuse, appeared in the doorway,
+shook an arch forefinger, chirped, “Oh, you two——” and disappeared.
+
+Dr. Joseph Elm said: “Her legs are too fat. She ought to wear longer
+skirts. Old lady like her. But, as I was saying, Judy, this niece of
+mine has been fussing and fussing—you know how it is—to have me come
+down to ’Frisco to see her. Look, I think I’ll go down to-morrow or
+the next day; and, while I’m there, I might just as well hunt up this
+Miss MacDonald. Save you a trip down. You can post me up on what to
+say——”
+
+“You’ve read the letters, Dr. Joe. What do you think of them?”
+
+“Well, now, Judy—I hardly know.”
+
+“But honestly, Dr. Joe?”
+
+“Judy, since you want it, I believe that somebody real smart might get
+something or other out of the letters. They give a lot of facts, and
+they seem to give them pretty straight.”
+
+“You think, as I think, Dr. Joe, that it must have been one of us?”
+
+“Bless my soul to glory, if I do! Look, Judy. It does seem like
+whoever did it must have been in the house before—and quite a while
+afterward. But those were the days of lamps and candles out here on
+the ranch. Somebody might have hidden in the house for a couple of
+days—cellar, attic. Anyway, look! What’s the sense of amateurs like us
+tinkering around and worrying over this thing when we can get a
+professional, a specialist, to take it in hand? I don’t examine a
+man’s teeth; I send him to his dentist. Since I’m going to be in
+’Frisco anyway, I might as well stop in and make a dicker with this
+crime analyst. I’ve been thinking. It might be a good plan to fetch
+her right up here. She could get the lay of the land then. And while
+she was studying over the letters she could talk to you and Lucy, and
+you could answer any questions for her. What do you think?”
+
+“I’d agree, except for Neal. He has been himself since we came home on
+Thursday. But I am afraid that it wouldn’t do to have him know we were
+delving into the thing again. I’m sure it wouldn’t be safe. I fancy,
+though, considering her profession, that this woman would be willing
+to come as a friend of Lucy’s, or as—your niece.”
+
+“Or as a hired girl, something along that line?”
+
+“It would be much easier to explain a guest at Q 2 than it would be to
+explain a new servant, after all these years of Tilda, and Lily, and
+George, and Gee Sing.”
+
+“Look, Judy. I’ll size her up. If she’s ornery ordinary, I’ll wire
+you, and you’ll have to sandwich her in as help for Tilda or
+something. If she’s just common ordinary, the niece racket would be
+all right. And if she should happen to be extraordinary, we’ll work
+the friend of Lucy’s stunt.
+
+“Never mind. I’ll take it you’ve said it, and thanks. Look, Judy, you
+don’t need to compliment my relatives, though, because I’m going to be
+pretty mean about one of yours right now. Irene’s a doggone
+chatterbox. And, like most of that kind, she isn’t smart enough to
+show, either. Seems to me it would be better not to let Irene in on
+this. I don’t mean that she’s malicious. But she’d spill the beans,
+sure as fate, some place where Neal would find them.”
+
+“I know. But I’m afraid Chris would resent it if we didn’t tell her.”
+
+“Look. There’s no law been passed that we have to tell Chris, either.
+Did you mean to go tearing the lace off your silly handkerchief,
+Judy?”
+
+She dropped the nervous fluff into her lap. “This is going to be hard
+to carry through, Dr. Joe.”
+
+“You’re right. It is going to be hard. Hard as blazes. Are you sure
+you want to, my girl?”
+
+“I haven’t any choice.”
+
+“I hate to say this, Judy; but you know there is a chance, or half a
+chance that you, or even Neal, might be partly right about this: that
+some one of the family——”
+
+“I know. That’s why I think we should tell Chris the truth about this
+woman, if she comes here. You see, Lucy and I will know who she is.”
+
+“Lucy was a kid. You were in Colorado. Look, Judy. Chris is a good
+boy, and he’s getting better all the time. But he’s been married to
+Irene for twenty-odd years—and, bless my soul to glory, he’s been in
+love with her all the while, and is yet. Tell Chris, and you’ve told
+Irene.”
+
+“I suppose so.”
+
+“Here’s another thing. If there can be anything comparative about one
+Quilter’s feelings for another Quilter, I’d say that Neal and Chris
+were less partial to each other than any other members of the family.
+It would bust Chris all up to have Neal get worse. But he’d have that
+happen even before he’d haul what he calls the Quilter honour down
+from the flagstaff where he keeps it hoisted.”
+
+“I’m not sure; but I believe that isn’t fair to Chris.”
+
+“You bet it is. Look, Judy. It is a matter of taste whether you’d
+rather have one cousin wind up in a nice, comfortable sanitarium
+somewhere, or whether you’d rather have it proved that your aunt, or
+your uncle (by Jolly, Judy, Phineas was a great old boy, wasn’t he!
+Letters seemed to bring him right back to me), or another cousin,
+or—yourself, or your wife, maybe, killed a member of the family. I’m
+for you, Judy. I’m with you to the finish. Always have been. I’m in
+love with you, you know. If I wasn’t, I’d send you a bill. But yet you
+can’t blame Chris for the stand he’d be bound to take, either.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Want to change your mind, my girl? We could drop this thing right
+here, flat as a pancake.”
+
+“Neal is my little brother. I mean—— Well, when I was seven years old,
+Neal was three. He had fat little legs, and he followed me about
+wherever I went. I mean—I always did take good care of him. He knew I
+would. Forgive me, Dr. Joe. I’m naturally sentimental; but you and
+Neal seem to be the only people who tempt me to display it. All I was
+trying to say was that I have determined to go through with this.
+And—I wish I could think of some way to thank you. It seemed almost
+impossible for either Lucy or me to go to San Francisco just now.”
+
+“Going to ’Frisco anyhow. Funny fellow if I couldn’t do a little
+neighbourly errand for a friend.”
+
+“I understand about the trip, and the niece.”
+
+“Judy, you’re flirting with me. Shame on you—an old lady like you!”
+
+“I’m not. I’m adoring you.”
+
+“You’re darn right. You’d better, or I’d send you a bill.”
+
+“Do you think this crime analyst will come up to Q 2, Dr. Joe?”
+
+“Come? She’ll jump at the chance.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+  I
+
+Dr. Joseph Elm said: “Look, Miss MacDonald, I’m not asking you to say
+whether or not you’ll take the case. All I’m asking you to do is to
+read these letters.”
+
+“Letters,” Lynn MacDonald explained, “that pertain to a murder
+committed twenty-eight years ago. Many of them, you have told me,
+written by a twelve-year-old child. Yes, I admit the fact that the
+child was Lucy Quilter does make some difference—but not enough. The
+remainder written by a boy who since has confessed to the murder. At
+the very best, I could form a theory or two. Any possibility of
+proving those theories has been removed by time. I am sorry, Dr. Elm,
+but——”
+
+“Will you read these letters, just read them, I mean, for five hundred
+dollars?”
+
+“My time——”
+
+“Yes. I know about time. Everybody’s time. Will you read them for a
+thousand dollars?”
+
+“I am not a highway robber, Dr. Elm.”
+
+“No? Well, bless my soul to glory if I know what you are. You’re a
+darn good crime analyst, or so I hear. But if you’re not a better
+analyst than you are a woman, you’ve nothing to show. Look. As a
+woman, you’re a mess. You haven’t any kindness, or patience, or
+sympathy—not even pity. You haven’t any courage—afraid to take a
+chance. You haven’t much of anything but lack of time.”
+
+He settled back patiently in his chair. If he had guessed rightly
+about that red hair and those clear gray eyes, something was going to
+happen in half a minute now.
+
+Lynn MacDonald stood, tall, behind her desk.
+
+“Perhaps you are right,” she said. “Certainly you are right about my
+lack of time. I have no time to sit here and listen to insults from
+importunate strangers.”
+
+Dr. Elm added to his patience an air of solid permanence.
+
+“Funny thing,” he offered, “about women. Tell them the truth and
+ninety-nine out of a hundred will think you are insulting them. I kind
+of figured, maybe you’d be the hundredth. But I see now where I made
+my mistake. I should have tried to wheedle instead of——”
+
+“Bullying,” supplied Miss MacDonald.
+
+“All right. Look. I’ve found out one thing you’ve got—that’s a temper.
+Glad to see it. Makes you a person. You’re Scotch-Irish, I judge. Best
+debtors in the world. Never had a Scotch-Irish bill yet that wasn’t
+paid. Look. You won’t read those letters for love or money. Will you
+read them to pay a debt?
+
+“Hold on. Let me tell you. I’m a professional man, same as you’re a
+professional woman. I’ve got a consulting room, too. It isn’t near as
+stylish as this one of yours. One thing, I’ve had it forty-odd years,
+and it’s kind of worn down some, and rubbed off. Another thing, I
+don’t much favour elegant consulting rooms. Patients likely to get
+impressed. ’Tisn’t a good thing to impress your patients. Many a
+stomachache has turned into appendicitis just from the patient being
+ashamed to own up to an ordinary stomach ache in the midst of walnut
+furniture and Persian rugs. Look. Here’s what I’m getting to.
+
+“I’ve been sitting up there, afternoons, for the past forty years.
+I’ve had time and patience, all that while, to listen to women—two
+thirds of them nervous, hysterical things, poor souls—telling me about
+their backaches, and their numb spells, and their throbbing heads.
+Until the last ten years or so about all I could do was to listen, and
+then pat them on the shoulders, and tell them they were fine, brave
+girls, and give them some healthy advice, and send them home. About
+all I can do yet, for that matter. Say psychiatrist to most women and
+they’ll up and act like you did just now when I was trying to tell you
+something. No. I sit and cluck, like an old hen eating, and listen. I
+suppose the time I’ve wasted listening to and pitying your
+sister-women would aggregate about twenty years. Money doesn’t pay for
+it—if I got paid with money, which I generally don’t, because I can’t
+cure them. Thanks might pay, but I’ve never got thanked—much. (‘Old
+Dr. Elm simply could not find what my trouble was. So I went to young
+Dr. Sawbones, and he cut it right out. I wouldn’t have lived three
+months without the operation.’) But I’ve kept along. I’ll go back,
+when I leave here, and sit up there and listen, and cluck, till I die.
+But I’ve always kind of thought, maybe, sometime I’d get paid back.
+I’ve never asked a favour of a woman in my life, Miss MacDonald. Never
+even asked a girl to marry me. Well, I’m asking a favour now. You can
+read these letters in less than the time you could read a novel. How
+about it? A couple of evenings, as pay for twenty years? And if you
+tell me there’s no reason why you should pay for all the time I’ve
+given to your sister-women, I’ll tell you that, come to it, there
+generally isn’t a reason for most of the fine, grand things folks have
+done. Florence Nightingale, Father Damien, or——”
+
+Lynn MacDonald, sitting behind her desk, resting her chin on her
+bridging fingers, smiled. “Or,” she questioned, “Dr. Joseph Elm?”
+
+“I get you. It’s below the belt, all the same.”
+
+“But, no, you didn’t ‘get’ me. I meant, any real reason for him to
+come here and offer me what he has just offered me. Oh, yes. I know
+what it is. In spite of your opinion of me, I have some of it
+myself—in payment for a service, not for himself, but for friends of
+his?”
+
+“Well, of course, if it comes to that, the Quilters have always seemed
+a lot more like relations than friends.”
+
+“I see. Now, then, Dr. Elm, since I am to read the letters, perhaps if
+you could give me just the outlines of the case? None of the details,
+but facts enough to allow me to study the letters with some
+understanding from the beginning?”
+
+“Yes, you bet. That’s what I thought, too. If we could kind of whittle
+through the thing together, before you began on the letters, it might
+save you a lot of time.”
+
+Miss MacDonald’s pink palms met meekly in her lap. Her face was quiet,
+but the comprehension in her gray eyes was visible.
+
+
+  II
+
+“Here,” said Dr. Elm, “we are.” He produced a derelict notebook from
+his pocket, and flicked through it with a dampened forefinger. “Yes.
+I’ve made out a list of characters—like in a play——”
+
+“First, if you will,” suggested Miss MacDonald, “I’d rather hear,
+again, the outlines of the case. Where the murder was done, when, and
+how. Later, perhaps, the people who were on the premises at the time
+would be helpful. I have understood you to say that Richard Quilter
+was shot when he was in bed in his room at night. That the absence of
+a weapon precluded all possibilities of suicide. That a rope was found
+hanging from his window, out across a porch roof beneath the window,
+and to the ground. That the freshly fallen snow on the roof and the
+rope indicated that the rope had not been used as a means for escape.
+That careful searching of the grounds that night, particularly in
+front of each window and door, seemed to prove that no one had left
+the house after the shot was heard.”
+
+“That’s right, so far; exactly right. Now let me see. Yes, here it is.
+The time was Monday around midnight, on the eighth of October, in the
+year 1900. The place was the Quilters’ big cattle ranch, Q 2 Ranch, in
+Quilter County, eastern Oregon.”
+
+“Perhaps,” suggested Miss MacDonald, with a last clutch at her dinner
+engagement, “if you have it all written in the notebook, you might
+leave it, with the letters?”
+
+Dr. Elm squeezed the book shut and sunk it into his pocket. “You
+couldn’t,” he explained, “make heads or tails of that. Let me see.
+Where was I?
+
+“Oh, yes. On Monday night, October the eighth, the Quilter family went
+to bed early, as usual. Irene Quilter, the young bride of Christopher
+Quilter (Chris was Richard’s—Dick’s—cousin) couldn’t sleep, so she got
+up about ten o’clock, put on her slippers and her wrapper, took a
+candle and went downstairs to the sitting room. She lighted the
+hanging lamp down there, and poked up the fire, and read until a
+little after eleven o’clock. Then she went back upstairs. When she
+tried to go into her room and Chris’s, she found that the door was
+locked.
+
+“Now Irene, like most people who haven’t much pride, was awfully
+precious with what she did have. She was too proud to knock. Also, it
+made her mad all over to think Chris had locked her out. She turned
+around and sneaked straight downstairs again, and fixed herself a bed,
+with Indian blankets, on the sofa in the sitting room.
+
+“I judge that the more she thought about it the madder she got. You
+see, she and Chris had had a little tiff before he went to sleep. She
+decided that Chris would be ashamed of himself pretty soon—as he would
+have been, sure enough, if he’d played such a mean trick on his
+wife—and come downstairs to find her and to try to make it up. So what
+does she do but bolt the door to the back stairway—it came down into
+the sitting room—and go into the front hall and bolt the door to the
+front stairway. (It comes out in the letters how the Quilters were
+never much for locking doors. But they had to have bolts on these
+stairway doors so that they wouldn’t blow open and bang in the winter,
+when they tried to keep the upstairs shut off.) Locking Chris
+out—showing him two could play at that lock-out game, as she put
+it—made Irene feel enough better so that she cozied right up in her
+sofa bed to cry, but, by mistake, she dropped off to sleep. The next
+thing she knew she heard a revolver shot upstairs. It sounded,
+everybody said, like a cannon in the quiet of the place.
+
+“She jumped up, lighted her candle, got into her wrapper and slippers,
+and ran upstairs. When she reached the upper hall, she must have
+thought everybody had gone crazy, for they were all pounding on their
+doors, on the inside, and shaking them, and shouting. They were, like
+I told you a while ago, all locked in their rooms. She ran down the
+hall toward Chris’s and her room. When she came to Dick’s room she saw
+that the door was open and a lamp was lighted in there, so she ran in.
+She found Dick in bed, shot though the left chest.
+
+“She ran to him. The window was wide open. That wasn’t the custom in
+those days—three inches down from the top—and she said he turned his
+eyes toward the open window and muttered something that sounded like
+‘Got away.’ At first Irene was sure he had said ‘Got away.’ Later,
+when folks quizzed her, she admitted that he might have said, ‘Go
+away.’ But his next words, she declared up and down, were, ‘Red mask.’
+
+“She kind of lifted him up—worst thing in the world to do, of course,
+but Irene was an awfully stupid woman—and then he said the names of
+his three children: ‘Neal, Judith, Lucy.’ It was then, Irene said,
+when she was stooping over him, that she got blood on the front of her
+wrapper and on her sleeve.
+
+“She thought he wanted the children brought to him; but she didn’t
+like to leave him, and she didn’t know what to do. She had it firmly
+fixed in her mind, in spite of what he had tried to say when he
+glanced toward the window, that he had shot himself; so she never
+thought of asking him even one question. She wouldn’t. Well, anyway,
+she finally started to go for Neal and Lucy—Judith wasn’t at home—and
+he spoke out again and said, ‘Wait, Father.’ He meant his own father,
+Thaddeus Quilter.
+
+“Irene went back to Dick and he said, clearer this time, putting all
+his strength into it, ‘Bring Father. I must tell him.’ He repeated,
+‘Must tell Father,’ and that was the end.
+
+“Sometime, during all of this, it had dawned on her what the trouble
+in the hall was. I mean, that the family were all locked in their
+rooms. Right there on Dick’s bedside table, under his lamp, she saw a
+scatter of keys. She put them in her wrapper pocket and ran out and
+unlocked the doors. All the locks upstairs were the same; otherwise
+Irene never would have got the keys sorted out and the doors unlocked,
+I guess. Lucy’s door was opposite Dick’s, so Irene unlocked it first.
+Neal was in Lucy’s room. They ran across the hall—Irene had said,
+‘Your father,’ to them—but it was too late. Dick was dead when Lucy
+reached him. That’s the story, as briefly as I can tell it.”
+
+“He lived and was conscious for some few minutes after he was shot.
+How about the position of the bed? Would there have been any
+possibility that he could have thrown the revolver from him, through
+the open window?”
+
+“Look. The bed was ten or twelve feet from the window. The gun would
+have had to land on the porch roof, just beneath the window. The snow
+on the roof was unbroken. There was nothing on it, or in it, except
+the rope. The only other gun in the room was on the top shelf of a
+closet, the length of the room, at least twenty feet, from the bed. It
+was found fully loaded. Now about the rope——”
+
+“Forgive me, Dr. Elm. You got your details from the letters, didn’t
+you?”
+
+“Yes. Of course I’d heard a lot of talk at the time. I got to Q 2 as
+fast as I could after they sent me word. I got there early Wednesday
+morning. But I’d forgotten some, and most of the details I never had
+any too straight, anyway. I was too busy looking after the family to
+take the interest I should have, maybe. Anyhow, what I really thought,
+in spite of heck and high water, was that some dirty cur had got into
+the house and killed the boy and got out again—some way or other. It
+was what I wanted to believe, so I’ve kept at believing it until—here
+recently.”
+
+“These letters, nothing else, have forced you to change your mind?”
+
+“That’s about the size of it, I guess.”
+
+“The letters, that is, which recount all the findings of the murder,
+and which were written by the person who has since confessed to it?”
+
+“Yes. Neal wrote them, thank the Lord. If he hadn’t written these
+letters when he was eighteen, it might be a lot harder for us now when
+he is forty-six.”
+
+“I see. Now, then, if you will, tell me about the people who were in
+the house at the time. Then, when I begin to read the letters, I can
+recognize the members of the family, and the others, in their proper
+relationships.”
+
+
+  III
+
+Dr. Elm said: “Miss MacDonald, I’ve never won any fame for driving a
+hard bargain, and I don’t care about starting to this late in life.
+You’ve agreed to read the letters; nothing else. If you say the word,
+I’ll begin right here with descriptions of the family. But, look; you
+mentioned relationships. There’s another relationship that is mighty
+important. I mean the relationship of the Quilter family, for the past
+two hundred and some years, to their environment. You can’t snatch a
+parcel of folks away from their backgrounds and then account for the
+way the folks act. People live in a pattern. Whether the pattern is
+entirely of their own formation, or whether it isn’t, hasn’t much of
+anything to do with it. The pattern is there—just as sure as it is
+here in this pretty rug of yours. And, to see folks honestly, you have
+to see them with relation to their pattern. This is so true that, if
+you haven’t their right pattern, you’ll give them another. That’s why
+I quarrel with the Behaviourists.
+
+“Now as soon as you begin to read Lucy’s letters you’ll begin to
+wonder. They don’t sound like the letters of a little back-country
+ranch girl. And Neal’s don’t sound like the letters of a country
+bumpkin, nor yet of a buckaroo in eastern Oregon in 1900. From start
+to finish of these letters, you’ll be bothered finding the original
+Quilter pattern. I can give it to you in five minutes, if you’ll let
+me. Will you?”
+
+“But,” began Miss MacDonald, and amended a quick, “of course.” She
+refused herself a glance at her wrist watch and repeated, by way of
+improvement, “But of course.”
+
+“Well, then, in 1624 James the First made a big land grant in Virginia
+to Sir Christopher Quilter—tenth great grandfather, the children call
+him. You know your American history well enough to know that the fact
+that Sir Christopher and his wife Delidah stayed right there and
+succeeded in laying the foundations for a great family estate means
+something. I could spend all afternoon telling you Quilter history,
+but I won’t. Right from then on it is a history of decent, striving,
+successful men and women, with heroes scattered thick as fleas on a
+dog’s back. One of the Quilters was a warm personal friend of
+Washington’s—so on.
+
+“In 1848 the original grant, or most of it, was still owned by a
+Christopher Quilter. He had three sons: Christopher, Thaddeus, and
+Phineas. When Christopher and Thaddeus had come of age, the old man
+had given them free leases on plantations of their own—slaves and all.
+These two lads had been educated at Oxford. That gave them a chance,
+maybe, to get a perspective on the question of slavery.
+
+“Christopher, the eldest son, was thirty years old in 1848. Thaddeus,
+the second son, was twenty-eight years old. Phineas, the youngest, was
+fifteen. He was in England. Well, the two older boys put their heads
+together and decided to leave the South. They hated slavery, like most
+decent men did. Also, they hated the sectional differences; and being
+as smart as some and smarter than most, both of them saw pretty well
+what was going to happen in the nation, sooner or later.
+
+“They talked it over with their father, of course, and he agreed with
+them, right down to the ground. He was less of an abolitionist, maybe,
+than his sons were. But he thought that the South would secede and get
+away with it—and he hated the idea worse than poison. He’d have come
+with the boys to the Oregon territory, I think, but for the question
+of the slaves on the plantation.
+
+“Maybe you’ve heard about fine, grand abolitionists in the South who
+freed their slaves and went North? Yes. Look, maybe you’ve heard, too,
+about people who moved and left their cats, free as air, to starve.
+Decent Southerners, in those days, didn’t free their slaves and walk
+off. No more than a decent father, nowadays, frees his children and
+walks off.
+
+“No, siree. Great-grandfather Quilter sold the two plantations that
+his sons had been managing, and gave them the money he got for them.
+Christopher and Thaddeus took the money, and their wives, and came out
+to Oregon in 1848. Great-grandfather stayed in Virginia, and took care
+of the slaves until he died, during the last year of the Civil War.
+
+“Sure, Christopher and Thaddeus came as wealthy men. But I don’t need
+to tell you that they gave up lives of luxury and ease for the
+hardships of pioneering. They had two reasons. I don’t know which
+loomed larger to them. One was to get clear shed of the wickedness of
+slavery. The second was to found another family estate in a safe land.
+Phineas and Thaddeus both fought on the side of the North during the
+war. When the war was over, they came home to the Q 2 Ranch. And there
+they’ve lived and raised their families; and there their children and
+their children’s children are living up to now, 1928. Pretty
+decent-looking pattern? Nearly as I can judge it’s made of material
+that hasn’t any wrong side to it, nor any seams. That is, until this
+cussed murder business ripped through it in 1900.
+
+“Christopher, the eldest brother, and his wife had both died by that
+time, and Thaddeus Quilter was the head of the family. He was eighty
+years old in 1900. Eighty years of the finest, cleanest, most
+holy-honest living that a man ever put through. He was the father of
+the murdered boy, Richard Quilter. He was the father of the lady
+called Aunt Gracia in the letters. And he was the grandfather of
+Richard’s three children: Neal, Judith, and Lucy. Their grandmother,
+Thaddeus Quilter’s wife, had been dead a good many years.
+
+“Taking them in the order of their ages, Phineas Quilter, the youngest
+of the three brothers, you know, comes next. He was sixty-seven years
+old in 1900, and he was a great old boy. He’d spent a good part of his
+time hunting for gold mines in Oregon and Nevada; he never fared very
+far, but he fared often. It was his diversion. He was a
+happy-go-lucky, but good—good as his gold all the way through. He was
+a cut-up, strong for practical jokes—all like that. A little gay and
+fizzy in his youth, maybe; but he came out fine and mellow in his old
+age. His wife called him Pan when she was in a real good humour. He
+liked it. That gives a slant, maybe. But don’t forget that, like
+Thaddeus Quilter, he was a fine, honourable old gentleman. Phineas
+loved Dick like he would have loved his own son, if he’d had one.
+
+“Olympe, Phineas’s wife, comes next in order of age. She was all
+right, a real nice lady. Phineas met her when he went South, after the
+war, to try to settle up the estate. She was what they used to call a
+reigning beauty. She was studying elocution, and hoping to be a great
+actress. So Phineas met her, and married her a few weeks later, and
+brought her out to Oregon to live on a cattle ranch—de luxe, but a
+frontier ranch, just the same. Nowadays the marriage might have wound
+up in a divorce court, in spite of the fact that they loved each other
+a lot, right up to the end. Anyway, Olympe did what women in those
+days generally did do, she stayed married, and made the best of it. I
+can sort of imagine her thinking it over, those first months on the
+ranch, looking far across the sage and the bunch grass to the hills,
+and saying to herself something like this: ‘I wished to be a famous
+actress. I could have been, too, if I hadn’t fallen for this young
+Lochinvar-came-out-of-the-West stuff. Well, I did. Here I am, stranded
+on an eastern Oregon cattle ranch. By Jolly, I’ll be a great actress
+anyway.’ And then she went to it.
+
+“From that day on she used the Q 2 Ranch for her stage, and acted on
+it, with the family and their friends for her lifelong audience. Now
+here’s the catch in it. This acting business made her seem like more
+or less of a fool. Yet the whole family loved her and respected her.
+Folks will give love free, sometimes, but they won’t give respect
+free. Olympe had to earn that. Bless my soul to glory, if I know how
+she earned it—but she did. She was selfish. She didn’t know much about
+gratitude. She was vain. She slipped up on a lot of the virtues. And
+yet, I respected her, and I respect her memory. I used to puff all up
+with pride when she’d deign to be nice to me.
+
+“That covers the oldsters. Did you get them? Thaddeus Quilter, father
+of the murdered man; Phineas Quilter and his wife Olympe, uncle and
+aunt of the murdered man?”
+
+“Yes. I have them straight.”
+
+“Dick himself would be next of age. Do you want to hear about him?”
+
+“By all means; yes.”
+
+“Well, he took after his father, Thaddeus Quilter. Dick was more of a
+plodder, not quite so brilliant nor quite so interesting as the old
+gentleman, maybe, but not dull; not by a long shot. Bone-good, Dick
+was—a fine, honourable, hard-working lad. He married young, and he
+loved his wife enough to make her happy. It busted Dick all up when
+she died. But he didn’t brood. He took what energy he might have put
+into grieving and used it toward being a darn fine father to the three
+children she’d left him. Dick worshipped his own father—but all the
+Quilters did that. I’m bound to say that it was Dick, more than the
+old gentleman, who pulled the Q 2 Ranch through the lean years and
+kept it from going under. Dick loved Q 2 like a mother. He had to
+mortgage, but he never sold an acre of it. Not even when young
+Christopher, Dick’s cousin, was spending a small fortune off it,
+gallivanting around back East and in Europe.
+
+“Gracia Quilter comes next—Dick’s sister, the old gentleman’s one
+daughter. She was a healthy, sweet-hearted, normal girl until she got
+kind of soured because of a mighty unfortunate love affair. Right
+after that, by cracky, she embarrassed the family a lot by up and
+joining a new-fangled religious sect that called themselves
+Siloamites. You never hear anything at all about them any more, but
+they were pretty strong in Oregon and Idaho and around there for a
+while. They were all right, a fine class of people. I never knew
+better folks, anywhere, than the general run of them. A couple of
+handsome young missionaries came along and caught Gracia on the
+rebound from this love affair. She was emotional, and something of a
+mystic—she took after her mamma in that. So she up and joins the
+church, and gets baptized and everything. Never did her nor anybody
+else a mite of harm that I could see. One of the Siloamite tenets was
+never to thrust their religion on other folks. But the Quilter family,
+including even the old gentleman, felt pretty sorry about the whole
+thing.”
+
+“Did her religion amount to fanaticism? Did it in any way seem to
+affect her mind?”
+
+“No, not a bit of it. Not a bit of it. I’m mentioning it because it
+seems to me to be the one rift in the Quilters’ lute. The one thing
+that any Quilter ever did that all the other Quilters didn’t root for.
+You know, like Chesterton’s neighbours, sitting on the fence and
+shouting ‘Hooray!’ Something about Chesterton always reminded me a
+little of Phineas. Great old boys, both of them—though Phineas
+certainly kept his figure better.
+
+“Well, that brings us to Christopher. He was the elder Christopher’s
+son. Makes him a nephew of Thaddeus Quilter’s, and a cousin of Dick’s.
+Chris was the real showy member of the family. Handsome, as ladies
+used to say, as a Greek god. He took more after his Uncle Phineas than
+he did after his father. Though instead of dreaming he’d find a gold
+mine, Chris dreamed he could write plays. I don’t know, yet, why he
+couldn’t. He’d had a fine education, here and abroad, and he was real
+smart. But he couldn’t; and he wasted a pile of the family’s money
+trying to. Chris was selfish, and too easily influenced. Still, you’d
+go far before you’d find a better lad than Chris was. He is a fine
+man, too; and, as I always say, he’s getting better all the time.
+
+“Just like his Uncle Phineas, though, he went and married an Eastern
+girl who didn’t have a mite of talent for an isolated ranch. Her name,
+Irene, didn’t live up to its Greek meaning. I can’t say that I ever
+liked Irene much; still, there was always something amiable about my
+dislike for her. She was one of these irritatingly helpmate-ish sort
+of women. Never knew a stupid woman to marry a real smart man and not
+try to run him.”
+
+“You think, then, that Irene—Mrs. Christopher Quilter—was a stupid
+woman? And, also, an egotistical woman?”
+
+“Was and is. Look. She, as they say nowadays, goes in for it. She’s
+sort of deliberately arch—if you know what I mean. One of the
+poor-little-me type. But she has more to show than I have—a couple of
+fine sons and a sweet little daughter, so I don’t know why I should be
+running her down. She’s been a true wife to Chris.
+
+“Judy, Mrs. Judith Quilter Whitefield, Dick’s eldest daughter, comes
+next. She was in Colorado at the time, taking care of her invalid
+husband. Married only a year——”
+
+“Perhaps, Dr. Elm, to avoid confusion, if we could keep to the people
+who were at the ranch on the night of the murder?”
+
+“That’s right. But here I went and told you all about Phineas, and he
+wasn’t at the ranch the night Dick was murdered, either.”
+
+“It doesn’t matter. Now, the others?”
+
+“Neal Quilter was next of age. Dick’s son. The one who wrote the
+letters to Judy. The one on whose account we need to get this thing
+straightened out. He took after his father and grandfather. Bone-good.
+Smart as a whip. Never had any real schooling to amount to anything.
+His grandfather and his Aunt Gracia taught him. The kid was reading
+Latin better than I could when he was ten years old. When he was
+eighteen he passed the entrance examinations for Oregon Agricultural
+College and was graduated from it just two years later, with all the
+honours. He was keen about writing, always scribbling things at odd
+minutes. But he couldn’t serve two masters, and Q 2 was his passion.
+His grandfather was his idol; but he loved his father better than most
+boys do. Chris’s sons think a pile of Chris, but it isn’t like the way
+Neal thought of Dick.
+
+“Lucy Quilter, the little girl who wrote the letters, comes next. She
+was twelve years old at the time, small and dainty, and pretty as a
+peach—is yet. At twelve she was the bud of what she’s bloomed into
+since. I guess, from what you said, I don’t need to tell you what she
+is now.”
+
+“Scarcely. It must be marvellous to know her as you do.”
+
+“That’s what I think, when I’m away from her. Soon as I get with her I
+forget that she’s a famous lady, and start trying to boss her about
+her babies, or to advise her about taking care of her health better,
+or something of the kind. She’s as simple as common sense—and as rare.
+Let me see—Neal, Lucy. Yes, that finishes off the list.”
+
+“No servants? No visitors?”
+
+“From 1893 to 1900 were the seven lean years on the Q 2 Ranch. They
+had a Chinese house boy, Dong Lee. But, aside from him, Gracia and
+Judy—until she went away—with Lucy’s help were doing all the inside
+work. Dick and Neal were doing most of the outside work. They had to
+have help, of course; but they got the neighbouring men to come in
+when they needed them. So many of the ranches went under in ’93 and
+’94 that help was easy enough to get that way, in those days. But Dong
+Lee wasn’t there the night Dick was killed. He’d been having trouble
+with his teeth—Dong Lee, that is—and he’d gone to Portland to see a
+dentist.
+
+“Now as to visitors. Gracia had had a couple of her church friends,
+missionaries, there on the place for ten days. There was one room
+built in the attic, and the boys had occupied it. But they’d left the
+day before. Nice, clean lads, both of them. I always thought it was a
+lucky thing for them that they were well out of it.”
+
+“You are certain that they both had left?”
+
+“Look. Dick was killed on Monday night, around midnight. Late Monday
+afternoon the two lads were in my office in Portland, a matter of two
+hundred miles distant (remember we didn’t have automobiles in those
+days), delivering a message from Dick to me. He wanted a prescription
+refilled and sent to him.”
+
+“Was he ill at the time?”
+
+“Yes. Dick had been having a lot of trouble with his stomach.”
+
+“Had it made him unpleasant, difficult to live with?”
+
+“It had not. Quieted him down a mite. I think that is an
+over-exploited theory, about pain making folks mean. If they’re
+naturally mean, it gives them an excuse for indulging. In my
+experience, I’ve found that real suffering is anyway as apt to make a
+saint as a sinner. But that’s beside the point, I guess.”
+
+“No, I think not. But about these visitors. I suppose you are certain
+that the two men who came to your office, with the message, were the
+same two men who had been visiting at the farm?”
+
+“At the ranch? Yes, dead certain. I’d known the lads before. I knew
+them afterward. Not a shadow of doubt about it.”
+
+“I see. Now, then, Dr. Elm, the situation you have presented to me
+amounts to this:
+
+“First, you give me stately, unassailable traditions. That is,
+traditions based on proven performances of integrity, stability,
+courage, reaching through two hundred years. Then you give me the
+Quilter family of 1900, true to these traditions—wise, honourable,
+cultured people, with strong family loyalty and affection. A dearly
+loved member of this family is found murdered in his room at night.
+That a member of the Quilter family, which you have presented to me,
+could be guilty of such a crime seems to be entirely without the
+bounds of reason.
+
+“But there was newly fallen snow that night. No one could have gone
+away from the house without leaving footprints in the snow. You
+declare that there were no footprints. Someone might have hidden in
+the house, and remained there until escape was possible. One of your
+first insistences was that, because of the reliability of the people
+who searched the house, no one could have been hiding there. Also, the
+house was so carefully guarded that an escape, after the first hour,
+would have been impossible.
+
+“Do you see it? You have precluded all possibility that the murder was
+committed by a member of the Quilter family. You have precluded all
+possibility that the murder was committed by anyone who was not a
+member of the Quilter family. And you state that it happened
+twenty-eight years ago.
+
+“Wait. You are a reasonable, sensible man. Why didn’t you tell me, at
+first, that you didn’t expect, nor entirely desire, me to arrive at
+the truth? That you wanted a sound-seeming theory, which could be
+evolved from the letters, and which might, by fixing on some guilty
+stranger, cure your friend of his delusion? I may be able to do that
+for you. If I can do it, harmlessly, I will. I know, as you know, that
+I can’t do better than that.”
+
+“I hate to hear you talk that way, my girl. Quitting before you’ve
+begun. I sized you up as having more spunk than that. One thing I
+admired the most about you was your spunk and——”
+
+“Temper your admiration, Dr. Elm. You aren’t in your consulting room
+just now, you know.”
+
+“I don’t think that’s very nice of you, Miss MacDonald, trying to
+abash an old, white-haired man like me.”
+
+“I only wish that I thought I had, or could. Your methods shame
+Machiavelli. I’m in terror of you. You’ve bullied me into reading your
+letters. You’ve bullied me into promising a harmless lie. If the
+harmless lie seems inadequate, you’ll doubtless bully me into a
+pernicious one, and the penitentiary.”
+
+Dr. Elm said, “Bless your heart,” stood, put his overcoat across his
+arm, bowed; and, though his two hundred and fifty pounds would seem to
+necessitate a definite solidity of carriage, Lynn MacDonald was left
+with the impression that some gentle breeze had wafted him delicately
+away.
+
+She smiled, the rueful smile of grudging admiration confronting the
+confusion of charm and guile. She looked at her watch. It was too late
+to go home and dress and keep her dinner engagement; it was too early
+for anything else. An hour’s reading should take her far through the
+letters. Then home, and dinner, and the restful evening she had been
+needing for so long. First, the list of people, again:
+
+  1. Richard Quilter:     the murdered man.
+  2. Thaddeus Quilter:    Richard’s father.
+  3. Phineas Quilter:     Richard’s uncle.
+  4. Olympe Quilter:      Richard’s aunt. Phineas’s wife.
+  5. Gracia Quilter:      Richard’s sister.
+  6. Christopher Quilter: Richard’s cousin.
+  7. Irene Quilter:       Christopher Quilter’s wife.
+  8. Neal Quilter:        Richard’s son.
+  9. Lucy Quilter:        Richard’s daughter.
+
+Dr. Elm had told her that Phineas Quilter was not at the Q 2 Ranch on
+the night of the murder. She put a check beside his name, and reached
+for the smaller packet of letters.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+  I
+
+                                March 12, 1900.
+
+Dearest, dear Judy-pudy: Uncle Phineas’s dictum, “Never begin a letter
+or end a love affair with an apology,” has been a hindrance to me in
+the starting of this letter. Perhaps if I state that Dong Lee has had
+another toothache, and that Christopher sent us a telegram that came
+two days after you and Greg left, and that said he had been married
+the week before and would arrive at Q 2 on Saturday, March ninth, with
+his wife, you may understand why I have not had time to write to you.
+
+All the preparations were exciting and much fun. Grandfather himself
+helped me shine the best silver on Friday afternoon. Dong Lee had been
+compelled to lie down with a bag of hot salt on his face. Aunt Gracia
+made new curtains for Chris’s room, and Olympe put her best cloisonné
+rose jar on the lowboy. The one drawback was that something so
+pleasant going to happen made us miss you and Greg more tensely. We
+couldn’t say, once, as we had said the day of the hailstorm and rain
+after you left, “Thank goodness, Judy and Greg aren’t here.”
+
+Father and Uncle Phineas met Chris and Irene at the train with the
+carriage. Neal had worked hard getting it mended and washed and
+polished; but, of course, there had been no time to paint it. Bread
+and Butter were not as dashing as I wished they might be. Though Neal
+had curried them carefully, they somehow did seem to betray the fact
+they were generally used for ploughing. I hoped that Irene might not
+notice it. I fear that she did.
+
+Irene is pretty. Her hair is yellow. Her cheeks are pink, and her eyes
+are turquoise blue. But, though it is hard to explain, her prettiness
+seems inexpensive: like the things we don’t buy in the shops because,
+though attractive, we feel sure they won’t be durable. I should add
+that this is not very noticeable except when she is close to Aunt
+Gracia, and that, even then, Irene’s clothes do much to counteract the
+impression.
+
+Her clothes are very beautiful, and she rustles in them as if she were
+walking knee-deep in autumn leaves. Her trains make Aunt Gracia’s and
+Olympe’s seem like something they just happened to be dragging about
+behind them. On just one hat she has eight plumes, and she said the
+shortest one was sixteen inches long.
+
+She was very enthusiastic over all of us, and the place, on Saturday
+evening. She has a way of expressing appreciation by saying “oo,” with
+rising and falling inflections. Sometimes it sounds as if she were
+running a scale. She showed all sorts of deference to Grandfather by
+constantly calling him “sir,” and acting humble. I am sure that
+Grandfather disliked it.
+
+Olympe came downstairs rather late, as she usually does when we have
+company. She looked beautiful in her old white lace ball gown and with
+her “Prince of Wales” magenta plumes in her gray hair. Irene seemed
+much astonished at Olympe; but then, you know, strangers often do.
+Olympe was at her best. She lifted her lovely chin (not once all
+evening did she forget and droop her chin) and told Irene how great
+artists had painted her portraits. It seems that a great artist once
+wished to paint Irene’s picture, too. It is interesting, I think, to
+have two beauties in the family at one time. It is a pity that Irene
+uses so much White Rose perfume that, whenever Olympe stays close to
+her, Olympe begins to sneeze with hay fever as she usually does only
+in August. But, excluding that, and a few other things, I think the
+general exchanged impressions on Saturday evening were all at least
+moderately favourable. Irene made me happy by saying that I looked
+like a Reginald Birch child. I was glad to be able to repay her at
+once, and honestly, by saying that she looked like a Penrhyn Stanlaws
+lady. But it was not original. She said that so she had often been
+told.
+
+On Sunday morning, when Father, Chris, and I were showing her about
+the ranch she said, “But, Booful!” (She calls Chris “Booful” in
+public. I thought, for some time, that she would spell it “Boofel,” or
+“Boofle,” and that it was a joke with perhaps interesting origins. I
+have since discovered that she means “Beautiful.” I should think Chris
+would abhor it.) “But, Booful!” she said, “I didn’t know that your
+funny farm was a truck farm.”
+
+Yes, Judy dear, I quote exactly. I was extremely glad that Grandfather
+had not come with us to be wounded.
+
+Darling Father, as usual, met the situation superbly. He explained to
+her that, during the hard times, it had seemed wise to him to put in
+enough garden to supply the family table, with perhaps a bit over, for
+occasional trading at the stores, until the worst pressure was past.
+He told her, of course, we still had cattle and horses, and that, now,
+the South African War was raising the cattle prices, so that the
+stockmen would soon come into their own again. He added that after
+this he would always have a family garden, however, and a large one.
+
+She said, “It is a large family, isn’t it?” She has a syrup-sweet
+voice; but, someway, the things she says with it often seem to ruin
+its timbre.
+
+When I told Aunt Gracia what Irene had said about the family, she
+asked me why I repeated it. She said, “We are a large family, aren’t
+we, honey-baby?”
+
+“Aunt Gracia,” I said, “we are. But we are not a large patch of loco
+weed that has got a start in the best bunch grass.”
+
+Father came in, just then, and when he found I was writing to you he
+asked me to convey this message. Your last letter, he said, has
+distressed him. You must spare no expense when it is a question of
+comfort for Greg. Quilters, he thought, had not yet reached the place
+where they found it necessary to practise economy on their invalids.
+He sends you and Greg his dearest love. He will write you, at length,
+in a few days.
+
+Just overnight, almost, economy has stopped here. Chris insisted on
+having all the stoves right out and the fireplaces reopened. They eat
+up wood. He says that before next winter we must have the old furnace
+repaired. Probably, before next winter he will understand better. He
+and Irene brought us all presents from the East. I have no enthusiasm,
+as yet, for describing them. Perhaps, when you receive yours, my
+difficulty will be clear to you. I think that Olympe is going to send
+you the ice-wool fascinator they brought to her. It is beautiful, but
+Olympe will never wear lavender. It was an experience and a lesson to
+watch Grandfather being grateful for _Richard Carvel_ when he had so
+desired a Miss Tarbell’s new Life of Lincoln.
+
+I must run now and help Aunt Gracia with supper. Dear Judy and Greg, I
+love you so much that when I stand on tiptoes I can touch it in the
+stars.—Lucy.
+
+
+  II
+
+                                March 19, 1900.
+
+My dear, sweet Sister Judy: This morning I found out an amazing thing.
+Did you know that Q 2 Ranch belonged entirely to Christopher? Neal
+says that he had known it, but that it was so unimportant he had
+forgotten it. I had never thought about who owned it. If I had, I
+should have supposed that we all did. But to-day I happened to hear
+Irene say to Chris, “But, Booful, the farm belongs entirely to you.”
+She seemed to be wishing him to do something, I don’t know what, about
+the ranch.
+
+I went at once to Grandfather. I suppose that no one could question
+the assertion that Grandfather has one of the most beautiful
+characters that ever was in the world. No matter what great man I read
+about from Da Vinci to McKinley, I always decide that Grandfather is
+superior to him. Sometimes I wonder whether any of us are grateful
+enough for the opportunity of having Grandfather for an ancestor.
+
+To-day, though I interrupted him when he was deep in his new
+translation of Schiller, he treated me with kingly courtesy. That is
+not an exact description. Grandfather, I think, is much more of a
+gentleman than are most kings.
+
+“Grandfather,” I said, respecting his liking for directness in all
+things, “does Q 2 Ranch belong to Cousin Christopher?”
+
+“It does,” he replied. And then, I suppose, he read my feeling in my
+face, for he asked, quickly, “But, my darling, need that trouble you?”
+
+I told him that if it did not trouble him it would not trouble me; but
+that I should like to understand about it.
+
+He placed a chair for me. He explained that, since Cousin Christopher
+had been Uncle Christopher’s eldest son, naturally he would inherit
+the estate. He said that when he and Uncle Christopher, and, later,
+Uncle Phineas, had founded this second family estate they had agreed
+that divisions were unwise. So, though both Grandfather and Uncle
+Phineas had put their fortunes into the ranch, they had desired it to
+be inherited, though not entailed, as the estates in England are. He
+explained to me why that is the wisest way. I am sure you know about
+that; so I shan’t bother you with a repetition. Grandfather also said
+that, of course, mine and thine never had, and never could, mean
+anything to the Quilter family.
+
+We have often heard that. I suppose we have always believed it. At any
+rate, I stopped questioning Grandfather and went and looked up the
+word “bounty” in the dictionary. It meant what I had thought. So, when
+Aunt Gracia and I were ironing, I asked her why if _meum_ and _teum_
+really meant nothing to a Quilter, it could be true that we had been
+living on Christopher’s bounty all these years.
+
+She seemed shocked, but controlledly so, and said what a very funny
+baby I was, and where had I managed to pick up so mad an idea.
+
+I told her Irene had said to Chris that, after all, the “farm”
+belonged to him, and that all these people had been living on his
+bounty for years and years.
+
+Aunt Gracia said that, of course, I had to do what seemed best to me;
+but that she was sorry my ideas of rectitude, and of being
+Grandfather’s granddaughter, seemed to allow me to eavesdrop. She
+finished ironing one of Irene’s beautiful corset covers, trimmed with
+yards of lace ruffling, before she said another word. I ironed plain
+pillow shams in silent humiliation. Oddly, the next thing she said
+was, “What did Christopher say?”
+
+“He called her a delightful little imbecile,” I said, “and that ended
+the conversation.”
+
+“Necessarily, one would think,” Aunt Gracia smiled. But I explained
+that they stopped conversing in order to begin kissing. They kiss
+constantly. Uncle Phineas says that is entirely good form for
+honeymoons. Perhaps he is joking. It seems strange. You and Greg
+didn’t. At least, not lavishly and in public.
+
+Olympe came into the kitchen to see whether her second-best taffeta
+petticoat had split from being laundered. (It had.)
+
+Aunt Gracia said, “Olympe, dear, why do some women like to be called
+imbeciles?”
+
+“Because they are,” Olympe answered. “It is an acid test. However, if
+that young person doesn’t stop calling me Aunt Olympe, I shall find
+something to call her that won’t please her.”
+
+We have told Irene that Olympe objects to the “Aunt,” but Irene says
+she can’t remember. I think Olympe and Irene do not love each other,
+as yet. I believe I haven’t told you of an odd mannerism of Irene’s.
+She talks all the time—incessantly is the exact word. It is
+particularly hard for Olympe. Since all the rest of the family are so
+busy—Chris has pitched right in and is helping Father and Neal with
+the ranch work—it leaves only Olympe for Irene to talk to. We could
+say now, though we do not, how fortunate it is that Greg is not here.
+Olympe does not have to sit quietly in a chair. She can walk away. She
+often does.
+
+Your letter telling of Greg’s improvement brought us all bright joy. I
+love you so much that if it were planted as a clover seed it would
+grow as a meadow.—Lucy.
+
+
+  III
+
+                                March 26, 1900.
+
+Dearest, dearest Judith: You asked me in your letter that came last
+Monday to write to you more about Grandfather. Grandfather, of late,
+has spent more time than usual in his room, and has been more subdued.
+There seemed to be not much to write about him. So, after I had read
+your letter, I decided to have a talk with him in order to gather
+material for my next letter to you.
+
+Olympe—this is not changing the subject—has developed deafness. As you
+know, she has been very slightly deaf for some time; but, of late, she
+pretends to be totally deaf. I say pretends, because she is deaf only
+when she is with Irene. My problem was: is that wise of Olympe, or is
+it wrong?
+
+For several months I have felt that it would be beneficial for me to
+discuss the question of right and wrong, again, with Grandfather. Last
+year, when I wished to discuss it, he gave me a rule of conduct, you
+know, “Search for beauty,” and said we would better postpone the other
+for a while.
+
+Yesterday, then, after a quick ride with Neal over the south range
+(Neal was so adorable. He let me ride Tuesday’s Child for the first
+time, and took Thursday’s Child for himself), to pink my cheeks as
+Grandfather likes to see them, I went and rapped on his door.
+
+I suppose a man would have to be as great as Grandfather is to be able
+to make other, quite unimportant, people feel almost great themselves
+when they enter his presence.
+
+I gave my problem to him. He laughed very heartily and then said that,
+according to Hume, whom he had been reading when I came in, Olympe was
+justified. Hume, he told me, was an Eighteenth Century historian and
+philosopher—a better philosopher than historian—who held that utility
+was the chief element of all virtue.
+
+“You see,” he explained, “according to this gentleman, Olympe’s act,
+since it is so useful, could not be wrong.”
+
+Disappointingly, with that he changed the subject and began to talk
+about loyalty. It was all interesting, as related by Grandfather; but,
+since it was mostly the same history of the Quilter family, and their
+courage and loyalty since the time of Cromwell, you would not care to
+have me repeat it here. Grandfather, of course, knew that I had heard
+it many times before, and explained that he was using it to make his
+point—since Irene was now a Quilter we owed loyalty to her.
+
+“Then,” I questioned, “if you didn’t laugh, you’d really think it was
+wrong of Olympe to pretend to be deaf?”
+
+Again Grandfather disappointed me by saying that I was a bit young to
+penetrate Hume.
+
+I picked up my notebook and started to go away. Grandfather asked me
+what I had there. I told him I had brought my notebook to write in it
+what he would tell me about right and wrong. He asked me what I had
+written. I had not written anything. He was troubled. I hurried to
+explain that it did not matter. He was still troubled. I suggested
+that it might be wise for me to ask Aunt Gracia about right and wrong.
+She has them both so neatly.
+
+Grandfather said, “Heaven forbid.” And, again, he said that I was too
+young to be delving into moral issues. He said, perhaps, I would allow
+him to write a few simple rules of conduct in my notebook for me to
+use until I was older. He took my book and wrote:
+
+“Darling little Lucy Quilter. Be proud. Be loyal. Be gay. Be generous
+rather than just.”
+
+After I left Grandfather’s room I met Uncle Phineas and Irene in the
+hall. She had been talking to him. She went away. I said to Uncle
+Phineas, because Irene had looked so pink and blue and gold, “How
+lovely she is!”
+
+He pulled my top curl and made up a face at me.
+
+“I mean,” I explained, feeling that lovely had been a little
+extravagant—you know, one would call Aunt Gracia lovely, “how pretty,
+how delicate.”
+
+“Yes,” Uncle Phineas said, “pretty and delicate as a somersault.”
+Uncle Phineas does not like Irene at all.
+
+I told him then, since I thought he should know, what Grandfather had
+been telling me about our owing Irene our loyalty. How family loyalty
+was one of our strongest traditions. Uncle Phineas said: “Thad goes
+about brandishing Quilter loyalty like a club.” You may imagine what a
+terrible humour Uncle Phineas must have been in to criticize
+Grandfather.
+
+Later that evening, when I was showing Neal my new rules of conduct,
+Uncle Phineas came up. Neal showed them to him, after asking my
+permission, which it seemed rude to withhold.
+
+Uncle Phineas said he would give me one more. He took my notebook, and
+wrote, scrawlingly, right under Grandfather’s beautiful, patient
+lettering: “Be wise. Use Wisdom’s Robertine.” That, as you may not
+know, is a cosmetic which comes in dark blue glass bottles. Irene has
+one, and she gave one to Olympe. I thought it generous of her. Neal
+says that Irene will never miss one bottle.
+
+It is difficult to explain, but here of late, hatefulness seems to
+have got hold of all of us. I should say, all of us except
+Grandfather, who is too perfect, and Father, who is too busy. Darling
+Father, not busy, wouldn’t be hateful, either, I am sure. But the
+thought of work as a producer of virtue has given me an idea for a
+story. I have put it in my notebook, and shall write it when I am
+grown up. It is to be about two men; one who has all the virtues, and
+one who has none of them, but who is egotistic and avaricious. He has
+to work so hard to satisfy his vanity and his avarice, and he has to
+do such good things to get the glory and admiration he wants, that he
+leads as virtuous a life as does the good man. When they both die,
+they are regarded with equal respect by their neighbours. _Two Roads_
+would be the title for it.
+
+As I finished writing that last paragraph, Neal came in. I told him
+that I had come to the end of my letter, but that I was trying to
+think of some extra special way to express my love for you and Greg. I
+asked him how he liked, “I love you so much that, just from what
+spills over, I love the whole world.” He evaded, and teased, and said
+he did not want to be loved from leakage, and so on. But, finally,
+though he was very sweet, he reminded me of Grandfather’s rule about
+simplicity, and he said that it seemed to him that love, more than
+anything else, should be simply expressed. I suppose he is right. So,
+I love you. I love Greg.—Lucy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+  I
+
+                                April 12, 1900.
+
+Dearest, dearest Judy-pudy: “Begin at the beginning,” like many other
+rules, seems very simple. It is not. How is one to know where the
+beginning is?
+
+I have decided that, probably, the beginning of this very long letter,
+which I am planning to write to you this afternoon and evening, should
+be that Irene does not like Q 2 Ranch. She does not wish to live here,
+or to have Christopher live here.
+
+When they came last month, they came only for a visit. But when Chris
+found that we had been sending him all the ready money we could get,
+and had been forced to practise rigid economy, he refused to take
+Irene back to New York. Father agrees with Chris that he and Irene
+should stay here for the present.
+
+Chris says certainly, that nothing else is to be considered. He says
+if he had had the least notion of how things were with us here at
+home, he would have come home two years ago when he returned from the
+Continent. He said that, of course, by staying in New York and
+attempting to get his play produced, he felt that he was doing his
+share. Because, if _Gold_ had been successful, we never would have had
+another money worry again. He says effort must weigh, as well as
+accomplishment.
+
+Irene said that Booful had worked very hard and lived most frugally in
+New York. Chris said that he had not lived half as frugally as he
+would have had he known that his living was literally coming out of
+our pantry and off our backs.
+
+Irene and Father both said “Nonsense” to that, but they said it
+differently. Just the same, Judy, in spite of Father’s “Nonsense,” can
+you ever remember a time when about all the ready money we had did not
+have to be sent off to Cousin Christopher?
+
+Chris said that he had had his chance, and that you had not had yours
+(he meant about your not going to a university), but that now we must
+all pull together to see that Neal and I had ours.
+
+Father agreed with him. He rather overagreed with him. He said that
+Chris had had a bit more than his chance, he thought. That he had two
+degrees, and two years of European travel. He said that Chris was a
+sophomore at Princeton when he was Neal’s age.
+
+Neal began to say, as he always says, that he did not care for a
+classical education; that all he needed was a few years at a good
+agricultural college. Father spoke almost abruptly to him. Neal walked
+right away out of the room.
+
+When Neal was gone, that left Grandfather, Father, Chris, Irene, and
+me in the sitting room. I was reading in the window nook. I think that
+the others did not know I was there. I was not eavesdropping because,
+if any of them had turned around and looked at me, I was plainly there
+to be seen.
+
+Irene said that if an agricultural college was all Neal cared about,
+why couldn’t he be sent to the Oregon one, which she had heard was
+fairly possible.
+
+Darling Father has been having that stomach trouble again. You know
+how quiet and patient it makes him. He just sat there, white, and did
+not answer Irene at all.
+
+Grandfather told her that, just now, even the state agricultural
+college was a bit more than we could manage.
+
+Irene said, “Couldn’t you mortgage some more of Chris’s land?”
+
+Grandfather explained to her that the ranch was over-mortgaged now. He
+went on and told her about how bad ranching conditions had been, and
+how in 1895 cows were selling for from five to seven dollars, and
+calves for two, and horses about the same. He told how it had been
+necessary to disperse most of the herds because we could not afford to
+keep them. And then he told how timber and teams had kept us going.
+And how, after that, the mortgages had been necessary to buy new
+herds, and to pay debts contracted when we couldn’t even mortgage. He
+finished by telling her how, if we could devote the coming two or
+three years to keeping up our interest, and our herds, and so on, we
+were bound to win through with flying colours.
+
+I don’t know why that should have made Irene angry. It did. It made
+her so angry that her voice trembled as she asked Grandfather whether
+he actually meant that the place was so deeply in debt that no more
+money could be raised on it.
+
+Grandfather told her that he doubted whether another hundred dollars
+could be borrowed on the place. He said that now it need not be
+borrowed. He said she had spoken of raising money. We were now, he
+told her, engaged in raising money—cattle and horses.
+
+She has a queer way, I think I may have mentioned it before, of
+seeming to hear only a part, the first part of whatever one says to
+her. She has another odd mannerism. She interrupts. She interrupted
+Grandfather then, and said that, in other words, the place was
+worthless.
+
+Grandfather said to Christopher, “Sir, can you explain to me how your
+wife happens to be labouring under such a misconception?”
+
+Usually, when anybody asks Christopher a question, Irene answers it.
+“I know,” she said, “that when a farm of this size is mortgaged up to
+the hilt, so that not even a hundred dollars can be raised on it, that
+it is a failure. I don’t believe in throwing good money after bad. It
+seems to me that the only thing to do is to sell the place, if
+possible, and invest the money more wisely.”
+
+Judy, did you ever consider how much worse things words can say than
+people can ever do? I think that must be because actions can be met
+with actions, but some words have no words for answers.
+
+For quite a long time no one said anything. I felt my heart drop into
+my stomach, and then—I actually could feel this—my stomach closed
+around it somewhat as a sea anemone closes—and stuck to it. It was
+painful.
+
+“Uncle Thaddeus, Dick,” Christopher managed to say, “Irene doesn’t
+understand.”
+
+Grandfather stood up. He looked majestic. “That, Christopher,” he
+said, “is, I think, your fault and not your wife’s. You should have
+explained to her that men do not sell their inheritance. That it is
+not theirs to sell.”
+
+Grandfather and Father went out of the room together.
+
+Christopher said to Irene, “Uncle Thaddeus is right, sweetheart. It is
+my fault. I should have explained——”
+
+“Explain!” she burst out. “If there is anything in the world that you
+haven’t explained to me concerning Quilter precedents and traditions,
+I hope I may never have to hear it. You go about, every one of you,
+buttered with precedent, greased with traditions. Like the pig at the
+circus. One tries to get hold of you, and traditions slip you through
+one’s hands. What I need to have explained now is why a farm,
+admittedly worthless, should be kept as a home for the aged and
+infirm. We could better afford to put them all into institutions for
+indigent old age. As for the younger generation, your cousins are
+strong and capable—let them earn their livings elsewhere. Why should
+we keep them with our lives? Them, and their children, and——”
+
+I made a dreadful sound. It was like the first part of an enormous
+hiccup. It was drawing my breath in after smothering for so long.
+
+Christopher turned and saw me. He was glad, I think, to have me there
+to vent his wrath upon. He lowered his voice and became aggressively
+polite—you know the way Quilter men do when they are angry. He begged
+my pardon for intruding on my privacy, and so on; and, at last, he
+said that he was bound to ask for my promise that I would not repeat a
+syllable of what I had, surely inadvertently, overheard.
+
+Irene said bother promising anything. She said I might run and tell
+every word she’d said, for all she cared. She said she wished I would,
+and save her the trouble; because, if I didn’t, she meant to.
+
+Christopher, looking exactly like the man in the Gibson picture,
+“Hearts Are Trumps,” said, “No, I think not, Irene.”
+
+“I have already,” she declared, like a dare. “Long ago, I spoke to
+your Uncle Phineas about the possibility of selling the farm. I’ve
+mentioned it, since, to your Aunt Olympe and your Cousin Gracia.”
+
+Perhaps if Irene knew it was like cracking us on our crazy bones every
+time she said “farm,” she might stop it. Perhaps she might not.
+
+“I am sorry to hear that, Irene,” Christopher said, very much in
+Grandfather’s manner. “Because such talk succeeds only in making my
+family dislike and distrust you, and accomplishes no other end
+whatever. Possibility of my selling Q 2 Ranch ranks, in the range of
+possibilities, exactly on a par with my selling one of the children,
+or committing a murder or a robbery—something of the sort.”
+
+“You are robbing,” Irene declared. “You are robbing us of our chance
+for happiness. Not murder, perhaps. But you are condemning yourself
+and your wife to a sort of everlasting suicide. You prefer that, I
+suppose, to——”
+
+“Infinitely,” Christopher interrupted (he got the habit from Irene, I
+think). “But that must be said for you alone, Irene. I love Q 2: I
+haven’t been as loyal to it as the others have been; but I love it,
+and them. If you would give me a chance, I could be very happy here.”
+
+“Pleasant,” Irene said, “and interesting to hear you, after we have
+been married seven weeks, talking about me alone. Dividing us. Leaving
+me alone, while you step to the other side with your precious family.”
+
+“If there is a division,” Christopher said—I am sure that they had
+both forgotten all about me—“you are making it.”
+
+“No,” she said. “Not yet. But understand this, Christopher, I will not
+plan a life here—not even with you.”
+
+At that moment Olympe came into the room. She has been wearing all her
+silk petticoats for everyday, since Irene came, so she rustles almost
+as crisply as Irene does. She was well into the room, she had come
+down the back stairway, before she noticed us near the fireplace. I
+was crying. Irene looked as if she were burning, and Christopher
+looked like her ashes—gray-white.
+
+Irene flamed out at Olympe: “I was telling Christopher that I will not
+stay here in this hole. That, if he plans to live the remainder of his
+life here, he will plan to live it without me.”
+
+Think, Judy, what a wonderful opportunity it would have been for
+Olympe’s “Quilter men” speech, the one she does like gray velvet, or
+even her “God help the Quilter wives” speech. But she remained stone
+deaf. She came to me, and put her arm around my shoulders, and said,
+“Come with Olympe, sweetheart,” and gave me one of her exquisite
+handkerchiefs and led me out of the room.
+
+We met Uncle Phineas and Aunt Gracia. Uncle Phineas, of course, began
+to hug and kiss me and quote the Queen: “Consider what o’clock it is!
+Consider anything, only don’t cry!” Aunt Gracia tried to get me away
+from Uncle Phineas to find out whether I’d been bumped or burned, and
+everyone was all excited and concerned as they always are when I cry.
+I wish they wouldn’t do that way. I wish I might indulge more often in
+the luxury of tears. It should be, I think, one of the recompenses for
+the length of time one has to be a child. Neal says they fuss so
+because I open my mouth so wide and make such a noise. I can’t help
+it. I believe no one can be heartbroken and fastidious at the same
+time.
+
+Olympe was very angry. She said a great deal. Among other things she
+said that Q 2 was no longer a fit place for a child, and that I had
+been forced to witness a disgusting scene, and that Irene was
+threatening to leave Christopher.
+
+Uncle Phineas said: “Hoop-la! That’s the best news I’ve heard since
+McKinley beat Bryan.”
+
+Olympe said, “Pan!”
+
+After supper Irene apologized to Grandfather before all of us. She
+said that she had not understood about Q 2, but that now Christopher
+had made things plain to her. Of course, she went on to say, she had
+never intended that the entire “farm” be sold. Her idea had been to
+sell small sections of it, here and there; just enough to supply us
+with what money we needed for the present.
+
+Uncle Phineas told the story about the man who loved his dog so much
+that, when he had to cut his tail off, he chopped it in small chunks,
+so as not to hurt the poor creature so much. Aunt Gracia suggested
+that we go into the back parlour and have some music.
+
+Uncle Phineas played and Irene sang some of the new coon songs she
+brought from the East. Then Irene and Christopher did a queer new
+dance that is called a “Cake-walk.” They say it is much more effective
+when there are several couples. Aunt Gracia sang for the rest of us.
+While she was singing Irene sat by me and talked.
+
+She told me about the new moving photography. She says every face is
+recognizable, and that every motion is made. I should love to see it;
+but, probably, they will never have it in Oregon. She told me, too,
+that she and Christopher had seen several of the new horseless
+carriages in New York. She says it is positively eerie to see them
+gliding along by themselves. No one here, except Grandfather, thinks
+that they will ever be more than a fad; but Grandfather predicts that,
+in time, they will at least share equal honours with the horse.
+
+I love you, dear, and I love Greg.—Lucy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+  I
+
+                                May 1, 1900.
+
+Dearest Judy: Neal says that when you say for me not to write anything
+about people unless I can write good things about them you are
+displaying the worst sort of Quilter sentimentality. Uncle Phineas
+says that your dictum would deplete the libraries. He says to tell you
+that, if you don’t know your Plato, you should know your Boswell and
+your Pepys. But Grandfather says that the whole secret of the art of
+letter writing lies in writing not what one wishes to chronicle, but
+what the recipient can find delight in reading. So, I shall try to
+write only good things about everyone in your letters. Just now that
+may be difficult. It can’t be helped. And, if you should change your
+mind, after having Neal’s and Uncle Phineas’s opinions, please let me
+know.
+
+You ask what has happened to my lessons. It was necessary to
+discontinue them for a while, after Chris and Irene came home. Aunt
+Gracia was too busy to hear them. But now I am having them every day
+with Chris. And, of course, my Latin twice a week with Grandfather,
+and my music and French with Olympe.
+
+Chris has time now for my lessons. He has stopped helping Father and
+Neal with the ranch work and has begun his writing again. He was no
+real help, anyway, to Father and Neal. And, when he writes, there is
+always a possibility that he may make a great deal of money and also
+achieve fame. He has begun a new play and has the cast of characters
+all made out. The leading man’s rôle is to be for Nat Goodwin.
+
+Irene is happier now that Christopher stays in the house all the time
+with her. We have tried to get her to ride with us, but she is afraid
+even of Wednesday’s Child. She says she would not be afraid to ride in
+a ladies’ phaëton, if we had one. She has sent to New York for some of
+her household things that she left there. When they come she is going
+to fix up her room and Chris’s so that it can be called a studio.
+
+Yesterday was Olympe’s sixty-first birthday. We had dinner in the
+evening and a celebration. Olympe sat in Grandfather’s chair at the
+head of the table, and remembered her chin, and was superb. Especially
+superb when everyone stood and drank her toast with the table claret
+we had left over from your wedding. Dong Lee baked a triumph of a
+cake, and we put one tall wax taper in its centre. (White wax tapers
+always remind me of Aunt Gracia.) I wish we might celebrate for Olympe
+several times each year. She is so transcendent when she is happy.
+Even Irene said, last night, that Olympe was not unlike Sarah
+Bernhardt. We missed you and Greg so much that not one of us mentioned
+either of you all evening.
+
+I fear that what you suggest about my sense of humour may be just. It
+has often troubled me. But Grandfather says humour is a faculty which
+develops late. He says one should not blame me for not having a fully
+developed sense of humour, unless one is willing to blame me for not
+having a fully developed stature. He says that my sense of humour is
+coming on nicely; that I have a sense of wit and a sense of the
+ludicrous, and that the more subtle sense will develop as I develop. I
+hope it is true. But I know that Grandfather is inclined to overrate
+my abilities. Irene says he greatly overrates them. She has a little
+girl friend, only fourteen years old, who is a reporter on one of the
+big New York daily papers. Grandfather said that he presumed the child
+was an orphan. Irene said no indeed she was not. Are orphans supposed
+to be brighter than other children?
+
+Dear sister, I send very much love to you and Greg.—Lucy.
+
+
+  II
+
+                                May 30, 1900.
+
+Dearest Judy dear: I am glad that you have given me some leeway about
+writing. Until your letter came, it seemed impossible for me to write
+at all.
+
+It is Uncle Phineas’s fault. He wishes to join the new gold rush to
+Nome, Alaska, and he is trying to get Chris to go with him. Uncle
+Phineas, while he doesn’t seem old, is edging close to seventy. Chris
+has had no training for hardships, and would not know a gold mine from
+a gopher hole. We could not raise money anywhere for them to go
+properly equipped. If we could, according to the warnings in the
+newspapers, the expedition would be, as Grandfather says, criminal
+folly. (Of course, all I have been writing about this is gleanings
+from the elders.) The _Oregonian_, a few days ago, had an account of
+the dreadful dangers and hardships that gold seekers are having to
+endure. But, in spite of everything, Uncle Phineas and Chris forge
+right ahead with their plans. It makes one think that Aunt Gracia is
+right about the childishness of men—though Grandfather and darling
+Father would have to be the exceptions that prove that rule.
+
+Olympe is wearing her dreariest gowns and is more tragic than I have
+ever seen her. She has added ever so many clauses to her Quilter men
+speech (none of them pleasant), and has revised the Quilter wives’
+speech until it is almost heartbreaking. But Irene has reformed. She
+offers quite often to dust the rooms. She reads Elbert Hubbard, and
+Neal says that she is conspicuously living, loving, laughing, and
+doing things worth while. That seems well enough to me. Neal says that
+it is wormy. Everything is wormy for Neal, lately. It is an unpleasant
+new word of his. Marriage, he says, is wormy. He has resolved never to
+marry. Even love, he says, is wormy. He says it does to men what
+barnacles do to ships. He says to look at what a fine, free-sailing
+craft Chris was, before Irene barnacled him all over with her messy
+love. Neal is growing cynical and pessimistic. Grandfather says it
+doesn’t matter; it is an unavoidable phase of male adolescence.
+
+Some of Irene’s household things have come. She has not unpacked them
+yet, as she doesn’t care to have the room called a studio if Chris
+goes to Nome. Possibly, then, she would like a _boudoir_. (She has
+been asking me how to spell French and Latin words for her, when she
+writes to her friends. I have told her for weeks. But, after thinking
+it over, I decided, one day, it would be kinder to tell her what
+Grandfather said about using foreign words in one’s letters. She
+cried, and told Chris that I had said she was vulgar. I had not. I
+apologized, though, to please her. I didn’t mind at all.) She has
+unpacked some of her linen, to put it in the blue closet so it won’t
+turn yellow. It is not as handsome as our best linen, but better than
+our third best and much more fancy. She has big initials embroidered
+on it. The initial is “B.” I asked her why, since I had thought her
+name had been Irene Guildersen.
+
+She was much astonished to discover that the others had not told me
+Christopher was her second husband. She seemed proud of it. She told
+me very admirable things about her first husband, who is still living.
+She divorced him.
+
+Later, when discussing the matter with members of the family, I found
+that all of them, except Aunt Gracia, approve of divorce and think
+there is nothing even odd about it if, they said, it was procured
+because of genuine provocation. These opinions of theirs make it hard
+for me to understand why none of them had told me about Irene’s
+divorce. Sometimes, though rarely, I agree with Neal, who is
+declaring, of late, that there is no accounting for Quilters.
+
+I love you dearly. I love Greg dearly, too.—Lucy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+  I
+
+                                June 9, 1900.
+
+Dearest Judy-pudy: Dr. Joe came out last Thursday to see Father and,
+as Neal says, to sit and worship at Grandfather’s feet. Neal himself
+worships Grandfather, you know. That is why it makes him angry for
+anyone else to do so. I made an epigram about it: “Gods are not
+jealous. It is people who are jealous of them.” Grandfather says it is
+creditable for a twelve-year-old.
+
+I love Dr. Joe. I think if he couldn’t dispense any medicine he would
+still be a splendid doctor. When he steps in, and smiles, everything
+always seems to improve. He told Uncle Phineas there was no
+possibility that, with his blood pressure, he could survive the
+hardships of Nome. So that worry is off our minds. Chris has decided
+to finish his play. He has it well in hand, and the cast of characters
+all written.
+
+On Saturday, Uncle Phineas started off on a prospecting trip by
+himself. It was a blow to us, because we had hoped that Uncle Phineas
+had given over prospecting with that last unfortunate trip of his in
+1897. But he was so offended about his blood pressure that he drew
+thirty dollars from the bank and went down into Malheur County. (Irene
+thinks it odd that the checking account at the bank is a joint one for
+all the elders. She said so.)
+
+Irene has stopped living, loving, laughing, and doing things worth
+while. She broke a Spode cup on Friday. Aunt Gracia cried. Irene said
+such a fuss over a cup, when Haviland was prettier, and one of the
+Portland department stores had advertised a sale of Haviland china
+cups and saucers for eight cents each only last week. She said for
+Aunt Gracia to dry her tears and she would send ninety-six cents and
+get a dozen. Doesn’t it seem strange that anyone, even Irene, should
+not comprehend real Spode? It must mean that her backgrounds are
+murky.
+
+Something of the sort would need to be the matter with a person who
+could do what Irene did yesterday. She asked Olympe to give her and
+Christopher the room that is Uncle Phineas’s and Olympe’s. Olympe was
+so amazed that she forgot to be deaf. Besides being amazed she was
+angry, and scornful, and amused, and several other feelings. She,
+herself, did not seem to have her emotions well sorted.
+
+Aunt Gracia asked Olympe what answer she had given to Irene.
+
+Olympe replied that she had told Irene it seemed to her that
+Grandfather’s room was, perhaps, even more attractive; and that, since
+Grandfather had had his longer, he was, doubtless, more tired of it
+than she and Pan were of their room. She suggested that Irene offer to
+exchange rooms with Grandfather.
+
+Aunt Gracia put down the chopping bowl and went running right out of
+the kitchen. When she came back she, too, was angry and laughing. She
+said she had caught Irene on her way to Grandfather’s room.
+
+Olympe shrugged, in that sophisticated foreign manner of hers, which
+Neal so derides, and asked why Aunt Gracia had stopped her. It was
+time, Olympe declared, that Grandfather was beginning to see that
+young person in her true colours.
+
+It is odd about words, isn’t it, dear? Now “young,” by itself, is a
+pleasant word; and “person,” though lacking in charm, is surely
+respectable and blameless. But by putting the two words together as
+Olympe does, they make an insult. Neal says so it is with people. He
+says, take a pleasant girl and a respectable and blameless man, and
+marry them and, likely as not, the result will be a joke, or an
+insult, or even a curse or a crime. But, as I have told you, Neal is
+developing into a regular Timon.
+
+Olympe asked how Aunt Gracia had managed to halt Irene. Aunt Gracia
+answered cryptically (this is the exact word because I have just
+looked it up in the dictionary), “Blackmail.”
+
+Olympe laughed one of those ruffling lacy laughs of hers and went
+away, because the kitchen was steamy and unpleasant. I do not know
+whether she understood what Aunt Gracia meant by blackmail. I
+understood. Aunt Gracia did not know that I understood.
+
+Irene, you, see, had told me all about it. Her first husband, whose
+name is Archie Biggil (isn’t that too bad?) was still madly,
+devotedly, ardently, tenderly in love with her. He is an importer, and
+had been in Brazil when she had married Chris. Now he has returned to
+New York. He has found out about Irene’s second marriage, and where
+she is living. He is writing her passionate letters. There is much
+more to it than that; but nothing, I think, that you would care to
+hear. Irene was worried for fear Chris would find out about her
+receiving the passionate letters. She told me because she had to tell
+someone. I don’t know why she told Aunt Gracia. I trust that Chris
+will not find out about the letters. I feel certain they would annoy
+him. He acts, lately, as if he were as much annoyed as a man could be
+and remain in health. I think he was disappointed about Nome and the
+gold mine.
+
+I love you and Greg very dearly.—Lucy.
+
+
+  II
+
+                                June 25, 1900.
+
+Dearest, dear Judy: I thought it very sweet of you to be sorry for
+Irene, and to have her remind you of Ruth, sick for home, standing in
+tears among the alien corn. Neal does not agree with me. He says
+misplaced sympathy is the trademark of the sentimentalist, and that
+anyone who could be sorry for Irene here, on Q 2 Ranch, would be sorry
+for the Black Hole of Calcutta because it had to have all those people
+packed into it. I am giving you Neal’s opinion, not because I think it
+is very smart, but because I fear it is true.
+
+I believe, if you really feel like being sorry for anyone in
+particular now, it would be wise to be sorry for Christopher because
+he is the only one here who deeply loves Irene. Not loving, and not
+being loved, does give one such a satisfactory removed feeling. You
+know, we were so miserable when we thought Whatof was killing the
+chickens; but when we found that it was a coyote and not Whatof,
+nearly all of the heavy, hurting feeling went away. I suppose, though,
+if we were to think that through, as Grandfather always advises, we
+should discover that it made no difference to the chickens, the real
+sufferers in the event, whether they were killed by a dog or a coyote.
+To carry out the analogy, we on the Q 2 Ranch, now, are in the
+positions of the chickens. Losing Q 2 would be a little worse than
+dying, don’t you think?
+
+Christopher has had an offer from one of the big land companies for
+the ranch. They buy the big ranches and divide them and sell them as
+small farms to the settlers who are coming in from Nebraska and
+Missouri and Utah. At first Christopher was indignant about the offer.
+It was an insultingly small sum, he declared. But, in a day or two, he
+was saying that suppose he did sell a part of Q 2, leaving the direct
+home place and forty or fifty acres surrounding it——Darling Father
+said that if Christopher would show him how to make a living for
+eleven people from forty acres of land, particularly the forty
+surrounding the house, he would not have another word to say.
+
+Christopher said if he and Irene left the place they would never take
+another penny from it, but would go on their own from that time on.
+
+Neal, who was present, asked, “Own what, Chris?”
+
+Irene answered, “Not our own property.”
+
+Aunt Gracia said, the other evening, “Christopher, do you ever stop to
+think that right up to now you have never wanted anything, education,
+travel, leisure, that Q 2 hasn’t given you?”
+
+Christopher said: “I’m not forgetting, don’t worry, Gracia. Though
+that is over, now. I’ll never take another dollar from the place that
+I don’t earn right here.” (He is working hard on his new play. He has
+it well in hand, and the cast of characters all written. The principal
+part is to be for Mr. Sothern.) “What is troubling me now is Irene’s
+health.”
+
+“Not Dick’s health?” Aunt Gracia asked.
+
+“Dick’s health, too, and of course,” Christopher said. “But I am not
+responsible for Dick. I can’t do anything about his health.”
+
+“Can’t you?” Aunt Gracia inquired.
+
+“Meaning, my dear?” Chris answered.
+
+“That Dick is ill. That he is doing the work of six men. That you
+could stop worrying him, and insist that your wife stop it.” Aunt
+Gracia, talking like that, gives you an idea of the conditions here.
+
+Irene mopes around all the time and says she does not feel well. She
+doesn’t look well, either. But she eats—well, at least heartily and
+often—and she will never go outside the house, not even in this new
+June weather. Dr. Joe says that he is damned if he knows what is the
+matter with her. Christopher said, “Sir, do you mean to suggest that
+my wife is malingering?”
+
+“No,” Dr. Joe said. “Do you?”
+
+I must run now and help Aunt Gracia. I love you both, Greg and you,
+dear, very dearly.—Lucy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+  I
+
+                                July 6, 1900.
+
+Dear, dear Sister Judy: Last night I had a terrible nightmare. I
+screamed and woke. I found unhappiness sitting like a giant on my
+chest. I began to cry. Neal came in, wrapped in his dressing gown. You
+know how Neal seems to lose command of himself when I cry, so almost
+at once I had to stop. I hoped he might go back to bed again. He would
+not. He insisted on sitting on the foot of my bed until we could, as
+he said, discover together what troubled me until I woke crying in the
+night. Finally, after quite a talk, we found that it was, probably,
+fear. Fear, you know, of our losing Q 2.
+
+Speaking of fear usually makes Neal impatient. Last night he said—he
+is often sarcastic of late, but Grandfather told me, privately, that
+was but another manifestation of his age—of course crying was the best
+thing to do in the face of fear or danger. He said when Teddy charged
+up San Juan Hill he got afraid they were going to lose the battle,
+about midway up the hill, and put his head down and wept salt tears
+into his horse’s mane. He said that was the way to win battles—to sit
+and cry, as Olympe did, and make plans for the poorhouse.
+
+I told Neal that, if we called it a battle, Irene must be the foe, and
+that she cried most of the time—always when either Christopher or
+Father was present.
+
+Neal said tears were her weapons, not ours, he hoped.
+
+I explained that I was not using tears for weapons. I was using them
+for lamentations over having to leave Q 2.
+
+Neal said, who was going to leave? He wasn’t. If worst came to worst,
+he would stay in Q 2 as a stableboy for some Swede farmer. He said he
+would stay just as he would stay in America and be an American if some
+foreign power, even Spain, should conquer us. He said, too, that just
+as there was nothing he wouldn’t do, including the shedding of blood,
+to save his country from foreign usurpation, so there was nothing he
+would not do to save Q 2 for the Quilters. (For one thing, I think, it
+was the Fourth of July only day before yesterday.)
+
+What we must do, Neal said, was what Uncle Phineas had tried to do
+with the Nome scheme: separate Irene and Christopher. He thinks
+Christopher would stop thinking about selling Q 2 if he were removed
+from what Neal calls the venom of Irene’s proximity.
+
+I thought separating them would be wrong, since they loved each other.
+Neal said it was not love. It was infatuation. He called me an idiot.
+I did not like it, so perhaps I am not one.
+
+I told Neal that it was difficult for me to understand how so much
+trouble could be caused about nothing but money. Money is real. It can
+be handled and earned, and lost. People have it, to save or to spend.
+I have always fancied that real trouble had to be about vague things,
+such as love, or hate; or about unobtainable things, like health for
+darling Father and Greg, or a baby for Uncle Phineas and Olympe; or
+unpreventable things, like war and death.
+
+Father just came in. Aunt Gracia needs me, so I must end this letter.
+Father looks very tired most of the time lately. He told Neal the
+other day that he could not work and fight both, and that he had to
+work. He said for you not to worry about Bryan’s nomination. That he
+would have been elected in 1896, if he had ever been going to be. He
+sends you and Greg his dearest love, and a check, and says there is
+plenty more of both where these came from.
+
+I hope what I have written about money won’t worry you, dear. Aunt
+Gracia said the other day that what we send to you and Greg to live on
+would not be pin money for Chris, let alone Chris and Irene.
+
+I love you, Judy. I love dear Greg. I love you both together.—Lucy.
+
+
+  II
+
+                                July 31, 1900.
+
+Dearest dear Judy-pudy: Olympe says that she wrote to you several days
+ago and told you about darling Father’s narrow escape from death. All
+of me goes empty, even yet, when I think of it. Fancy the wagon’s
+tongue breaking when Father was driving Bell and Zebub over Quilter
+Mountain! Grandfather had advised against the team, but Father was in
+a hurry and Bread and Butter are so slow.
+
+If Indian Charles, from 3 O X, had not happened to be right there,
+Father would certainly have been killed. Aunt Gracia thinks that God
+put Indian Charles at that particular curve to stop the horses,
+though, as Grandfather says, that bears thinking through. It does seem
+that the simpler way would have been to have had Neal notice the
+tongue when he was overhauling the wagon. Darling Father would be
+angry if he knew I had written that. He says overhauling the wagon was
+his job and not Neal’s, and that Neal is in no way responsible for the
+accident. Poor Neal keeps declaring that the tongue was in good shape
+a week ago, and everyone is being so exaggeratedly nice to him that I
+scarcely see how he can endure it. Even Dong Lee baked Neal’s special
+tart for supper that evening.
+
+Father makes light of the whole affair, though he strained the
+ligaments in his wrist and has to wear his arm in a sling. About all
+that Father is, is thankful. Irene and Christopher were going with him
+and, at the last moment, decided against it. If three people had been
+on the seat, Father thinks none of them could have stayed there. Aunt
+Gracia attributes Christopher’s and Irene’s decision to God, too.
+Isn’t it strange how trying to see the hand of Providence in things
+does confuse them? I have been thinking a great deal, lately, about
+God. I wrote a poem about Him. It is the accident, I think. Until
+Uncle Phineas came home, the accident had a most sobering, almost
+religious effect on all of us.
+
+This is odd. When you and Greg went away, it seemed as if the
+happiness we had had because of having you with us never had equalled,
+nor made up for, the unhappiness we had to endure because you were
+gone. But, when Uncle Phineas came home on Wednesday, it seemed as if
+the unhappiness of having him away had been nothing compared to the
+fun of having him home again. Uncle Phineas, I believe, is one of
+those people whom his family appreciate more after they have been
+without him for rather a long time.
+
+He is in splendid high spirits. Perhaps he has found another gold
+mine. No one, I think, has remembered to ask him. While he was away,
+Olympe kept longing for his return in order that he and she might make
+their plans together for the poorhouse. But she has been so happy
+since he came that she has forgotten all about the poorhouse. She is
+wearing her gayer frocks, and giving only her lighter, more whimsical
+speeches.
+
+Since the accident, I haven’t heard either Irene or Chris mention
+selling the place. Chris is working hard on his new play. Mr. Joseph
+Jefferson is to have the leading rôle. Also, Chris has done another
+sonnet to Irene. He did it yesterday during our lesson time. It is
+fortunate that Irene has so many splendid rhymes: green, serene,
+sheen, queen, been (as Grandfather pronounces it), clean, and dozens
+of others. Greg would have a hard time rhyming you into a sonnet. But
+Greg would never think of writing a sonnet to you. Aren’t you glad?
+Not, of course, that I disapprove of authors, since I am planning to
+be one. But I am going to be a writer, rather than an author. When I
+told Chris that, and that I was going to cover pages and pages with
+real written words, and then stack them up and sell them, he said:
+“Precisely. You are going to be a hardy perennial author.” And then he
+gave me quite a lecture about ambitions and bandbox zeniths. But
+Grandfather said, not at all. That he had yet to associate real genius
+with the ability for being enterprisingly unproductive.
+
+It is past bedtime. I love you both very dearly, and I send my love to
+you both in this letter.—Lucy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+  I
+
+                                August 1, 1900.
+
+Dearest Judy dear: Father and Uncle Phineas and Chris have all gone to
+Portland for a few days. They left here last Thursday. I think that
+they will return to-morrow. Father had to see Dr. Joe. I don’t know
+why the others went, unless it was, perhaps, for the trip.
+
+Christopher was no sooner out of sight than Irene began to move
+Father’s belongings out of his room, preparing to unpack her boxes and
+to instal herself and Christopher in Father’s room. She said she
+positively had not asked Father to exchange rooms with her. She said
+he had offered to do so, because he had heard that she wanted a cupola
+room in order to fix the cupola up as an Oriental cozy corner.
+
+Olympe asked her why she had not made the exchange while Christopher
+had been at home. Irene said because she wished to surprise him. (It
+is only by remembering Grandfather’s sixth rule, under “B,” that I am
+restraining myself from underlining almost every word in this letter,
+and clubbing it all up with ! ! !)
+
+Aunt Gracia and Olympe tried to reason with Irene. She kept right
+along dumping things out of Father’s room and tugging her things in. I
+ran and told Grandfather. He would not budge. Grandfather, of late,
+budges less and less. The only thing he has said about the entire
+affair he said this morning when Irene took him into the room to show
+it to him. He said: “My word! My wordless word!”
+
+Neal declares that he and I should try to be broad-minded and
+receptive toward the new. He says that forward steps should be made in
+house furnishings as well as in other things. He says that perhaps the
+ultra-moderns are right in attempting to get away from the austerity
+of the early colonial furnishings. He says that perhaps we do need
+more colour, more daintiness, more luxury, and more invitations to
+relaxation.
+
+Aunt Gracia says that if Neal and I find daintiness in that room, her
+imagination pales before our conception of a really honest, cleanly
+junk heap. She said that a fishnet stuck full of trash was not merely
+inartistic, it was also a wall-wide inducement to dirt. She said she
+could get all the colour she needed from the Turkey carpets in the
+front and back parlours that Great-great-grandfather had bought in the
+Orient, or from the pulled rugs that Great-grandmother and her
+sister-in-law had made. She said the Oriental cozy corner was not an
+invitation to relaxation. She said it was an invitation to
+assassination.
+
+Poor, lovely Aunt Gracia has grown bitter of late. For one thing, I
+think that her blackmailing, as she called it, has turned into a
+boomerang. Irene told me about it. That is, Irene said that if Chris
+knew she didn’t have to stay here, that Archie was pleading with her
+to return to him, and that he would send her the money for the trip at
+any time, she thought that Chris would act very differently.
+
+I asked Irene why, then, if she wished Chris to act differently, she
+did not tell him about Archie? She said that she was tempted to, every
+minute of the day; but that Gracia advised so strongly against it she
+was afraid to. She said that Gracia had known Chris longer than she,
+Irene, had known him; and that Gracia was afraid such a disclosure
+might result in tragedy.
+
+I asked Irene what sort of tragedy. Irene did not know. So I went and
+asked Aunt Gracia.
+
+I could not get any satisfaction from her because she was indignant
+with Irene for having told me about Archie Biggil and his passionate
+letter, and the rest. Aunt Gracia is sweet but odd. She does not
+understand that I know all there is to know about at least the
+theories of love and passion from having read widely about them in
+books.
+
+She said that unless I would promise her never again to listen to
+Irene when she talked on subjects of the sort, she would take the
+matter up with Grandfather. I told her I would not promise, because it
+was unreasonable for her to ask me to. Not, you understand, Judy dear,
+that I liked listening to the sort of thing Irene was always telling
+me. Dr. Joe did not like to cut up cadavers when he was in medical
+college, either. It was a part of his education that he had to endure.
+So I thought that, since live men did actually say to live women: “My
+God! The haunting beauty of your white body never leaves me day or
+night!” I should, as a prospective writer, know it. That is what I
+told Aunt Gracia.
+
+She put her arm around me and said let us go and talk to Grandfather.
+We did so. Aunt Gracia and I were both astonished to find that he knew
+all about Archie Biggil. Irene had told him, he said, because she was
+troubled and needed to confide in someone.
+
+Grandfather said that I had been quite right in refusing to promise
+not to listen to Irene; that is, if I wished to be a writer of the
+Laura Jean Libby or Marie Corelli school. He had thought, he said,
+that I cared more for Dickens, Thackeray, and Scott; but, evidently,
+he had been labouring under a misconception.
+
+I had a feeling that Grandfather was what Chris calls “spoofing” me;
+but I could not be sure. Perhaps I was mistaken. At any rate, quite
+soon, we got it straightened out tidily.
+
+An author, Grandfather says, must go about collecting material
+constantly. But, despite that, an author must use a definite
+discrimination about the sort of material he chooses to collect.
+Grandfather says that no person can gather all the sorts, because it
+is a physiological fact that one’s brain has room for only a certain
+amount. It was necessary, he said, to decide quite early on one’s
+standards, and then collect in line with them, to the exclusion of
+other material, in order that one’s mind should not become hopelessly
+cluttered.
+
+I feel that Grandfather should have given me this information long
+ago. I am thankful to have obtained it now before it is entirely too
+late.
+
+It took us some time, you see, to get to the explanation of the
+tragedy that Aunt Gracia feared.
+
+Grandfather said to her that he, like Lucy, was not quite clear on
+this point. He could not, he said, visualize Christopher running about
+menacing fatuous ex-husbands.
+
+Aunt Gracia replied that it seemed to her the real tragedy impending
+was for Christopher to discover Irene.
+
+Grandfather smiled that heavenly smile of his that usually means a
+pearl. “He won’t, dearest. Set your mind at rest. He won’t. That, in
+itself, constitutes the tragedy—or the triumph—of marriage.”
+
+I think that I do not fully understand this. But, since I am sure it
+is a pearl, I am quoting it for you. You are married. You may
+understand it. At any rate, no matter what it means, exactly, it must
+mean that no tragedy, like _Hamlet_, with everyone lying about dead,
+is apt to happen.
+
+Judy dear, I love you. Will you tell Greg that I love him, too?—Lucy.
+
+
+  II
+
+                                August 28, 1900.
+
+Dear, dear Judy-pudy: It was good of you to take so long to explain to
+me what Grandfather meant about the tragedy, or the triumph, of
+marriage. I think it rather bold of you to say that Grandfather, who
+is eighty years old, is wrong about it. You are only twenty-two years
+old. But it does not matter. I am no longer interested in marriage. I
+have decided, with Neal, never to marry.
+
+Though, of late, I dislike to be on Neal’s side about anything. Some
+great change, terrible, grewsome, seems to have occurred within him.
+(I know that is a poor sentence, and that it is of a literary flavour
+which I despise. But I have tried several drafts on scratch paper and
+it seems to be the best I can do.) Or, to put it simply as Grandfather
+always advises: If Neal had been a dog for the past few months we
+should have been afraid he would bite us. Now he acts as if he had
+bitten us and were glad of it.
+
+I do not know what has caused this change in Neal, but I know who has.
+The person is Uncle Phineas. When Uncle Phineas came home from his
+prospecting trip last month, he came home with a secret. He told Neal
+the secret. I am sure of this. They got off alone together and
+whispered about the secret.
+
+When I said this to Neal he was angry. He said to have a person like
+me in it was a scourge to any family. He did not mean that, I am sure.
+But he was very polite, and talked in a low voice, even when he called
+names, such as “rubberneck” and threatened. After the many years of
+deep study that I have devoted to character, I hope I have at least
+discovered that no one gets as angry over anything as Neal got unless
+it is the truth. If I had been making a childishly simple mistake,
+Neal would have teased me and laughed at me.
+
+Neal said that it was crumby—everything is crumby with Neal, just now,
+but that is an improvement over wormy—for me to think that Uncle
+Phineas would share a secret with him and with no other member of the
+family. It isn’t—crumby, I mean—because, if it were rather a naughty
+or mischievous secret, as it probably would be since Uncle Phineas had
+it for his, Neal would be more in sympathy with it than would any
+other member of the family. Not, of course, that either Neal or Uncle
+Phineas would do any wrong thing, but—well, you understand what I
+mean. For instance, Uncle Phineas, I believe, is the only member of
+the family who would join Neal in his plan to separate Irene and
+Christopher. Of course I have no proof that Uncle Phineas has not
+shared his secret with some other member of the family. All I know
+about that is, if he has shared it with someone else it has not
+affected the someone as it has affected Neal.
+
+Father has changed a bit since he returned from Portland, but, if
+possible, for the better. I think that is because Chris has stopped
+worrying him. Did I tell you that Christopher went to Portland to try
+to raise some money? He couldn’t. He has come home again and is
+working hard on his new play.
+
+Uncle Phineas has remained in Portland. Even though he is not running
+up hotel bills, but is visiting Dr. Joe, it does seem strange for him
+to remain in the city for so long. Olympe is furious about it. She
+does fury beautifully—not at all in an ordinary fashion, but with
+dignity and hauteur. She manages it so nicely, I think, because she
+blames Irene and not Uncle Phineas. She pretends that no person in his
+senses would stay on the same ranch with Irene if he could stay
+elsewhere. I should think that she might blame Chris because he is
+responsible for Irene. She does not. She pities him. That is worse
+than blaming, of course. Though poor Chris does seem to deserve to be
+pitied.
+
+Judy, dear, he was stunned when he discovered that Irene had exchanged
+rooms with Father. He came downstairs alone, looking faded and like a
+poor photograph of himself.
+
+“Dick, old boy,” he said to Father, “I’m tremendously sorry about this
+fracas upstairs. It isn’t that Irene is selfish. She’s the most
+generous little thing in the world, really. She doesn’t understand——”
+
+Father said of course she didn’t, and neither did he. He said there
+was no tradition that he was aware of which would keep the various
+members of the family from making an exchange of rooms, when the
+exchange was advantageous.
+
+It may be advantageous for Irene. For all the rest of us it is an
+irritation. A dozen times a day, beginning with the morning towels and
+ending with the evening lamps, some one of us makes a mistake about
+the rooms. We stand and knock at the door of the room that is now
+Father’s thinking that Irene or Christopher may be in it. And, since
+we know that Father is never in his room in the daytime, we open that
+door and walk right in, intruding on Irene and Christopher in a most
+humiliating fashion.
+
+Father himself forgets. He came from his bath, the other evening—he
+was very tired—and opened the door to his old room and walked right
+in. He came so quietly, in his slippers, that Irene had not heard him.
+She was in the room alone and she was frightened. (She said it was
+partly because she had never seen Father in his dressing gown before.)
+She screamed and screamed and screamed. She cried, and had what she
+calls a heart attack. Chris was frantic, and poor, darling Father was
+stunned from the shock of having caused a lady such distress.
+
+During the heart attack, Irene said that any decent house would have
+keys to the doors. Wednesday, Aunt Gracia went to the attic and found
+the keys for the doors, and shined them up with Sapolio and put them
+in the keyholes. None of us use them, except Irene. Neal is very smart
+about them. He says they open a new era on the Q 2 Ranch. He has made
+up a song, to the tune of “Bringing in the Sheaves,” which he calls
+“Turning Quilter Keys,” and which he sings about, objectionably.
+
+I send my love to you, dear, and to Greg.—Lucy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+  I
+
+                                September 10, 1900.
+
+Judith dearest: Christopher, I think, is going to sell Q 2 Ranch. It
+seems odd and perhaps not right that a private disaster like this
+should completely overshadow, for us, the terrible disaster in
+Galveston day before yesterday. But it has. I think that Christopher
+gave us credit for more altruism, and so told us yesterday when we
+were all so troubled over the Galveston sufferers. I think that he
+thought our own trouble would diminish by comparison. It has not.
+
+When all the mortgages are paid, Christopher will have about $9,000
+left over. If he and Irene take half, that will leave $4,500 for
+Grandfather, Father, Olympe, Uncle Phineas, Aunt Gracia, you, Greg,
+Neal, and me.
+
+Christopher says that we can buy a pleasant Willamette Valley farm for
+less than half of that, and start free and clear. That will be much
+better, he says, since this place is too large for Father and Neal to
+handle, especially since Father’s health is so uncertain.
+
+Indeed, Christopher declares, Father’s health is one of his chief
+reasons for selling. He thinks it is not fair to expect Father to
+carry on this struggle under a load of debt. Aside from the sentiment
+attached to the place, Christopher says, a smaller place, clear of
+debt, would be better for everyone. However, he says he will not act
+hastily, nor counter to our wishes in the matter. The offer is open
+for sixty days.
+
+No one says anything. No one will say anything. I mean, not anything
+at all. I mean, not one single word. Not, “Yes, Christopher,” or, “No,
+Christopher.” I believe that Uncle Phineas might talk, if he were
+here. Uncle Phineas is lost.
+
+Neal and I are the only ones who know this. After Christopher broke
+the news to us yesterday morning, Neal and I rode to Quilterville. We
+sent a telegram to Uncle Phineas, in care of Dr. Joe. Neal had to tell
+me what he was going to do because he had to borrow my pocket money,
+to put with his money, to send the telegram. We stayed in Quilterville
+several hours waiting for the reply. When it came it was from Dr. Joe.
+It said: “Phineas not here. Mum’s the word. No occasion for worry. He
+is O. K. Joe.”
+
+We had no money to answer that telegram. Neal says he thinks that
+Uncle Phineas has gone on another prospecting trip. It is odd, because
+Olympe got a letter from him this morning, written in Portland and
+mailed from there. I picked up the envelope and looked to see the
+postmark.
+
+Neal thinks that Uncle Phineas wrote several letters, and left them
+for Dr. Joe to mail in regular order. It would not be unlike Uncle
+Phineas. The fact that Olympe had sent him her garnet set to be
+cleaned, and that he did not mention it in this letter, might seem to
+prove Neal right. Olympe has written, now, to have him sell the set
+instead.
+
+Aunt Gracia is going to sell Great-great-great-grandmother’s silver
+tea set. It is hers, you know. Olympe says the Turkey carpets belong
+to Uncle Phineas and have ever since he settled the estate in
+Virginia. She is going to have him sell them. The amount should keep
+you and Greg in comparative comfort for a long time, she thinks. Aunt
+Gracia is hoping for a teacher’s position. She is hunting out old
+books to bone up for the examinations. Neal plans to stay right here
+and work for his board only, if necessary. Grandfather will apply for
+his pension after all these years. It will be about seventeen dollars
+a month.
+
+Aunt Gracia has asked me to come and help her now, so I must go. Dear,
+I love you and Greg very, very much.—Lucy.
+
+
+  II
+
+                                September 21, 1900.
+
+Dearest, dearest Judy-pudy: If you have worked out, in your philosophy
+for living, any special thing to say or to do to prepare you for a
+shock, it would be wise to say or do it right now. I have very bad
+news to tell you.
+
+The stress and worry of the last several months, combined with darling
+Father’s ill health and the final news that Q 2 is to be sold, has
+unhinged his mind. Just a little bit, Judy dear. Not enough so that
+any of us had noticed it. Truly, truly. We had no idea of such a
+thing, before the blow fell. And, if the blow had not fallen, we would
+not know it now. He seems just the same as always. Truly he does,
+Judy. Perhaps a little sweeter and kinder—but really just the same.
+So, when you think of dear, darling Father, think of him as acting
+just as he acted when you and Greg left home in March. If you were to
+walk right into the room this minute, you would not see a bit of
+difference in Father’s mentality. Truly, truly you wouldn’t, Judy.
+But, dear, the truth is that Father is now a baptized Siloamite. But
+remember quickly, Judy, before this makes you ill or anything: _Father
+is just the same wonderful man._
+
+Wednesday those two pleasant young missionaries, Mr. Cordinger and Mr.
+Withmore, came to the house. Since they knew nothing about our
+troubles, and were jolly and interesting, it was almost a blessing to
+have them. If they had not unhinged dear, darling Father’s mind, it
+would still be better than not to have them here. They are staying on,
+in the attic room, for a week or so. You know they never force their
+religious views on anyone, or even ask anyone to join their church; so
+how it could have happened that they unhinged Father’s mind, I cannot
+understand.
+
+To-day, when they and Aunt Gracia and darling Father started to drive
+to Quilter River, we had no idea that Father was not in a normal
+state. Judith, when they got to Quilter River, Father allowed himself
+to be baptized in it. They all came home and deliberately told us.
+
+Knowing Father as we know him, and knowing his opinions of even less
+ornamental nonconformist religions, of course such an act can mean but
+one thing. I have not found courage yet to discuss the matter with
+anyone except Neal, not even with Grandfather.
+
+Neal says that he thinks there is some dark, sinister meaning behind
+it, like blackmail. Neal says that Christopher thinks so, too. If
+Christopher does think this, it seems odd that he has now ridden to
+Quilterville to mail a letter asking Dr. Joe to come to Father.
+
+I do not believe that it was blackmail. Those two young missionaries
+are the sort that Grandfather calls clean, wholesome chaps. And, if
+they were wicked, how could they blackmail a man like darling Father
+who has led a perfect life?
+
+Judith, dear, I think I am not able to write more now. If I had found
+any consolation for myself, I would give it to you. But I have found
+none. I have nothing to give to you but my love.—Lucy.
+
+
+  III
+
+                                September 22, 1900.
+
+Dearest Judy dear: If only I had not sent that letter to you
+yesterday! Or if only I had not spent all my money with Neal’s
+telegraphing to Uncle Phineas, and could telegraph to you now to
+disregard letter, as Christopher did that time in the university when
+he planned to commit suicide, and wrote to us about it, and then
+changed his mind.
+
+Neal and I have discovered that Father is not, and never was for one
+moment, insane. I can write that word now. I could not write it
+yesterday.
+
+Last night Neal decided to go straight to Father and ask him why he
+had been baptized. I advised against it, fearing that it might make
+Father worse again. Neal, fortunately this time, paid no more
+attention to my advice than he usually does.
+
+Neal was excited and frightened, though he denied it. He went rushing
+upstairs and followed his own quick knock straight into Irene and
+Christopher’s room. Christopher had forgotten, again, to lock their
+door. Irene had her hair done up in kid curlers. Neal apologized and
+pretended not to see. Irene had a slight heart attack. I think because
+she has assumed, without actually saying it, that her hair waved
+naturally. It was unlike Neal to tell about the kid curlers. He would
+not have told a month ago. Sometimes it seems as if Christopher were
+selling more of the Quilters than just their family estate. Yesterday,
+I thought, he had sold darling Father’s sanity. That is not true,
+because this is what Father told Neal.
+
+He said that he liked to pay his debts. He said that the accident had
+frightened Aunt Gracia and had started her to worrying, again, about
+his immortal soul. She thought that if he had died not in a state of
+grace, as she calls it, he would have been doomed to whatever Avernus
+the Siloamites had manufactured. He did not have their conception of
+it clearly in his mind, but he was sure that it was shockingly
+unpleasant. He said that Aunt Gracia had been a mother to us children,
+and had stood with him, shoulder to shoulder, all his life. He said
+she had enough to trouble her, just now, without being troubled about
+him. And for him to allow himself to be dipped, once, into Quilter
+River seemed to him a very small payment to make to her.
+
+Neal told Father that he could not go with him in that argument. Neal
+said that he thought hypocrisy was never justified. Father said he had
+tried to foil his conscience with the same casuistry, but that he
+could not. Father said kindness was its own justification. He said
+that the sacrifice he had made to please Gracia and to set her mind at
+ease was so genuine that it cancelled hypocrisy. Neal said that he did
+not believe in sacrifice. Father said, “Neither does Christopher.”
+
+Neal had to admit, of course, that it always depended upon the
+sacrifice and who made it. Neal could not understand why Aunt Gracia
+should have worried about Father, in particular. Neal said he had
+never heard of her worrying about any other Quilter’s immortal soul.
+
+Father told him why. Father said that we children were old enough to
+know, and that he had meant, for some time, to tell us.
+
+Judy, a few months before Neal was born, a man who lived in these
+parts then was courting Aunt Gracia. Aunt Gracia was infatuated with
+him. Mother never did like him, and she had once complained to Father
+that the man stared at her. But Father said Mother was so very
+beautiful that he could not blame anyone for looking at her. Still,
+Father kept an eye on the man; but he soon succeeded in convincing
+Father that he was interested only in Aunt Gracia.
+
+One evening, when Father knew that the man was on our place, Father
+stopped work a bit early. He did not distrust the man in the least, or
+he would not have allowed him to be courting Aunt Gracia. So he
+doesn’t know why he stopped work early that evening—he just did so.
+And, as he was coming through the oak grove, he heard Mother scream.
+Father spurred his Cayuse, and got there just in time to shoot and
+kill the man before he had harmed Mother.
+
+Father went straight to the sheriff. In a few days they had a trial.
+The jury acquitted Father without leaving the courtroom. And the judge
+apologized to Father for having bothered him with the affair.
+
+None of this has ever troubled Father’s conscience at all. He said
+there was but one thing to do, and he did it. But he says that, since
+Aunt Gracia deep in her own heart has never truly forgiven him, she
+thinks the Lord has not forgiven him either. She even thinks that the
+Lord would not forgive Father, unless Father made some special kowtow
+in his direction. So Father made the kowtow to gratify Aunt Gracia.
+
+Not long after the trouble, Father said, the missionaries of the
+Siloamites came to the house, and Aunt Gracia became a convert to
+their faith. The religion turned Aunt Gracia from a hard, bitter,
+broken person into a useful, serene, lovable woman again. Because of
+this, Father said, he felt that he also owed a certain debt to the
+Siloamites—a debt that he was glad to pay.
+
+Father said he told Aunt Gracia that he could not say her religious
+beliefs were true, because he did not know. He could not say that they
+were false, because he did not know. He knew nothing. But, since her
+religion was a beautiful, kind, and just religion, he hoped that it
+might be true. And that, if with nothing stronger for a foundation
+than hope, his baptism would mean anything to her, he was willing to
+go through with the ceremony. She told him that it would mean
+everything to her. He was baptized.
+
+Neal asked Father why Aunt Gracia’s foolish happiness meant more to
+him than the humiliation of the rest of the family, particularly
+yours, Judy, and Neal’s and mine.
+
+Father answered that if an act, which was both kind and useful, could
+humiliate his children, then he was sorry.
+
+Since you have asked for it twice, I will send you my poem about God.
+Grandfather says that it has a thought in it; but he says that he
+thinks my medium will prove to be the stately splendour of English
+prose. He named my poem for me.
+
+            Omnipotence
+
+      God was sad, and he sighed,
+        “How little the earth men know,
+      They think I am satisfied
+        With my work down there below.
+      So they blame me for blunders of hand,
+        And they scorn me for tasks ill done.
+      Why can’t they understand
+        That I have only begun?
+      Do they think I am unaware
+        That much I have wrought has been wrong?
+      My burdens are heavy to bear.
+        Why won’t they help me along?”
+
+
+  IV
+
+A knock, demand nicely moderated by deference, tapped on the glass of
+Lynn MacDonald’s office door.
+
+Her secretary said, “Shall I have your car brought around, Miss
+MacDonald, or shall I order your dinner sent up to you?”
+
+Lynn MacDonald added the last page of Lucy’s final letter to the pile
+of pages in front of her and smoothed it flat with her palms. Near the
+telephone were Neal Quilter’s letters, a package of neatly taped
+temptation.
+
+“Neither just now, Miss Kingsbury. I think I shall stay here for half
+an hour or so longer. But you must go straight home. I thought you had
+gone some time ago.”
+
+“I can’t help you?”
+
+“Not now, thank you.”
+
+The tape untied easily. From the envelope with the blue figure 1 on it
+she took Neal Quilter’s first letter, and shook the thick folded pages
+free from their creases.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+  I
+
+                                Wednesday night,
+                                October 10, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: I am just home from Quilterville where I got your telegram
+asking me to tell you the truth about what has happened here. I told
+Grandfather and the others that they had no right to lie to you, and
+that they couldn’t fool you if they tried. I knew you could tell from
+the crazy telegram we sent to you that we were hiding something from
+you.
+
+Judy, I’m going to do for you what I’d want you to do for me. I’m
+going to tell you the truth. This business of sparing you and all that
+is sentimental twaddle. It isn’t only your right to know, it is your
+duty to know that Father did not die mercifully and peacefully and all
+that rot last Monday night.
+
+Father was murdered in his room. He was shot and killed. That would
+seem horror enough, wouldn’t it? That isn’t the horror. That isn’t why
+we have been lying to you. That isn’t what has beaten us. I’ll tell
+you what the real horror is. And yet—it can’t be true. If it can’t be
+true, it must be false. I’ll tell you why. I’ve thought it all out.
+I’ve thought it all out carefully. It can’t be true. I mean, it can’t
+be true that some one of us right here in the house that night, some
+member of our family, the Quilter family, murdered Father.
+
+That is the first thing we have to do, Judy, you and I. We have to
+prove that no member of the Quilter family murdered Father. When that
+is out of the way, we can think straight again. We can go ahead and
+find out who did do it—damn him! And we’ll attend the hanging.
+
+That’s why, before I tell you anything else, I’ll have to tell you
+what I have thought out about the family. You know I’m not as crumby
+about the family as the rest of you are. You know I can think more
+clearly about them than you could. I know that we are a doggone faulty
+bunch. I have accepted that. I think it wise to accept that, first.
+
+Beginning with Grandfather, who is the best of the lot now Father is
+dead. Grandfather is a sentimentalist, and something of a poseur,
+and—— Let it go at that. What’s the use? Next to Father, Grandfather
+is the decentest person, man or woman, that I have ever known or ever
+shall know. He’s not perfect, I suppose. But he comes too darn near
+being for me to point his imperfections. Any denial of wrongdoing for
+Grandfather would be desecration. Grandfather’s world revolved around
+Father—and Aunt Gracia and Lucy.
+
+Now for the handsome Christopher. Chris is wormy with selfishness, and
+lazy as a dog, and weak as water, and conceited. All right. But when
+it comes to murder—he’s as clean out of it as Grandfather or Lucy, and
+there’s no sense in dodging it. Chris would half kill Father with
+worry—he’s been at that, hard, for six months now. But, in his way, we
+are bound to grant that Chris loved Father. He wouldn’t shoot him, if
+he had the best reason in the world for doing it. We know that. And we
+know, too, that right now Chris needed to have Father alive, as an
+excuse for selling Q 2 and to manage the smaller ranch Chris said he
+was going to get for us. Father’s death puts a decided crimp in
+Chris’s plans.
+
+Olympe. She’s vain and affected, and has her share of common ordinary
+faults. But could any living being, in his senses, suggest that Olympe
+would shoot a dying kitten to put it out of its misery? If Chris has
+sold us out, as he was threatening to do, Father’s ability to
+establish us on another place was Olympe’s best chance for keeping out
+of the poorhouse she’s been talking about all the time lately. Olympe
+loved Father.
+
+Aunt Gracia. She has had her mind all mussed up for years with that
+fool religion of hers. She has gone a bit sour, of late, as the rest
+of us have, from overwork and overworry. But anyone who would whisper
+murder in the same breath with Aunt Gracia’s name would be a liar and
+a criminal fool, and I know it, and you know it, and everyone who has
+ever seen her knows it. Just writing it makes me hot. Aunt Gracia
+loved Father.
+
+Irene. She is one of the crumbiest specimens I ever saw. She’s at the
+bottom of Chris’s threatening to sell the place—she has nagged him
+into it. She has caused all sorts of trouble here from the first night
+she came. I’ve hated her like a burr under the saddle. I hate her yet.
+Partly because of that I know that she would not commit a murder—could
+not have committed this murder. It took a smart person, and a plucky
+person, and a darn tricky person to get away with this business on
+Monday night. Irene is a first-rate idiot. She is a chatterbox, and a
+coward. Tell me that a woman who is afraid of a cow will walk into a
+room and shoot a man dead? Not on your life she wouldn’t. If she had
+wanted Father out of the way, she might have tried slow poison. She
+had no reason for wanting Father out of the way. She didn’t love him,
+or anyone. But she liked Father; she couldn’t help it. Three months
+ago Father gave up trying to influence Chris in any way about selling
+Q 2. Irene needed Father alive for the same reason Chris needed
+him—his ill health as an excuse for selling us out; his ability to
+manage the new place for us.
+
+Lucy and I were the only other people in the house on Monday night.
+The missionaries who had been visiting here left Q 2 early Monday
+morning, and old Dong Lee went in with them to Portland to see a
+dentist.
+
+I’ll be damned if I’ll defend Lucy. And Neal Quilter didn’t do it. I
+know that. The others here may not know it. If I were any one of them,
+I’d suspect Neal Quilter, and with good cause.
+
+Read this, Jude. I’ve had plenty of reason to think, here lately, that
+Father was losing his mind. His giving up, and allowing Chris to plan
+to sell us out. And then that baptism junk. Lucy wrote it to you.
+Father’s explanation satisfied her. It didn’t satisfy me—not by a long
+shot; not from Father. Father was no sap. Well, then, suppose I knew
+that he’d rather be cleanly dead than living with his mind worse than
+dead—and he would. Suppose I knew that Father would rather die than to
+have the Quilter name tainted with insanity? He would have. You know
+Father, and Grandfather, and their “ten generations of sound-minded,
+clean-bodied men and women.” All right. I am smart enough, and I have
+pluck enough to have planned this thing, and to have done it.
+
+Read this. Having Father dead doesn’t do any of us any good. Having
+Chris die would have saved the Q 2 Ranch. Since Chris had no sons, the
+ranch would have gone to Grandfather. Well, Father and Chris have
+changed rooms lately. All of us were always butting into the wrong
+rooms. I starred at it. Irene was downstairs in the sitting room when
+Father was shot. Suppose I had meant to sneak in and kill Chris, and
+had been so excited—I would have been excited, I suppose—that I got
+into the wrong room. Suppose I had seen a man there in bed, and
+suppose I’d shot on the instant, thinking that he was Chris. That is,
+suppose I had meant to kill Chris and had killed Father, by mistake.
+
+I am the only member of the family who is unsentimental enough to do
+it. Or mean enough. Or, funny how we’ll stand up for our precious
+selves, loyal enough to Q 2 Ranch. Not long ago I told Lucy that I’d
+stop at nothing, including bloodshed, to save the place. I said it. I
+meant it. I must have had murder in my mind—or the potentialities for
+murder—to have said a thing of the sort.
+
+You see, assuming that I did it, it works out smoothly enough. I
+didn’t do it. I swear to God that I know I did not. If I had done it,
+I’d know it. I didn’t do it. Lucy knows that I didn’t. Lucy knows that
+within two minutes after we’d heard the shot, she came running into my
+room, through our inside door, and found him—me, I mean—hammering at
+the door into the hall, trying to break the damn thing down. But then
+you know, Jude, that Lucy would lie herself into Hades to save me from
+being suspected. This, though, isn’t a question of her needing to lie.
+I mean, she did find me locked in my room. I know that. It is a fact.
+I’ve got to keep hold of it, and of one or two other facts that I
+have. You see, you and I have to prove, first, that I didn’t murder
+Father. I mean, that none of the Quilters did do it. I mean——
+
+
+  II
+
+                                Later, Wednesday night.
+
+I stopped writing there and went out and walked to the road and back.
+Breathed some sweet snow air into my lungs. Cleared my head. Time I
+did, I guess. That last page or so seems to be rather raving. Sorry.
+But I am going to send it along because I want you to have all this
+straight, and because, as Grandfather always says, we do have to think
+this thing through—straight through.
+
+Straight thinking isn’t easy as yet. Writing does me a pile of good.
+To write a thing you have to get it more or less into shape. That is
+what I’m going to do. I’m going to sit here—I am staying up for a few
+nights—and write the whole thing out, in black letters on white paper
+to you. It will keep my thoughts in order—you’ve no notion what a
+filthy mess they have been in for the past two days. It will do more
+than that.
+
+I said, in the beginning of this, that it was your duty to know the
+truth. This is what I meant. It would be just like you not to think
+so, but you’ve a long way the best of it, being off in Colorado and
+not in the midst of this hell here. You should be able to think better
+and to see more clearly than I can. I’ll give you a straight account
+of facts from here. You’ll have the enormous advantage of perspective.
+Together we’ll get the truth. We have to. You and I are young. The
+others are old. I don’t wish to be crumby and sentimental about it.
+But you and I won’t even have a right to die until we find who
+murdered Father. Out in the air, just now, I decided that, if a member
+of the family did do it—then we must find that out, too. You know,
+Judy; if not for the sake of punishment, at least for the sake of
+justice to the others.
+
+Take a brace then, dear, and get ready for the facts. They aren’t
+sweet, I’ll warn you.
+
+On Monday evening we all milled around in the sitting room, about the
+same as usual, as far as I can remember. I have been so darn grouchy,
+lately, though, and so much interested in _Descent of Man_ that I
+haven’t paid much attention to the folks. I have asked Chris about
+Monday evening (one doesn’t quizz Grandfather), and he says that no
+one acted nervous, or excited, or peculiar in any way. An opinion
+worth nothing, I am afraid, since he was so busy spooning with Irene
+that he probably would not have noticed a fit on the hearthrug. I
+think perhaps Lucy will know whether anyone acted in an unusual way.
+But Lucy, poor little kid, isn’t fit to be questioned just now. Aunt
+Gracia agrees with Chris. So, for the present, we’ll record that
+everyone acted as he usually does act.
+
+Around nine o’clock Olympe went up to bed. Then Grandfather went, and
+Aunt Gracia went with him, as usual, to turn down his bed and so on.
+Chris and Irene ambled out together. I waited until I was sure I
+wouldn’t meet them hugging in the hall, and then I went and suggested
+to Lucy that it was time for her to come. She said she would when she
+had finished the chapter she was reading. I heard her come into her
+room, just before I went to sleep. I don’t know, nor does anyone seem
+to know, what time Father came up to his room.
+
+The next thing I knew I heard the shot, loud as a cannon, bang through
+the house. I jumped out of bed and ran to my door. It was locked. I
+ran back to the table and got the lamp lighted and began to hunt
+around for the key. I don’t know why, but I thought that the door was
+locked on the inside. I couldn’t find the key. I was scared. I grabbed
+a chair and began to try to bang through the door with it. At about
+the second bang, Lucy came running into my room in her nightgown,
+screaming my name, and what was it, and that her door was locked. I
+didn’t pay much attention to her. I was crazy by that time, for the
+house was a bedlam. Everyone was trying to do what I was trying to
+do—get doors open. And everyone was shouting and screaming to everyone
+else.
+
+I had busted two of the bedroom chairs before I realized what a fool I
+was—trying to crash a heavy oak door with a frail maple chair.
+
+I noticed that Lucy had gone. I ran into her room. Her lamp was
+lighted, and she was showing more sense than I had shown by trying
+nail files and hairpins in her keyhole. All the time the noise in the
+hall kept up. Everyone was shouting and calling and rattling his door
+and trying to bang it down—everyone, that is, but Olympe. I’ll tell
+you about her later.
+
+I ran to Lucy’s window. I had some wild idea of getting out that way.
+For a second, then, I almost keeled over. Things seemed to break loose
+and stampede in my head, and the only thought I could corral had to do
+with Aunt Gracia’s judgment day. It took me fully half a minute to
+realize that the new world out there meant merely a heavy fall of
+snow. I opened the window. Snow was two inches deep on the sill. I
+leaned out. A cloud uncovered a ghastly moon. The snow had stopped.
+Lucy came and caught hold of me and said that we could not get out of
+that window. All this seems unimportant; but I wish I had as definite
+an account of everything that went on behind the other locked doors.
+This may not seem unimportant to you. I am trying to give you facts.
+You must try to interpret them.
+
+I knew that Lucy was right about attempting to get out of the window.
+I closed it. She was shivering from cold and fright, so I got her
+wrapper and made her put it on. She went back to her job of trying to
+unlock the door with a nail file. I looked on her bureau to find
+something that might work better. I noticed the time by her little
+clock. It said ten minutes to twelve. It had seemed much longer, but I
+believe it had been less than ten minutes since we had heard the shot.
+Chris said that he looked at his clock, as he lighted his lamp, and it
+said a quarter to twelve. That tallies closely enough, I guess.
+
+Chris missed Irene, for the first time, when the shot woke him, and he
+admits that he was senseless from fright. If he hadn’t been, he could
+have climbed out of his window and have run along the porch roof right
+there to the window of Father’s room. He did not know, of course, that
+the shot had been fired in Father’s room. But, if he’d had his
+senses—something that none of us did have—he surely would have used
+the window and the porch roof to get with some other member of the
+family.
+
+I found a glove buttoner on Lucy’s bureau and tried it in the
+keyhole—fool’s work, of course. I think the others were trying the
+same racket, though, for most of the noise had stopped by that time. I
+suppose because Lucy and I were together was the reason that we didn’t
+call to the others. All the rest of them called. Aunt Gracia, in
+particular, kept shouting to Grandfather, over and over: “Father! Are
+you hurt? Father! Are you all right?” Lucy and I could hear
+Grandfather answering her, but Aunt Gracia seemed not to hear him. I
+think she was too excited, and too frightened to listen. Chris kept
+shouting like a Comanche for Irene.
+
+I wonder, Jude, how we all knew that some terrible thing had happened?
+Nothing terrible ever had happened on Q 2. Why, then, the minute we
+all heard a gunshot in the house, late at night, did it throw us into
+a panic? I suppose the locked doors would be the answer. Yes, of
+course it was the locked doors and not the sound of the shot that
+locoed all of us.
+
+Lucy and I were still monkeying with the lock when Irene shoved the
+key into it. She unlocked the door and said, or sort of mewed at us,
+“Your father!” and ran across the hall to Chris’s room.
+
+Lucy’s door was the first one that Irene unlocked. Lucy was in front
+of me; so she was the first one into Father’s room—that is, since
+Irene had left it. Father was lying in bed. Irene had pulled the
+counterpane close under his chin. Lucy ran to him and caught him up in
+her arms.
+
+Lucy is a thoroughbred all the way through. She didn’t scream. She
+didn’t faint. She didn’t utter a sound. She turned her head and looked
+at me. That was all. The trouble is, the same paralyzed look is still
+on her face. It has not worn off, not in two days.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+  I
+
+I can’t star myself, much, for the next few minutes. Chris,
+Grandfather, Aunt Gracia, and Irene were in the room before I had
+realized that Father was dead. Then I thought that he had shot
+himself.
+
+Grandfather took Lucy’s place beside Father. He looked up at us and
+told us, “Richard has been shot and killed.”
+
+It would be Grandfather, wouldn’t it, out of the whole herd of us, who
+would know without any proof, simply and surely know, that Father was
+not a suicide? I don’t mean to be crumby and sentimental about it; but
+it is pretty rotten to think that, though Father had spent his life
+earning such a surety, Grandfather was the only one of us who would
+give it to him, then, on the minute and without proof. I wish I might
+even say that, having been told, we accepted Grandfather’s statement
+on the instant. We did not. No, not us.
+
+Chris said something about where was the gun. He began to tear through
+the bedding hunting for it. So did Aunt Gracia. So did Irene. So did
+I. There was no gun to be found. Father was not a suicide. He was
+shot, from a distance of at least several feet, with a .38 calibre
+gun. Since every man in the county who has a gun has a .38 calibre
+Colt’s, we are not, in spite of Chris’s contentions to the contrary,
+going to be able to do much with that information. The point I am
+making, now, is that Father was not a suicide. I’ll go into it more
+fully, later.
+
+It was Lucy who first called our attention to the open window and to
+the rope. Now, Judy, read this carefully and see what you can do with
+it.
+
+The window was wide open from the bottom. There was a thick rope
+hanging over the sill and out of it. One end of the rope had been tied
+with a slip knot around one of the heavy legs of the bed. The rope
+went across the carpet to the window, across the window sill, across
+the porch roof beneath the window, and dangled to the ground.
+
+Looks easy, doesn’t it? Some dirty cur had shot Father and had got out
+of the window by means of the rope. But the rope was covered with
+snow, and there was not a handprint in the snow on the window sill,
+nor a footprint in the new snow on the roof.
+
+When I saw that rope, I would have jumped right out on to the roof, if
+Chris had not stopped me. He told me not to track the snow. He said
+that we must have a lantern. I ran down to the kitchen and got one.
+Read this, Jude. I have told you once, but I want to tell you again.
+We swung the lantern out over the porch roof, and the snow was a
+clean, unbroken sheet.
+
+Chris looked at the clock on Father’s mantelpiece. It said ten minutes
+past twelve. Twenty-five minutes, at the most, since we had heard the
+shot. Not long enough for the snow, if it had been snowing hard, to
+have covered the footprints. We went to the window again. No snow was
+falling. And I know that none had been falling at ten minutes to
+twelve. There is no dodging it: the rope had not been used. Or, as
+Chris keeps insisting, it had not been used as a means of escape.
+Since he can’t produce any sort of theory as to what it might have
+been used for, I’ll leave you that, for what it is worth, and get
+along.
+
+The murderer had not climbed out of the window. There were, then, just
+two things that he could have done:
+
+1. He could have got out of the house some other way.
+
+2. He could have stayed in the house.
+
+Grandfather said: “He has not escaped this way. He has escaped some
+other way.”
+
+“If he has escaped,” Chris said. “If he hasn’t, he is not going to.”
+
+Irene screamed, “He may still be right here in this room,” and would
+have had a heart attack, if there had been time; but there wasn’t.
+
+With Grandfather directing, we made a quick, thorough search of
+Father’s room. Chris, clinging to the suicide theory, I suppose,
+devoted his time to the bed. (He made one queer discovery; but, since
+it cannot amount to anything, I’ll get along and tell you about it
+later.) He found no gun, of course. The only gun in Father’s room was
+in his clothes closet, twenty feet away from the bed. His gun was
+fully loaded, and behind some boxes on the top closet shelf. You don’t
+need this, but I’ll give it to you. With the wound, if he had had
+strength to move, which he had not, Father could not have moved
+without leaving a trail of blood. Irene had blood on the front of her
+wrapper and on her sleeve. She got it there when she had been lifting
+Father. Those were the only blood-stains anywhere that were not on the
+bed covers.
+
+The room was easy to search. There was nothing anyone could have got
+under but the bed, and nothing to hide behind. We pounded through the
+clothes closet, and that ended the search there.
+
+Grandfather said that Chris, he, and I would go to search the house.
+He said for Aunt Gracia, Irene, and Lucy to stay in Father’s room,
+lock the door after us when we left, and close and lock the window.
+
+Lucy said, “But where is Olympe?”
+
+
+  II
+
+We all, including Grandfather, forgot the plan of having the ladies
+lock themselves in Father’s room. We all went rushing like mad things
+down to Olympe’s room. Irene kept mooing: “I unlocked her door. I
+unlocked her door last of all.”
+
+The door was unlocked. There, stretched straight on the floor in her
+nightgown, was Olympe. Irene screamed as only Irene can scream. She
+thought, I guess, as I thought—that Olympe had been murdered, too.
+Aunt Gracia ran to her. She found that she was breathing all right,
+that she had merely fainted.
+
+Every second seemed precious to us, just then. So, after we had made a
+quick but absolutely complete search of Olympe’s room, we left Lucy
+and Irene with her, and went on to go through the rest of the house.
+
+I had brought two lanterns from the kitchen. I had a notion of taking
+one of them and running out to search the grounds. Grandfather pointed
+that, if the fellow was outside he was, and far on his way. But, if he
+was inside, we had a chance of finding him and keeping him here.
+
+Aunt Gracia had insisted upon coming with us men. That made
+Grandfather, Aunt Gracia, Chris, and I the ones who searched the house
+that first hour. Grandfather said for Aunt Gracia and Chris to take
+one of the lanterns and search the front of the house, and for him and
+me to take the other lantern and search the back of the house. Chris
+got the gun out of Father’s closet and, at Grandfather’s bidding, I
+got Grandfather’s gun out of the commode drawer in his room. We
+thought it fortunate, just then, that both guns had their chambers
+full, ready for use.
+
+While we had been getting the guns, Grandfather had been locking the
+bedroom doors on the outside. Irene had left the keys in the locks, of
+course. Grandfather explained, as he finished that job, that if the
+man was hiding in any of those rooms he would stay there until we were
+ready for him, or break his neck trying to get out of a window.
+
+Grandfather and I went down the back stairway. We found the door at
+the foot of it locked on the sitting-room side. (Irene had locked it
+earlier in the evening. That comes in her story. Perhaps I should have
+told her story to you first of all. But I think I shall do better if I
+try to keep to the order of events as they came to me.)
+
+As Grandfather and I ran back upstairs, to go down the front stairway,
+I happened to think that the door to the attic stairway had had no
+key, and that it should be locked. Grandfather told me that he had
+locked it with the key to my door. I am telling you this, in
+particular, to show you how quick, and fast, and straight Grandfather
+was thinking that night. But for him and his alertness some loophole
+might have been left, something might have been overlooked, as Dr. Joe
+persists. I know that with Grandfather directing as he directed all
+that night, nothing was overlooked.
+
+We made a thorough search of every inch of space downstairs. Then
+Grandfather insisted on going with Chris to search the cellar. He
+asked me to stay on the first floor with Aunt Gracia. She and I went
+all through the downstairs rooms and halls again, and found nothing.
+We went back upstairs to Olympe’s room. She had revived, but had not
+got hold of anything as yet. She looked old, years older than
+Grandfather, lying there in her bed, asking over and over: “What is
+it? Why are you all up? What is the trouble?”
+
+I thought that we should tell her. The others wouldn’t let her be
+told. They said we must wait until she was stronger. Aunt Gracia
+skipped out to get some peach brandy for Olympe. I noticed, then, that
+Lucy was fingering a gun, fooling with it as she might have been
+fooling with a hairbrush. I went and took it away from her and asked
+her where she had got it.
+
+“It was under Olympe on the floor when we picked her up,” Lucy said.
+“I hadn’t really noticed what it was.”
+
+It was Uncle Phineas’s old .32 Colt’s. I broke it. The chambers were
+all empty; so it could not have been either harmful or useful.
+
+Grandfather came upstairs. He said that he and Chris had found no one
+in the cellar, and no traces of anyone’s having been there. He had
+left Chris downstairs, with Father’s gun, guarding the lower floor. He
+said for me to go down and help Chris, while he searched the attic and
+the upper floor. I couldn’t quite see Grandfather searching the most
+dangerous parts of the house, alone, while I went to squire Chris.
+Before I had time to object, Aunt Gracia, who had come back with the
+peach brandy, said nonsense. She would go down with Chris, if he
+needed someone, and I should go with Grandfather.
+
+Since Uncle Phineas’s old gun was in my hands, I hunted around and
+found some cartridges for it, and gave Grandfather’s gun back to him.
+The attic was the same old story. We were pretty thankful up there for
+Aunt Gracia’s housekeeping niceties. It was easier to search than the
+parlour had been. All the trunks, chests, and boxes against the
+wall—nothing but vacant spaces. Grandfather and I opened all the
+chests and trunks that weren’t locked—that was all of them except
+Irene’s three big trunks—and poked through all the boxes, big and
+little. The partitioned room up there was as clean and as empty as a
+dish in the cupboard. The bed covers were all put away, the mattress
+rolled back, the wardrobe open to air.
+
+We came downstairs. But before we had unlocked a bedroom door, Chris
+shouted to us from the lower hall and asked us to come down.
+
+He had got an idea, and a doggone good one. He had been to all the
+downstairs windows and doors. Each window sill had rolls of unbroken
+snow on it, and so had each of the three door sills. Unbroken, that
+is, except for the slight crumbling caused by Chris’s having opened
+the windows and doors. He had put candles into empty cans—they throw a
+much better light than a lantern does, you know—and we used them at
+each downstairs window and door. Read this, Judy. Nowhere near a
+window, nowhere near a door, was there a footprint nor a break in the
+snow of any kind. As far as we could throw the light, say eight to ten
+yards at least, the snow was a clean unbroken sheet.
+
+Put it like this, to make it clearer. The fellow had not got away
+before the shot was fired. If he had got away since, he would have had
+to leave some sort of tracks in the snow. There were no tracks in the
+snow. Ergo: he had not got away. Ergo: he was in the house.
+
+I said, “He is right here in this house!”
+
+Chris cursed and said that he was. “What’s more,” he added, “we’ll
+keep him right here. I think we’ll find a good use for him—later.”
+
+
+  III
+
+Well, Jude, I guess we kept him here. I guess he is still here with
+us. We spent all that night, or, rather, that morning, searching and
+re-searching the house and guarding to keep anyone from leaving it. No
+one left it. Up to the present, two o’clock Thursday morning, we have
+found no one in hiding here.
+
+About four o’clock Tuesday morning Chris took a notion to go to
+Quilterville and inform the sheriff—Gus Wildoch still has the job,
+you’ll remember—and telegraph to Dr. Joe. He started out of the back
+door down toward the barn. Irene stood in the doorway and yelped until
+she made Chris come back. I couldn’t blame her much. Grandfather
+thought, too, that it would be wiser to wait until dawn.
+
+When Chris came back, we tested our lights’ efficiency on his tracks.
+They showed clearly. And, when daylight came, there they were—a deep
+line of woven footprints going part way to the barn and coming back to
+the house. Any other tracks, which had been made any time after the
+snow had stopped, around midnight, would have shown as plainly as
+those that Chris had made.
+
+I didn’t think of it at the time, but I believe now that that fact had
+something to do with curbing Chris’s enthusiasm for bringing Gus
+Wildoch to the place. At any rate, instead of leaving at dawn, Chris
+yielded to Aunt Gracia’s urging and waited for some of the hot coffee
+she was making.
+
+Shortly after six o’clock we gathered about the table in the dining
+room. Lucy had finally crawled into bed with Olympe, and they had both
+got off to sleep about five; so, naturally, we did not disturb them.
+
+Aunt Gracia poured Grandfather’s coffee, passed it, and said:
+
+“No one has left the place since Dick was killed last night. No one is
+hiding in the house at present. That can mean just this: Whoever
+murdered Dick is in this house and is not in hiding.”
+
+How was that for a stunner, Judy, after the night we had all put in?
+
+Irene stuttered something about not understanding.
+
+Whether she did or not, and I’ll bet she did, Grandfather and Chris
+and I understood right enough. For the first time in my life, I guess,
+I heard Grandfather’s voice go harsh when he spoke to Aunt Gracia.
+
+“My daughter,” he said, “that conclusion is premature.”
+
+Aunt Gracia replied, “I’m sorry, Father; but I have been sitting quiet
+for hours, praying for guidance and thinking. I can reach no other
+conclusion.”
+
+We had tried to get her to stay in Olympe’s room with Olympe and Irene
+and Lucy, but we could not keep her there. So, at last, we allowed her
+to sit in the lower front hall through the night. It seemed the safest
+place, since we had the front stairway door locked. We thought that no
+one would risk making a getaway through the front door. I gave her
+Uncle Phineas’s old gun and I took my rifle. Grandfather stayed in the
+back of the house with his gun. Chris kept making a steady round of
+the house, using Father’s gun. Chris and I changed places—I was in the
+upper hall—from three to four o’clock. At four, because she insisted,
+and because we felt certain there was no danger by that time, we
+allowed Aunt Gracia to make another thorough search with Chris. Irene,
+who had come out of Olympe’s room when Chris had started for
+Quilterville, tagged along with him and Aunt Gracia on this last
+search of theirs. Except for not whistling up Whatof and Keeper, which
+did not occur to any of us until they showed up for their breakfasts
+on Tuesday morning, I can’t see that we overlooked a single bet. Can
+you?
+
+Returning to our coffee-cup conversation, Grandfather said, in answer
+to Aunt Gracia’s reply about thinking: “I have been thinking myself,
+dear—or attempting to do so. We have all been trying to think, I
+fancy. I, too, have reached but one conclusion: that constructive
+thinking is impossible for any of us, as yet. Minds in the states that
+our minds are in just now are illy working machines, Gracia. We’ll do
+well not to rely on them, for the present.”
+
+“No, Father,” Aunt Gracia actually said, “that won’t do. Christopher
+is going, in a few minutes, to town for the sheriff. Before he gets
+here, with other outsiders, it is necessary for us to put our minds in
+order. Seven people were in this house last night after Dick was
+killed. No one could have left the house without making footprints in
+the snow. There are no footprints. We knew that in the night. This
+morning has proved it. There are no footprints. Whether we are willing
+to admit it or not, each one of us here knows that no one is hiding in
+this house. That brings us to this, and evasion is useless: One of us
+seven must be the person who killed Dick.”
+
+“Seven people, yes,” Grandfather said. “But seven people all locked in
+their rooms. No judgment that does not take into consideration those
+locked doors, is sound.”
+
+Aunt Gracia said, “Six people locked in their rooms.”
+
+Judy, if she had smashed a bomb down on the dining table she couldn’t
+have caused a worse explosion. I don’t know what the others had
+thought about Irene being out, wandering around alone in the halls at
+midnight. I had not thought anything. I hadn’t had time to give it a
+thought. Grandfather was right, as he always is, about our minds being
+broken machines that night and morning. Mine is yet, for that matter.
+I’d be crazy if it weren’t for the order I was getting by writing this
+all out to you.
+
+Irene began a bout of violent hysteria, screeching wedlock’s warcry at
+Chris: “I told you so! I told you so!”
+
+Chris lost his head completely. He cursed, and banged the table with
+his fists, and shook his long forefinger, arm’s length, at Aunt
+Gracia, and shouted.
+
+Grandfather stood up, straight, at the head of the table. Gosh, but he
+can tower! I’ll remember him like that. He said to Chris, “Sir,
+restrain yourself, and comfort and quiet your wife.” He turned to Aunt
+Gracia. “Daughter, explain to me the meaning of your last statement.”
+
+“But I thought you knew, Father,” Aunt Gracia said, “that Irene was
+not locked in her room last night.”
+
+While Grandfather said: “I had not known that. I had thought that
+Christopher had been the first to succeed in opening his bedroom door,
+and that he had sent Irene to release us while he stayed with Dick,”
+he kept on towering. Then he put his palms flat on the table and,
+slowly, sat down again in his chair.
+
+Chris roared, “Uncle Thaddeus, are you going to sit calmly there and
+allow Gracia to accuse my wife of murder?”
+
+Irene said: “She did it herself. That’s why she is accusing me.”
+
+Yes, Judith, this conversation took place on the Q 2 Ranch, in the
+year 1900.
+
+By some blessed miracle, Grandfather did not hear this speech of
+Irene’s. He spoke to Chris. “I think Gracia made no such accusation,
+Christopher.” And to Aunt Gracia, “You meant to make none, did you,
+Daughter?”
+
+“No,” Aunt Gracia answered. “I said, only, that Irene was not locked
+in her room last night. That she was in the hall, with the keys, and
+that she let us all out of our rooms. I think that circumstance should
+be explained.”
+
+Chris started up a lot of con talk about his wife doing no explaining.
+Grandfather said, “If you please, Christopher?” and little Chris
+subsided.
+
+“My dear,” Grandfather said to Irene, “if you will, please tell us
+exactly what occurred last night with reference to yourself. I ask for
+this, you all understand, not as an explanation of Irene’s actions,
+but as a possible means for helping us all forward toward the truth.”
+
+Irene lifted her head from Chris’s padded shoulder and looked first at
+Aunt Gracia and then at me. I felt as if she were clawing those light
+blue eyes of hers into my face. I thought: “She thinks I murdered
+Father,” and looked up to see Grandfather following her stare. I met
+his eyes. They didn’t claw, Judy. They did something worse than that.
+Just for an instant, before they looked away, they speculated—they
+doubted. You’ll say I imagined that. All right. Remember the time we
+tried lying to Grandfather about the Evans kids’ bobsled? Did we
+imagine that look, that time?
+
+Say, Jude, wouldn’t it be horrible if a person could do some vile
+thing and then, from the shock of it, or something, forget about it
+right off? I mean—not know that he had done it. But Lucy was right in
+my room, within two minutes after we had heard the shot.
+
+No matter. What I am trying to get to is Irene’s story. This was the
+first time that any of us, except Chris, I suppose, had heard it. That
+is why I have waited to tell you. If I am to get this thing organized,
+at all, I’ll have to keep the events in order as nearly as I can.
+
+I think I’ll step outside again, and get another whiff or two of cold
+air before I begin on Irene’s story. I don’t know how important it is,
+or may be. But I want to present it to you as clearly as I can.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+One thing I am bound to say for Irene: she was eager to tell what she
+knew. Chris did not wish her to tell. She insisted and got snaky with
+him for trying to stop her.
+
+She said that, on Monday night, she couldn’t sleep; so she got up—she
+thought it was then about ten o’clock, though she was not certain—put
+on her slippers and her wrapper, took a candle, and went downstairs to
+the sitting room. She said she was going to read, and she was afraid a
+light in the bedroom would disturb Chris. She said, also, that she was
+cold, and she thought the fire might still be burning in the
+sitting-room fireplace.
+
+The fire was burning. She mended it, lighted the hanging lamp, and
+finished reading her book. She thought that it was close around eleven
+o’clock when she went upstairs again. The door to her room and Chris’s
+was locked. She said that she and Chris had had a “trifling quarrel”
+before Chris had gone to sleep. She thought, in consequence, that he
+had misunderstood her reason for leaving the room and had locked her
+out. (That gives a fair notion of her perceptions. She’d been married
+to Chris for seven months, and yet she could fancy that he was capable
+of a cad’s trick such as that. Chris is faulty, but he’s no mucker.)
+She said that this made her very, very unhappy and a little bit angry.
+She didn’t desire the family to know that Chris could do such a thing;
+so without making a particle of noise, she tiptoed downstairs again
+and made a bed for herself on the sofa, with the Indian blankets.
+
+Her next move was to pull the bolts on the doors to the front and back
+stairways. She did that because, she said, she felt sure Chris would
+feel ashamed of himself before long and come down and try to make it
+up with her. I guess she was pretty hot, all right, for she said she
+thought the bolted doors would show him that two could play at that
+lock-out game. Locked doors are a mania of hers, anyway. So is
+insomnia, though she sleeps until noon often enough. This trick of
+going downstairs to read was, as far as I know, a new one with her. I
+fancy the trifling quarrel was responsible for that.
+
+After she had locked the doors, she blew out the light, got into her
+sofa bed, and settled for a long, comfortable weeping spell. Or, as
+she explained it, she lay down and cried herself to sleep.
+
+She was wakened by the sound of the shot upstairs. The room Father had
+then—Chris’s old room—is right above the sitting room, you know. She
+said she thought it was Chris shooting himself because she had been
+unkind to him. (She is the sort of woman to whom such an action would
+seem not merely reasonable but also admirable.) She jumped from the
+sofa, got into her wrapper and slippers, lighted her candle, ran
+through the rooms, unbolted the door to the front stairway, and ran
+upstairs. All the noises had begun up there, she said, before she had
+got the door unbolted. If anyone had been running through the upper
+hall, or trying to come down the back stairway, there would have been
+no chance of her having heard him.
+
+She started straight down the hall for Chris’s and her room. She says
+she is sure she did not get hold of the idea, then, that we were all
+locked in our rooms. She said that she did hear Grandfather shout,
+“Let me out of here!” but she was too badly frightened to make any
+meanings at all.
+
+She passed Olympe’s room and Grandfather’s room on her left, and Aunt
+Gracia’s, and yours, and Lucy’s on her right before she came to
+Father’s door. It was standing open. The light was burning, so she ran
+in there. For the minute, and for the first time, too, she had
+forgotten about the exchange of rooms.
+
+She said that, when she saw Father lying there in bed, it took her a
+minute to realize that he was not Christopher. Father was lying with
+his head tipped back on his pillows, and with blood streaming out over
+his nightshirt. She ran to him. She put her candle on the table there,
+and sort of lifted him in her arms. That was when she got her wrapper
+smeared with blood. She says he turned his eyes toward the open window
+and murmured, “Got away.” At first, Irene was certain that Father had
+said, “Got away.” But, when Aunt Gracia questioned her, she admitted
+that Father spoke indistinctly and that he might have said, “Go away.”
+But I know that her best impression is that Father said, “Got away.”
+Then, she declares that Father said, quite distinctly, “Red mask.”
+There was no shaking her certainty about that. She said that he used
+his lips to say it, and that she was watching them, and that she would
+swear that he said, “Red mask.”
+
+It stands to reason, Judy, that Father did not say “Red mask.” Now
+what could he have said that sounds like red mask? Repeat it over to
+yourself. I have; but I can’t get it. “Dead” sounds something like
+“red.” “Dead past.” That’s senseless, isn’t it? “May ask,” sounds like
+“mask,” and takes the lip pressure that Irene insists he made. But
+“may ask” is meaningless, isn’t it? I can’t get it. I am hoping that
+Lucy may be able to, later. She is such a little word wizard.
+
+Irene knew that Father was dying. She thought that he had shot
+himself. She did not try to question him. We can’t blame her for that.
+She wanted to do something for him, but she didn’t know what to do.
+She attempted to ease his position; to stop the flow of blood with the
+sheets.
+
+He said our names: “Neal. Judith. Lucy.” She started to leave him,
+then, to bring Lucy and me to him. He said, more loudly than he had
+spoken before: “Wait. Father.” She ran back to him, and he said,
+slowly and plainly: “Bring Father. I must tell _him_.” He repeated,
+“Must tell Father.” That was the end.
+
+Irene declares that there can be no doubt about it: Father had
+something that he wished to tell Grandfather and no one else. It seems
+to me that can mean but one thing: Father knew who killed him. He was
+willing to tell Grandfather, no one else, who that person was. This
+would seem to preclude an outsider. Though there may be still some
+events in Father’s past life of which we children have not been
+informed.
+
+That ends Irene’s story, in so far as Father is concerned. She left
+him, then, and ran to the door and back again to get her candle before
+going into the dark hall. On the table, beside her candle, and in the
+light ring from Father’s lamp, she saw the keys lying scattered. Then,
+she thinks, for the first time she made the connection of the noise in
+the hall with the doors. That is reasonable enough—for Irene. She said
+she could not get the keys picked up. She kept dropping them. At last
+she put them in the pocket of her wrapper and, with her candle, came
+into the hall. Lucy’s door is directly across the hall from Father’s
+room, as you know. Irene poked one of the keys into the lock and
+unlocked it.
+
+I asked her how she had known which key to use. She said that she had
+never thought of that. She took the keys from her pocket, one at a
+time, and each one fitted the lock she put it in. That is straight.
+The locks on the upstairs doors are all alike, and so are the keys.
+Chris made me go with him Tuesday while he proved this to me.
+
+When Irene had finished telling her story, Tuesday morning, Aunt
+Gracia asked her why she had unlocked Lucy’s door first. She added
+that Lucy was the one child in the household. It was stupid of Aunt
+Gracia to ask that, because Irene had just told us how it had
+happened. I didn’t blame Chris for getting hot.
+
+He said Aunt Gracia was assuming that Irene ran out of Father’s door
+in full possession of all her faculties; that Irene was in a condition
+to stop and reason quietly about which door it would be wise to open
+first, establishing orders of precedence, giving us all a rating as to
+age and importance. There was tragedy, Chris said. There was a duty
+for Irene to perform. She performed it, and she deserved high
+admiration for her composure and courage. We might, or not, give her
+that admiration, he said. But he would brook no word of criticism.
+
+In a way, I agree with Chris. I wish Irene had got us out sooner; but
+I can see her position. Father was dying. She felt as if she should do
+something for him, right there, instead of rushing off and leaving
+him. When she did start to leave him, he called her back to him—that
+is, told her to wait. I don’t like Irene. But I guess she did about as
+well as any of us younger ones would have done.
+
+Aunt Gracia seemed to pay no attention to Chris’s speech. Her next
+question was downright crumby. She asked Irene why she had thought
+Christopher had shot himself, when she must have known that
+Christopher had no gun.
+
+Grandfather settled that in a hurry. He apologized for Aunt Gracia;
+and then he explained to her that sudden fright, as she knew,
+precluded rationalization, and that it was natural that Irene’s first
+anxiety should be for her husband.
+
+Aunt Gracia said, “You haven’t a gun, have you, Christopher?”
+
+“Beginning already?” Chris was ugly about it. “No, Gracia, I have no
+gun. Have you?”
+
+Aunt Gracia said: “No, I haven’t. But that is an honest question, and
+you had a right to ask it.”
+
+“Irene,” Grandfather said, “Christopher and Gracia were both locked in
+their rooms, were they not? You unlocked both their doors?”
+
+“I did, Uncle Thaddeus,” Irene answered. “I swear that I released
+every member of this family from a locked room.”
+
+It seems to me like this, Judy. Either we have to believe Irene’s
+story, all of it, or we have to disbelieve it. I am here. I know her.
+I heard her tell it. I believe it, word for word.
+
+Grandfather believes it, I know. In spite of her actions, I think that
+Aunt Gracia believes it. Or, perhaps I should say, against her own
+will, I think Aunt Gracia believes it. Chris must believe it. But here
+is the crumby thing about Chris. Instead of saying flat, as I can say,
+that he knows Irene’s story is true, he keeps trying to prove it.
+
+He got me off and showed me, on Tuesday, that the fire had been mended
+after we left it the night before. He showed me the oil in the hanging
+lamp, nearly burned out. He has said, “Irene had no opportunity to get
+rid of a revolver.” As if Irene could not have done all the things she
+said she had done—built the fire, burned the oil, made the bed, and
+then come upstairs later and fired the shot. She could have hidden the
+gun in the front of her wrapper, and have got rid of it since. Nobody
+searched her. The only important thing about any of Chris’s “proofs”
+for Irene is that he thinks it necessary to hunt for them and use
+them.
+
+On the square, though he is starring himself in the rôle of sleuth,
+Chris seems to me to be more off his screw than any of us. But,
+perhaps, I haven’t any right to say that. Chris told me that I should
+try to brace up, that Lucy, poor little kid, was worrying desperately
+about me. Grandfather told me that we must be careful for Aunt Gracia;
+that it seemed to him the tragedy was affecting her more seriously
+than any of the rest of us. Aunt Gracia thinks that Grandfather is
+harder hit than any of us. And, of course, Olympe is still flat in
+bed.
+
+It is queer about Olympe. She must have heard the shot and jumped out
+of bed and fainted from fright. But she has no memory of having heard
+it at all. That shows the sort of tricks one’s memory can play. When
+we found she didn’t know what had happened, we didn’t tell her until
+Dr. Joe got here yesterday, Wednesday morning. (I started this letter
+on Wednesday; but I’ve written all night, so it is four o’clock
+Thursday morning now.) Dr. Joe thought it better to break the news to
+her gently than to have her keep on fussing and worrying and asking
+questions. He told her. Leave it to Dr. Joe to take for himself, and
+put right through, any old disagreeable job that we are all afraid of
+attempting.
+
+After our merry little breakfast on Tuesday morning, Chris rode to
+Quilterville to spread the news, send the telegram to Dr. Joe, and to
+send the crazy lying telegram, which he and Irene had composed
+together, to you.
+
+Gus Wildoch and Hank Buckerman (he’s coroner now) and a couple of
+other guys came out to the ranch with Chris. Gus and Hank were as
+decent as they could be, I guess, under the circumstances. The other
+guys went about issuing invitations to have their faces punched in;
+but again under the circumstances—how handy those clichés are—I let
+them get away with it.
+
+Grandfather took charge of Gus and Hank. Gus’s attitude seemed to be
+that, if Grandfather would tell him what he wanted done, he’d do it.
+They stayed around about an hour, holding their sombreros like
+stomachers and shaking their heads, and then they left. Hank was much
+embarrassed because there would have to be an inquest. He kept
+apologizing to Grandfather about it. When Grandfather suggested that,
+perhaps, the inquest could be discussed later, Hank said sure,
+whenever we said, and, furthermore, it was nothing but a damn lot of
+red tape anyway.
+
+Gus and Hank came out again to the ranch when Dr. Joe came, early
+Wednesday morning. Slim Hyde came, too, with his hearse. Dr. Joe had
+brought him because he, Dr. Joe, wished to take Father’s body to
+Quilterville for an autopsy. Hank was a trifle worried about the
+inquest by this time, but Dr. Joe told him that the family would not
+be able to be bothered with anything of the sort for several days. The
+time was finally set for Friday morning. Queer, especially since old
+Hank is coroner, how I dread that inquest. If I were dog guilty, I
+couldn’t dread it much more than I do. Hank was decent as could be
+about it. Insisted, again, that it was a mere formality, and advised
+Grandfather not to try to attend. Furthermore, he said, that went for
+any of us who weren’t feeling up to snuff on Friday morning. All he
+needed, he declared, were one or two folks who could kind of tell a
+little about how things had happened.
+
+Hank himself, as I nearly forgot to tell you, deduced a theory almost
+at once which satisfied him completely. Someone, he declared, had shot
+Father through the open window. Since it did not matter at all to Hank
+that there is not a tree of any sort near Father’s room, nor that,
+unless the murderer had been equipped with wings, he should have had
+to stand on the porch roof to fire, nobody bothered to quarrel with
+Hank about it, nor about how the fellow had got the window open, nor
+any of it.
+
+Dr. Joe stayed here until shortly after noon. He had his hands pretty
+full, what with attending the entire family, and interviewing and
+dismissing the busybodies who had been streaming up since the day
+before, like ants to a sugar bowl.
+
+Chris and I could not see much reason for an autopsy. We knew that
+Father had been shot; and had died from that shot. But Dr. Joe was as
+stubborn as a mule about it; so we gave in. He and Slim took Father’s
+body to Quilterville on Wednesday afternoon. It will stay there, now,
+until after the inquest, and then be brought home for the funeral,
+which, I believe, the folks have decided to have on Saturday.
+
+I have kept at this all night, in order that you and I can start even.
+I want you to know, when you have read this letter, as much as I knew
+when I wrote it. I’ll skip through it now and see whether I have left
+out any points. If not, I’ll ride into Quilterville, as soon as Chris
+gets up at six, and mail this on number Twenty-two.
+
+I find several points I have not made in connection with Irene’s
+story. As soon as she had heard the shot, she came through the
+downstairs rooms and up the front stairway. The door was locked, until
+she unlocked it. No one could have come downstairs the front way then,
+or she would have met him. The door to the back stairs was also
+locked, on the sitting-room side. Someone could have run down the hall
+and have hidden on the back stairway, or in the bathroom, which was
+unlocked. Someone could have gone to the attic. The door to the attic
+was unlocked. Then, while we were all in Father’s room, just at the
+first there, he might have managed to sneak through the hall, which
+was dark, and past Father’s door in spite of the fact that it was
+open, and get to some hiding place without any of us seeing him.
+Whatever his previous plans had been, they had not included one member
+of the family, not locked in a room, who could unlock the other doors.
+Nor, of course, had his plans included the circumstance of his being
+locked upstairs by means of the bolted stairway doors.
+
+I know how this will be bound to seem to you: the problem was one of
+discovering some fellow hiding in the house. It would seem so to me, I
+am sure, if I were not right here. Judy, you’ll have to take my word
+for it. No one was hiding in this house on Monday night or Tuesday
+morning. A human being, even a child, takes a good-sized space to hide
+in. There was not a foot of space, from cellar to attic, which we had
+not gone over with idiotic thoroughness before it was light on Tuesday
+morning.
+
+I can see you sitting there and thinking of places where we did not
+look. It won’t go, dear. Yes, we looked in the old furnace and poked
+into it, though Lucy could not have crawled into the fire box. Yes, we
+have looked in the broom closets and the fruit closets. We have looked
+in the flour and sugar bins, and the wash boilers, and the churns, and
+the bureau drawers. We have looked as if we were hunting for a collar
+button instead of a man. And, remember, Aunt Gracia at the time, and
+since, has been over every square inch of the house. You know that she
+can always find any missing thing in this house more easily than we
+can find a word in the dictionary. Irene, I think it was—it sounds
+like her—who suggested secret passages and sliding panels. They would
+be convenient, wouldn’t they?
+
+The ground is still covered with snow. Except for the paths from the
+front and back doors, and the necessary paths to the barns and
+outhouses, and the tracks the dogs have made, the snow, as far as we
+can see, is clean and unbroken. That would mean, wouldn’t it, that
+anyone who had left the house since Monday night had left it through
+the front or the back door? No one has stepped on the side porch, and
+the snow from that door to the yard is still unbroken. We could not
+keep the paths from getting beaten—people coming and going, all that.
+We have kept the outside doors locked, and Chris has the keys in his
+pocket. Nobody could pick those locks with a hairpin or a glove
+buttoner. We have kept Whatof chained by the front door and Keeper
+chained by the back door. You know, when those dogs have been told to
+watch, what they would do to some sneaking stranger.
+
+After this, it hardly seems worth while to bother about telling you
+what Chris discovered when he was looking under Father’s bed that
+night. But here it is. The bed had been moved three or four inches at
+the foot—pulled along over the carpet, I mean, as if some fairly hefty
+weight had been tugging on it. Chris keeps declaring that this must be
+of importance. How can it be important? Remember, the rope was covered
+with snow. The snow on the window sill and on the porch roof was
+unbroken. The snow makes it a certainty that no one had got out of
+that window during the past hour, let alone the past twenty minutes.
+Chris maunders about the rope having been used for some purpose before
+the snowstorm began. Irene suggested that the fellow might have come
+in that way. Lassoed the leg of the bed, first, I suppose, and then
+climbed right up.
+
+I think that finishes it all then, except this. The folks here, for
+some reason, seem to be getting comfort from keeping you and Greg in
+the dark. Rather often somebody pauses to thank goodness that you two
+don’t have to know the truth. I am not asking you to lie for me; but,
+on the level, I wish you would. Things are bad enough around here as
+it is, without having the folks all sore at me. In time, they will
+have to tell you the truth. If you could, until they get ready to do
+so, receive whatever hanky-panky they write to you, and not let them
+know that you are on, it would help me a lot.
+
+I’ll write you the truth every night—I’m night herding in the house at
+present. You can write what you please to me, of course. As I have
+said, I need the benefit of your thinking. Too, and again of course,
+you can do as you please about giving me away. Perhaps I would better
+say, you can do what you have to do. It doesn’t matter, really. What
+does?
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                                Neal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+  I
+
+                                Thursday night,
+                                October 11, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: I said I’d write again to-night, so I shall, though I
+haven’t much to add to what I wrote last night. All day I’ve been
+troubled with doubts about the wisdom of this writing. But I have
+started it, and you’ll want the developments, and I need your help; so
+I’ll keep at it for a while, at any rate. Particularly, I am sure, you
+will want news of the family.
+
+They are all saying, now, how splendidly Grandfather is coming
+through. He has got the cane that Chris duded with in the East, and he
+totters about with it, defying any one of us to think that he needs to
+use it. Physically, he is a dead game sport. But, mentally, darn it,
+Judy, I don’t know. Think this over. Is it like Grandfather to insist,
+in spite of everything, to insist without rhyme or reason, that
+someone sneaked in from the outside and killed Father, and got away
+again? No, sir, it is not like him. But that is what he is saying. I
+have decided that either Grandfather does think that I did it, and is
+putting up this con talk to save me, or else that, mentally,
+Grandfather has weakened a bit.
+
+That brings the interesting speculation as to whether or not
+Grandfather would try to save me. I know this about him. He is the
+finest, straightest, wisest man I have ever known. (If Father had
+lived, he would have been as great as Grandfather, in the end. But
+Grandfather had an edge on Father of thirty-odd years of living, and
+experiencing, and acquiring knowledge and wisdom.) Giving that
+character to Grandfather—or to any man—would he, if he felt fairly
+certain that his grandson had killed his own father, even by mistake
+for another man, try to cover traces, shield him, and allow him to go
+free? I think that he would. You know, Grandfather has always been
+strong for the idea of usefulness connected with morality and the
+principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. He would think
+that, by saving me from punishment, he was saving the entire family
+from worse punishment. While my punishment would be a just one, theirs
+would be fearfully unjust. The family name would be disgraced. You and
+Lucy would be known as the sisters of a murderer—a parricide. Your
+children—had an uncle hanged. No, Grandfather would not stick that. A
+few months ago he wrote for Lucy, “Be generous, rather than just.”
+That is what he would do. He would let justice slide for me in order
+to be generous to the rest of the family. He would save me in order to
+save our standards, our traditions, and the other Quilters’ futures.
+And any one of us would do the same thing. I know it.
+
+Olympe is still in bed. She quite simply lies there. I went in and
+talked to her a few minutes to-day. Unless the family stops this darn
+sentimental business of everyone trying to “spare” everyone else,
+we’ll make a fine showing on Friday at the inquest. I asked Olympe,
+straight, how she supposed it had happened that Uncle Phineas’s old
+gun was under her when the ladies picked her up from the floor.
+
+She said that, since I was asking for suppositions, she supposed she
+had seized it—Olympe would never do less than “seize” a gun—and jumped
+from her bed before she fainted. It seems, when Uncle Phineas is away,
+that she always sleeps with his old gun under her pillow.
+
+I told her that it had been unloaded. She said she knew it. She would
+have been afraid to sleep with the horrible, dangerous thing beneath
+her pillow if it were not unloaded.
+
+Olympe’s guns would always be unloaded, wouldn’t they? As if her life
+were nothing but motions—useless things pretending usefulness;
+unrealities in the guise of reality. Her world is a stage, right
+enough, and she is more merely a player than it seems entirely moral
+for any living person to be.
+
+She said she supposed it must have been the sound of the shot that
+frightened her, though she does not remember having heard the shot.
+(Dr. Joe says that is not at all unusual. That, often, when people
+faint from sudden fright, they do not remember the cause of their
+fright when they regain consciousness.) The last things that Olympe
+remembers are rubbing lotion on her hands, getting into bed, and
+blowing out the lamp on her bedside table.
+
+I think that her prostration now is by way of being distinctive.
+Sorry. That is a crumby way for me to write of Olympe. I am
+tremendously fond of her, and she knows it.
+
+Aunt Gracia is doing only fairly well. She looks ill. Her grief has
+intensified her aloofness. Grief is the first word to use; but it is
+grief plus horror with Aunt Gracia. She is convinced that some one of
+us, right here in the house now, murdered Father on Monday night. As
+always, she manages to be the most useful member of the family. She
+would die for any one of us, I believe; but she hates to live with
+us—excepting, of course, Grandfather and Lucy.
+
+Lucy, poor little kid, is hit hard. She is up and around, and she
+helps Aunt Gracia. But she looks—frightful. You’d hardly know her.
+That shocked expression is still on her face, sort of stuck on it,
+like a mask. She was too skinny, anyway, and I’ll bet she has lost ten
+pounds since Monday night. She doesn’t cry. She slips about, working,
+or staying close to Grandfather. She has stopped reading. She has
+stopped writing. When she isn’t busy with the little duties Aunt
+Gracia finds for her, she huddles close to Grandfather—Chris says—or,
+when I am in the house, to me, and sits quietly with her tiny hands in
+her lap, and with that expression on her face. She took a tablet early
+this evening and began to write to you. She wrote about half a page,
+and then she walked across the room and tossed the entire tablet into
+the fire. I know why. Lucy will not write lies. She cannot write the
+truth. So she has quit.
+
+Irene and Chris, I think, have come through better than the rest of
+us. Irene dared to say that she and Christopher still had their “great
+love.” All the rest of us, Aunt Gracia and Grandfather, Lucy and I,
+for instance, hate one another, I suppose. I should not suggest,
+though, that Irene is not affected, or that Chris is not. Irene cries
+most of the time. She is as shaky as an aspen, and hurt-seeming. She
+is not withdrawn, as Aunt Gracia is; but, poor girl, she gives the
+impression of trying to keep out of the way. I suppose grief is the
+most jealous and the most selfish of all emotions, and Irene senses
+it, even from Chris. We have no reason to expect her to feel as we
+feel, now; and since she cannot she is excluded and alone.
+
+It is hard to write about Chris, or to understand him. He
+loved Father. He has something to endure that the rest of us
+haven’t—remorse. He made the last few months of Father’s life a hell
+on earth for him, and he knows it. When Chris thinks about our loss—he
+is white all the way through. But Chris, like the rest of us, has gone
+rather flooey. Judy, there is no good denying it—Chris is scared. And
+fear seems to make Chris rather yellow. I think it often does that to
+men and women.
+
+Chris had got it into his head that, sooner or later, Irene is going
+to be blamed for this, because she was the only one who was not locked
+in a room on Monday night. So Chris has turned sleuth. An
+objectionable rôle at best, and one that Chris plays badly. On the
+square, Judy, it is a case of protesting too much. As nearly as I can
+judge, the one thing against Irene is her husband’s eagerness to prove
+that she is innocent. Everyone here except Chris knows that she is,
+without proof. I tried to give that to Chris to-day, but he would not
+have it.
+
+He said it was charming of the family, but that after the inquest the
+law might step in. If it did, or when it did, he thought it would be
+well to have some proofs a bit more tangible, if less beautiful, than
+sweet family faith.
+
+He has been rounding up these proofs of his since Monday night. If he
+has captured anything that is worth a cent for proof of anything, he
+has not informed me. This is the sort of thing he produces:
+
+The rope—his informant was Aunt Gracia—had been in the attic for a
+year or more. It was bought to be used for a clothes-line. It was too
+thick for the clothespins to straddle, so it was put in the attic.
+This fact, that the rope was taken from our attic, Chris professes to
+believe is of enormous import. Remember little sentimental Lucy, aged
+four, when Uncle Phineas sneaked her off to the circus, inquiring as
+she watched the clown, “If he weren’t tho thad, would he be funny?”
+
+To-day, Chris has been directing his attention to the question of who
+locked us all in our rooms. I told him that meant, merely, that he was
+directing his attention to who murdered Father. Any boob would know
+that whoever did the one thing did the other. He essayed shrewdness
+with his “Perhaps.”
+
+
+  II
+
+                                Later on Thursday night.
+
+As I finished writing that last paragraph Aunt Gracia came into the
+sitting room. I think she suspects that I am giving you the truth,
+though she neither accuses nor questions. She had brought some darning
+with her, and for the first time since Tuesday morning she seemed to
+wish to talk. So I have put this aside for an hour, and we have been
+talking.
+
+It is Chris, I suppose, who has started Aunt Gracia to worrying about
+the locked doors. She asked me if it didn’t seem strange to me that
+anyone could have gone through the upper hall, locking all the doors,
+and not have waked any of us.
+
+I told her, perhaps a bit, but not very strange. She and Lucy and I
+sleep like stones and always have. Olympe is slightly deaf. Chris is a
+sound sleeper, too; and if he had heard someone monkeying around he
+would have thought it was Irene. Irene, downstairs, with the doors
+closed and locked, couldn’t have heard anyone who was trying to be
+quiet in the upper hall.
+
+“That is all very well,” she said, “but what about your grandfather?
+Do you think that anyone could open his door, remove the key from the
+inside lock, close the door and lock it on the outside, without his
+hearing a sound? He sleeps like an Indian.”
+
+“For that matter,” I said, “Father slept lightly, too. But the doors
+were locked, and no one heard it being done. Why bother with
+conjectures when we have facts?”
+
+She declared that we had no facts, as yet. She said that I was wrong
+about Father sleeping lightly. That is, he had not been sleeping
+lightly of late, because there was something to make him sleep heavily
+in the medicine Dr. Joe had been prescribing for him. She said she
+meant to talk to Dr. Joe about that, later. Just now, she wished to
+talk to me about the locked doors.
+
+“What I believe,” she said, “is that the keys for the doors were
+collected sometime early in the evening, or, perhaps, in the
+afternoon. Then, when the murderer slipped through the hall that night
+he had nothing to do but fit the keys into the locks and turn them. It
+is possible that Father would not have heard so slight a sound as
+that. It is not possible that anyone could have opened his door
+without his hearing it. Not one of us, I think, except Irene would
+have noticed if our key was not in its lock when we went to bed. Not
+one of us used our bedroom key, except Irene.”
+
+“Was her key in the lock when she went to bed?” I asked.
+
+Aunt Gracia said, “I don’t know.”
+
+“Why don’t you ask her?” I suggested.
+
+“I have asked her.”
+
+“Couldn’t she remember? Or wouldn’t she tell you?”
+
+“Yes, she told me. She said that it was not in the lock. She said she
+missed it, at once, and told Christopher that it was gone. He said, no
+matter—something of the sort.”
+
+“Well, Aunt Gracia?” I asked. I guess she could see the chip on my
+shoulder. I don’t like Irene a bit better than Aunt Gracia likes her.
+But I seem to like fair play a lot better than Aunt Gracia does.
+
+“Well,” she sort of mocked, “since the key was missing at nine
+o’clock, doesn’t it seem odd to you that when, at eleven or
+thereabouts, Irene found the door locked against her, she should have
+decided that Christopher had locked her out?”
+
+“Not at all,” I said. “She was angry, and her feelings were hurt. Why
+should she stop to wonder about the key? The door was locked, wasn’t
+it? Irene and I seem, at least, to have a feeling for facts in common.
+The door was locked. All right—Chris could have got up, found the key,
+and locked it, couldn’t he? Keys aren’t stationary things.”
+
+“Evidently not,” Aunt Gracia said, without lifting her eyes from her
+sewing. “I’ve asked everyone but you, Neal. No one can say whether his
+key was on the inside or outside of his lock, that night, or whether
+it was missing entirely. Do you know about the key to your door?”
+
+I didn’t, of course. I hadn’t touched the thing since she had put it
+in the lock, weeks ago.
+
+“No one,” she said, “in this house, ever touched keys, or thought
+keys, but Irene. Understand, Neal,” she went on quickly, because, I
+think, she saw that her injustice was making me hot, “I do not think
+that Irene walked into Dick’s room on Monday night and shot him. I do
+know this. We all know it. Irene was out in the hall that night, with
+the keys to all the doors. She could lock or unlock as she chose. She
+could have locked us all in our rooms. She could have spent the ten
+minutes or so, after we heard the shot, in Dick’s room with him as she
+says she did, or she could have spent that time in helping someone to
+escape, or hide, or——(Dick’s last words, as quoted by Irene,
+particularly the ‘red mask’ remark, did not carry conviction to me.
+Did they to you?) Then, when she was certain that her—shall we say
+friend?—her friend was safe, she could have unlocked our doors. Lucy’s
+first—the child of the household.
+
+“Fine!” I said. “Except that no one was hidden in the house, and that
+no one has escaped. Irene unlocked Lucy’s door because it was straight
+in front of her as she ran from Father’s room. If, as you’ve been
+hinting, Irene had planned with somebody to kill Father, would she
+have agreed to a plan that would put her in the position she is in
+now—that is, the only one of us who was not locked in a room?”
+
+“Irene is stupid. She might have agreed blindly, if the person who did
+the planning was clever. But there is this, Neal. I repeat, I insist
+that Irene is stupid. Suppose, this seems more probable, that whoever
+planned to kill Dick did not tell Irene the truth about what he was
+planning to do. Suppose he made her believe that something else—no, I
+have no idea what—was going to be done that night. The rope might come
+into it there. And the snow probably spoiled some extra plan. No one
+could have reckoned on snow in October. In all my memory, snow in
+October has come just once before this—that was when I was a little
+girl. In other words, suppose that Irene helped, but unwittingly—as a
+dupe, a cat’s-paw. That is possible, isn’t it?”
+
+“No,” I said. “Irene couldn’t keep a secret to save her life. If she
+had got mixed up in this, but was innocent of any wrong intentions,
+she would have told Chris, either purposely or by mistake. It takes
+stouter stuff than Irene has to keep a secret at a time like this. If
+she had told Chris anything of that sort, he would have told us. You
+may, or may not, have a right to doubt Irene’s honesty. You can’t
+doubt Chris’s—not in an affair of this sort.”
+
+“I can,” Aunt Gracia said. “I do. I doubt everyone in this house, for
+one reason or another, except your Grandfather and, perhaps, Lucy.”
+
+That “perhaps” made me see red. “And yourself?” I said. I was a mucker
+for saying it as I did.
+
+She answered me quietly: “No. Sometimes I doubt myself.”
+
+“That’s all right,” I said, “but you can stop doubting Lucy, here and
+now——”
+
+“I have never thought,” Aunt Gracia interrupted, “that Lucy walked
+into Dick’s room and shot him. Don’t be absurd, Neal.”
+
+“Whatever you thought about her,” I said, “makes no particular
+difference. She was in my room within two minutes, within a minute, I
+should say, after the shot was fired. If you could have seen her
+then——” I was too sore to try to talk about it.
+
+“Yes. I knew about her coming directly into your room, Neal,” was what
+Aunt Gracia said with words.
+
+I got up and put a log on the fire. I didn’t dare trust myself to
+answer her.
+
+After a minute or two, she went on talking. She wished that I would
+stop standing up for Irene. She said that it didn’t matter what I said
+to the family; but, when outsiders, people in authority, came to
+question me, she thought it unnecessary for me to make my defences of
+Irene so angrily and so staunchly. She finished by saying: “You don’t
+like her, Neal. You have never liked her. You have said to me that you
+hated her. Why should you, now, take this attitude toward her? You
+resent even her husband’s attempts to prove her story—resent them on
+the grounds that Irene never could, under any provocation, do an
+unworthy deed.”
+
+“Rot!” I said. “Look here, there is a difference between an unworthy
+deed, as you say, and murder—or even helping a murderer along.”
+
+“To be sure,” she said.
+
+I decided to answer her, this time. “Do you believe,” I said, “that I
+murdered Father, and that Irene helped me?”
+
+“I think,” she answered, straight, “that Irene had to help either you,
+or Christopher, or Olympe—or someone from the outside who has eluded
+us. My clear thinking forces me to give up hope of an outsider. You
+notice that I have left out Father, myself, and Lucy. The madness of
+the past few days has, sometimes, made me almost doubt myself; but I
+know that is madness—nothing else. No one could doubt Father, or
+Lucy—I suppose.”
+
+“All right, Aunt Gracia,” I answered—I can’t explain it, but her
+saying that she had had moments of doubting herself was mighty good
+for me to hear—“let’s look at it this way. What reason would Chris, or
+Olympe, or you—let’s include you—or I have for killing Father? I mean,
+why would any one of us have done it?”
+
+“Why does anyone ever murder?” she asked. “Because, since his mind his
+not become one with his Creator’s mind, he can lose it—can be insane
+for a longer or shorter time. Why did Dick murder Enos Karabass?”
+
+“Because he tried to assault Mother,” I answered.
+
+“So Dick said, and, I suppose—believed. Enos loved me. He worshipped
+me, I tell you. I loved—worshipped him. Our punishment came because we
+did worship each other, instead of our Creator. But, loving me as he
+did, and loving all women because of me, do you suppose—— Oh, how mad
+of me to talk to you like this! No matter. I will say it. Dick was
+insanely, wildly jealous. You are Dick’s son. But vengeance is the
+Lord’s. If you did do this thing, I hope you may go free, as Dick went
+free; and that, before you die, you may be saved, forgiven, and ready
+to enter one of the highest states of glory, as Dick was ready.”
+
+I don’t know why that didn’t make me hot. It didn’t. It was as if I’d
+had a curtain over a part of my mind, and Aunt Gracia’s accusation had
+drawn it aside, and had shown me, in the light, that the dim, queer
+things I had sort of halfway feared myself, were—cobwebs.
+
+My own relief, I suppose, made me capable of sympathy for her. I was
+dead sorry for her, and her doubts, and her poor, battered-up love
+affair. I tried to say what I thought might comfort her.
+
+“It was a wonderful thing, Aunt Gracia,” I proffered, “that, if Father
+had to die, he should have died so soon after his baptism. That he
+could go, as you say, saved, forgiven, and ready for one of the
+highest states of glory——”
+
+She interrupted me sharply: “Why do you talk to me like that? You
+don’t believe any of it, and I know that you don’t. What are you
+trying to do? Trap me?”
+
+“Trap you?” I echoed like a fool. I didn’t get her at all. You know
+how I am, Judy. I can use the old bean all right, but it takes
+time—plenty and plenty of time. Mark Twain, wasn’t it, who said, “When
+in doubt, tell the truth?” I tried it. “I was attempting to comfort
+you, dear,” I said.
+
+“No, you weren’t,” she rewarded me. “But you have. You have made me
+remember. Sometimes I forget. What you have just said is the meaning
+of it all. That is why I can endure it. Anything that has a meaning
+can be endured.”
+
+She went away quickly, and left me alone. I have been sitting here,
+trying to think.
+
+“Trap me,” she said. Can you beat it, Judy? You see her meaning, don’t
+you? Chris, as a sleuth, has done much talking about motives. If Aunt
+Gracia had wished to be sure that Father would attain one of those
+highest states of her glory——— You see? Before Father had had time to
+backslide. A motive for Aunt Gracia. But who would ever have thought
+of it but Aunt Gracia herself?
+
+Isn’t she the queerest proposition? Just when we get to thinking that
+she is almost loony, she snaps around on us and is brighter than we
+are. No mind that was not in excellent working condition could have
+caught me up like that, “What are you trying to do? Trap me?” in half
+a second.
+
+Though, as you know, Judy, all this is rot. Suppose we got about it as
+Chris has been going of late. Suppose we try to put salt on the tails
+of nonexistent clues, and to materialize what Chris chooses to call
+“proofs” out of the air.
+
+Aunt Gracia’s voice was the one Lucy and I heard first, and all the
+time on Monday night, calling and calling to Grandfather from behind
+her locked door. Aunt Gracia has lived a good many years now with one
+of her high states of glory as her own objective. Would she sacrifice
+it for Father’s sake? She would not. If she had been guilty, would she
+have revealed her motive, offhand, to me? She would not. All this, you
+understand, would be Chris’s “proofs.” Mine would be that I know Aunt
+Gracia. That I have known her all my life. That she is a
+Quilter—Grandfather’s daughter and Father’s sister. These are good
+enough proofs for me.
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+  I
+
+                                Friday night,
+                                October 12, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: We have been all day in Quilterville, attending the
+coroner’s inquest. It was pretty bad. Worse than I had expected. Hank
+Buckerman was all right, decent as could be. But a fly guy from the
+district attorney’s office was there, trying to show off—make a name
+for himself; Lord only knows what he was trying to do besides chivy
+us. His name is Benjamin Thopson. He put the screws on, right enough.
+
+The men on the jury were John Skrope, Roy Ulander, George Houndel,
+Pete Garret, and a couple of Swedes that have just bought the livery
+stable Jim Murtaine used to have, down near the river. It was the
+Swedes, I’ll bet, who kept the jury out so long. Two hours and ten
+minutes, Jude, while we hung around waiting, before they brought in
+their verdict: Died on the night of October eighth, from the results
+of a gunshot wound inflicted by person or persons unknown.
+
+None of us said so while we were waiting. None of us has said so yet.
+But I know what I was afraid of, and I know what the others were
+afraid of: a verdict against Irene, or against Irene and Chris
+together. That is what they would have handed us, Jude, just as sure
+as I’m living to tell it, if it had not been for Aunt Gracia. But I
+must tell you that later. It is early evening now. I have all night to
+write in. I want to give you the thing straight, from beginning to
+end.
+
+I had never been in that courtroom before, and I know you have never
+been there. It is a dirty, dark hole of a place, with the windows too
+high and the ceiling too low. They kept the windows shut, and the big
+coal stove in the centre of the room blazing away, red hot all the way
+around part of the time, and eating up the air.
+
+Hank, looking like a good-humoured eagle, sat up behind a desk where
+the judge sits during trials. This smart aleck Thopson and Bruno
+Ward—the Portland lawyer, you know, whom Father and Dr. Joe have been
+consulting since Mr. White died—and Mattie Blaine sat at a long table
+below and in front of Hank’s desk. (Mattie had to take the whole works
+down in shorthand.) We Quilters sat together in a front seat, to the
+side. The remainder of the room was filled, chiefly, with canaille.
+While I was in the witness chair I had a chance to size up our
+audience. I was pleased to see how many people we knew had enough good
+taste and tact to stay away. None of the Beckers were there, and none
+of the Youngs. Chris said Tod Eldon was there with his wife, but I
+didn’t see them. None of the Binghams were there. But a quarter
+section of the room was filled with the Dunlapper tribe.
+
+Dr. Joe testified first. Death was caused by an intrathoracic
+hemorrhage, due to a bullet shot into the left chest. The bullet
+entered the left chest between the fifth and sixth ribs, pierced the
+pericardium without injury to the heart, traversed the lung, and
+lodged near the left scapula. (I’ve got this from Dr. Joe since then.)
+
+Thopson asked, “Any possibility of suicide, Dr. Elm?”
+
+Dr. Joe said, none. The absence of a weapon proved that suicide was
+impossible. Also, absence of powder burns showed that the gun had been
+fired from a distance of several feet.
+
+Thopson asked Dr. Joe whether he knew what sort of gun had been used.
+Dr. Joe told him that he had recovered the bullet. That it had been
+fired, evidently, from a .38 calibre Colt’s.
+
+Thopson said: “You were present in the house at the time of the
+murder, Dr. Elm? You were among the first to discover the body?”
+
+“No,” said Dr. Joe.
+
+“Your testimony, then, regarding the absence of a weapon near the
+bedside, was given from hearsay?”
+
+Dr. Joe said, “If Dick had had a gun in his hand when they found him,
+the absence of powder burns, and the position of the bullet, and the
+whole thing would prove that he couldn’t have shot himself—if that’s
+what you’re getting at.”
+
+Thopson said he was through with the witness. Hank excused Dr. Joe and
+called Irene to the stand.
+
+The procedure, after that, was to call the witness, swear him or her
+in, ask the name in full, where they lived, what the relationship was
+to the victim, that sort of thing, and then Hank would say, “Tell the
+jury what you know about the shooting.”
+
+Irene seemed delicate, and pretty, and out of place stuck up there in
+that dirty old hole.
+
+She told her story straight, just as she had told it to us at home.
+Except she said that, when she found the door locked she thought that
+Chris was trying to play a joke on her. She omitted their quarrel, you
+see—good job, too—and the part about having cried herself to sleep.
+
+Thopson led off by asking, “Is your husband in the habit of locking
+you out of your room at night, for a joke?”
+
+Irene said, “No, he isn’t.”
+
+“How many times has he locked you out?”
+
+“He has never locked me out.”
+
+“What gave you the idea, then, that it was a joke?”
+
+Irene said, “It could have been nothing else.”
+
+“It wasn’t a joke, though, in the end, was it?”
+
+“It proved not to be. It also proved not to have been my husband who
+had locked the door.”
+
+“It never occurred to you to knock on your own door and find out why
+your husband was—er—playing this joke on you?”
+
+“I did not wish to disturb the family.”
+
+“Very considerate. A light rap, with a dainty hand, on your own door,
+would have aroused and disturbed the entire family, you think?”
+
+Mr. Ward jumped up. “Mr. Coroner,” he said, “this is a deliberate
+baiting of the witness, and a waste of time. This lady has explained
+that, though she thought the locked door was a joke, she was not
+entirely in sympathy with it. Mr. Thopson questions because she did
+not pound on the door like a vixen. It depends, I suppose, upon one’s
+experience with ladies. This lady slipped quietly away, arranged, as
+she has told us, a neat little retaliation, and went to sleep.”
+
+I had thought that Dr. Joe was making a sucker play when he had got
+Mr. Ward to come over from Portland. I changed my mind. Mr. Ward
+wasn’t particularly brilliant, not one, two, three compared to Aunt
+Gracia, but he was as useful as a left leg. Whenever this fly Thopson
+would get too smart, Mr. Ward would jump up and appeal to Hank, and
+Hank would shut Thopson off. Then, if Thopson started hollering about
+it, Hank would inquire: “What’s eating you, say? This ain’t a trial.”
+
+Perhaps it wasn’t a trial. But it came too close to being one to suit
+me. Though, in another way, a real trial might have been better. Right
+at the beginning, if Mr. Ward could have defended Irene, it would, at
+least, have carried the enormous advantage of straight dealing. He
+couldn’t defend Irene, because no one had accused her. What he was
+fighting was the accusation. But he had to hide even that.
+
+He played the rope, which the fiend had been afraid to use, and the
+weapon that the fiend had carried away with him, hard and fast. The
+trouble, or the chief trouble was, I think, that he did not believe in
+them himself.
+
+Thopson chivied Irene, next, on what he called “the victim’s last
+words.”
+
+Irene had told that Father had said, “Got away,” and then, “Red mask.”
+
+“You think the victim meant to indicate that some person, wearing a
+red mask, had got away?”
+
+“I don’t know what the words indicated. I only know that he said
+them.”
+
+“You have, perhaps, thought of some other meaning that the words were
+meant to convey?”
+
+“No, I have not.”
+
+“You have given the matter no thought whatever?”
+
+Mr. Ward stopped that. He asked whether the purpose of this
+investigation was to discover the facts of the case or to allow Mr.
+Thopson to torture a grief-stricken lady. He said that, clearly,
+Richard Quilter’s last words had meant to indicate that the man who
+had murdered him had been masked, and had escaped. Knowing, Mr. Ward
+said, that the family’s chief future concern would be to apprehend the
+fiend who had committed this heinous crime, Richard Quilter had, in
+spite of the fact that he was a dying man, done his best to aid his
+dear ones with the frightful task which he knew, even then, would soon
+devolve upon them. “His duty, first, gentlemen, though Richard Quilter
+performed it from the edge of the grave. Duty done, he called for his
+children, for his aged father——” On and on. But Ward was no fool.
+Remember, Judy, the men who were on the jury. Ward was merely heating
+his wind for the shorn lambs, as it were; or, at least, that was the
+way I sized him up.
+
+Thopson asked Mr. Ward, directly, if he thought that red masks were
+the customary apparel for murderers.
+
+Mr. Ward said, “Dying men don’t lie, Mr. Thopson.”
+
+Thopson said, “No. Dying men do not.”
+
+But I think that went high over the heads of the jury.
+
+Thopson then began on the keys. How had Irene happened to see them
+there on the table?
+
+“They were directly under the lamp and beside the candlestick I had
+put down.”
+
+“And what gave you the assurance that those particular keys were the
+keys to the bedroom doors?”
+
+“Nothing gave me that assurance. At last I understood what the noise
+in the hall must have meant—was meaning, that the others were locked
+in their rooms. I saw keys there. I took the keys and went to unlock
+the doors.”
+
+“Very well. How long would you say it was from the time you heard the
+shot until you happened to see the keys on the table, put them into
+your pocket, and went and unlocked the doors?”
+
+“The others say it was about ten minutes—or a bit longer—after the
+shot was heard, before I unlocked the first door.”
+
+“I am not asking you what the others say. I am asking you for your own
+opinion.”
+
+“I should have thought it was longer than that.”
+
+“Time passed slowly, dragged, between the time of the shot and the
+time to unlock the doors?”
+
+Irene didn’t get it. I think the jury didn’t, either.
+
+“It seemed a long time,” she answered.
+
+“During this long time,” Thopson said, “did you make any search, near
+the bed, for the weapon you thought the victim had used to kill
+himself?”
+
+“No. I was very much frightened and shocked. I did not know what to
+do.”
+
+“Were any weapons—any guns, that is—discovered later in the house?”
+
+“Dick’s own gun was in the closet of his room. But the closet was a
+long distance from the bed. The gun was on a high shelf, behind some
+boxes, and it was found fully loaded.”
+
+“That was the only gun in the house?”
+
+“No. There were others. But they were all locked in the rooms with the
+people who were locked in.”
+
+“Through with witness,” Thopson said, and sat down.
+
+They called me next, swore me in, and so on.
+
+I told my story; just about what I have written to you, though in less
+detail. How I had heard the shot, jumped out of bed, tried the door——
+I was scared stiff, Jude. I thought, after what Thopson had given
+Irene, when she was a lady and a pretty one, there was no imagining
+what he might do to me. When I stopped talking and he said he was
+through with me, and Hank said, “Witness excused,” I was so amazed
+that I kept right on sitting there until he said again, “Witness
+excused.”
+
+They called for Lucy, next. But Grandfather had not allowed her to
+come. He said that it was no place for her, that she was not
+physically fit to go through with anything of the sort, and that,
+since someone must stay at home with Olympe, Lucy should stay.
+
+Mr. Ward said, “Mr. Coroner, Lucy Quilter, a little girl, twelve years
+old, ill herself from shock and grief, is not in the courtroom. I may
+add that she is at home attending her aunt, who is seriously
+indisposed.”
+
+“And furthermore,” Hank said (“furthermore” is one of his pet words,
+you know; he pronounces it “futthermore”), “anybody who tries to start
+anything about that little motherless and fatherless child being kep’
+at home where she belongs, will find theirselves in a contempt of
+court—or worse.”
+
+He called Chris as a witness.
+
+
+  II
+
+Chris told the same story. He had heard the shot—so on. All the
+same—his fright, the noises we were making.
+
+About then one of the Swedes got a bright idea. He wanted to know if
+there weren’t any windows in our house, and why none of us had tried
+to get out of our room by way of the window.
+
+Chris told him that the rooms across the front of the house had
+windows out on to the sloping roof of the downstairs porch, but that
+the windows across the back of the house faced a sheer drop of close
+to thirty feet.
+
+Mr. Swede then decided that he had to have a plan of the upstairs
+rooms drawn on the blackboard, right then and there. Hank asked one of
+us to draw it. Who volunteered? Who would? Aunt Gracia, of course. It
+looked about like the sketch that I enclose.
+
+[Illustration: Gracia Quilter’s Sketch of the Second Floor. A
+hand-drawn plan of the upper floor of a house, consisting of eight
+bedrooms and one bathroom. A hallway runs through the middle from
+front to back, with stairs leading down on either end. There are also
+stairs leading up to the attic in the back, behind a narrow door. The
+porch roof runs along one side of the building, underneath the windows
+of the four bedrooms on that side, belonging to Christoper, Richard,
+Thaddeus, and Olympe. Opposite these are the bedrooms belonging to
+Neal, Lucy, Judith, and Gracia.]
+
+Some fools tittered. I could have killed them. She had no ruler, and
+the sketch was shaky, of course. But it was plain enough, and gave the
+Swede exactly what he had wanted. That is, it showed that Chris, or
+Grandfather, or Olympe could have got out of a window and gone along
+the porch roof to Father’s room.
+
+Thopson asked Chris why he had not done just that.
+
+Chris said: “I was out of my mind with fright. My wife was missing
+from our room. Someone had been shot. I could tell from the noises
+that others of the family were also locked in their rooms. My one idea
+was to get my door opened. Possibly, in another five minutes or so,
+the idea of the window might have occurred to me. I don’t know. I know
+that I did not, at the time, give a thought to the window.”
+
+Mr. Ward went to the blackboard and marked more plainly the situation
+of the window with regard to the roof—showing the distance, about five
+feet, of Chris’s cupola window from the roof. He drew a slanted line,
+to indicate a third pitch roof. He made a speech, trying to convey the
+impression that any thought of the roof, in connection with the case,
+was an absurdity. I don’t know about the jury, but I do know that I
+remained unconvinced.
+
+You understand, Judy, I am not slurring at Chris, or anything of the
+sort. But it is doggone queer that he did not think of that window at
+all. What I really believe about it is this: Physically, Chris has
+always been something of a coward. Three months ago I’d have denied
+moral cowardice for him; but his planning to sell us out because Irene
+nagged him, makes me less inclined to that denial. You remember the
+time Chris didn’t pull Lucy out of the river when she had a cramp? The
+time you jumped in with all your clothes on, and did? And the time he
+fell out of the cherry tree into a a hammock and fainted from fright,
+though he wasn’t even bumped? It seems a lot more probable to me that
+Chris did think of the window—that he looked out of it. The fact that
+a man doesn’t drop out of a window on to a slippery, slanted porch
+roof, at night, by no means makes him a murderer. There are different
+sorts of courage. Chris married Irene and brought her home to Q 2.
+
+I was afraid that Chris was in for a bad few minutes concerning the
+window; but while Mr. Ward had been talking, Pete Garret had,
+apparently, laboured. He brought forth a mouse. He asked Chris why he
+had locked Irene out of the room.
+
+Chris said, “I did not lock my wife out of the room.”
+
+Mr. Ward reminded the jury that the key to Chris’s door had been
+found, along with the keys to the other locked doors, on the table in
+Father’s room.
+
+“The fiend,” said Mr. Ward, “having no idea that this little lady was
+below stairs, had locked that door, when he locked the other doors, in
+order to make sure of the time required to effect his escape.”
+
+I don’t know why Thopson had waited so long to take up the subject of
+footprints. I imagine a good look at the jury had decided him not to
+crowd them with ideas. Though Mr. Ward had missed no opportunity to
+mention escape, Thopson had stopped Irene’s story, and mine, when we
+had come to the place about rushing into Father’s room after Irene had
+unlocked the doors.
+
+“Mr. Ward,” Thopson said to Chris, “keeps mentioning the escape of the
+criminal. Will you tell the jury, Mr. Quilter, exactly how you think
+this escape was made?”
+
+Chris said, “I have no idea as to his method of escape.”
+
+“Mr. Ward has made repeated mention of a rope hanging out of the open
+window of the victim’s room. Will you please give us the exact
+situation of that rope?”
+
+Chris told them what I have written to you.
+
+“Do you agree with Mr. Ward that this rope was not used as a means of
+escape?”
+
+“Yes, I agree.”
+
+“Will you tell us why?”
+
+Chris told them.
+
+“Now, Mr. Quilter, will you please tell the jury where you did
+discover footprints that you had reason to believe were made by the
+escaping criminal?”
+
+Chris is a good looker, all right, Judy. I wasn’t ashamed of him,
+sitting up there so clean and so alien to that dirty hole, answering
+the questions in that low, educated voice of his.
+
+“There were no discoverable footprints,” he said, “anywhere about our
+grounds.”
+
+“Indeed? That makes your perplexity, your—er—vagueness about his
+method of escape readily understandable.”
+
+“Nevertheless,” Chris inserted, “that he did find some method of
+escape is evinced by the fact that he has not been found in hiding in
+our home.”
+
+“You all searched the place pretty well, I suppose?”
+
+“We have searched repeatedly, and with absolute thoroughness.”
+
+One of the Swedes spoke up, in that slow, drawling, damnable way they
+have, “Yoost a minute, Mr. Coroner. Maaybe the fella is in the Quilter
+house yet, but not hiding behind a door—aye?”
+
+Hank said, “Say, get tired, can’t you? You guys don’t seem to
+understand the offices of this here inquiry. What we’re here for ain’t
+to put up a lot of tall talk. Futthermore, it is to find out how the
+dirty son of a sea cook got into the Quilter mansion and killed Dick
+Quilter—one of the squarest men that ever lived—and got away. We’ve
+got time, sure. But, at that, we ain’t got all week, either, to set
+here and listen to you guys beef about what ain’t got anything to do
+with the offices of this inquiry. Futthermore, witness testified that
+there weren’t no footprints they could find. Well, then, either they
+overlooked the footprints, the which would be easy enough on a place
+of that size, or else the guy hid in the house somewheres.
+Futthermore, to sit here and yappy-yap about him not hiding behind a
+door is wasting everybody’s time. Nobody said he hid behind a door,
+did they? Shut up! I’m talking, ain’t I? Present witness excused.
+We’ll ask Mr. Quilter, Senior, to take the stand, if he feels able.
+And we’ll try to listen to him with the respect his years merit, to
+say nothing of his attainments. Shut up! Am I coroner of Quilter
+County, or ain’t I? Am I supposed to run these proceedings, or had I
+better quit and turn them over to a rah-rah boy? Thank you, Chris. You
+done fine. Now, then, Mr. Quilter, if you’d as lief take the stand?”
+
+I got that speech straight from Mattie’s notes. She and I were talking
+together while we were waiting for the verdict. She’s a good kid. I’ll
+admit that I was sort of assuming the light and airy for her
+benefit—self-defence, Judy, not orneriness; I can’t advertise my
+reserves—and I said that speech of Hank’s was a classic, and that I’d
+like to have it to preserve, word for word. She said, “I’ll copy it
+from my notes for you,” and sat down and got to work. An hour later,
+she came up with a bunch of papers, torn from her notebook. “I thought
+you might like to have Miss Quilter’s testimony, too,” she said. “She
+was so wonderful,” and she handed me the papers and skipped. It made
+me sort of think that somebody must have told her about me pushing
+Lump Jones’s face in for him, the night of the Youngs’ straw ride.
+Gosh, but that seems twenty years removed from this afternoon, and
+Grandfather’s having to take the witness stand, and be questioned.
+
+
+  III
+
+Except for his manner of telling it, Grandfather’s story was not very
+different from Chris’s or mine.
+
+He had been wakened from his sleep by the sound of a gunshot. (I think
+Grandfather called it a revolver shot.) He had been mightily
+disturbed. He had lighted his lamp, risen from his bed, and gone to
+the door. He had found it locked—a circumstance that greatly increased
+his anxiety. He had donned his dressing gown and slippers. He had
+looked about him for a key, and he had made various futile attempts to
+open his door without it. He had gone to his window and opened it—had
+perceived that snow had fallen. Caution, which his increasing years
+had put upon him, had warned him against the folly of attempting to
+retain his balance on the sloping, snow-covered roof. He had turned
+again to his room, in search of some heavy implement with which to
+batter down his door. He had been unable to find anything of the sort.
+The turmoil made by other members of the family in their varied
+attempts to open their own doors had materially abetted his own
+agitation. Several times he had heard his daughter Gracia’s voice,
+calling to him from behind her locked door, to ascertain the state of
+his welfare. He had answered, but had seemed unable to reassure her.
+Finally, after what had seemed an interminable period of time, he had
+heard the welcome sound of running feet in the hall. Shortly after
+that, his niece, Mrs. Christopher Quilter, had unlocked his door.
+
+She had said to him his son’s name, “Dick!” and had hastened up the
+hall.
+
+He had gone at once to his son’s room. His nephew, Christopher, and
+his son’s children, Lucy and Neal, had been in the room when he had
+reached it. His son was dead. “Gentlemen, I invite your questioning.”
+
+Thopson came clear off his perch and asked Grandfather, most
+respectfully, whether he knew of anyone who would benefit by the death
+of Richard Quilter.
+
+“Sir,” Grandfather answered, “my son’s death, far from proving a
+benefit to any living person, has and will prove a severe loss to
+many. I am speaking now merely of material loss. My son was the
+manager of Q 2 Ranch. On his ability and acumen the fortune of our
+entire family largely depended.”
+
+“I had heard,” Thopson said, “that there had been some talk of selling
+the Q 2 Ranch.”
+
+“My nephew, Christopher, had been approached with offers of purchase.
+Up to the present time, he has accepted none of them. However, is that
+not beside the point? Had the present Quilter properties been sold,
+others would have been immediately purchased as an estate for the
+family. My son’s services would have been more necessary, if possible,
+on the new ranch than they have been on the old.”
+
+Roy Ulander spoke up from the jury. For a minute, when he began to
+speak, I was crazy mad, remembering all Grandfather had done for him,
+and thinking that Roy was going to quiz him. I was mistaken. Roy took
+that minute to attempt to console Grandfather. He said that he knew
+Neal and Phineas and he—Grandfather—would be able to carry the ranch
+along all right. He added, not wholly to my delight, that I was a
+good, steady lad and a fine worker, with an old head on young
+shoulders.
+
+Grandfather thanked him.
+
+Thopson wanted to know whether Father had left a will.
+
+Grandfather said that he had not.
+
+Thopson commented, “Very strange.”
+
+Grandfather begged leave to differ with him. He explained that, aside
+from Father’s modest personal effects, Father had nothing to will to
+anyone.
+
+“No life insurance?”
+
+“None, sir,” Grandfather said.
+
+“I see.” But Thopson managed to put into those two words a commentary,
+caustic, on the character of a man who ventures to die without life
+insurance.
+
+Grandfather rebutted with the information that, until 1893, both he
+and Father had carried large policies. Since that time, Grandfather
+said, they had been unable to keep up the premiums.
+
+Thopson grew faintly argumentative. He stated that the better
+companies carried their policy holders for several years.
+
+“As did our company, sir, for six years,” Grandfather replied.
+
+Thopson observed that it was difficult for him to understand why a
+family, who had ample means for all the luxuries of life, including
+education in Eastern universities, foreign travel, and what-not, could
+not afford the necessity of keeping up small life-insurance premiums.
+
+“The premiums,” Grandfather informed him, “amounted to well over
+fifteen hundred dollars a year. However, my understanding is, that the
+purpose of this inquiry was to discover, if possible, where, when, and
+by what means Richard Quilter came to his death. That its purpose was
+not to inquire into the details of our domestic financial managements
+and expenditures.”
+
+“Precisely, Mr. Quilter,” Thopson accepted. “Precisely. Our purpose is
+to discover, as you have said, where, when, and by what means Richard
+Quilter came to his death. Now, Mr. Quilter, I think I may say,
+without fear of contradiction, that you more than anyone else in this
+room are desirous of discovering, also, the person who is responsible
+for the death of your son. May I, then, offer you the results of my
+experience?” (Hot lot of experience that guy has had. He is still
+downy.)
+
+His question, of course, was rhetorical. But Grandfather answered it,
+when Thopson stopped to breathe.
+
+“You may, sir.”
+
+“In cases of this sort, the logical approach is to find, if possible,
+the reason for the crime. That is to say, before we can discover who
+committed the crime it is necessary to discover why the crime was
+committed. Now, if your son had left money to some person, there we
+would have what we professional men call a motive for the murder.”
+
+“You have made yourself clear,” Grandfather said. “However,
+unfortunately, perhaps, for you professional men, my son left not one
+cent on earth.”
+
+“You are positive of that?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“You aren’t?”
+
+“No, sir. I am confident of it. I am positive of nothing.”
+
+“Then,” Thopson produced, “perhaps it won’t surprise you greatly when
+I tell you that Richard Quilter did leave a neat little sum of money.”
+
+For one flickering instant Grandfather exposed his complete
+stupefaction to the rabble. Then, as he often does, he built a blind
+of his Johnson and got behind it.
+
+“You do not surprise me, sir. You do astonish me. Proceed, if you
+please, to enlighten me.”
+
+Up to this time, as I have said, Thopson had been as decent as a
+mucker of his sort could be toward Grandfather. But now that he was to
+enlighten, he assumed an oily, confidential, between-you-and-me manner
+that made me have to hang on to my chair to keep from lifting myself
+out of it and giving him a swift kick. Chris, who was sitting between
+Irene and me, saw that I was getting hot, I think, because right then
+he caught hold of my arm with a firm grip.
+
+In this new manner of his, Thopson informed Grandfather, and all of
+us, that, by the merest chance, he had discovered that Father had
+carried an accident policy for the past eight years. A friend of
+Thopson’s was an underwriter for the firm that Father had been insured
+with. This agent—that’s a good enough word for me—had told Thopson
+that, if Richard Quilter’s death proved to be accidental, their
+company would have to pay the heirs ten thousand dollars.
+
+“Sir,” Grandfather said, “I can but wish that your informant had been
+himself correctly informed. My son did carry such a policy.
+Unfortunately, it was allowed to lapse only last year.”
+
+Thopson forgot himself. “Not on your life it wasn’t. The premium was
+only forty dollars a year. If Richard Quilter himself didn’t keep up
+the payments, then somebody else has kept them up. Undoubtedly, some
+member of the family. Now, if we can find who made the last payment——”
+
+Dr. Joe stood up. “I made that last payment,” he said, and sat down.
+
+Thopson chose to get suddenly solemn. “Mr. Quilter, were you aware of
+the fact that Dr. Elm had made this payment?”
+
+Hank said, “Don’t answer him, Mr. Quilter. You’ve told him once. If
+he’s deaf, we can’t fiddle-faddle around with him all week.
+Futthermore, he’s a waste of time.”
+
+“Mr. Thopson,” Grandfather said, “I was not aware of the fact that
+anyone had made the payment. My belief was that the policy had been
+allowed to lapse.”
+
+“Mr. Quilter, can you give any reasonable explanation of the fact that
+your son had not told you of Dr. Elm’s having paid this premium?”
+
+“I trust, sir,” Grandfather replied, “that I should not attempt an
+unreasonable explanation. I give you what seems to me a most
+reasonable one when I state that I fancy my son was not cognizant of
+the fact that his friend, Dr. Elm, had met this obligation for him.”
+
+And again Thopson forgot himself. “You mean he didn’t know it? You bet
+he knew it. Last August he went to the company’s office, in Portland,
+and tried to collect damages for a sprained wrist, or something.”
+
+Dr. Joe stood up, emphatically.
+
+Thopson said, “One moment, Dr. Elm.”
+
+Hank said, “Go on ahead, Doc, if you’ve got something to say.”
+
+Dr. Joe said, “Oh—plenty of time.”
+
+“Mr. Quilter,” Thopson had retrieved himself, solemnity and all,
+“would ten thousand dollars make any particular difference to anyone
+on the Q 2 Ranch at the present time?”
+
+“The answer to the question, which I infer you are trying to put, is:
+Yes, sir, it would.”
+
+“To whom?”
+
+“To all of us.”
+
+“Then,” Thopson shot out, “if this ten thousand dollars is
+collectible, every person on the Q 2 Ranch at present would benefit
+because of it?”
+
+“That is true,” Grandfather said.
+
+Thopson said he had finished with the witness. Mr. Ward stood.
+
+“Mr. Quilter,” he asked, “in all matters you were your son’s
+confidant, were you not?”
+
+“So I believed,” Grandfather answered.
+
+“Since he had not told you that this policy was still operative, is it
+probable that he had told any other member of the family?”
+
+“It would seem not. However, I cannot be certain. My son had never
+attached importance to that policy. He believed that the company was
+an unreliable one. My son’s failure to tell me of Dr. Elm’s kindness
+might have been because he knew of my dislike for monetary dealings
+with our friends. It might have been that so trivial an episode passed
+out of his mind. Or, it might have been that Dr. Elm himself asked
+Richard not to mention his act of kindness. In any of these events, it
+would seem unlikely that Richard had mentioned the affair to any other
+member of the family. I have expressed myself poorly. My meaning is,
+that the same considerations which would have kept Richard from
+telling me of this would have kept him, also, from telling anyone
+else.”
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Quilter. One more question, if you will be so good.
+You have told Mr. Thopson that your family would benefit from the
+payment of the ten thousand dollars’ indemnity. There are few
+families, I should think by the way, to whom ten thousand dollars
+would be of no benefit whatever. The same question, put to any member
+of the jury, would, I am certain, be answered as you have answered it.
+My point is this: Would the money, for any reason, be more acceptable
+to you now than it would have been at any time in the past ten years?
+Or, to put it still more clearly: One year ago your son’s life was
+insured for a large amount—twenty, thirty thousand dollars. Would not
+thirty thousand dollars have been more useful to Q 2 Ranch than ten
+thousand dollars?”
+
+You see what he did, Judy? He asked the first question, and then he
+would not allow Grandfather to answer it. He kept right on going. And
+the question which Grandfather finally had to answer was: Which is the
+larger amount, ten or thirty thousand dollars?
+
+Do you know why Mr. Ward did that? I know. It was because he believes
+that one of us Quilters is guilty. It is because he was afraid of
+Grandfather’s honesty.
+
+I thought that Grandfather might scorn the loophole. He did not. He
+answered, “Sir, thirty thousand dollars would surely have been more
+useful to the Q 2 Ranch than a problematical ten thousand dollars. I
+may add, that my son’s life insurance was with an old, reliable
+company. Have I correctly answered your question?”
+
+“You have; and thank you, Mr. Quilter.”
+
+I told you why Mr. Ward had asked the question as he had. I think I
+don’t need to tell you why Grandfather answered it as he did. Or,
+perhaps I should say, I have told you before this why Grandfather
+answered it as he did.
+
+Grandfather came back to his seat beside Aunt Gracia. Dr. Joe was
+called to the stand.
+
+
+  IV
+
+Thopson elected sternness. “Dr. Elm, where were you on the night of
+Monday, October eighth?”
+
+“I was attending Mrs. H. F. Ferndell, in Portland, Oregon. She gave
+birth to an infant daughter at one o’clock in the morning.”
+
+“You can, of course, produce witnesses to substantiate this alibi?”
+
+“Not an alibi,” Dr. Joe said, with perfect gravity. “A birth.”
+
+“You can prove that you were where you claim at have been on the night
+of Richard Quilter’s death. And allow me to remind you, Dr. Elm, that
+this is no place to indulge in forced witticisms.”
+
+Dr. Joe said, “How does it go? ‘“There’s nae ill in a merry wind,”
+quo’ the wife when she whistled through the kirk.’ Well, get on. Get
+on!”
+
+“I have asked you whether you could prove that you were where you
+claim to have been in Portland, on the night of October eighth.”
+
+“I don’t know. There were two grandmothers, three or four uncles and
+aunts, the father, the patient, and, of course, the infant. The whole
+thing hinges on whether or not those people could be got to confess
+that they had me for their physician. I should say it was doubtful.
+Oh, get on, you—you. Of course I can prove it.”
+
+“Very well. Will you, then, tell this jury how it happened that a man
+in your circumstances should have undertaken to keep up an insurance
+policy for another man?”
+
+Dr. Joe said, “I paid my board bill last month. Did you?”
+
+Thopson turned to Hank. “Mr. Coroner, I appeal——”
+
+Hank said, “He asked you a civil question. Can’t you answer it?”
+
+One of the Swedes found voice. “Maaybe, I tank the doctor he don’t
+want to tell about paying oop the insurance.”
+
+Dr. Joe said, “Sure, I’d just as lief tell. I was out at Dick’s
+house, early last year, when the bill came for his premium on this
+policy. Dick said that he thought he would drop it—that it was a
+shyster company. And it was—there’s something else I can prove,
+Mr.—What’s-your-name—though I didn’t know it at the time. I had a
+policy of my own with the same company. I told Dick I thought it was
+foolish to drop a thing like that, for forty a year. He said forty was
+too much to waste, and that he had spent his last available cent for
+the month, anyway. I asked him to let me pay it this year—said he
+could count it against what I owed him.”
+
+“You were in debt to the deceased?”
+
+“Yes. To him and his family.”
+
+“What was the amount of this debt?”
+
+Dr. Joe said, “I was afraid I might be asked that, so I reckoned it up
+in cold figures here lately. It came to a million and four dollars and
+twenty cents. Or, though likely you won’t understand, I am in debt to
+these people for friendship, for a place that feels like home, for——”
+
+“It is not a question, however, of actual monetary debt?”
+
+“No, I don’t suppose you’d think so. Well, anyhow, I asked him to let
+me send the check in for him this year, or until he was in cash again.
+
+“He refused, point-blank. And there, as he thought, the matter ended.
+When I left the ranch, I swiped the bill; and, later in the month, I
+sent in a check with a letter telling the company to be sure to send
+the receipt to me. Warning them, under no circumstances, to send it to
+Q 2. Consequently, they mailed Dick the receipted bill in the next
+mail.
+
+“In the meantime, he had told Mr. Quilter here that he had decided to
+allow the policy to lapse. Mr. Quilter agreed with him that it was as
+well to have done so. Time will probably prove that he was right about
+it. He usually is.
+
+“When Dick got the receipted bill, he knew what I had done. I can’t
+say that he was particularly grateful to me. He insisted that I take
+his note—all that sort of stuff. He said that he wouldn’t say anything
+to his father about it, because his father hated being under
+obligations to friends. I told him he had better not tell his father.
+Threat—you see. I guess that ends the story.”
+
+Dr. Joe started to walk away. Thopson winged him with: “One minute,
+please. Did the deceased tell any other member of his family about
+this somewhat unusual proceeding?”
+
+“They are here,” Dr. Joe said. “Do you want me to ask them?”
+
+Hank said, “This ain’t a trial. I’ll ask them. Save time. Miss
+Quilter—never mind leaving your seat for a little informal matter like
+this—did you know Dick had this fake accident policy?”
+
+Aunt Gracia said that she had known of it, several years ago. But that
+Father had told her, when he had told Grandfather, that he had decided
+to let it lapse.
+
+“What about you, Neal?” Hank asked.
+
+I told him I had known nothing about it. I had known that Father was
+all cut up about having to let the life insurance go; and I had
+supposed that it left him entirely uninsured.
+
+Hank began to ask Chris, next; but Thopson got funny and said that he
+insisted on having these answers under oath. I didn’t think Hank would
+allow him to get away with it, but he did. I suppose he had to.
+
+Thopson took Irene first. He asked her whether she had known about the
+policy. She said that she had not. The witness was excused.
+
+Chris was called, and sworn in. “Yes,” he said, “I knew that Dick was
+carrying some sort of an accident policy. When we were in Portland
+together, last August, my Uncle Phineas and I went with Dick to put in
+his claim for payment because of his injured wrist.”
+
+“How did all three of you happen to go? Did he think he’d need to be
+backed up?”
+
+“Not at all. We had been lunching together. After luncheon, Dick said
+he was going to stop at the company’s office. We stopped with him.”
+Chris then went on to say that they had been treated to various
+insults, had been asked to produce witnesses to the accident, among
+other extraordinary demands, and had finally been curtly dismissed
+with instructions to call again. Chris said that he and Uncle Phineas
+were both angry. But that Father had merely said it served him right
+for attempting to deal with crooks, and that he would never go to
+their office again, nor pay another premium. In so far as he was
+concerned, Chris said, he had not given the matter of the policy
+another thought. He had not known that it had carried any such
+indemnity in case of accidental death. He had known nothing more
+concerning it.
+
+“Did you,” Thopson questioned, “happen to mention this matter to your
+wife?”
+
+“You have heard my wife’s testimony. I did not.”
+
+“Not in the habit of confiding in your wife, eh?”
+
+Chris kept his temper like a gentleman. It was more than I could have
+done, but I was proud of him for doing it. “I am not in the habit of
+burdening my wife with exhaustively trivial details which could
+neither amuse nor interest her.”
+
+“Did your uncle, Phineas Quilter, feel the same way about confiding in
+his wife?”
+
+“I should assume that he did. However, I am unable to answer for the
+feelings of my uncle.”
+
+“You don’t know, then, whether the lady who is at home sick in bed was
+aware of the ten-thousand-dollar indemnity?”
+
+“I think not. My aunt is not a secretive person. Had she known, I
+fancy she would have told some one of us, at least. Also, my Uncle
+Phineas had not known of the policy prior to the day when we called at
+the office of the company with my Cousin Dick. Since that time, my
+Uncle Phineas has not returned to Q 2 Ranch.”
+
+“Your uncle, I suppose, never writes any letters to his wife?”
+
+“He writes to her, certainly.”
+
+“And if he had written to her about the policy, you think she would
+not agree with you that the ten-thousand-dollar indemnity was too
+trivial to mention?”
+
+“I have told you, under oath, that I had not known of that indemnity.”
+
+“It makes quite a difference as to the policy’s importance, doesn’t
+it?”
+
+“It does.”
+
+“By the way, Mr. Quilter, have you tried, recently, to put another
+mortgage on Q 2 Ranch?”
+
+“I have.”
+
+“Were you attending to that when you were in Portland, last August?”
+
+“I was.”
+
+“Did you succeed in raising the money you wanted?”
+
+“I did not.”
+
+“Mr. Quilter, how long have you and your wife been residing on Q 2
+Ranch?”
+
+“We came there last March.”
+
+Thopson counted on his stubby fingers. “Seven months. You were not at
+the Q 2 Ranch at any time last year, were you?”
+
+“We were not.”
+
+“Finished with the witness.”
+
+I hoped that Mr. Ward would take Chris, then. He did not. He sat
+still.
+
+They called Aunt Gracia to the stand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+  I
+
+I had been as nervous as an old woman about Aunt Gracia all during
+these everlasting proceedings. She and I had ridden to Quilterville
+together to keep from crowding the carriage.
+
+We were no sooner mounted, and off, than she began to talk to me about
+hoping I’d be “discreet” at the inquest. I did not understand her, at
+first. We had held sort of a family council before we had left home
+and Grandfather had talked to us. Over and over—you know how unusual
+it is for Grandfather to be reiterative—he had impressed upon us the
+necessity for telling the absolute truth.
+
+He explained, of course, that he did not suppose any of us would lie,
+but that affairs of this sort were apt to invite attempted diplomacy,
+finesse. None of us, Grandfather went on to say, had any reason to
+fear the truth. Truth, he asked us to remember, was the one thing that
+could not ultimately be defeated. He gave us rather a sermon,
+insisting that truth bred truth as surely as cabbages bred cabbages,
+or as lies bred lies. Grandfather, as you know, would neither dictate
+nor appeal; but he came closer to each, in this talk to us, than I had
+ever heard him come.
+
+I was still thinking of his last statement (Lucy would call it a
+pearl), “One cannot bargain with truth,” when Aunt Gracia began her
+talk about discretion. It seemed to me that she was unsaying most of
+the things Grandfather had said; but it was easier to doubt my own
+understanding than it was to doubt either Aunt Gracia’s dutifulness or
+her rigid integrity. It wasn’t long, though, until she gave me no
+opportunity for choice; so then I asked her, straight, if she was
+disagreeing with what Grandfather had said to us in the parlour.
+
+She answered that Grandfather was old, very old, and at present
+frightfully weakened from shock, grief, and the impending horror of
+disgrace. She said that, fundamentally, what Grandfather had been
+telling us about truth was sound; but, in many circumstances, truth
+should become a delicate thing, to be handled delicately, not swung as
+a bludgeon. She said that truth might breed truth, if it were planted
+in the proper soil. If it were tossed carelessly to the four winds it
+might breed nothing—as cabbage seeds sown in the sagebrush would breed
+nothing—or it might breed anything: destruction, disgrace.
+Grandfather’s idealism, she remarked, like many other beautiful
+things, was not always the most practical asset in a time of
+emergency.
+
+You will understand, Judy, that I actually had to turn in my saddle
+and look to make sure that it was Aunt Gracia, of the nonadjustable
+moralities, who was riding beside me.
+
+She misread my look, because she said: “Exactly, Neal. We are to use
+the truth to-day, but we are to use it carefully, with discretion. For
+instance, dear, the fact that I can find comfort in the knowledge that
+Dick died in a state of perfect grace, need not be brought out. Unless
+we are directly questioned, I should think the entire circumstance of
+Dick’s recent baptism might better be omitted from the testimony. Too,
+I can see no reason for telling anyone who may be there to-day about
+the fact that Dick and Christopher had recently exchanged rooms.”
+
+“Aunt Gracia,” I asked, “do you think that some one of us meant to
+kill Chris, and blundered into Father’s room, by mistake?”
+
+She evaded that by saying it was more important, now, to plan for the
+future than it was to probe into the past.
+
+I told her that I agreed with her. But, I fancy, we did not mean the
+same thing. It was a peach of a morning, Judy. The snow had melted.
+The air was sweet. Hiroshige had done the sky, and our brown old hills
+lay softly in front of it. It was not the realization of death, it was
+the realization of life—of a world alive; even our hills were only
+napping—that made me go suddenly rabid.
+
+Aunt Gracia interrupted my ravings. “Don’t, Neal. Don’t,” she
+commanded. “You sound like Jasper in _Edwin Drood_.”
+
+That was plain enough, wasn’t it? “Aunt Gracia,” I said, “it is
+bothering you, isn’t it, to decide whether I shot Father because I
+thought that he was going insane, or whether I meant to go into
+Chris’s room that night, and shot Father by mistake?”
+
+“Why do you say that?” she asked.
+
+“Because you say we must mention neither the baptism nor the changed
+rooms at the inquest to-day. Because I know that you have suspected
+me, from the first. Would it help you any to have me swear to you, out
+here in the open, that I am as innocent as you are?”
+
+“Yes,” she said.
+
+“I swear it, Aunt Gracia.”
+
+We rode along and had made the ford before she said another word. She
+came up beside me on the east river path.
+
+“Neal,” she said, “this is an irreligious community. Consequently,
+there are two words they like to roll around their tongues—‘Religious
+fanatic.’ I am hoping they won’t think of those two words to-day.”
+
+She grew intense. She does, you know, once in a blue moon. She said
+that she wasn’t a coward. She said she would be glad to say that she
+had killed Father, and then go to join him, and Mother, and the others
+in one of the highest states of glory. But, she said, such a false
+confession could do nothing but bring added shame and grief to the
+family. If only, she said, she were not a Quilter—then how eagerly she
+would sacrifice her own life and honour for the honour of the
+Quilters.
+
+I felt, of course, like asking her not to be an idiot. I didn’t.
+I produced some banality about the uselessness of such a
+sacrifice—allowing the real criminal to go free, all that.
+
+“I know,” she answered, “but—the ecstasy of it! The exquisite, vivid
+ecstasy of such a sacrifice. Or—of any sacrifice. Isn’t it odd, Neal,
+that no one ever pities Isaac?”
+
+You can understand, Judy, that that just about knocked me a twister.
+You can understand, too, why I had been dreading Aunt Gracia’s turn as
+a witness. I tell you what, Jude, every one of the family has got the
+rotten habit of thinking that, because Aunt Gracia’s mind is different
+from our own, it is inferior—deformed. We have no right to the
+comparison. It is as unfair as comparing—well, say ice and water. I’d
+be bound to muddle a metaphor here—but Aunt Gracia’s mind is surely
+more fluid in its mysticism than are ours in their set materialism.
+This is all pretty poor. I wish you might have been there, to-day, to
+see and hear Aunt Gracia.
+
+
+  II
+
+When I saw her gather up the skirt of her long black riding habit and
+walk across that dirty room and take her place in the witness chair,
+the thought flashed through my mind that it was a wonder that Olympe,
+ill or not, would have forgone such an opportunity. Only, and I’m not
+meaning to knock Olympe, either, Aunt Gracia’s dignity and distinction
+were natural, untrimmed: the difference between one of our Percherons
+in a meadow or decked out in a circus parade.
+
+Hank put her through the usual preliminaries, and then asked her, as
+he had asked us, to tell the jury what she knew about the murder.
+
+Sitting there, dressed in black in that gloomy room, with her face a
+white oval and her long hands, white and still in her lap, she needed
+a Rembrandt. She is old, past thirty, but she is beautiful; especially
+beautiful with her head tipped as she had it this afternoon, so that
+her thin features are a bit foreshortened. And as for her voice—they
+can extol soft, velvety, throaty voices for women. But I’ll take Aunt
+Gracia’s voice every time—it is like a clear glass bell being rung
+with decorum.
+
+“My story,” she said, “would be precisely the same as the stories the
+others have told you. My fright, my efforts to open my door, my
+release, could further in no way the purposes of this inquiry. You
+have listened, patiently, to three accounts of the sort; but you are,
+I believe, no nearer the truth than you were in the beginning. It
+seems wise to me, now, to bring several matters to your attention.
+
+“You have not taken into account the fact that whoever was in my
+brother’s room on Monday night must have been there for sometime
+before the shot was fired. The rope was not put in place after the
+shot was fired. From the position of the rope in the snow, and from
+the amount of snow that had fallen on it, we were able to tell that
+the rope must have been lying, for at least an hour, exactly where we
+found it.
+
+“My brother was a light sleeper. Does it seem reasonable, even
+possible, that anyone could come into his room, open a window, tie a
+rope around his bedstead, toss the rope out of the window, while he
+slept? Or, while he lay there in bed and calmly watched the person
+making these preparations? If, for some reason, my brother had been
+unable to move—though he was not unable to move—don’t you know that he
+would have called, cried out for help? You have listened to the
+testimony that members of the family could be plainly heard shouting
+to one another through the closed locked doors. Would my brother,
+would any man, lie in silence, motionless, and allow some intruder to
+remain in his room?
+
+“No; not unless he were forced to do so. What could have forced him?
+The gun that killed him—nothing else. But not the gun alone. The gun
+in the hands of some strong, powerful person of whom my brother would
+have been afraid.
+
+“I wonder how many people in this county would testify that Richard
+Quilter was a brave man? Every person, I think, who knew him. I wonder
+how many people would have dared to sneak into my brother’s room and
+menace him with a gun. Very few, I believe.
+
+“It has been suggested, or, perhaps, I should say insinuated, that my
+cousin, Irene Quilter, shot my brother. Look at her. Do you think she
+would have dared? Assume that she did dare. Do you think that she
+could have frightened my brother—a man six feet tall and afraid of
+nothing? How long do you think it would have taken him to leap from
+his bed and seize any weapon held in her trembling hands? She is a
+frail woman, bred in an Eastern city. Probably she has never
+discharged a gun in her life. She, as you must know, could not menace
+a coward for five minutes. Could she have menaced Richard Quilter for
+an hour—two hours?
+
+“It took a man who was expert with a gun to be able to keep my brother
+covered while he stooped to tie that rope around the foot of the bed.
+True, he had it in readiness, or so it would surely seem. He had one
+loop made, shall we say? But, gentlemen, to draw fifty feet of rope
+through a loop is not the work of an instant. The murderer had to
+stoop to fasten the rope. He had to do it with his left hand, while
+his right hand held the gun that cowed my brother.
+
+“Dr. Elm has told me, and will testify under oath, that my brother was
+not drugged at the time of his death; that he had been given no drug
+of any sort before his death. Can you see Dick Quilter, as you knew
+him, alert, active, fearless, lying there in bed while some weak,
+inadequate person crouched to place that rope? I think you cannot.
+
+“Three women were in the house that night: an old lady, past sixty—my
+aunt, Olympe Quilter—Irene Quilter, and I. Also, there was my little
+niece, Richard’s daughter, a twelve-year-old child. Do you think that
+Richard would have allowed any one of us to threaten him with a gun
+for a longer time than it took him to reach us and take the thing away
+from us?
+
+“My father was in the house that night. You know him. But, aside from
+that, you have seen him on the witness stand to-day. He is eighty
+years old. Would Richard have been afraid to unarm him, do you fancy?
+Would Richard have been afraid to unarm this eighteen-year-old son of
+his? Or, could Richard have been afraid of our cousin, Christopher
+Quilter?
+
+“I dislike saying this, here, but I will say it because I must. My
+brother loved our Cousin Christopher; but he scorned him. He thought,
+perhaps rightly, that Christopher was a weakling. Though Richard had
+been ill for some time, he could work all day at tasks that tired
+Christopher in a few hours. What opportunity in an Eastern university,
+in his studies abroad, had Christopher had to develop prowess with a
+gun? He was never a sportsman. As a boy he never went hunting. I doubt
+that he has fired a gun half a dozen times in his life. All of which
+would mean nothing, perhaps, but for the fact that Richard knew it as
+well as I know it. Do you think that Christopher, a man of much
+frailer physique than my brother, could have frightened him for five
+minutes; could have kept him cowed and silent for an hour? Do you
+think that Dick Quilter, with any one of these seven people, would not
+have made an attempt to save himself?”
+
+Thopson interrupted and wanted to know if Aunt Gracia was not
+overlooking the fact that, perhaps, Richard Quilter was in the act of
+making that attempt when he was shot.
+
+“I will remind you,” Aunt Gracia said, “that the rope had been in the
+position we found it for at least an hour. Nothing but knowledge that
+such an attempt would mean certain death could have held my brother
+passive for an hour. As you suggest, it is possible that at last, in
+desperation, he did make an attempt to save himself. You know the
+result.
+
+“There is another point that has not been touched upon: the lighted
+lamp in Richard’s room that night. I had put the small bedside lamp,
+newly filled, as usual, in his room that evening. At midnight, the
+lamp was burning low; the oil was all but exhausted. Since, I have
+refilled the lamp and tested it for time. It took two hours and a half
+to consume as much oil as had been consumed on Monday night. It had
+never been my brother’s practice to read in bed. There was no book or
+magazine near his bed. Why should the lamp have burned throughout the
+night?
+
+“Assume that when Richard went into his room that night, the murderer
+was hiding there—probably in the clothes closet—and, after Richard had
+got into bed, but before he had reached to extinguish the light, the
+man had stepped out, with the gun levelled on him——”
+
+“Wouldn’t you say, Miss Quilter, that two hours and a half was a long
+time for the murderer to have spent in your brother’s room?”
+
+“I should, indeed.”
+
+“A long time, too, for such a man as your brother to have allowed
+himself to be ‘menaced’ without making an attempt to disarm the
+fellow, without raising his voice in outcry?”
+
+“It seems to me that is precisely what I have been contending, Mr.
+Thopson. I presume, however, that you have thought ahead to the second
+point which I was about to make. This:
+
+“We have no way of knowing what went on in Dick’s room that night.
+None of us, I am sure, knows all there is to be known about any other
+person. We think that there was no hidden chapter, no hidden page or
+paragraph in my brother’s life. We cannot know it. Suppose some
+ruffian was making a blackmailing demand from Richard. Suppose that
+Richard was as eager as was the man himself to keep the rest of us
+from knowing that he—the murderer, I mean—was in the house; had any
+reason for being there.
+
+“We know nothing of these possibilities now. I hope we may know, in
+time. What we do know now is that no member of this family could have
+caused Richard one moment’s alarm. That he could have and would have
+disarmed any one of us in the snatch of a second, and sent us ashamed
+away from him.
+
+“My brother’s corpse is lying in the adjoining room. I ask the jury to
+look at it. To see the size of the man, the breadth of his shoulders.
+I ask them to see what can be seen in his dead face—the strength, the
+purpose, the courage. I ask them to return and look at us, here. Then
+they will know, since they are just, wise men, that I have spoken the
+truth.”
+
+Impressive? Golly, Jude, it was a knockout. On the square, it is
+thanks to Aunt Gracia—the family disgrace because she happens to be a
+mystic—that Irene, or Chris, or, probably, both of them aren’t going
+to have to appear before the Grand Jury. And, if you will forgive the
+old wise crack, it wasn’t so much what she said as the way she said
+it. Sitting there, so aloof and so lovely, speaking in that clear,
+unafraid voice of hers, she conveyed the impression that no man’s
+doubt could damage her; that any man’s doubt would prove him a fool or
+a monster. One doesn’t, you know, look at the white moon in a black
+night’s sky and remark, “I don’t believe it.” And yet, after all, the
+moon is not a large and luminous dinner plate.
+
+Note, Judy: Aunt Gracia had made a special point, to me in private, of
+the fact that Father was taking medicine that made him sleep heavily.
+Dr. Joe knew it. Would he have called a sleeping medicine “drugs”?
+Possibly, almost certainly, not if he had had a talk with Aunt Gracia
+before the inquest. Because, you see, if Father had been drugged into
+a heavy sleep, all Aunt Gracia’s arguments would amount to nothing.
+The person could have crept into the room, made the arrangements with
+the rope without waking Father; could have fired the shot, and could
+have got away. Smash goes the fact of Father’s lack of fear; smash
+goes the fact of his disarming any one of us; smash goes the expert
+gunman—smash for all of it. Not much bravery is required to shoot a
+sleeping man.
+
+It doesn’t seem reasonable to suppose that, even if Father had been
+drugged and asleep, some guy would have had the nerve to stick around
+in the room for a couple of hours with the lamp burning. But it is
+possible, anyway, that Father got into bed and was so dopey, and tired
+that he dropped off to sleep and forgot to blow out the light.
+
+Here is another thing, Judy. If the guy had been hiding in Father’s
+room before Father came into it, couldn’t he have fixed the rope then?
+Sure he could. Father didn’t look under his bed at night, did he? He
+would have noticed if the window had been open and the rope stretched
+across to it as we found it. But he wouldn’t have noticed a loop of
+rope around the leg of his bed. The fellow did not, necessarily, have
+to pull the fifty feet of rope through the loop with one hand while he
+used the other hand to keep Father covered with a gun.
+
+Since I didn’t think through to any of this until I was riding home
+from Quilterville this evening, I am fairly certain that the jury
+hasn’t come to it yet. For one thing, as I have said, Aunt Gracia
+obviated doubt by making it seem idiotic and indecent. For another
+thing, the jury, at the last, was straining every nerve to live up to
+her description and look like wise and just men.
+
+When Aunt Gracia had finished her speech, which I’ve copied straight
+from Mattie’s notes for you, she began to gather her skirts into one
+hand, preparatory to leaving the witness chair.
+
+Chris whispered to me, “Bless her, she’s turned the tide!”
+
+Thopson said, “One moment, please, Miss Quilter.”
+
+Aunt Gracia sat back in her chair, and dropped her hands, quiet as
+dead things, into her lap again.
+
+
+  III
+
+Thopson started off with a lot of con talk about how helpful she had
+been, and about how she had his gratitude and the gratitude of the
+jury for her plain speaking. It was only through such methods as hers,
+extolled he, that the guilty wretch could ever be brought to justice.
+It sounded great. But I felt, like the carpenter, that the butter was
+spread too thick. Aunt Gracia sat, pale and placid, and looking about
+as susceptible to flattery as my but recently mentioned moon.
+
+“You have implied,” Thopson finally came to it, “that your brother
+might have had an enemy. By a rigorous searching of your memory, would
+it be possible for you to recall who this enemy might be?”
+
+“But, of course,” Aunt Gracia answered, “I thought that you knew.
+Seventeen, nearly eighteen years ago, my brother killed a man as he
+would have killed a mad dog, or a rattlesnake, or any dangerous thing
+that was attacking his wife. He was tried, and acquitted. The jury did
+not leave the room. The judge apologized to Richard—or so I have been
+told—explaining that the trial had been merely a conformance to the
+letter of the law.”
+
+“Do you know the name of the man whom Richard Quilter killed?”
+
+“Enos Karabass. The Pennsylvania Dutch, I believe, are unfortunate
+people to anger.”
+
+“His family lives in this vicinity?”
+
+“No, they do not.”
+
+“Were they informed concerning the manner of his death?”
+
+“We were unable to find that he had any people.”
+
+Thopson gave himself over to pity. “But, my dear Miss Quilter——”
+
+“You asked me if it could be possible that my brother had an enemy.
+Any man who has ever killed another man might, it seems to me, have
+dangerous enemies from that time forth.”
+
+“I see. I see. Granted, then, for the sake of argument that that man
+had a brother, or a son, who wanted to avenge his death. Would it have
+been possible for him to enter your home without detection?”
+
+“Quite possible. Our outside doors are never locked until the last
+thing at night. While we were at supper, in the dining room, anyone
+could have walked in, quietly, and gone upstairs.”
+
+“You have no watchdogs on your place?”
+
+“We have two dogs. I mentioned suppertime because, usually at that
+hour, the dogs are at the back of the house waiting for, or eating,
+their suppers.”
+
+“Very well. He could have gotten into the house. He could have hidden
+in your brother’s bedroom. But—— Could he have gotten out of the
+house? That is, could he have gotten out of the house without leaving
+any footprints in the snow? This does seem to bring us back to the
+beginning, doesn’t it?”
+
+Aunt Gracia said, “He could have got out of the house, because he did
+get out. How he escaped we have not, as yet, been able to discover.
+That is the problem to be solved. We have one fact. He is not in our
+home at present. That leads to another fact, unexplained, but not
+conjectural. He has escaped. It is stupid, and so it is an insult to
+the intelligence of this jury for us to keep insisting that the man
+could not have got out of the house, when we all know that he _has_
+got out of the house.”
+
+The jury shone from the sensation of having their intelligences
+mentioned.
+
+“Very well,” Thopson assumed acceptance, “we’ll rest that for the
+present. Now, if you please, I’d like to take up, with you, the matter
+of the locked doors.”
+
+Aunt Gracia invited, “Yes. I wish you would.”
+
+I am asking you, Judy, is she a clever woman, or isn’t she?
+
+“All of the outside doors were locked, on the inside, I presume, on
+the night of October eighth?”
+
+“No. We have three outside doors. The side door was locked, on the
+inside. Both the front and back doors were unlocked. Anyone could have
+come downstairs and have walked straight out of the house through
+either of those doors.”
+
+“Without leaving footprints in the snow?”
+
+“I am sorry,” Aunt Gracia said, “I thought that we were speaking now
+only of the doors.”
+
+“Whose duty was it to lock those outside doors at night?”
+
+“It was no one’s duty. Usually, the last person downstairs, in the
+evening, attended to locking the house.”
+
+“Who was the last person downstairs that night?”
+
+“My brother. That is, he was the last person to retire. It should have
+been his care to lock the doors.”
+
+“Would it have been possible for him to have forgotten to lock them?”
+
+“Very possible. Locked doors are given, or were given, very little
+attention on our ranch. I fancy that we slept many nights with the
+doors unlocked.”
+
+It seemed to me that, if I had been in Thopson’s place, I should have
+asked, then, how it happened, in a house where locked doors were given
+no attention, that there were keys for all the upstairs doors. (Aunt
+Gracia’s statement was truthful enough. She had said, “were given.” A
+month or so ago, not one of our bedroom doors had a key to it. Aunt
+Gracia had had to hunt them all out from the hardware box in the
+attic.) Thopson missed it, however, and went on to ask her to tell him
+exactly which doors were locked that night.
+
+“Except for the seven bedroom doors, which were locked on the
+outside,” she said, “and for the side door, downstairs, I think every
+door in the house was unlocked, including the inside and outside
+cellar doors. To be sure, I had almost forgotten, the door to the back
+stairway was locked. Irene Quilter has told you how that came to be
+locked.”
+
+“Into what downstairs room,” Thopson inquired, “does the back stairway
+lead?”
+
+“Into the sitting room.”
+
+“Not the room in which Mrs. Christopher Quilter was sleeping that
+night?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Why, then, did Mrs. Christopher Quilter not unlock that door, and go
+up the back stairway, instead of going through the several downstairs
+rooms, in order to use the front stairway?”
+
+“That question is easily answered, Mr. Thopson. The back stairway is
+crooked and narrow. We none of us ever use it. In her terrorized
+state, my cousin would surely act according to habit. Her habit was to
+use the front stairway.”
+
+Can you sort the truth out of that, Judy? Irene, who never did any
+work, and who was never in a hurry, generally did use the front
+stairway. The rest of us used the back stairway as often as we used
+the front one. Do you know why Aunt Gracia deliberately lied about it?
+I don’t know, entirely. And I don’t know why Irene did not run right
+up the back stairway that night. I wish that I did know. Though,
+surely, Aunt Gracia might have been right about Irene’s acting
+according to habit. It was her habit to go upstairs the front way, and
+she was badly frightened. I guess we’ll have to let it go at that.
+
+Thopson’s next question was a stunner. “Could you swear, Miss Quilter,
+that no member of your family could have gone into Richard Quilter’s
+room, committed the murder, slipped out through the hall and back into
+his own room? I understand that the turmoil in the hall would have
+covered any slight noise that night.”
+
+For the first time, Aunt Gracia hedged. “I think that I understand
+your question, Mr. Thopson; but may I ask you to state it a bit more
+directly, so that I may give a direct answer?”
+
+“Would you swear that there was not time for any member of your family
+to have gone into your brother’s room, committed the murder, and got
+back into his own room, before Irene Quilter came into the upper
+hall?”
+
+“No. I could not swear to that, because there was time. I could and do
+swear, however, that no member of our family did do what you have
+suggested because, though there was time, there was not opportunity. I
+make this oath for two reasons. The one reason, I have given you: No
+member of our family could have kept Dick Quilter cowed for five
+minutes—much less for an hour or longer. The second reason I have not,
+as yet, given to you. It is this: Each member of the Quilter family
+was locked in his or her room that night at the time of the murder.
+All seven bedroom doors were locked on the outside. One of the
+bedrooms was unoccupied—but that door was also locked. Irene Quilter
+found seven keys in my brother’s room, and used one key to unlock each
+door. No, Mr. Thopson, we have more than Irene’s word for that. The
+keys were left on the outside of the locks. Only a few minutes later
+my father and I turned all those keys again. We did this, hoping that
+the murderer might be hiding in one of these rooms, and that we could
+keep him locked there while we searched the remainder of the house.”
+
+“Granted,” Thopson said, “that six of you were locked in your rooms on
+that night. There still remains a seventh, Miss Quilter, who was not
+locked in her room.”
+
+Aunt Gracia said: “Mr. Thopson, please be fair about this. Can you
+imagine anyone who would plan a murder by carefully establishing
+alibis for every person in the house except herself? Do you suppose
+that if Irene Quilter had planned to kill my brother, she would have
+arranged to be the one person in the house who was not locked in a
+room at the time?”
+
+“Am I unfair when I suggest that plans sometimes miscarry?”
+
+“No, you are not. That is a fair thing to say. But no person ever
+plans a murder so that the burden of suspicion, even stupid suspicion,
+falls upon himself. It would seem, too, Mr. Thopson, that in this
+instance the murderer’s carefully laid plans had not miscarried. My
+brother is dead. The murderer has escaped—got clear and away, and, as
+yet, no one of us has one clue as to his identity.”
+
+She put it over, Judy. All honour to Aunt Gracia! Mr. Ward knew better
+than to say a word when Thopson signified that he was ready to excuse
+her. It was she, the family misfortune, who got the verdict for us—the
+verdict that allowed us all to go free.
+
+Thopson called Dr. Joe again. Dr. Joe testified, under oath, that
+Father had been given no drug of any sort that night. Do you suppose
+that Dr. Joe could salve his conscience, if he needed to, with the
+difference between “had been given no drug” and “had taken no drug”?
+
+As Dr. Joe came back to sit with us, Gus Wildoch and the two guys who
+had been at the ranch with him came sneaking in at the back of the
+room. They had been subpœnaed for witnesses, and had been called right
+after Dr. Joe—as I should have mentioned. But Hank had explained that
+they had sent in word that they might be a little late, owing to a
+rush of duties, and he had proceeded to go along without them. I fancy
+that Hank was trying to keep them out of it. Or, perhaps Gus himself,
+with his regard for the elder Quilters, was trying to evade
+testifying. Their evidence, however, was certainly not damaging.
+
+Since each of them said the same thing, in almost the same way, I’ll
+lump their testimony to save your time and my space.
+
+They had come with Christopher Quilter, at his request, to Q 2 Ranch
+on the morning of Tuesday, October the ninth. They had seen and had
+carefully examined the body of Richard Quilter. He had been shot
+through the left chest. Rigor mortis had been complete when they had
+arrived. They had inspected the Quilter mansion and grounds. They
+couldn’t say as to footprints—the place was pretty well tracked up by
+the time they got there. Gus didn’t “go much on these here footprints,
+anyhow—too many ways to get around them, such as wearing the other
+fellow’s shoes.” They had been unable to form any opinions as to who
+the murderer might be.
+
+Thopson tried none of his baiting with them. The two deputies, I was
+later informed, were Gus’s two brothers who have come recently from
+Texas, and the three made rather a formidable trio: combined heights
+about nineteen feet; combined weights close to six hundred pounds.
+
+They were excused, and Hank grew confidential with the jury. He told
+them that if they wanted to go into the other room and talk things
+over for a few minutes, they could—he guessed. But he reminded them
+that they and he should get home and get their milking and other
+chores put through. He guessed that they saw, as he saw, that a lot of
+time had been wasted, and that, “futthermore,” there wasn’t sense nor
+reason in fiddle-faddling much longer. Some dirty son of a sea cook
+had broken into the Quilter mansion and shot Dick Quilter and made a
+getaway. Hank finished by expressing his deep regret that the law
+wasn’t able to help the Quilters out in any way, right now; and,
+adding his fervent hope that soon it might be able to lay hands on the
+Dutchman, or whatever dirty crook had done it, he turned the case over
+to the jury.
+
+If I had been writing a book, I’d have kept their verdict a dark
+secret until now. But since I have sacrificed my literary style to
+your peace of mind, I have had to miss my climax.
+
+However, perhaps this will serve: What Aunt Gracia told the jury, with
+my comments appended.
+
+1. Father was the strongest member of the family.
+     True a year ago. Not true a week ago.
+
+2. Father could have disarmed any member of the family.
+     Doubtful, certainly, a week ago. But, say that he could have
+     disarmed any one of us. Would he have tried to? Can you see
+     Father jumping at any one of us, and snatching a gun from us? I
+     can’t. Judy, you and I know that he would have lain there in bed
+     and tried to shame us out of our nonsense. Aunt Gracia was right
+     about that. He couldn’t have feared a one of us. He would have
+     thought that we were staging a bluff. Would he have called it?
+     Yes, and for any length of time. I can imagine him lying there in
+     bed and laughing at us.
+
+3. Father had not been drugged. He was in full possession of
+   all his faculties.
+      Is this the truth? Did Dr. Joe lie helpfully?
+
+4. None of us ever used the back stairway.
+     We all used it, except possibly Irene.
+
+5. Since the murderer was not in our house, he must have
+   escaped from it.
+     You don’t need me to point the sophistry of that.
+
+6. We were all locked in our rooms. Proof: Irene found seven
+   keys, unlocked seven doors, and left seven keys on the outside
+   of the doors.
+     There are ten doors in our upper hall. Irene found and used
+     seven keys. You can think that out. I’m not going to write it.
+     Remember that all the keys to the locks in the upper hall are
+     interchangeable. The attic door had had no key. It has now. I
+     have brought it down from the hardware box in the attic. My one
+     bit of sleuthing. But whether that was its first or second trip
+     downstairs within the week, it did not say.
+
+
+  IV
+
+Judy, I’m not crazy—though sometimes I feel, almost, as if I were. I
+am not trying to prove, with this quibbling, that some member of the
+Quilter family shot and killed Father. It seems to me that the single
+hope I have left, for anything, is to prove that no member of the
+family is a murderer. But I am bound to be with Grandfather concerning
+truth. I have to get my proof through truth—nothing else can satisfy
+me. I have to establish Quilter innocence, and reëstablish Quilter
+honour, before I can begin to try to establish anything else.
+
+Aunt Gracia proved Quilter innocence to the six good men and true. I’d
+give a thousand of the best grazing acres on Q 2 to have had her prove
+it to me. I’d give more than that. My own life, of course—but it is
+not worth shucks. I’d give Lucy’s life, or Grandfather’s, just as they
+would give them, for that certainty.
+
+Do you know, I have found one way I can almost get it. My way hasn’t
+anything to do with ropes, or keys, or coal oil. It hasn’t anything to
+do with footprints, or motives, or drugs.
+
+I do this. I take us, one at a time. I begin with Grandfather, and I
+come straight through the list to Lucy. I stop at each name. I think.
+I put into that thinking every particle of knowledge I have concerning
+each person, and I keep out of it every particle of prejudice and
+every atom of affection or of admiration. I judge them as objectively
+as I judge cattle for buying or breeding. Each time I do it, I come
+out with a clean slate. That method, and nothing else, gives me my
+certainty, my sure knowledge that not one of the Quilter family could
+be guilty of crime.
+
+And that, after consideration, I am bound to state is a lie. It gives
+me my certainty—with one exception. That is why I don’t go after it
+more often. That is why I am afraid of my certainty. Each time, more
+positively than the last, it omits one person. Probably you don’t need
+to have me tell you who the one person is. Neal Quilter.
+
+Neal Quilter could have done it. Suppose that he had. Suppose that he
+had planned the thing keenly, as it was planned, from beginning to
+end. And then, as Aunt Gracia said, since we are dealing with
+suppositions, suppose that the horror of having done such a thing
+should have driven him clear out of his mind; should have caused a
+real brain storm—so that, when the storm had cleared, he had forgotten
+every incident connected with the crime.
+
+I wish I knew more about minds. I wish I knew whether a thing of the
+sort ever had happened or ever could happen. Chris says that great
+strides in psychology are to be made within the next decade. I tried
+to pump him about it, since he is interested in the subject. But of
+course, since I was unwilling to say to him what I have said to you, I
+got no real satisfaction. Still, since it is recognizedly possible
+that a man may forget his entire past, including his own name, and
+continue to go about as a fairly normal person, I don’t see why it
+should be impossible for him to forget, entirely, some one particular
+horror.
+
+Granting the amnesia, I could have done it. I could have gone upstairs
+some time in the late afternoon and fixed that rope on the bed, and
+collected the keys from the inside of the doors. (Where I got a gun,
+and what I did with it afterwards, are, of course, other things I
+would have forgotten. I can reconstruct with the material now at hand.
+I cannot remember.) Then, on Monday night, before Father put out his
+light, I could have stepped across the hall to his room. If I had gone
+in there, threatening him with a gun, do you think he’d have jumped
+out of bed and taken the gun away from me? I think not. Aunt Gracia
+was night about that. Father would not have been afraid of any one of
+us. Why, even I would laugh if any member of our family came dodging
+into my room flourishing a gun. Or, perhaps I should say, even I, a
+week ago, would have laughed.
+
+But we’ll say I didn’t show my gun. We’ll say that I kept it in my
+back pocket for an hour or so while we talked, Father and I. If I had
+decided to kill him rather than allow him to go insane, I might have
+desired a long, confirmatory talk. Unless the rope is clear outside
+the whole affair of the murder—as Chris still insists—we can no longer
+suppose that I had meant to shoot Chris, and shot Father by mistake.
+That hour, with the rope out across the porch roof, has to be
+accounted for.
+
+I might have fixed the rope at eleven o’clock, deciding that I would
+use it in the next five minutes. And, after that, something might have
+caused me to delay for another hour. The rope hocus-pocus certainly
+would not have caused Father to take either me or my threats any more
+seriously. Can’t you imagine the conversation?
+
+“What are you planning to do with the clothes-line, my son?”
+
+“I am going to use it to escape out of the window after I have shot
+you.”
+
+We know that Father would have laughed at me; unless, of course, he
+had decided that I had gone mad. In that case, he might have started
+to get out of bed to take the gun away from me.
+
+Well, then, I had the rope fixed, we’ll say. I shot Father. I went to
+the window and discovered the snow. I knew that the rope could not be
+used, then, because the footprints on the roof would betray me. What
+might I have done? It is absurdly simple. I might have stepped across
+the hall to my own room and locked myself in—_with the key to the
+attic door_. Yes, as I have said, I have since found the key in the
+hardware box in the attic. But if Grandfather, or Aunt Gracia, had
+discovered an extra key in my room, when they were searching the
+house, would they have declaimed concerning it, or would they have
+hidden it away in the box?
+
+Why I should have had the key, if I had planned the rope escape, I
+can’t think. Why I should have planned the rope, I can’t think. I
+might have had some wily scheme, involving both the key and the rope.
+Or the entire idea of the rope might have been one of the fool
+mistakes that murderers, according to the best traditions, always
+make. Leaving the door between my room and Lucy’s unlocked would seem,
+certainly, to have been another mistake.
+
+The question of time is a nice one. I needed, after the shot was
+fired, to have looked out of the window, crossed the full width of
+Father’s room, got across the hall and into my own room, locked the
+door, picked up a chair, and battered the door with it. Lucy needed to
+have got out of bed, put on her slippers, lighted her lamp, run across
+her room to my door, opened it. It might work out. I don’t know. I
+think that I couldn’t have done my part of it in two minutes. Then I
+remember how long two minutes were when you were taking Greg’s
+temperature.
+
+On the whole, the time seems to be against me. What I could have done
+with the gun seems to be for me. When I remember how this house was
+searched, it seems impossible that I could have hidden a gun anywhere
+in it. It certainly would have been found. I could not have thrown it
+out of a window. We’d have seen it in the snow. Though, after all, I
+have a good baseball arm; I might have thrown it out of Father’s open
+window. No, that’s nonsense. It would have been found, long before
+this. However, the fact that the gun is gone doesn’t weigh very
+heavily against the facts that no one got out of the house that night
+and that no one was hiding in the house that night.
+
+I suppose you might suggest that Chris was as capable of the crime as
+I was. It won’t do. Chris loved Father: not enough to kill him rather
+than have him lose that splendid mind of his, but too much to kill him
+for any other reason. Father had stopped opposing the sale of the
+ranch. Chris had Father’s ill health and overwork on this place to use
+as an excuse for selling us out. He had Father’s ability as a rancher
+to salve his conscience if he stuck us on some dinky valley truck
+farm. Also, Chris is a rank sentimentalist and—may I say
+consequently—something of a coward.
+
+Yet, when I go to calling Chris names, I suspect that I should go
+softly. I have wondered, these last few days, whether instead of
+fighting what I have always decried as Quilter sentimentality, I have
+been fighting, merely, a subtle sensitiveness, an ability for loving,
+which I have been too boorish to possess or to understand. The thought
+of marrying some queen and giving her a right to paw over me and call
+me “Boofel,” nauseates me. Look at Uncle Phineas tethered to Olympe.
+Look at Chris deeded to Irene! You and Greg are different; but you are
+friends. You bake your bread, instead of feasting on the yeast.
+And—you are a Quilter woman. But what I started to say was, that I
+have wondered whether this lack of sentimentality in me denoted simply
+a hard streak, a streak of yellow, perhaps a streak of cruelty.
+
+I’ve wondered, too, if the fact that Father killed that cur a few
+months before I was born, and that Mother saw him do it, might have
+made me different. People seem to think that prenatal influences are
+important. I have never believed it, because it seems to me if that
+were true of people it would be true of animals. Still, what do I know
+about it? Or about anything? There is this: I don’t feel as if I were
+incapable of love, if love is the rather tremendously serious, and
+yet, someway, the very humorous, clutching feeling I have for the
+family and for Q 2. But I do feel as if talking about it, showing it
+off as Irene and Chris show it off, defiled it.
+
+There is Aunt Gracia, to-day, and the feeling I have about her. She
+sat there, lying under oath, to save the Quilter family; to save, I
+know, either Irene and Chris or Irene and me. There isn’t one of us, I
+suppose, who would not have been willing to sacrifice his own honour,
+peace of mind, and the rest, to such a cause. But, by Jove, I think
+Aunt Gracia is the only one of us who is brave enough to sacrifice
+eternity. I know exactly what she did to-day. Should I go to her and
+spiel a lot of mushy stuff about loving her for it? Should I cheapen
+her magnificence to gratify my own emotionalism? Should I write my
+name in red pencil on the base of a marble column?
+
+In other words—what a good boy am I! Sitting here, teetering with
+tragedy, and revelling in congratulatory self-analysis. Ask me this,
+Judy. Ask me why I have not mentioned again the important fact that
+was brought out during to-day’s inquisition? That is, why I have so
+carefully avoided further discussion of the fact that Father’s death
+may bring to his family a payment of ten thousand needed dollars?
+Should you believe me if I told you that, for the last several hours,
+I had forgotten it? I hope you are too sensible to believe that. Ask
+me why, just now, when I was making out the case against myself, I did
+not mention a ten-thousand-dollar motive? Ten thousand dollars would
+mean enough money for Irene and Chris to go where they please, with
+enough left over to carry Q 2 through to safety. I remarked, during
+the inquest, that I had not known about the accident policy. I seemed
+to be believed. I seem to have believed myself——
+
+
+  V
+
+                                Later.
+
+Sorry, Judy dear. I am a fool. Even this forgetting business would, I
+suppose, need to stop somewhere. I had not known about the policy. And
+talking is rot. My apology, if you’ll have it, is that Father’s death
+has been a knockout. I’ve been feeling too much—unaccustomed feelings.
+I have been thinking, or trying to think, until my brain has worn out
+from effort.
+
+I am all right again now. I’ve been out with Uncle Phineas walking and
+waiting for the sunrise. He is all cut up, torn up about Father. And
+yet, somehow, the fact that he was not here on Monday night, and that
+he didn’t have the horror of that first hour, seems to make him more
+wholesome, saner than any of us.
+
+He was here at home when we got back from the inquest last evening. He
+came running down the path to meet us, with tears washing out of his
+eyes and all over his cheeks, but he was paying no more attention to
+them than he would have paid to rain. He is one of us—a Quilter
+straight through—and neck deep in trouble with us. But it is as if he
+had come in, on purpose, while the rest of us have been chucked in.
+
+Olympe was out of bed, when we came from Quilterville yesterday, as
+chipper as you please in Aunt Gracia’s best kitchen dress with a
+little doily of an apron. She actually had helped Lucy prepare supper
+for the three of them. Olympe would be correctly costumed for the
+frying of ham and eggs.
+
+(Dr. Joe has envoys scouring Chinatown for Dong Lee, but he is not to
+be discovered. He was to have stayed a week; so we know that he’ll be
+back on Monday; but we could do with him sooner. It is tough for Aunt
+Gracia, this having him gone just now.)
+
+While the rest of us were getting a pick-up supper in the kitchen,
+Olympe disappeared. Sure enough, in a few minutes, here she came,
+wearing that black lace rig of hers, with the red roses and red velvet
+loops ripped off of it. A pity, since, by that time, Lucy and I were
+the only ones who had stayed downstairs.
+
+Olympe stopped in the kitchen doorway and asked us where Pan was. We
+told her that he had gone to Grandfather’s room with him. She trailed
+forward to the table, delivered the first part of her “God help the
+Quilter wives” speech, and turned to sweep from the room. Lucy
+laughed.
+
+You see, in her haste to get into mourning, Olympe had forgotten the
+back of her gown. Do you remember its long, square train, caught up in
+two places with great blobs of a horrible shade of red velvet and red
+roses? She had forgotten to remove them.
+
+It was not amusing. Lucy laughed, as you know, not in spite of our
+trouble, but because of it. If Lucy had not been all to pieces,
+unnerved and half hysterical, she could no more have laughed at
+anything about Olympe than she could have cat-called in church. I
+don’t recall that any of us children were taught that we must never
+laugh at Olympe. And yet, of course, laughing at her has always been
+one of the major Quilter heresies.
+
+Olympe wheeled about. She was so white that the little dabs of rouge
+on her cheekbones looked as if they might tumble off. I went and stood
+close to Lucy.
+
+Olympe said, “Are you laughing at me?”
+
+I tried to tell her that Lucy was not laughing. That she was all to
+pieces, hysterical, and did not know what she was doing.
+
+“She may not know,” Olympe said, “but I know that she is laughing at
+me. Why? Because I am old, and weak, and no longer beautiful; because
+my husband humiliates me, and neglects me.”
+
+She trailed away then, riding the trimmings on her train. Lucy, of
+course, burst into tears.
+
+I have gone well around Robin Hood’s barn, with all this. I wanted to
+give you something as a sample, perhaps as an excuse for what I am
+going to ask you to do.
+
+Judy, I want you to write and insist on having Lucy come to you for a
+time. Don’t hint that it is for Lucy’s sake. Lucy is too game to
+desert. Say that it is for your sake. Say that you need her to help
+you with Greg—so on. I don’t need to dictate your letter, but make it
+strong. I’ll manage her railway fare, somehow or other. She has to get
+away from here for the present.
+
+She is twelve years old, imaginative and impressionable. We have been
+fools to leave her alone so much with Olympe, here of late. I don’t
+need to tell you how brave and sensible Lucy usually is. She will come
+through even this all right, if we give her half a chance. She won’t
+get the half chance, here, now, with Olympe treating her to scenes
+like the one last evening, and telling her—the Lord knows what, and
+making her promise not to tell. The kid has something extra on her
+mind. And, though Lucy won’t tell me, I am darn sure it was Olympe who
+loaded it there. I couldn’t insist that Lucy break a promise. But can
+you imagine anyone who would be fool enough to add the burden of a
+secret and a promise to Lucy’s troubles right now?
+
+When this afternoon is over—the funeral is to be this afternoon—I am
+going to Olympe about it. Not that I think it will amount to a hill of
+beans; but, since we won’t be able to get Lucy to you for a week or
+so, I’ll have to get things straightened out for her in the meantime.
+
+She is scared, Judy, Lucy is. When I got her quieted down, last night,
+I urged her to go upstairs to bed. She wouldn’t go. She said that she
+was lonesome alone, and that she wanted to stay with me. Then, of a
+sudden, you know how she lights and flashes, she said: “That is a
+story, Neal. I’ve turned coward. Please don’t tell Grandfather. I am
+afraid to go upstairs and stay alone in my room.”
+
+I fixed her a fine bed, and screened it off from the light, on the
+sitting-room sofa. And, gosh knows, I shouldn’t have thought it
+strange, even from Lucy, if she had begun to be afraid a bit
+sooner—the first night or the second. I can’t pretend that any of us
+has been entirely without something that at least approximated fear.
+Grandfather has locked the place himself, each night. And, as you
+know, I have stayed up all night, on guard, every night this week.
+(Chris offered to spell me, but I’ve liked the quiet nights for
+writing to you. I have needed the job badly, so I have liked it.) No,
+Lucy’s fear would have been natural enough, if it had begun sooner.
+Coming now, it must mean that whatever fool thing Olympe told her
+yesterday, and made her promise not to tell, has frightened her. With
+this added to the rest, I am sure you’ll agree with me that we must
+get Lucy right away from here.
+
+Aunt Gracia is in the kitchen attending to breakfast. I’ll go and
+cadge an advance snack, and then I’ll ride into Quilterville with this
+in time to get it off on Number Twenty-four.
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+                                Saturday, October 13, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: We buried Father to-day. To gratify Aunt Gracia, we had the
+Siloamite ceremony. They did the best they could to re-break our
+hearts, if that could have been possible. Since mummery is not always
+ineffective, there should be a law decreeing that no one but a man’s
+enemies be allowed to attend his funeral.
+
+The entire county was there, I think. There were ponderously perfumed
+flowers, tortured into unnatural shapes, over which furry,
+caterpillarish-looking letters writhed into words, “At Rest,” and such
+originalities.
+
+When we came home neighbours had been here and had done strange,
+geometrically unfamiliar things to the rooms, and had left a table
+spread with an astonishing repast in odd dishes, which we never use.
+Nothing was lacking, you see, from the best funereal traditions—not
+even the baked meats. Nothing was lacking, except any sense of the
+fitness of things, or of the comfort of finality, or the dignity of
+death, or the realization that we are a supposedly civilized people,
+living in the year 1900 A. D.
+
+Sorry, Judy. I am not fit to write this evening. I am going to bed
+to-night. If Chris wishes to keep up this fool night herding he may. I
+am through.
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+  I
+
+                                Sunday, October 14, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: Dr. Joe came home with us last evening, and spent the night
+here. This afternoon he talked to Grandfather, Uncle Phineas, Chris,
+and me.
+
+He had heard from Mr. Ward, who had been to see the insurance people.
+He said that they were inclined to hedge. They had hoped to have it
+proved that Father’s death was suicidal. Mr. Ward writes, however,
+that they haven’t a legal leg to stand on, and that he thinks he will
+have the money for us within two weeks.
+
+Grandfather asked me whether I had thought about what you and Lucy and
+I would do with the money. I had not, of course. I hadn’t realized
+that the money would come to the three of us. I told Grandfather we’d
+do whatever he advised. He said we should have to think it over. We
+dropped the discussion there.
+
+This evening, when he got me alone, Chris said, flat, that I should
+have to let him have five thousand dollars. That is, he said if I’d
+pay the Brindley mortgage so that he could get another mortgage to the
+extent of five thousand dollars, that would satisfy him. But, in some
+way, he had to have at least five thousand at once—enough for Irene
+and him to get back to New York and live until he had made a success
+of his writing. Otherwise, he said, he should be forced to accept the
+offer he had for selling the place. He was certain that I would
+understand why he could not ask Irene to remain on Q 2 Ranch. No man,
+he said, could ask any sensitive woman to continue life in a place
+where such a horror had occurred.
+
+I said, “Shall we cast lots for the garments, Chris?” and walked away.
+But it isn’t as decent as that. It is refined blackmailing—though I
+don’t know why I modify it.
+
+If we do get the money, he’ll get his five thousand, won’t he, Judy?
+Cheap at the price, to be rid of them. The other five thousand will
+carry us along to safety.
+
+In passing, I wonder whether Irene knew that Chris wouldn’t expect or
+ask her to stay on a place where a horror had occurred? Sorry. That is
+spite—cad’s talk—nothing else.
+
+Thank the Lord we’ll get Lucy away from this rotten, spite-ridden,
+fear-ridden hole before long. I wish we might get Grandfather away for
+a while, too. He has aged, in the past week. I wish, also, that I
+could keep him from finding out about this last brash move of Chris’s,
+but I don’t know how to do it.
+
+I’m foundered on this writing business, Judy. It is doing no good. I
+think I shall pass it up. But I do want to tell you that I have
+decided I was clear off about Grandfather’s suspecting me. I surely
+had a brainstorm, right, there for a few days.
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+  II
+
+                                Monday, October 15, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: Your letter in answer to my first one to you came this
+morning. I’m glad that you think I did right when I told you the
+truth. But I am sorry that you thought my purpose in writing to you
+was to gain comfort and consolation for myself.
+
+It is gratifying, of course, to know that you are sure I did not go
+into Father’s room and murder him in cold blood. Gratifying, too, to
+be assured that you can’t believe I murdered Father, not even by
+mistake for Chris. As a matter of fact, I had reached both conclusions
+some time ago.
+
+Your judgment, from a few thousand miles of distance, that we were all
+mistaken about nobody hiding in the house, and, probably, all mistaken
+about there being no footprints in the snow, is also reassuring. And
+nothing could be more inspirational than your repeated assertion that,
+until I come to my senses and realize that no member of the family
+_could possibly_ have done such a wicked thing, I’ll be useless as an
+aid in discovering the real criminal. Too, your persistent demands
+that I stop being foolish, hysterical, and begin to think calmly and
+sanely and search for “clues” (Lord, Jude, that searching for clues
+came near to being the last straw!), and evolve some sensible theory
+and some reasonable plan of action, have been carefully noted.
+
+Sorry, but to date I have evolved no such theory or plan. However,
+other members of the family have been less dilatory. I shall give you
+the two theories in vogue at present. You may have them to play with,
+but I should advise against your putting them in your mouth, because,
+I fear, they might rub off and give you a tummy ache.
+
+The first theory was constructed by Olympe and is, I believe,
+exclusively her own. It was this theory which succeeded in frightening
+Lucy—I had given the child credit for much better sense—out of her
+wits. At Lucy’s earnest solicitation, Olympe graciously allowed Lucy
+to repeat the production to me. The author, modestly, declined a
+direct discussion of it.
+
+Lucy tells me that she has enlightened you, to some extent, concerning
+a gentleman unfortunately named Archie Biggil—ex-husband of Irene’s.
+That she has told you of his, perhaps belated, ardency; of his
+jealousy, his passion, and other interesting emotions. Sweet stuff for
+a kid like Lucy to have been consuming!
+
+Olympe thinks that this Archie Biggil came, armed to the teeth, with
+great stealth, in the deep darkness of the night, to Q 2 Ranch. She
+thinks that he wore a red mask; that he crept into Father’s room and
+shot him, not, as you may be supposing by mistake for Chris—though
+that, too, would involve one or two minor discrepancies, such as the
+fact that Archie, not having known of the changed rooms, would have
+been unapt to make such a mistake—but out of revenge for the
+unhappiness that Irene had undergone on Q 2.
+
+Olympe advances that Archie, thoroughly provoked, had intended a sort
+of holocaust, or general slaughter of the Quilters. But, possibly due
+to his astonishment at having the first murder prove such a noisy
+undertaking, he had temporarily, though immediately, desisted. He had
+rushed into the hall. He had met Irene, who, overcome with some
+emotion (joy? fright? horror? astonishment?), had experienced but one
+impulse—to wit, the getting of Archie under cover. She had herded him
+into the attic. She had locked him in one of her trunks for
+safekeeping! (Your penchant for underscoring permits me only the
+modest exclamation point. That sentence bravely deserves more.)
+
+Irene’s three large trunks in the attic were locked. They were not
+searched. They have never, to my knowledge, been searched. Since
+Olympe has never helped in our searchings, I do not know how she
+happened to be aware of the locked, unsearched trunks. Evidently,
+someone has told her of them.
+
+To continue, and to repeat, Irene locked the irritable Archie in one
+of her trunks and returned below stairs to discover, for the first
+time, what it was that Archie had been up to. Again, the range of her
+possible emotions is a wide one. We may assume that her sense of tact
+soon predominated. Disliking to be involved in the affair, she simply
+left Archie locked in the trunk. Though, in due time, Olympe seems to
+prophesy, Irene will relent and unlock Archie.
+
+You may judge what the past week had done to Lucy, when you realize
+that she could admit junk of this sort into that straight-thinking
+mind of hers. It makes me ill. Almost as ill as it makes me to wonder
+why Olympe was so badly in need of a theory that she should proffer
+this one.
+
+The second theory, given as the joint production of Grandfather and
+Uncle Phineas, is more ingenuous.
+
+They say they believe that the murderer came to the house sometime
+shortly after dark, probably while we were all at supper. That he came
+in the front door and went upstairs. This, I admit, would have been
+risky, but possible. The front of the house, the hall, the upstairs,
+were all dark. They have provided the man with a dark lantern of the
+type that burglars are supposed to carry.
+
+At that time, he could have collected the keys in the upper hall, and
+gone upstairs to the attic. It was, they think, while he was hiding in
+the attic that the idea of the rope swung out of the window first came
+to him. Uncle Phineas makes the picture: The villain crouching, the
+coil of rope near at hand. He had, so the story goes, while he was
+making his other plans about locking us all in our rooms, made also
+his plan of escape. But the coil of rope brought fresh inspirations—a
+plan for misleading us. He took the rope, crept downstairs again, tied
+it around the leg of the bed, moved the bed a bit to make us believe
+that the rope had been used as a means of escape down the side of the
+house to the ground. He counted on it to send us all rushing from the
+house in hot pursuit of him. And, they say, but for the snow this plan
+of his would, probably, have accomplished his purpose. (Yes, you bet.
+But for the snow. And but for the man’s forehandedness in tossing the
+rope out of the window at least an hour, perhaps two hours before he
+got around to the shooting.) However, since the rope had been merely
+an afterthought, the snow made no difference in his original plan of
+escape.
+
+This plan, they have decided, must have been to get out of Father’s
+room into some safe, previously arranged hiding place in the house.
+Why, with us all locked in our rooms, and with no snow to betray him
+with footprints, he should have planned to stay in hiding in the
+house, instead of planning to run right down either stairway and out
+of the house and away, I don’t know. The fact that he could not have
+done this, that Irene was downstairs with the stairway doors locked,
+need not make any difference in the speculations as to what his
+original plans may have been. He had not, certainly, planned to have
+Irene locked out of her room. But Grandfather and Uncle Phineas,
+wedded to the notion of the rope as a “false clue,” insist that,
+because he wanted us out of the house hunting for him he must have
+planned to stay in the house.
+
+After the deed, the murderer returned, posthaste, to the attic. He
+left the attic door unlocked. You may choose your answer to that from
+the following suggestions:
+
+  1. He had left the key in the hardware box by mistake.
+  2. He thought that an unlocked door would allay suspicion.
+  3. His hiding place in the attic was so secure that an unlocked
+     door, or two, made no difference to him.
+
+Here, Jude, is where you can come into your own. You are certain that
+we left some part of the house unsearched. You are right. Until late
+this afternoon, no one had searched—the roof.
+
+Since the fact that there is no way to get up on the roof except
+through the trapdoor, directly in the centre of the attic roof and
+about eleven feet from the floor, seems to bother no one, it need not
+bother you.
+
+The stepladder, that Monday night when we searched the attic, was
+nowhere near the trapdoor. There was no box, or chest, or anything
+else that could have been used to reach the trapdoor, anywhere near
+it. In answer to Uncle Phineas’s question as to whether I could swear
+that none of these things had been moved beneath the trapdoor and,
+afterwards, put back into place—of course I could not. I could swear
+that nothing appeared to be out of place that night in the attic. I
+could swear that, if any object, large or small, had been directly in
+the centre of the attic, beneath the trapdoor, both Grandfather and I
+should have seen it instantly. But, that, also, is of no consequence;
+because, according to our most popular theory, this is what happened:
+
+The murderer had moved the stepladder, had ascended it, had opened the
+trapdoor and got out on the roof. Since the trapdoor claps shut when
+it is not held, he had fastened it open and had left—— What? Why, a
+rope, of course, dangling. He had then descended the ladder and had
+replaced it against the wall of the room up there. Next, he had stolen
+downstairs and committed the murder. He had then returned to the
+attic, climbed up the rope to the roof, pulled the rope up after him,
+and closed the trapdoor. In short, just give that guy enough rope and
+there was nothing he could not do with it, from fixing “false clues”
+to climbing eleven feet of it, dangling loose, and excluding, only,
+hanging himself with it.
+
+Once he found himself on the ten-by-twelve flat piece of roof, he
+regarded his escape as having been perfectly effected. All that
+remained for him to do, after that, was to wait until he got ready,
+climb down his rope again, come down through the house and walk out of
+it.
+
+In case you don’t like to have him walk out through the locked and
+doubly guarded doors, you may have this: He stayed above, fluctuating
+between the roof and the attic, for four or five days. That is, until
+Friday, when we all except Olympe and Lucy had gone to the inquest; or
+until Saturday, when we all had gone to the funeral. On either of
+those days, the snow was melted; so he could have got out of a window,
+or jumped off the roof, or climbed down his rope from the
+roof—couldn’t he?—and walked away.
+
+The question of his food and water for five days has, also, a nice
+variety of answers. I prefer my own: That he ate his rope, and washed
+it down with snow water from the roof—the special snow that did not
+come down through the open trapdoor into the attic. You see, if the
+trapdoor had been left open for any length of time from ten minutes to
+two hours, during the snowstorm, there would have been snow or melted
+snow on the attic floor. Do you think that would have escaped both
+Grandfather and me when we were searching the attic? I know that it
+would not. I know that if anyone had got down off that dirty, wet
+roof, even once, he would have left footprints on Aunt Gracia’s
+spotless floor up there. The floor that night looked as it usually
+looks; that is, very much like the bread board.
+
+Unfortunately—I quote the elders—Aunt Gracia this morning thought that
+the weather was threatening and chose to have Dong Lee (he came home
+last night, garishly dentilated, politely sympathetic, but, seemingly,
+unperturbed) hang the washing in the attic instead of in the yard.
+This necessitated the usual cleaning and dusting of the attic. This
+late afternoon it was impossible to tell, by coatings of dust or the
+like, whether ladder, chests, boxes, had been recently moved.
+
+Much as she disliked the admission, Aunt Gracia was forced to say that
+nothing in the attic seemed to have been disturbed; that no traces,
+even of the most immaculate intruder, had been discoverable. Said
+Uncle Phineas, no traces of the criminal were to be found in the
+attic. Said he, any halfway clever criminal would, of course, have
+removed all traces before leaving the attic.
+
+Finis, then? The attic itself could scarcely be neater and cleaner
+than this explanation. All that remains to be explained is why
+Grandfather, Uncle Phineas, Aunt Gracia, and Chris declare that they
+credit such sort of stuff. And why do they leave me out in the cold
+with Olympe, Irene, and Lucy?
+
+Stretching a long, long bow I might give Uncle Phineas and, perhaps,
+Chris credit for honesty when they declare their belief in this
+nonsense. I know darn well that Aunt Gracia does not believe in it,
+not for one of her clear-sighted seconds. I know that Grandfather
+cannot believe it; unless—well, Grandfather is eighty years old, and
+this week has been a week of steady torture for him.
+
+Reverting, again, to your letter. What I seem to have said about
+attending the hanging of Father’s murderer has, apparently, shocked
+you severely. I was one little bloodthirsty lad, wasn’t I, when I
+wrote that first letter to you? The scarcely gradual tapering of my
+tone from vengeance to vacuity must prove at least amusing to you.
+But, at least, I am not a clutching backslider. I state, conclusively,
+that I no longer have any desire either to discover Father’s murderer
+or to attend any hanging whatsoever. Quite, quite the contrary. I
+won’t subscribe to the darn fool lies the others are propounding. But
+I’d give the spring heifers if I could concoct some lucid, logical lie
+that would clear the Quilter family.
+
+You say that I asked you to help me in ferreting out the criminal.
+That should speak volumes for my own condition at the time I wrote. I
+judge that the sheer shock of the thing reduced me on the instant to a
+drooling, chattering idiot—swearing my innocence to you, beseeching
+for your reassurance. You have given it, Jude; lots of it and
+lavishly—the reassurance. Shall we let it go at that? But, as for the
+help, I shall have to change my order. Can you, by any effort of wits,
+produce the lie we are all so seriously needing at present?
+
+Remember, any compound must include that rope. Do you know, sometimes
+I almost incline to agree with Chris’s ex-theory—that the rope was,
+somehow, coincidental. Deserting fiction, for the moment, and
+attempting fact: Can you think of any conceivable reason that Father
+himself might have had for tossing that rope out of the window early
+in the night? Suppose that Aunt Gracia’s suggestion about a
+blackmailer was truer than she thought. Might it have been possible
+that Father helped him—or anyone—to _get into_ his room that night by
+means of the rope? Someone, with a fair amount of agility, might have
+been able to get from the ground to the porch roof by means of the
+porch pillars and the rope. This would have had to be, of course,
+before the snowfall started. It is at least possible that, since the
+rope had been effectual for an entrance, it might have been left in
+place as an exit. The window’s having been left open would seem
+peculiar, on so cold a night; peculiar, but not impossible. The
+impossible element in any of this is the implication that Father could
+have been induced to stoop to underhandedness or secrecy of any sort.
+
+Aunt Gracia spoke about unknown paragraphs and pages in men’s lives.
+It went with the jury. Let it go. But it brings us back again to
+fiction. My thinking machine—I realize that this is in no sense an
+admission—is not, at present, in working order. You take the rope as a
+means of access instead of exit and see whether you can produce
+something that will serve for our present needs.
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+  I
+
+                                Wednesday, October, 17, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: When I wrote to you, day before yesterday, I thought that I
+was through with this letter writing. I wrote, then, in the rôle of
+Mr. Wise-guy, scorning you and the rest of the family for not serenely
+knowing that one of the Quilters was a murdering cur. Scorning even
+Grandfather; or, if not quite as brash as that, accusing him of
+senility for using that brave old mind of his to reach for the truth.
+No use of my trying it; no use of my loyalty to the family being
+stronger than the absence of footprints in the snow. I was going on
+nineteen years old, wasn’t I? Why shouldn’t I be the only wise, honest
+one in the group? Even poor old Olympe did better than I. She tried to
+think of an explanation. It was no good, and she was ashamed of it.
+But she tried, and hoped that Lucy’s clear little mind might help with
+it. Not smart-aleck Neal. He knew. There is no good in raving, Judy.
+But, gosh, I am so sick of myself that I feel exactly as I did that
+time when Whatof and I got in a mix-up with the skunk.
+
+No, we haven’t found the murderer. But something happened last night
+that proves, about as clearly as anything but finding him and hearing
+his confession could prove, that not one of the family was involved in
+the dirty business. Go on, Judy dear, crow! You can’t crow any louder
+than I wish I had a right to.
+
+Here is the story: Yesterday afternoon Uncle Phineas left, again, for
+Portland. This may seem sort of queer to you; but it isn’t. I can’t
+explain it, right now. It is a secret that Uncle Phineas and I have
+had together for a long time. But next week, at the latest, he hopes
+to be able to tell the family. As yet he hasn’t told even Grandfather
+or Olympe.
+
+I was sorry he couldn’t see his way clear to confiding in Olympe,
+because his going right away again hurt her feelings like everything.
+He couldn’t take her with him on account of our being so hard up for
+ready money, just now. Uncle Phineas shares Dr. Joe’s room in
+Portland. If he had taken Olympe they would have had to go to a hotel,
+and we couldn’t afford it. All this, then, to explain why Olympe
+returned to her bed, to stay, after Uncle Phineas left yesterday
+afternoon.
+
+At six-thirty Aunt Gracia was going to send Olympe’s supper tray up to
+her by Lucy, but I carried it instead. I am darn glad that I did, for
+now I know what I know. She seemed so forlorn that I sat down and
+talked to her while she ate her supper.
+
+She was not in a sunny humour. She has been a bit miffed with me, for
+one thing, ever since I questioned her about the gun. Too, she was all
+cut up about Uncle Phineas’s leaving her alone again, as she said, “at
+a time like this.” She has fully determined that he goes solely and
+wholly because he cannot bear to be on the place while “that young
+person,” as she calls Irene, is here.
+
+I didn’t stay with her any longer than seemed necessary. When she had
+eaten her supper, she asked me to search her room before I left her
+alone in it. To humour her, I made a thorough job of it. I looked
+under the bed and the sofa, in the closet, behind the curtains, and I
+even opened her old Flemish chest and stirred through it. She asked
+me, next, to put her wrapper handy, so that she could slip into it
+when she got up to lock the door after me. I told her that someone
+would be coming up, directly after supper, to keep her company and
+then she’d have to get out of bed and unlock the door again. She said
+that she would not stay a moment alone in the house unless she were
+certain that every window and door was locked. (I grinned to myself.
+One of her windows was three inches down from the top, right then, as
+Uncle Phineas always has it when he is at home. I had left it like
+that because I thought the fresh air would be good for her headache.
+That stuffy, purple and brown, verbena and liniment atmosphere that
+always pervades Olympe’s room would give me a headache at any time.)
+She said, also, that she was in no humour for company this evening.
+You know Olympe’s “Tired, ill, and old” speech—or perhaps you don’t.
+It seems to me that has been devised since you left. At any rate, she
+was unfit for companionship. She was, as soon as I left her, going to
+take some of the drops Dr. Joe had given her. She hoped, merely hoped,
+for a little sleep. So, if I would please, ask the others to walk
+quietly when they came through the hall on the way to bed?
+
+I promised to deliver the message, took her tray and went into the
+hall. I put it on the stand, and went into the bathroom to clean up a
+bit. As I walked through the hall I noticed—I am certain of this—that
+all the doors were standing ajar except the attic door, your door, and
+the door to Father’s room. When I came out of the bathroom, I picked
+up the tray and went downstairs, using the back stairway.
+
+The folks were sitting down to supper when I went into the dining
+room. I apologized to Grandfather for being late. Dong Lee came in
+with a tray of muffins, and hung around to hear them praised. Aunt
+Gracia and Lucy remarked on their excellence. Chris asked how Olympe
+was feeling. I answered, and delivered her message about quiet in the
+hall. Irene produced a none too gentle remark concerning Olympe’s
+deafness. Chris, as usual—one does sort of have to feel sorry for
+Chris at times—tried to cover it with an observation about the mantel
+clock’s being slow. Aunt Gracia thought not, and asked Grandfather for
+the correct time. Grandfather took out his watch, opened it, said that
+it was two minutes after seven——
+
+Just at that moment, with every last one of us right there around the
+dining table, the sound of a gunshot crashed through the house. It was
+precisely and exactly one too many shots for most of us.
+
+
+  II
+
+The next thing I knew, I was running up the back stairs, listening to
+a beast growling in my own throat. Since running down the hall,
+straight to Olympe’s room, was the sensible thing to have done, I
+can’t understand why I did it, then; but I did. I was the first one to
+reach her door. It was open. I ran into her room. She was in bed. Her
+night lamp was lighted on the table beside her. She is all right,
+Judy; don’t be frightened. She is as sound as she ever was, untouched
+by anything worse than a bad scare.
+
+But I did not know it when I ran to her. The others, who came crowding
+in, didn’t know it, either. I thought that, like Father, she had been
+shot and killed. I thought it so certainly that, when I touched her
+she felt cold; and, for one wild, red second, I saw soaking blood. I
+am stopping to tell you this in order to show you what sort of tricks
+my mind and senses will play on me. It is a lesson about trusting
+either of them too far. Even yet, I find myself thinking that Olympe
+is dead, and I have to stop and remember painstakingly that she is
+not.
+
+I heard Aunt Gracia’s voice declaring that Olympe was not hurt. I
+heard the words, but for all the meaning they conveyed she might have
+been reciting the multiplication tables. The experience has surely
+taught me much concerning cowardice. How can a fellow be blamed for
+anything when fear, through no volition of his, throttles him and robs
+him of all his faculties? Not, you understand, that I was afraid the
+fellow was going to pop out from somewhere and shoot me; such a
+thought never entered my mind, then. I wasn’t afraid, either, that he
+was going to appear and shoot some one of the others. I was afraid of
+what had happened, I suppose—if you can find sense in that—and not at
+all of what might happen. I am not starring myself for any of this;
+but I am not blaming myself. I couldn’t help it any more than I could
+help it if a boat capsized and chucked me into rapids that I hadn’t
+strength to swim.
+
+The first inkling of my intelligence returned when I heard Irene croak
+something about Uncle Thaddeus. I turned to look at Grandfather, just
+in time to see him loosen his hold on the foot of the bed and slip
+down into a heap on the floor.
+
+Again, don’t be frightened. Grandfather is all right now—or, at least,
+as nearly all right as he could be after having had a second shock of
+the sort. He won’t stay in bed; and he is declaring that it was all
+nonsense for us to have sent for Dr. Joe. Just the same, I’ll be glad
+to see Dr. Joe put in an appearance here. He’s antiseptic, that’s what
+he is. I wish to the Lord he had been here during the fracas yesterday
+evening.
+
+I am not needing to tell you what seeing Grandfather go under did to
+us. Even Dong Lee, who had come up with the others, went clear
+balmy—pushing us away from Grandfather, or trying to, and chattering.
+Olympe revived, and contributed more than her share to the bedlam.
+I’ll not attempt to describe it; I couldn’t, anyway. But when I tell
+you that, after we’d got Grandfather to the sofa he lay there, looking
+as if he were dead, and that we could not get his heartbeats, and
+thought that he was dead, or dying, you will understand why we were
+not attending to anyone or anything else. You’ll understand why, until
+Grandfather’s ruddiness began to seep back into his cheeks, and his
+eyes were opened and he was talking to us, reassuring us, we did not
+give a damn if a whole regiment of murderers were marching, slowly,
+away from the house. They’d had time to, right enough. It was
+half-past seven before Chris began his declamation about this being
+the same thing over again, and his rhetorical questions about what
+were we doing, and where was the murderer, and so forth—all
+pyrotechnical rather than practical.
+
+Grandfather, by this time, was sitting up on the sofa with one arm
+around Lucy and one around Aunt Gracia, both of whom, unromantically,
+were hiccoughing convulsively. As I looked at them, I had a bright
+idea. They—all of us—needed police protection.
+
+I stated this idea, and, also, that I was going right then to ride to
+Quilterville and get Gus Wildoch and a deputy or two. I started off on
+the run. Grandfather called to me.
+
+“My boy,” he said, when I had come back into Olympe’s room, “you said
+that you were going to tell the sheriff what had happened here. Do you
+know what has happened here? Does anyone know? I do not.”
+
+If I looked as I felt, I looked like two fools.
+
+“We heard a revolver shot,” Grandfather said. “We came to this room
+and found that Olympe had, again, fainted. The similarity of this
+circumstance with that of tragedy proved too much for my strength, I
+am ashamed to say. Olympe, my dear, did you happen to discharge a
+revolver by mistake?”
+
+Olympe pulled herself up higher on her pillows, drew her pretty
+old-rose wrapper about her shoulders, perked up her famous chin, and
+made it known to all present that she had never yet fired a revolver
+on any account, either by mistake or purposely, and that, she trusted
+she never should. In the midst of death, as it were, Olympe is a
+gentlewoman. She had just passed through a most terrible experience,
+and still she found space to resent with dignity what she considered
+an implication of rowdyism from Grandfather.
+
+Grandfather apologized, and asked her if she had any memory at all of
+anything that had happened before she had fainted.
+
+I believe that we all thought she wouldn’t have. Thank the Lord she
+did have! It took her a long time to tell it, but what she told was
+this:
+
+Right after I left her she had got out of bed and locked her door. She
+had gone immediately back to bed. She was lying there, annoyed because
+she had forgotten to take her drops while she had been up. She reached
+for her wrapper, on the foot of her bed, preparatory to rising again,
+and, just as she did so, she heard a noise at the cupola window—the
+one I had purposely left open from the top. She turned, and looked
+across the room toward it. She saw a man, wearing a bright red mask,
+slowly pushing open her window. She tried to scream, but her throat
+had closed. She tried to move. She could not. She said that the
+sensation was precisely the same as one experiences during nightmares.
+She closed her eyes. She made an effort for prayer. She felt that she
+was suffocating. She could hear the window being raised slowly, inch
+by inch. Something, she said, seemed to break in her mind. She
+thought, “This is what death means.” That was the last thing she knew
+until she opened her eyes and saw us all gathered around Grandfather
+on the sofa. She thought that the man in the red mask had come into
+her room and killed Grandfather.
+
+That was all she could tell us. She had not heard the shot fired. It
+was enough to tell Gus. A man, wearing a red mask, had climbed to the
+porch roof and into Olympe’s room, through her window. He had fired
+one shot, and had escaped.
+
+I asked Grandfather if I might go, now, to Quilterville. He said for
+me to use my own judgment.
+
+Here’s a hot one on me, Judy. While I was saddling Tuesday’s Child, I
+had a queer feeling, which I did not entirely recognize. About a
+quarter of a mile down the road, it introduced itself to me. I was
+scared. Rather definitely scared, and this time for my own skin. The
+moon was not up, yet, and there were enough clouds to keep the
+starlight from being showy. I took the short cut through the oaks, and
+every falling leaf or creaking branch was the guy in the red mask
+taking aim at me. Out in the open again, he bounded ahead of me like a
+pebble skipped over water. And once, disguised as a ball of
+tumbleweed, he rose up and slew me. For the first time it occurred to
+me that something more potent than Irene’s yelping might have kept
+Chris from starting off, alone, to Quilterville the night Father was
+killed.
+
+My fear wasn’t based on altogether faulty reasoning. The man had forty
+minutes’ head start on me. If he needed a better start than that, and
+didn’t want the county people on his trail for a while, the smartest
+thing he could have done would have been to pop me off on the way.
+Number Twenty-six, eastbound, goes through Quilterville at three
+o’clock in the morning. If he had been planning to catch it, he
+wouldn’t have wanted any advance notices. Evidently, though, he had
+not made any such plans (I think we have given him too much credit for
+smart planning), because I got into town sound in wind and limb.
+
+Gus Wildoch had gone to bed; and, since he’d had a few drinks too many
+before he had got there, he was rather nasty. Seemed to think that Q 2
+was entirely too troublesome. Also, he appeared to be annoyed because
+Olympe had not been killed, and unable to discover why I had wakened
+him for any other reason. When he further discovered that, so far as I
+knew, we had not been robbed, he washed his hands of the whole
+circumstance until morning.
+
+I rode over to Al Raddy’s and got him to come down and open up the
+station so that I could send a telegram to Dr. Joe. Then I borrowed
+Al’s gun and rode home again. I was well over my scare by the time I’d
+got back to the ranch, but I can’t say the same for Chris.
+
+He indulged in one of his beautiful tempers when he let me in through
+the front door and saw that I had come alone. We had a sweet passage,
+in which he said my failure to bring help was about what he might have
+expected from me. I made some would-be clever retorts, and was getting
+pretty hot, when I saw that Chris was using his rage to cover his
+fright. I came off my perch and asked him whether they had made any
+alarming discoveries while I had been gone. His reply was worthy of
+Olympe.
+
+“Alarming enough,” Chris said, “to make us certain that no one’s life
+is safe on this place until we find the man who is, apparently, bent
+on destroying the Quilter family.”
+
+
+  III
+
+After I had left the ranch to go to Quilterville, Grandfather, Chris,
+and Aunt Gracia had made another thorough investigation of the house.
+
+The bedroom doors were all locked again on the outside, as they had
+been locked on the night that Father was killed. Again, too, the same
+doors had been left unlocked—that is, the attic and the bathroom
+doors. Father’s door, this time, had been locked, and Olympe’s locked
+door had been unlocked and left open. (That door unlocked would seem
+to indicate that the fellow had rushed out of it into the hall. But,
+there is this: the instant we heard the shot, all of us, except Irene
+and Chris who came up the front stairway, ran straight up the back
+stairway and into the upper hall. Would he have run out to meet us?
+Olympe’s door is at the far end of the hall from the attic door.) The
+seven keys were on Olympe’s bedside table, as they had been on
+Father’s bedside table.
+
+The rope, the same old clothes-line, which had been returned to the
+attic, was on the floor in Olympe’s room. It was not tied around the
+leg of the bed, nor around anything. It was lying there, in a loose
+coil, near the foot of the bed.
+
+The bullet from the gun had gone into the wall, about three feet above
+Olympe’s pillows. Evidently, he had aimed at her; but his shot had
+gone wild.
+
+Nothing was out of place in Olympe’s room. Exactly as it had been in
+Father’s room—not a chair seemed to have been moved, not a drawer
+opened.
+
+Lying on the floor, directly beneath the open cupola window, was a
+mask, large enough to cover a man’s entire face, cut roughly out of
+bright red satin. So, in spite of my surety, it would seem, now, that
+undoubtedly “red mask” were the words that Father had said to Irene
+before he died.
+
+Now, to see what we can do with all this. First, the locked doors:
+There could be, has been, endless speculation about those locked
+doors. But, finally, they seem to come to but two hypotheses. Either
+the fellow is up to something of which, as yet, not one of us has
+begun to get an inkling; or else he is a raving maniac, and his very
+lack of purpose is what is throwing us all so completely off the
+scent, and also what is saving him.
+
+I am strong for the second theory—that this is the work of a maniac. A
+smart man might have locked us all in our rooms that first night. No
+man, in his senses, would have run the risk of being out in the hall
+long enough to lock all the doors of the vacant rooms last evening. He
+had had to collect the keys from the inside of the doors again, and he
+had had to do it after he had come into Olympe’s room through the
+window. If he knew anything, he must have known that no one was in any
+of those rooms he so carefully locked. But he repeated, exactly, his
+first performance; even to leaving the bathroom and attic doors
+unlocked, and the door of his victim’s room standing open.
+
+From first to last, that rope business has seemed the work of a
+lunatic. This final move of lugging the thing into Olympe’s room, and
+leaving it there, unattached to anything, is the crowning lunacy.
+
+It doesn’t take a maniac, I suppose, to miss his aim. But firing as
+high as three feet above his mark, when Olympe was lying there
+unconscious and motionless, seems rather wild for sanity.
+
+Nothing being disturbed in either room appears to establish the fact
+that the fellow’s one motive is cold-blooded murder. As Aunt Gracia
+said at the inquest, we could grant that Father might have had an
+enemy. But unless we decide that this man has made up his mind to wipe
+out the entire Quilter family, which, of course, could be the decision
+of only a maniac, we cannot conceive of Olympe’s having the same
+enemy—or any enemy, for that matter.
+
+The mask is made of bright red satin. It is about twelve inches long
+and ten inches wide. It has two small holes cut for the eyes. It has
+strings, cut from the same satin, knotted into the sides. The strings
+were tied together in the back, as they had been when he was wearing
+it. He must then have pulled it off over his head and dropped it, by
+mistake we assume, just before he got out of the window.
+
+With the exception of Chris, we all believe, I think, that he did get
+out of the window this time. It was a darn risky business, running
+along that sloping roof to the rain spout, and getting hold of the
+spout, under the eaves, on a night as dark as last night was. I
+shouldn’t care to try it in the daytime. But this guy must be
+something of a circus performer, because he not only had to get off
+the roof, but he had also to get on it by means of the rain spout.
+Chris and I have gone carefully over the porch possibilities. The
+spout seems to be the one thing he could have used to climb on. The
+old trellis, at the south end, has completely rotted and fallen to
+pieces.
+
+Perhaps here I would better give another line or two about the search
+that Grandfather, Aunt Gracia, and Chris made of the house. They went
+about it systematically. They did not forget the roof this time. The
+three outside doors were all locked on the inside, as is usual now.
+Every window downstairs was locked on the inside. The cellar doors
+were locked. Chris and I made another thorough search of the place
+after I got home last night. No one could have been hiding in the
+house.
+
+This is what Chris thinks queers my maniac contention: He insists that
+it would take a keen mind to do exactly the same thing, twice, and
+outwit us each time. Of course, any fool who was willing to risk his
+neck could have made a clean getaway last night. After the snow
+melted, we had another freeze, and the ground is so hard that we can’t
+stamp our own footprints down into it. Escape, then, last
+night—discounting again the distance from the porch roof to the
+ground, and the dangers of the rain spout as a ladder—would have been
+simple enough. We know, though, that he did not get away across the
+roof that first night. We know that the snow was unmarked by any sort
+of print. Consequently, Chris thinks that the fellow worked again last
+night whatever foxy scheme he worked the first time. That is so
+reasonable that I am more than half ashamed of myself for not
+agreeing. The rope, the locked doors, and the red mask prove, surely,
+that it was the same man both times.
+
+The others are beginning to wonder, now, if we might have been
+mistaken about footprints that first night; if we might have
+overlooked a single line of them. Lucy, with her ingenious mind, has
+suggested that he might have got away on stilts! I know that there
+were no footprints. We have to stick to what we do know, or we shall
+never get anywhere. Since the man did not get out of the house that
+Monday night, he must have stayed in the house. Until last night, I
+have been certain that, since he did not stay in hiding in the house
+he stayed, as Aunt Gracia said, not in hiding. Or, to put it brashly,
+he was one of us.
+
+Last night every single one of us was in the dining room, sitting
+around the table. Dong Lee was serving us. That settles it. It could
+not have been one of us. Consequently, he did stay in hiding in the
+house.
+
+All this seems to grant him super-brains and sanity. But I believe it
+is quite as reasonable to grant him a madman’s cunning and a fool’s
+luck. When we find out what he did, where he went that first night,
+I’ll bet ten acres of Q 2 that we’ll not find any deep scheming, any
+genius job at the bottom of it. I’ll bet the same ten acres that we’ll
+find something so simple that a child might have devised it, so
+transparent that we’ve all looked straight through it without seeing
+it. I feel, somehow, certain that the entire thing is right before us
+for us to look at—if only we knew how to look. How to look seems to be
+the question now rather than where to look. You know what a wizard
+Aunt Gracia is when it comes to finding lost articles; and how she
+always says it is because she never hunts, but always thinks. It is
+thinking, now, and not peering under beds or into apple bins, that is
+going to land us where we need to be. In spite of my smartness, I have
+been trying to do some thinking that includes the trapdoor in the
+attic; but I haven’t had a sensible result, as yet.
+
+Both times we have given the fellow a good many minutes to use as he
+pleased. But, since we are more or less civilized beings, not entirely
+inured to tragedy, I suppose it is not wholly to our discredit that
+our first impulses, on occasions of this sort, should be for something
+other than an immediate pursuit of the criminal.
+
+Gus and his brothers do not subscribe to such sentimentality. They
+arrived, fully panoplied, about nine this morning and were at once
+overcome with disgust to think we had given attention to Olympe and
+Grandfather last night before we had started hue and cry. Nor did
+Chris’s contention that he had gone straight to the window in Olympe’s
+room, last night, and looked out of it, and seen nothing (the man
+could have got to the cover of the lower porch by that time), help
+much.
+
+“Sure, I know,” Gus said. “Looking out of windows is all right. But
+how long did you folks hang around and talk things over this time,
+before you men thought of going out after the —— —— who did the
+killing?”
+
+Later, he relented to the extent of admitting that, since he
+represented law and order in Quilter County, he supposed he’d try to
+do what he could. He added, however, that considering all the
+circumstances, and the time that had elapsed, he didn’t think we had a
+right to expect him to do much.
+
+Aunt Gracia suggested that she thought he should depute at least two
+men to guard our house for a time.
+
+Gus said, “Would you want them deputies to stay inside the house or
+outside the house, Miss Quilter?”
+
+Whether or not he was trying to be funny, I don’t know. I don’t much
+care. It is relief, I guess. Now, since we all know that not one of us
+could have had a hand in this, it doesn’t seem to matter, greatly,
+what other people think.
+
+The Wildochs had a talk with all of us—Grandfather was the spokesman,
+of course—first thing. Then they milled about the place for an hour or
+two, and made a great show of examining Olympe’s room. She is still in
+bed, so we curbed their enthusiasms for detail as much as we could;
+postponing, for instance, the minutia of digging the bullet out of the
+wall. When they finally left, Gus said that he would see what he could
+do about sending a couple of the boys out for a few days. No one has
+come, as yet, so he must have seen that he could do nothing.
+
+Don’t, for the Lord’s sake, Judy, go worrying about our safety. Unlike
+Gus, we are able to do several things. Chris and I are both staying up
+to-night, for all night. The happy practice of feeding Whatof and
+Keeper in the kitchen shed has been discontinued. The house is locked
+from cellar to attic. We are getting our fresh air from the fireplace
+flues, and our strength is as—and so forth. No kidding, it makes a
+difference.
+
+I guess this tells it all for to-night. Except sorry, and so on, for
+that fool letter I wrote to you yesterday. And, Judy, don’t forget
+about sending for Lucy, pronto. If we do get the money from Father’s
+insurance, I am going to try to think of some scheme for getting
+Grandfather away for at least a few weeks. Lucy and Grandfather are
+the only ones here whom I am worried much about. The others seem to be
+coming through pretty well. Olympe, I am sure, will be all right as
+soon as Uncle Phineas gets home. Thank fortune, when he comes this
+time, he’ll be able to stay.
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+  I
+
+                                Thursday, October 18, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: You are a good kid, all right, but someway or other your
+letters seem to rub me the wrong way. For gosh sakes, Jude, stop
+telling me that I didn’t murder Father. If you keep on with that
+line, I’ll think, as I thought for a while about Chris and Irene,
+that you are protesting too much. After all, you can’t _know_ that
+I didn’t do it, as you keep declaring with underlines. Nobody here
+_knows_—anything. How can you know, away off there in Colorado?
+
+It serves me right enough, for beginning this crazy, underhanded
+business of writing to you. The nights were long, and I had to have
+something to do, I guess, and the letters gave me a good excuse for
+writing, as Olympe says, “at a time like this.” Funny, how we’ll find
+excuses for ourselves. Funnier, how we’ll believe what we desire to
+believe. I don’t know what right I have to the plural. No matter;
+don’t stop, too long, to laugh over the humour I have just presented.
+I have something much more amusing to give to you.
+
+Olympe had supposed that Uncle Phineas would come with Dr. Joe from
+Portland this afternoon. (Dr. Joe had been out of town and hadn’t got
+my telegram until late Wednesday.) When Uncle Phineas did not come,
+her fury propelled her from her bed and downstairs in her black
+gown—by this time fully denuded of its festive colour.
+
+At seven this evening, Lucy came to me and asked me to come upstairs
+with her. She led me directly to Olympe’s room. Lucy is so choice,
+that I am going to attempt to quote her, as nearly as I can.
+
+“Neal,” said she, “I have something to tell to someone, and I have
+decided that, just now, you are probably the best one of the family to
+tell.”
+
+Said I: “To tell what?”
+
+Said Lucy: “To tell that I am very sure no man with a red mask came to
+Olympe’s room on Tuesday night. Ever since I decided to be an author,
+Grandfather has been training me to observe closely. Now, Neal dear,
+will you please observe with me?”
+
+She asked me to lie down on Olympe’s bed, where Olympe had been lying
+on Tuesday night. She had the night lamp lighted and on the table as
+it had been that night. She crossed the room, stood in front of the
+window, and asked me whether I could see her white face.
+
+I could not. The night lamp, shaded as it is, lights a small circle on
+the bedside table, and lights nothing else.
+
+I heard her open the window. “I am sitting in the window now,” she
+said, “with the pane pulled down between you and me. Does the glass
+make a difference? Can you see my white face?”
+
+I could not.
+
+“Then how,” she asked, “could Olympe have seen a man, and the bright
+red mask, at this same time on Tuesday night? Now listen,” she went
+on. “When I bang the window up hard, like this, you can hear it? But
+can you hear it when I raise it slowly, like this, inch by inch?”
+
+Since it made no sound whatever, I could not.
+
+“You see,” Lucy stated, “Olympe said that the window being raised,
+slowly, inch by inch, was what she heard to make her look toward it.
+She kept on hearing it, raised inch by inch. I can’t hear it myself,
+when I’m raising it slowly. You can’t hear it, over there. Olympe is,
+really, a trifle deaf.”
+
+Neal shines. Neal is brilliant. “Just the same, Lucy, we all of us
+heard the shot. There is no arguing away from that.”
+
+Lucy grows maternal. “Yes, Neal darling, of course. But, you know, I
+think that Olympe fired the shot herself. You see, she always slept
+with Uncle Phineas’s gun under her pillow when he was away from home.
+She kept it unloaded—or meant to. But the cartridges for it are right
+here in the commode drawer, where you found them the other night.
+Olympe could have put just one of them into the gun, and got into bed,
+and shot it off up there into the wall, where she knew it would stick
+and not hurt anyone. Then she could have jabbed it back under her
+pillow, and plumped right down into bed again. If we had searched for
+a gun, this time, and we didn’t, none of us would have thought it odd
+if we’d found the unloaded one under her pillow where she always kept
+it.”
+
+“At least not as odd,” I said, “as I think it is for you to accuse
+Olympe of this. Why are you doing it, Lucy?”
+
+“I’ll tell you my purpose in a minute or two,” Lucy said. “First, I
+should like to get through with my thinking. I think that Olympe’s
+reason for planning to do this was that Uncle Phineas went away and
+left her alone, when she kept telling him she needed his protection.
+Uncle Phineas, of course, will be shocked and remorseful when he finds
+how nearly Olympe did come to being killed. And, too, you know, Neal,
+Olympe has been sort of left out of things since Father was killed.
+Being almost killed herself, gives her an entrée. We know that is the
+way Olympe is made, and that she can’t help it at all—not any more
+than she can help being rather dull.
+
+“The mask was cut from one of Olympe’s old ball gowns that I used to
+dress up in, in the attic. The trouble is, some little snips of it
+were here in her work basket, and some threads of it were still caught
+in her dull scissors. I thought it wise to look, because Sherlock
+Holmes was always making such important discoveries with bits of
+tweed, you know. Now, I think, I can tell you my purpose. I want you
+to explain to Olympe, Neal. She must be explained to, and I think it
+would be much better taste for you to do the explaining than for me,
+at my age, to attempt it.”
+
+“Explain—what, Lucy?” I was shocked at the way I croaked it.
+
+“But, Neal! You must explain to her that the man jumped quite heavily
+into the room from the window. That he came gliding across the floor,
+and stooped to glare, or peer, or some such thing, at her, beneath the
+lamp. That she took one horror-stricken glance at the frightful eyes,
+burning through the holes in the red mask, and, as he made a cruel,
+menacing sound, and seemed to reach for his gun, she fainted dead
+away. I have cleaned all the scraps out of her work basket, of course.
+
+“You must be very careful, darling. It will be difficult. But it is
+necessary, now that Olympe has left her room, that she should not tell
+that story of hers outside the family circle. She had planned it so
+nicely, she thought, to have it all exactly like the other time. She
+even stole out in the hall, after you had left her, and locked all the
+doors. I think she must have brought the rope from the attic in the
+afternoon, and hidden it in Father’s room. Then she had only to dash
+in there, and carry it into her room. She must have hurried to get
+things all arranged and play the whole scene in so short a time. Poor
+Olympe—it must be sad for anyone to have to be as important to herself
+as Olympe is. You do understand, don’t you, Neal, that being an
+actress is really an affliction of Olympe’s, like Panys Gummer’s short
+leg?”
+
+I told Lucy I understood that. What I did not understand, I went on to
+say, was how a little girl, who could think through a thing as
+intricate as this could possibly have been frightened by a silly story
+about Archie Biggil hiding in locked trunks.
+
+Lucy said: “I only pretended to believe in that story. I thought if
+you could possibly think that I was afraid of Archie Biggil it would
+be so much better than for you to know the truth. Neal, dear, you have
+seemed to need comfort of late.”
+
+I asked her if she would please consider that I had been comforted,
+and tell me, if she knew, what she had been afraid of.
+
+“Why, Neal,” she said, “I was afraid of Olympe, of course.”
+
+
+  II
+
+She left me wordless. I must have looked my need for comfort, however,
+for Lucy hastened with it.
+
+“Darling,” she said, “that was my mere physical fear. It wasn’t by any
+means as uncomfortable as my unphysical fear that outsiders might
+discover the truth; but it made me more of a baby. I was especially
+afraid after I had laughed at Olympe, that evening. But, of course, I
+have had to be a little afraid from the first. And the Archie Biggil
+story made it worse. When Olympe told me that, I knew. Even Olympe,
+you see, Neal, couldn’t have credited that Archie Biggil story.”
+
+“Lucy,” I managed to question, “are you saying that you believe Olympe
+murdered Father?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, in that direct way of hers, “that is what I
+believe. I am sure, of course, that Olympe didn’t mean to do it. I
+think she went into Father’s room with Uncle Phineas’s gun that night,
+and that she thought the gun was unloaded. When she got into Father’s
+room, she acted one of her scenes for him. I think she must have been
+trying to make him promise that he would not consent to Christopher’s
+selling the ranch. Christopher might not have sold if Father had
+opposed it strongly enough. Olympe was worried about the poorhouse,
+you know. So I think she went to Father to play like she was very,
+very brave—probably she had Charlotte Corday in mind, or some other
+fearless lady. Yes, Neal, I know it is very silly. But, you see,
+Olympe lives in this very silly world that she makes for herself—I
+mean, really lives in it all the time.
+
+“I fancy, when she took the revolver from her dress, that Father just
+lay there and laughed at her. You know what laughing does to Olympe.
+You saw her the other night, when I laughed. And so, quite carried
+away with her acting, as she does get, you know, she pulled the
+trigger of the gun. She never thought that it would—but it did—go off.
+She must have been dreadfully shocked and frightened. She ran
+straightway back to her room, and fainted.
+
+“Of course, she’d have had to be a little crazy ever to have begun any
+of that—or to think she could point a revolver at Father and get a
+promise. And I thought such a horrible accident might have made her a
+little more crazy. And I thought—I’m afraid this is not clear
+thinking, though—that suppose she’d suspect I had guessed the truth.
+And I know, Neal, this was silly of me; but I couldn’t keep from being
+afraid she might play another scene, and have another accident.”
+
+Why, I asked, if Olympe had had no idea of using her gun, if she had
+thought that it was unloaded, had she locked us all in our rooms
+before she had gone into Father’s room?
+
+“I think,” Lucy answered, “that she didn’t. I think that, when Irene
+came upstairs and found Christopher had locked her out, it vexed her
+so much that she slipped along the hall and locked all the doors—just
+to make trouble in the morning. You know, she told me herself that she
+locked the stairway doors to show Christopher that two could play at
+that lock-out game.”
+
+“Do you think, Lucy, that Irene could have opened all of our doors,
+removed the keys, and locked us in without our hearing her?”
+
+“I think she could have with all of us but Grandfather. If Grandfather
+had heard someone fumbling at his door, he would have supposed it was
+some one of the family, and, while he might have called a question, he
+might not have. If he had thought some one of us was trying to do
+something or other to his door without disturbing him, it would be
+just like Grandfather to be too courteous to let us know he had been
+disturbed.”
+
+“And you believe that Grandfather would lie about it, afterwards?”
+
+“That is wrong of you, Neal. But I do think that Grandfather might be
+generous rather than just. Since he didn’t know that it was Irene who
+took his key, he might think it more generous not to say that he
+suspected her. Since Grandfather would die, as you know, to save the
+Quilter honour, surely he would keep silent to save it.”
+
+“All right. How did the keys get into Father’s room?”
+
+“Perhaps Irene had them with her, in her wrapper pocket, when she came
+back upstairs after she heard the shot.”
+
+“And why did she, from the very start, lie about locking the doors?”
+
+“I thought,” Lucy said, “that she didn’t like to confess she had been
+the one to lock us all in. Everyone seemed to think that whoever had
+locked us in had committed the murder.”
+
+“All right. Can you answer this? When Irene locked us all in our
+rooms, wouldn’t she have locked Olympe in her room, too?”
+
+“She might have locked Olympe in Father’s room.”
+
+“Only,” I protested, “when Irene opened Father’s door to get his key,
+wouldn’t Olympe and Father both have seen her?”
+
+“If Father’s key had not been in the keyhole,” Lucy answered, “Irene
+might have heard voices in his room, and not have opened the door. She
+might have locked it with one of the keys she already had.”
+
+“Very well. You have locked Father’s door. How did Olympe get out of
+it, after the shooting, and into her own locked room again?”
+
+“If Father’s key had been in some handy place, she might have used it
+to unlock the door, and to open her own door, and to lock her own door
+after her, again. Or, Olympe, when she went into Father’s room, might
+have turned the key in the lock. It would have made a gesture, and a
+speech. She might have held the key in her hand, and have shown it to
+Father, and told him that, until she had his promise, neither of them
+could leave that room. Irene’s locking was just naughtiness. If
+Father’s door had been locked on the inside, she wouldn’t have
+bothered about it. She’d have locked the others and gone on
+downstairs.”
+
+“And the rope, hanging out of the open window?”
+
+Judy, on the square, I fully expected the kid to have some logical,
+well-thought-out explanation of the rope. I have spared you a
+description of my own mental processes during this interview with our
+little twelve-year-old sister. I have assumed that your imagination
+would be more competent than my powers of description. Well, thank the
+Lord, the baby stuck at the rope.
+
+“Could it be,” she questioned, “that Olympe had threatened to hang
+herself out of the window with the rope?”
+
+“Or to hang Father?” I suggested.
+
+“I know,” she agreed, and blushed, “that is bad. That is allowing my
+literary imagination to run away with my logic. No, Neal, I can’t
+explain the rope. There is a chance that Father had wanted to get
+someone into the house that night, and had fixed it to help him in.
+Grandfather has told me about other incidents, that life allows such
+coincidences—I mean as Father having fixed the rope on the same night
+that he was shot by accident—but that literature does not. This is
+life—so that might be. Or it might be that Father had lowered
+something out of the window that night; something heavy that would
+have pulled the bed a bit. If he had done so before the snow was on
+the ground, whoever was below to receive it could have taken it and
+walked right away, or wheeled it in a barrow, and the snow would have
+covered any footprints or barrow tracks.”
+
+“And Father, who had gone to all that trouble for secrecy, would have
+lowered his treasure chest out of the window, and have gone back to
+bed, leaving the window wide open for the wind to blow over him, and
+the rope dangling to be seen?”
+
+Lucy argued: “The rope couldn’t have been seen until morning. Father
+might have had some reason for leaving it as it was for a few hours.
+Perhaps someone was going to send something up again—and couldn’t when
+he realized that the snow would show the footprints in the morning.
+Father would have closed the window. But Olympe might have opened it,
+at the last minute. She might have thought she’d throw the gun out of
+it. And then, when she saw the snow, and realized how a black gun
+would show in the white snow, changed her mind.”
+
+“By the way, Lucy, why did Father say ‘red mask’ to Irene?”
+
+“If he did say it, I think he said it to save Olympe. He’d wish to,
+you know. He’d have been sure that Olympe did not mean to shoot him.”
+
+“Have you decided what heavy thing it was that Father lowered out of
+the window, and to whom he lowered it?”
+
+“I had thought,” Lucy answered, “that you might know that. I had
+thought it might have something to do with the secret you and Uncle
+Phineas have been keeping together. I thought Uncle Phineas, since no
+one knew where he was the night Father was killed, might have been
+under Father’s window.”
+
+As it happens, Judy, that is utter idiocy. Ruled out. A good many
+persons know exactly where Uncle Phineas was that night. We shall all
+know it, before long now. I told Lucy this. She remarked that she was
+glad.
+
+I told her, next, that this mistake of hers should be a lesson to her
+concerning how easily mistakes could be made in matters of this sort.
+(That sounds like me and my heavy platitudinous, pedagogic style. Odd,
+the continuation of Lucy’s devotion.)
+
+She asked me what other mistakes she had made.
+
+I explained to her that, though she had worked her problem neatly, she
+had not got the right answer because she had left out an important
+equation—the human equation. I asked her, if Olympe had actually
+planned to go through with such a scene in Father’s room, what her
+first thought would have been.
+
+“To dress up for the part,” said Lucy. “But I decided that she had
+undressed, again, before we found her in her outing-flannel
+nightgown.”
+
+“Very well,” I said. “But examine this. Would Olympe leave Father,
+mortally wounded, run to her room, get out of her costume, hang it in
+the closet—it was not strewn about her room—put on her nightgown, take
+the gun again into her hand, and fall in a dead faint on the floor?
+Not only would she have done all that, but also could she have done
+all that before she fainted?”
+
+“I should think,” said Lucy, “since she did miss meeting Irene in the
+hall, there’d have been plenty of time, after that.”
+
+“Narrow it down,” I insisted. “Would Olympe, if she had shot Father by
+mistake, have left him alone to suffer and die? Remember, Lucy, that
+in spite of her artificiality, Olympe is a good woman.”
+
+“Do you mean,” Lucy gasped, “that Olympe shot Father on purpose?”
+
+“I mean,” I said, “you little nonny, you, that Olympe did not shoot
+Father at all. I mean, that it has been wrong of you to think these
+thoughts.”
+
+“Doubtless,” she sighed, in that seldom-used, grown-up manner of hers.
+“But I have decided that I must have a wicked personality. I have
+broken all the rules of conduct Grandfather gave to me. But at least,
+Neal, I am logical.”
+
+I told her that if deciding one of the family was a murderer, or, at
+best, a brutal beast of a coward, and that all the rest of the family
+were scamps and liars was an evidence of logic, she was logical right
+enough.
+
+“Whom have I accused of lying?” she asked.
+
+“Begin with Chris. He said, under oath, that he did not lock Irene out
+of their room that night.”
+
+“I didn’t hear him say it. But, even so, I’d call that a very light
+lie—a lie that any gentleman should be willing to use to get a lady
+out of serious trouble, especially since the lady was his wife.”
+
+“And what serious trouble was Irene in?”
+
+“But, Neal, she was the only one of the family who was locked out in
+the hall.”
+
+“Lucy,” I questioned, “whom have you been talking to?”
+
+“Really, only to myself,” she said. “But I’ve pretended to be talking
+to Sherlock Holmes. I have been Dr. Watson for days now—whenever I
+have felt at all up to it. It is an excellent way to clear one’s mind,
+Neal. Why don’t you try it, dear?”
+
+I told her that I didn’t care for the sort of clear brain that could
+clean out a good woman’s character in a swoop and leave a bad woman, a
+woman rotten to the core. I asked her if the second affair had not
+come up, how long she had planned to keep this mad belief of hers,
+that Olympe had done the murder, a secret?
+
+“I had meant,” she replied, “to keep it forever. It seemed best. You’d
+think, Neal, that keeping it would have been quite easy. No. It hasn’t
+been.”
+
+You’ll hate me for this, Judy, I suppose. It was beastly of me, I
+know. But I’d thought that Lucy needed a lesson. And—why not be
+honest?—I love the working of the kid’s mind. I am as proud as a
+parent when I get a peek at the way it goes. But that final little,
+“No. It hasn’t been,” of hers, got the best of me.
+
+I told her then what I should have told her in the beginning, and what
+she had had no opportunity to know without being told, since she was
+not at the inquest: That the bullet, which Dr. Joe had removed from
+Father’s body, had been fired from a .38 Colt’s of fairly recent make.
+That Uncle Phineas’s old Colt’s was a .32 calibre. That he left it at
+home, now, when he went on prospecting trips, because he had the new
+.38 that he bought a couple of years ago when Father and Grandfather
+bought theirs of that man who came around on a bicycle taking orders
+for them.
+
+“Was the kind he sold the kind that killed darling Father?” Lucy
+questioned.
+
+“Yes. And every man who has a gun in three counties has one of them.
+We can’t get far with that; but far enough to prove that a .38 bullet
+cannot be fired from a .32 gun.”
+
+“I had thought,” Lucy said, “that Uncle Phineas went to the city. You
+and I telegraphed there.”
+
+I told her that before long now she’d know where Uncle Phineas had
+been; and, until she did know, it would be more polite to stop
+guessing about it.
+
+“I only meant,” she explained, “that, if Uncle Phineas had gone to
+Portland, and not prospecting, he probably wouldn’t have taken his new
+.38 Colt’s with him.”
+
+For a wonder, I understood what she meant. It proves again, plainly,
+my contention that guns, ropes, coal oil, and their ilk are worthless,
+worse than worthless, when it comes to finding the truth in a case of
+this sort.
+
+“Very well, Lucy,” I said. “If you can believe, after having known
+Olympe all your life, that she would run away from Father, whom she
+really loved, when he was lying there with blood streaming from his
+breast, dying—run away, hide a gun so that it could never be found,
+get out of her clothes, and the rest of it, with no thought of
+anything but saving herself—it wouldn’t help you much to tell you that
+Uncle Phineas did have his gun with him, his .38 Colt’s, on that trip.
+I took it out of his valise myself, when I helped him to unpack.”
+
+Lucy looked at me, drew in a long breath, and burst into tears. For a
+moment I thought they were tears of relief. Not so.
+
+“It was so much better,” she sobbed, “to think that Olympe did it by
+accident. None of the rest of us could have done it by accident. And,
+besides, nothing is real to Olympe. Neal—Neal—— See, now—the rest of
+us!”
+
+She said it, Judy. The rest of us. The more I think of it, the more I
+am certain that Lucy is right, absolutely right, about Olympe’s little
+drama of Tuesday evening. It is all perfectly evident. But I do not
+believe that Olympe staged it either to spite Uncle Phineas or to get
+the centre of the stage. I know that she is too good a woman to have
+yielded to the temptation for no better reasons than these. I think
+that she thought the act would do just what it did do, for me at
+least. That it would remove suspicion from every member of our
+household.
+
+Damn it all, Jude! Why didn’t I think of something of the sort? Why
+didn’t any other one of us? Do you get the irony of it? Olympe, the
+one person here on the ranch—I suppose we should have to except Irene,
+also—who would have bungled it hopelessly was the one person who
+thought of the scheme. If Chris, or Aunt Gracia, or I had possessed
+wits for the conception, we’d have had wits for carrying it through
+convincingly.
+
+I don’t know whether or not I have been the one fool of the household.
+If any of the others have doubted Olympe’s story, they have not
+betrayed their doubt by the flicker of an eyelash. Though, of course,
+Grandfather doubted it from the beginning. His first question, I am
+sure I told you, was whether Olympe had discharged a revolver by
+accident. That, too, explains his reluctance to having me ride
+immediately to Quilterville. Also, when the county bunch arrived,
+Grandfather had them come directly to his room. He said that Olympe
+was in no condition to be troubled with questions. You see, he wished
+to tell Olympe’s story for her. And when I heard him telling it, “Mrs.
+Quilter was aroused from her sleep, on Tuesday evening, by hearing a
+noise in her room. She opened her eyes and saw a man creeping toward
+her; a man whose face appeared to be covered with the red mask we have
+since found. She fainted from terror——” I merely thought that he had
+been too much fuddled at the time to get Olympe’s story entirely as to
+detail.
+
+It seems to me, now, that Chris did flash an odd glance while
+Grandfather was telling Olympe’s story. If I am right about that, it
+might easily mean that Chris thought as I thought concerning
+Grandfather’s befuddlement. Because I have dreaded it, I suppose, I
+have imagined, once or twice, that Grandfather was getting less keen
+here of late. He is not. This proves it. Or, if he is, he could lose
+about half of his intelligence and still give us all cards and spades.
+
+This, then, Judy, so far as I am concerned, is the end of it. We are
+back where we began, the night of Father’s murder. I am through. I am
+not writing any more of these Mr. Micawber epistles. I don’t know who
+the murderer is. I don’t want to know. You don’t know. I don’t want
+you to know. So, no more brain storms, no more nervous palpitations,
+no more fake jubilations, and but one more apology—sorry, Jude, that I
+ever began any of this rot—from,
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+  I
+
+                                Saturday, October 20, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: I have what two weeks ago would have been mighty good news
+for you and for us all. Uncle Phineas got home this afternoon with
+$45,000 marked in his bank book. That is, you understand, he had
+deposited a check for $45,000 in the Portland bank.
+
+When he went prospecting down into Malheur County last June, he went
+into the old placer-mining region. He located a quartz mine there. He
+came home in August, and went straight on to Portland to try to
+interest some Eastern capitalists, who were there at that time, in the
+mine. He succeeded. And, finally, in late September, he got two big
+bugs to go down to Malheur County with him to inspect the property.
+
+They were coming out, on their way back to Portland to draw up the
+papers and close the deal, when Uncle Phineas heard what had happened
+here on Monday night, October the eighth. He came straight home, as
+you know. But he made an engagement to meet the men in Portland,
+toward the end of the week. This is his reason for going back to the
+city this last time. Everything went through without a hitch. Uncle
+Phineas banked the $45,000.
+
+So, you see, all is smooth sailing from now on. With that amount, we
+can bring the ranch through with flying banners, or I am a fool. Yes,
+I know. But I am not a fool where ranching, and nothing else, is
+concerned. Though when I realize what Father could have done, if he’d
+had half such an opportunity as this, it makes me meek. Also, it makes
+me pretty sore at Uncle Phineas. If it hadn’t been for his darn
+foolishness, I’d have had a chance to know something, at least, about
+how Father would have planned to go ahead with such an amount of
+capital: how he would have expended it; saved it; what mortgages he
+would have paid. As it is, I am in the dark with a case of cold feet
+at the notion of so much money to be handled.
+
+On the square, Judy, I hated this doggone secrecy of Uncle Phineas’s
+from the beginning. When he came home last summer, he told me about
+the location of the mine, what the ore had assayed, the accessibility
+to the railroad and to water. It sounded so good that, in spite of
+myself, and in spite of past experiences and even—shall I say—in spite
+of Uncle Phineas, I had to believe in the future of the thing.
+
+I was strong for telling the rest of the family, or at least some of
+the rest of them, right then. He would not have it. He had used me as
+a safety valve, because he had to confide or explode; but he would not
+tell another soul. He insisted, rightly enough, on the difference
+between locating a gold mine and getting a red cent out of it. On the
+score of not building up the family’s hopes, only to dash them, he did
+have a fair excuse for keeping quiet and for requiring that I should.
+But I knew, and he knew, that at any other time in the history of Q 2
+Ranch, he would have come shouting in with the big news, and allowed
+us all to have what fun we could out of the hoping and planning—you
+know how it has always been. No, sir, it was not fear of disappointing
+the family that made Uncle Phineas swear me to secrecy.
+
+It is a crumby thing to say, but, from the night she came here, Uncle
+Phineas has hated Irene. He always liked Chris better than he liked
+any of us, you know; so a mixture of Mother, Beatrice, and Griselda
+would not have satisfied him for his precious boy. Admittedly, Irene
+possessed no such combination of perfections. He was—and is, I
+suppose—convinced that Irene had roped his cloyingly innocent nephew
+by foul means. He thought all he had to do was to free Chris from the
+lasso of propinquity, and then the infatuation would instantly end. He
+tried to toll him off to Nome. When he had to give over that plan, he
+decided that Irene, if she saw no chance of getting away from Q 2 with
+Chris, would pick up some day and leave without him. He never for a
+moment believed that Chris would sell the place. His point, all along,
+was to save Chris. Mine, when I got mixed up with some mucky ideas of
+the same sort, was to save the ranch.
+
+Well, Uncle Phineas has saved the ranch. So I guess it is rotten of me
+to start quibbling about his methods. If he did make rather a bad
+mistake, he was more than paid out for it by the fiddle-de-dee effect
+of his triumph this evening. His announcement, with his display of the
+bank book, was the forlornest victory I have ever witnessed.
+
+We are a sentimental herd, and there is no getting away from it. When
+Uncle Phineas flashed the $45,000 on us, there wasn’t one of us,
+except Irene, I suppose, who thought of anything but what that money,
+or a tenth of it, would have meant to Father these last few years.
+
+He sprang it on us just after we’d sat down to supper. We received it
+as we might have received an announcement that he had had his
+photograph taken; and we passed the bank book from hand to hand as we
+might have passed the picture, though rather more quietly.
+
+Of course, I had been more or less expecting it. Though I was not
+prepared for any such sum as that. He had told me he was going to hold
+out for $45,000; but I had $15,000 fixed in my mind as the highest
+figure. One does, you know, always divide by at least three when it
+comes to Uncle Phineas and his affairs. Still, since I had been
+primed, I don’t know why I should have been so dumb. I might have
+sounded forth a glad cry or two, it would seem, but I did not.
+
+Lucy was the first to speak. She remarked: “Dear me! An enormous
+amount of money. Money was bothering all of us—wasn’t it—only a few
+weeks ago?”
+
+Chris replied by shoving back his chair, rising, and walking out of
+the room. Irene ran after him. Olympe burst into real tears. Aunt
+Gracia ran to Grandfather and put her arm around his shoulders.
+
+“Don’t you understand, Father,” she said, “Uncle Phineas has brought
+us a fortune? All our money worries are over now. You must be glad,
+dear. You must be glad!”
+
+So take the “good news,” Judy. In spite of the neat blue figures in
+the little leather book, I think none of us has quite got hold of the
+idea as yet. Except—funny, how often I have to make this
+exception—except, then, Irene. She has got Chris at their packing
+already—but a far from sunny, rather new Christopher, who snaps at
+one, and is surly, and who says that he will pack, if she likes her
+things put away in trunks, but that he is not leaving Q 2 for a while.
+
+Olympe is having a difficult time. She is torn between remorse for
+having accused Uncle Phineas of iniquities, widely assorted from
+neglect to infidelity, and anger at him for having kept the secret
+from her for so long a time.
+
+Poor Aunt Gracia seems to be in a trance. When you consider how hard
+it is to think up excuses and decent motives for mere mortals, you can
+imagine what a task it must be to have to find them for Omnipotence.
+You understand? If Father had to die, on the very night of October
+eighth, death would have been so much easier for him if he could have
+known that he was leaving us all, and Q 2, safe. So, until Aunt
+Gracia’s faith reconciles this seeming brutality with some obscure
+justice, she is bound, I fear, to have a bad few days.
+
+Grandfather has received the glad tidings by going straight to his
+bed. Aunt Gracia seems seriously concerned about him. But I know
+Grandfather, by this time. After weathering the past twelve days, as
+he has, he won’t allow what, after all, is good fortune, to down him
+now.
+
+Uncle Phineas put my name in the pot when he made this deposit. In the
+future, I am to write checks with the elders. I’ll celebrate by making
+my first one out to you, and enclosing it in this letter. Thank the
+Lord you can stop worrying about expenses. If you haven’t plenty of
+room for Lucy, where you and Greg are now, find a larger, more
+comfortable place. Or, if there is anything at all that will make you
+happier—get it.
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+  II
+
+                                Tuesday, October 23, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: Bless your heart for the letter that came to-day. None of
+the folks see my hand in it. They are all a bit worried, in spite of
+your denials, for fear Greg may be not so well. But, to the last man,
+they are relieved beyond measure at the prospect of getting Lucy away
+from this damnable, suspicion-ridden hole that used to be Q 2 Ranch,
+and safely with you.
+
+It is being no end good for Lucy. The notion that Judy-pudy needs her
+has chirked her chin up almost to its erstwhile snobby slant. She
+drank milk at dinner for the first time in ages. I knew why—strength
+for efficiency. She is as busy as six bunnies getting her washing
+done, and her clothes in order, and preparing “presents” for you and
+Greg.
+
+We’ll get her off on Thursday, I think. I’ll send you full details
+about trains in a telegram on the day she leaves here. For gosh
+sakes, Judy, don’t let there be any slip up about meeting her. I hate
+like thunder to have to allow the kid to make the trip alone. If
+Grandfather were only in a little better shape, I’d bring her, or
+Aunt Gracia might. If Chris and Irene had any definite date for
+departure, we’d have her wait for them. But, since Chris—and quite
+rightly—doesn’t care to leave Q 2 until Grandfather is out of bed, I
+suppose we’d better send Lucy along.
+
+If, by Thursday, Grandfather should be up again as, in spite of Dr.
+Joe’s pessimism, I rather think he may be, I’ll hop the train and
+escort Lucy to Denver. Or, if he seems well out of the woods, by
+to-morrow or the next day, we may have Lucy wait and go with Chris and
+Irene. Don’t worry, if I have to wire that she is coming alone. I’ll
+make friends with the conductor, and endow the porter.
+
+Thank you, dear, for helping out.
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+  III
+
+                                Wednesday, October 24, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: If I weren’t sure it would make things worse instead of
+better, I should devote the first page of this letter to an
+alphabetical classification of Neal Quilter, beginning with ass,
+bounder, cad, dunce—it is remarkably easy—and ending with wise-guy,
+yap, and zany.
+
+This, of course, as a direct result of your ten-page letter, which
+came to-day, in answer to my letter about the coroner’s inquest. The
+entire plan of writing to you, as I did write, could have been
+conceived only by an idiot—and the sound, fury, and significance have
+been fittingly evinced.
+
+Your attitude is the one reasonable attitude. I deserve every bit of
+the big-sisterly sweetness, sympathy, reassurance, and comfort that
+you are so determined to lavish upon me. I deserve it all; but I am
+afraid that I can’t endure much more of it. Jude, we have to cry
+quits.
+
+I do not, and I never did, suspect Aunt Gracia nor Chris. Whatever
+brain storm I had, has passed. I know, with no further need of
+reassurance, that I am an innocent little lad. For gosh sakes, then,
+Jude—stop it! I am not fool enough to ask you to forget what I have
+written; but, if you can, forgive it; and, because you must, ignore
+it.
+
+In answer to your question, do as you think best about telling Lucy
+that I have told you the truth. I have no right, and no particular
+desire, to burden you with keeping your knowledge a secret from Lucy.
+But I certainly do advise that you girls think of the affair as little
+as possible; that you two spend no time in putting your heads together
+and puzzling. It is a doggone unhealthy occupation, even for a man.
+The less you kids think about it and talk about it, the better.
+
+Dr. Joe—he came out again on Sunday—got word to-day from Mr. Ward that
+the insurance people have decided to fight our claim on the grounds of
+suicide. They base their lying contention on the supposition that the
+Quilters, unwilling to have a suicide in their family, eager to
+collect, illegally, a large sum of money, would have banded together
+to dispose of the weapon, and to make the death seem to have been
+murder. Mr. Ward wishes to fight it through to a finish. He says that
+they are a rotten, one-horse, almost one-man, shyster outfit, with no
+standing, and they should be shown up and forced out of business. He
+says that the absence of powder burns proves, conclusively, that the
+gun had been fired from a distance of at least five or six feet.
+Again, bother ropes, and masks, and coal oil, and powder burns—or the
+lack of them. I know that Father would not kill himself. I do not know
+how they could tell whether or not there were powder burns, underneath
+all that blood—— There I go again. Sorry.
+
+What I began to say was, that this decision of the company’s puts us
+in a nasty position. The Scylla of allowing them to get away with
+their filthy claims, and the Charybdis of dragging the thing through
+the courts, and of seeming eager to make Father’s death a paying
+proposition.
+
+We’ll do nothing until Grandfather is able to give us his best advice.
+At present, Dr. Joe and Uncle Phineas are all for fighting the thing
+through. Chris is, or seems to be, on the fence with Olympe and Irene;
+Aunt Gracia and I are strong for dropping it, here and now.
+
+Grandfather is not coming along as well as I wish he might. I think
+that it is mostly a general letting down and relaxation, after shock.
+The money sort of gave him an opportunity to rest. However,
+Grandfather is much hurt because Uncle Phineas had not told him about
+the mine, or asked his advice about any of the dealings.
+
+Uncle Phineas tried to get square by explaining that he was afraid
+Irene and Chris might have the same ability he—Uncle Phineas—had for
+turning daydreams into realities. In that case, had they known that a
+gold mine was in the offing, they might have hied them to New York on
+the strength of their knowledge.
+
+This helped not at all. Grandfather inquired why Uncle Phineas thought
+that he would go directly to Irene and Christopher and inform them. He
+went on to say that, in all his life, he had never betrayed a secret.
+His voice fairly shook as he all but dared any one of us to mention
+one instance of his having repeated the most trivial thing that had
+been told him in confidence. He said that, at eighty years of age, the
+discovery that his own brother dared not trust him with a minor
+confidence was an immitigably painful revelation. Sound enough, sane
+enough, just enough; but from Grandfather, at this time, rather
+thoroughly appalling.
+
+Aside from Grandfather, the rest of us are doing fairly well. The
+money assuages a lot. And the thought of getting Lucy away from this
+hellish place is a comfort. According to present plans, she is to
+leave to-morrow. But you will have my telegram about that long before
+you have this letter.
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+  IV
+
+                                Thursday, October 25, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: I hope you won’t think that I am in the throes of another
+brain storm, when you get the two almost identical telegrams about
+Lucy’s departure and arrival. After I had sent the first, I remembered
+the time the telegram we sent to Chris had miscarried. So I thought
+I’d play safe, and send another.
+
+It was darn crumby business, starting Lucy off alone on the train
+to-day. Nothing but the thought of Grandfather, lying there in his
+darkened room at home, kept me from hopping the train at the last
+minute and going with her.
+
+Grandfather is not pulling through as fast as I thought he would. He
+was able to talk to me for a while this morning, though Dr. Joe keeps
+time on us. Grandfather asked me, straight, about the insurance. I
+told him how things stood. He advised, strongly, that we drop the
+claim. He said that no one, now, including the insurance people
+themselves, believed for an instant that Father’s death was a suicide.
+But, he said, by the time we had aired the affair in court, and had
+allowed those scoundrels to present their dishonest evidence, there
+was no way of telling what some people might come to believe. He said
+that Father’s honour needed no defence, and that we would make none.
+He added that no retort we could offer would carry the dignity of
+non-retort.
+
+I can hardly say how thankful I am for this decision from Grandfather.
+To start yowling and yapping for insurance money would seem to be the
+final, filthy flourish. Thank the Lord that Uncle Phineas has made it
+possible for us to drop it. Or, I guess, I should say that Chris has
+made it possible for us to drop it.
+
+After Grandfather and I had talked this morning, he insisted upon
+seeing Chris this afternoon. Chris, strangely, or naïvely, told me all
+this himself. Grandfather put it up to him whether we should fight for
+the insurance money or not. He said that, unless Chris would give him
+his solemn promise that never again, under any conditions, would he
+consider selling the ranch, we should have to go to suit for the
+money. Grandfather’s position was, that though now we are in bonanza,
+if every few years we had to meet the same proposition we had to meet
+when Chris came home this spring, we’d need, and we should have to
+attempt to get, every red cent we could put our hands on. Chris
+promised like a shot. Judging from Chris’s account of the interview,
+Grandfather made a very impressive, almost but not quite Biblical
+ceremony of receiving the promise.
+
+So that is off our minds. Chris never would break a promise. He’d have
+smashed us to bits by selling us out; but he’d never so much as trifle
+with the pretty knickknack of his own punctiliousness. I am darn glad
+of it. Why I should be beefing about it, I don’t know.
+
+This small check I am enclosing is to be used, exclusively, for the
+funny little fleshpots you and Lucy delight in. I fear I have been
+remiss about sending messages to Greg; but I am certain that you have
+been delivering, promptly, all the pleasant things I should have said.
+I am better than that. I am certain that Greg would know that I meant
+them, whether I had sent them or not. I am a mucker with messages—but
+you know how I feel about Greg.
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+  V
+
+                                Saturday, October 27, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy: Thank you for the telegram that came this evening. I went
+to Quilterville about five and hung around over there for three hours
+waiting for it. If people’s bumps of sympathy were developed in
+proportion to their bumps of curiosity, living would be a more
+tolerable project. Not, Lord knows, that I bid for sympathy, or want
+it—that is, unless sympathy might be expressed by decent silence.
+
+No matter. It is great to know that Lucy is safe with you. That, with
+the news of Greg’s improving health, is the best bit I have had for
+many moons.
+
+Grandfather seems about the same. I know that he will come through all
+right; but Dr. Joe is worried. His staying right on here proves that
+he is, more than anything he says.
+
+Tell Lucy I’d like a lot of letters from her, and long ones, and that
+I shall not be critical. The place, with you girls gone, is like a day
+with the morning missing. How is that from your unpoetical, but most
+loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+  VI
+
+                                Monday, November 12, 1900.
+
+Dear Judy and Lucy: Aunt Gracia tells me that you two are worrying
+because I have not written to you since Grandfather’s death. I am
+sorry to have worried you. I should have written.
+
+We are all fairly well here. The weather is cold, but sunny. Chris and
+Irene are leaving for New York to-morrow.
+
+If I can get Steve Roftus to take the job of running the ranch for a
+year or two, I am planning to enter Oregon Agricultural College in
+February. We know that Steve is looking for a job, since Justin sold;
+but whether we can get him for what we can pay, I don’t know. We’ll go
+fairly high, because he is the best man in the county, and, now, more
+than ever before, I feel that I must have more adequate knowledge.
+
+Getting Steve was Grandfather’s suggestion. I had the last talk with
+him that anyone had. Two hours on the night of the thirtieth. As I
+suppose the others have told you, that was the night before he died.
+My best regards to Greg.
+
+                        Your loving brother,
+                                            Neal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+  I
+
+Lynn MacDonald’s reaching fingertips touched smooth wood. She glanced
+at the page in her hand. After all, it was the ending; fiction could
+scarcely have improved upon it. What was it that Lucy had said in one
+of her letters—something about life permitting where literature
+refused? She returned the page in her hand to its fraying creases and
+its envelope. “Poor loving brother Neal,” she murmured, and shook her
+head, and for a relaxing second drooped with a sigh.
+
+She straightened, stood, jerking impatiently at stiffness, walked
+across the room to her bookshelves, and stooped to the row of fat
+encyclopedias. “Har to Hur,” she pulled from the shelf, and added “Sai
+to Shu” to it.
+
+A knock, demand nicely moderated by deference, tapped on her door.
+
+“Shall I have your car brought around, Miss MacDonald, or shall I
+order your breakfast?”
+
+“Sai to Shu” sprawled on the floor. Miss MacDonald said: “Heavens on
+earth! What time is it?”
+
+“It is seven o’clock, Miss MacDonald. I came early this morning.”
+
+“But, but,” stuttered the crime analyst, “the charwoman hasn’t been
+in. She didn’t come in, last night. I was going home whenever she
+came. How stupid!”
+
+“I am sorry, Miss MacDonald. I met her as I was leaving last evening,
+and warned her not to disturb you.”
+
+Miss Kingsbury, surely an intentionally impudent fanfare of warm
+water, sudsy with soap and bath salts, of pinking cold showers, of
+vigorous Turkish towels, of stiff toothbrushes pungent with creamy
+paste, of tingling scalps, of the benison of eye cups, of the rewards
+of rest, sanity, and intelligent living, rescued “Sai to Shu” from the
+floor.
+
+“May I find something for you in this, Miss MacDonald?”
+
+“Put it in its place, if you will. I have finished with it.”
+
+“Har to Hur” stopped a gap in the shelves.
+
+“And now, please, do telephone to the garage for my car.”
+
+Fingers, brisk with weariness, folded letters and slipped them into
+tired old envelopes. Grapefruit, coffee, bacon and eggs. Naughty Uncle
+Phineas; Olympe with a lifted chin. A bath—first of all, a bath.
+Lovely Aunt Gracia. Handsome Gibson man, Chris. Coffee, and a
+crunching roll, and coffee. Your loving brother, Neal. Poor
+supersentimentalist, fighting mere homely sentiment—poor, loving
+brother Neal. Blue-eyed, blonde and fuzzy Stanlaws lady. Love, and
+Lucy. Pansy-faced children of Reginald Birch. A very warm bath, and
+green bath salts. Grandfather. Pan——
+
+“They are sending your car at once. May I help you with these, Miss
+MacDonald?”
+
+“Thank you. And lock them in the safe, if you will.”
+
+A list of the notes she had begun to make in case, toward the end,
+things should go astray.
+
+  1. Accident
+   Neal blamed.
+  2. Richard _offers_ to exchange rooms with Irene.
+   After accident.
+  3. Baptism.
+  4. Murder committed after missionaries and Chinaman had
+     left the ranch.
+  5. Dying words.
+   Red mask.
+  6. Locked doors. Unlocked doors.
+   Keys under lamp.
+  7. Rope.
+   Bed moved.
+  8. Olympe’s revolver, .32 Colt’s.
+  9. Revolver used for murder, .38 Colt’s.
+
+Absurd, all of it. She tore the paper into bits and tossed them into
+her wastebasket.
+
+“And now, please, Miss Kingsbury, get this hotel on the telephone—here
+is the card—and make an appointment for me with a Dr. Joseph Elm who
+is staying there. This afternoon—let me see; yes, for three o’clock.”
+
+
+  II
+
+Dr. Joseph Elm failed, wretchedly, with his attempt to put a smile
+across the trouble of his face.
+
+Lynn MacDonald insisted, “But the lady, Olympe, is dead, Dr. Elm?”
+
+He nodded at some woebegone thing a mile or two away in the distance.
+
+“Then, why won’t that do? Lucy worked it out very cleverly. A .32
+calibre Colt’s. A .38 calibre. You falsified about the size of the
+bullet to save Olympe? No one will remember. Yours was the only
+testimony concerning the size of the bullet. It does leave us with the
+rope, of course; but the rope may easily remain mysterious in the
+light of your confession. Surely caring about this thing as you care,
+you are not going to be thwarted because of one helpful lie?”
+
+Dr. Elm’s broad chest rose high, fell deep. “Look; what do I care
+about a lie, one way or the other? I can do it all right. Easy.
+Trouble is, when it comes to lies, I’ve been kind of choosey about
+them. I can lie as well as my neighbour; but I like to like my lies.
+There is something about this one that—that kind of stirs my fur. I
+don’t know. Olympe was a nice lady, and a good friend of mine. Well,
+of course, if that’s the best we can do, we’ll do it—or try to.”
+
+“I am sorry, Dr. Elm, to disappoint you. That did seem the most usable
+theory. But, since you dislike it so much, let me think. A case
+against Irene——”
+
+“No! Look. Irene’s alive—she’s got babies.”
+
+“I meant, of course, merely that she should have got rid of the gun,
+after suicide. But you won’t have that, either—not suicide, of course.
+Olympe would do so well—— But it has to be an outsider, is that it?
+The snow is going to make it difficult, frightfully difficult, to be
+convincing.”
+
+“I was wondering, Miss MacDonald. Now suppose you could come up with
+me to Q 2. We’d work you in as a close, warm friend of Lucy’s. You
+said you’d like to know her. The folks would be right glad to have you
+as a guest. And money doesn’t matter to them; anything you’d care to
+ask, they’d care to double——”
+
+“No, Dr. Elm. There’d be no purpose in that. I can think as well here
+in my office as I could think there. I’ll do my best, I promise you.
+Perhaps I may have some inspiration, later, about the outsider. After
+all, when one tries, there is almost nothing that one can’t do with
+circumstantial evidence, except to prove any theory that is founded
+upon it.”
+
+“I thought, maybe,” Dr. Elm persisted, “that the folks at the ranch
+could give you some bits of evidence that weren’t in the letters.
+Trouble is, I got another wire from Judy this morning. I ’phoned her
+last night—but she couldn’t talk. Neal isn’t getting any better.
+Jehoshaphat, what wouldn’t I give for the truth!”
+
+Lynn MacDonald’s pleasant features twisted. “The—truth! But, Dr. Elm,
+you of all people know the truth. You have read the letters.”
+
+Dr. Elm merely grasped more tightly the arms of his chair; but Lynn
+MacDonald drew back, and widened her eyes and dipped her chin to a
+question.
+
+“Look. We need a fresh start, my girl. A straight one, this time. Do
+you mean to say that you know the truth about who murdered Dick
+Quilter?”
+
+“Dr. Elm, do you mean to sit there, glaring at me, and tell me that
+you—you of all people on earth—don’t know who killed Dick Quilter?
+Don’t know, and do need me to tell you?”
+
+“God bless my soul to glory! Are you trying to say that you think I
+did it?”
+
+Her laugh winged out, but its flight was short. “I am sorry, Dr. Elm.
+Forgive me.”
+
+“Certainly. Certainly. Don’t mention it. But when you get all good and
+ready—— You see, I’m roasted nicely; I’m all ready to turn, and take
+up and eat.”
+
+“I am sorry. I——”
+
+“Look. Do you know who murdered Dick Quilter?”
+
+“I do, Dr. Elm. That is, I know it as well as anything can be known
+that has not been accurately proved. However, I think we can get the
+proof, the positive proof, later.”
+
+“Who did murder Dick Quilter?”
+
+“Dr. Elm, since you really don’t know, and since I have to tell you, I
+believe I would better begin at the very start, if you don’t mind. For
+one thing, perhaps your ignorance has taken a bit from my surety. Will
+you answer a question or two for me, first?”
+
+“Do you mean that Olympe Quilter really did murder her nephew? By Gad,
+I don’t believe it!”
+
+“See here, Dr. Elm. I told you that I thought I knew the truth. I told
+you that I had no proofs. Now your ignorance has changed certain
+aspects of the case. If you will furnish me with the proofs I need—not
+all of them, the end must come later, with a confession, but with some
+of them—and if your proofs fit my theory, I’ll tell you what I have
+decided. If your proofs should happen to ruin my theory—I’ll not tell
+you. That is positive, Dr. Elm. And, though you will hate me, you
+should be grateful to me for it.
+
+“Now then: Has Neal Quilter recently fallen in love?”
+
+“Heavens, yes, if you want to know. And if three years can be called
+recent. Fine, good, strong woman. She loves him. He loves her. Plenty
+of money, plenty of interests in common, plenty of time for babies,
+plenty of everything, and nothing but this fool notion of Neal’s is
+keeping them apart.”
+
+“Good! Now, then: what was the nature of the disease from which
+Richard Quilter was suffering?”
+
+“You know, it said in the letters, chronic stomach trouble.”
+
+“Is that all you are willing to give me, Dr. Elm?”
+
+“Look. Isn’t that enough? You’d think so, if you’d ever had it.”
+
+“You are asking for the truth from me, Dr. Elm. And yet you won’t give
+it to me. Was Richard Quilter’s trouble cancer? And did you promise
+him, because of—what was it—‘ten generations of clean-bodied men and
+women’ never to let any of his family know that this was, or would
+have been, the cause of his death?”
+
+“Adeno carcinoma of the liver. Lot of people thought it could be
+inherited in those days. We didn’t want to scare the children—that was
+it, chiefly: afraid of marrying; afraid of babies. It was better
+untold.”
+
+“Your autopsy, performed largely in the interest of science,
+completely verified your original diagnosis, Dr. Elm?”
+
+“Yes. I was cold-blooded. We didn’t have the X-rays in those days.”
+
+“No, no. I understand. The medicine you gave him contained a strong
+opiate of some sort, of course. Had he taken any of it that night, or
+could you tell, from the autopsy?”
+
+“I could tell. He had not taken a drop of it.”
+
+“Good. Now, then: about the footprints——”
+
+“I don’t know one dang thing about any footprints. I thought there
+weren’t any.”
+
+“I shouldn’t have said that. You see, the letters made such a point of
+the absence of footprints that, while I was reading, last night, I
+thought rather fancifully to myself of the disclosures as footprints.
+Step by step, almost from the first one of Lucy’s letters, the whole
+thing was so absolutely evident, the intangible footprints were so
+sure and so straight, that an unimportant thing like actual footprints
+in the snow being necessary for a solution seemed—well, perfectly
+absurd.”
+
+Dr. Elm said, “‘Sands of time.’ McGuffey, I guess. All the poetry I
+ever knew I got from McGuffey, ‘Make our lives sublime, and departing,
+leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.’”
+
+“Precisely,” said Lynn MacDonald.
+
+“Now,” said Dr. Elm, “that’s over with. Who murdered Dick Quilter?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+  I
+
+A gray kitten batted the tip end of a fern flowing green to the tiles
+of the sunroom’s floor, leaped three feet, killed an inch of fringe on
+the rug, toppled flat, waved coral set paws, and purred.
+
+Dr. Elm snapped alluring fingers and said: “Puss? Puss? Puss? Look,
+Judy, I didn’t think you’d take it like this. I don’t think this is
+the right way for you to take it, my girl.”
+
+Judith loosed tightened lips to tremble words. “Only—— I can’t believe
+it, Dr. Joe. I mean—— How could Neal possibly have forgotten?”
+
+“It is easier to say, maybe, how could Neal, being Neal, possibly have
+remembered? Of course though, Judy, we aren’t dead certain and can’t
+be, for a while, that Neal did forget. That part of it was Miss
+MacDonald’s one and only piece of guesswork. Jehoshaphat, though, I
+hope she was right about it!”
+
+“Yes. If she is right about—the other, I suppose we have to hope for
+that, too.”
+
+“She is right, Judy. There is no getting away from what she called her
+footprints. They walk right through the letters, making a path so
+plain it looks to me, now, like nobody but a fool could have missed
+it. Lucy’s second letter to you makes the first track. Maybe it would
+take a crime analyst to discover it; but, in the third letter, the
+path starts off, good and deep, and follows straight along through
+Neal’s last letter to you—not a misstep, not a detour, not a doubt.
+Soon as we can find time, we’ll go through them, if you want to, and
+trace them along. I thought I could tell you all the points—but I must
+have missed some, if you aren’t convinced.”
+
+“I am. I have to be. Except—Neal’s forgetting.”
+
+“Look, Judy. I don’t need to tell you about the findings of modern
+psychology. You understand it better than I do. But would you like to
+kind of whittle through Neal’s case with me, the way Miss MacDonald
+explained it—smart as a whip, that girl is—to kind of refresh your
+memory and help you understand about Neal?”
+
+“I wish we might, Dr. Joe. You are wrong about my understanding the
+new psychology. I don’t understand it very well. I never have.”
+
+“No; and who does? I shouldn’t have said ‘understand’—I should have
+said ‘believe in,’ maybe, or some such thing. We don’t understand
+gravitation, or love, or sin, or electricity, or—much of anything. But
+we believe in them because we’ve been forced to.
+
+“Well, to begin with, Miss MacDonald says that Neal is a
+supersentimentalist. That’s why he has always fought sentimentality to
+the last ditch, and derided it. He knew how extra-sentimental he was,
+and he was ashamed of it; hated it like he’d have hated a club-foot;
+inferiority complex right there, to use the jargon, to begin with.
+What Neal should have done was to have married real young, as Dick
+did. Then he’d have had a nice conventional outlet for his floods of
+sentiment—love of his wife and babies. That’s a lot different from
+loving his aunties and uncles and sisters. He didn’t marry. And, along
+in mid-adolescence, a doggone unfortunate thing happened.
+
+“He got the idea of marriage muddled up in his mind with all the
+distress and fear and self-humiliation that had ever come to him.
+Never had a worry in his life—I mean a real, serious one—until Chris
+came home, and the woman Chris had married started all the distress
+about selling Q 2. Too sentimental, too loyal, to blame Chris—or even
+Chris’s wife—blame it on marriage. You know, Lucy quotes him as saying
+a blameless young man and a pleasant girl married will make a curse or
+a crime. Then, Chris and Irene were hugging and kissing and loving and
+being as sentimental, here, there, and everywhere, as they darned
+pleased. Neal was jealous—though he didn’t know it, of course—so that
+made him hate marriage (their liberty), and himself, worse than ever.
+
+“Look. Who let him out of his locked room that night and directed him
+to Dick’s room, where he found Dick killed? The woman Chris had
+married. Who made a fool of him with her fake murder business? The
+woman Phineas had married. Further back: What caused his father to
+kill a man? (That went awful hard with Neal, and I knew it, at the
+time.) The man your Aunt Gracia was going to marry. Blame any of the
+folks? Same as I said before—too loyal, too sentimental. Lots easier
+to blame marriage. Marriage, you see this, Judy, mixed up with the
+dark experiences of his life; mixed up with murder, grief, despair,
+fear, self-disgust. Look—a firm resolve never to have any truck with
+marriage. Or, if you like it better, a marriage complex. About as easy
+for a loving, sentimental lad like Neal to endure, as a boil on the
+end of his nose.
+
+“It didn’t look so pretty, and he knew it. He stopped talking about
+it, soon as he got a little older, and hoped folks wouldn’t notice it.
+Before long, he stopped looking cross-eyed, so’s he could see it
+himself. He began to look—well, crooked, out of the sides of his eyes
+so’s he couldn’t see it at all. Got the habit of looking crooked.
+Forgot the boil; and it was a relief, you can bet on that. Here I am,
+though—that’s what always happens to me when I try to do fancy work
+with my words—with a boil on Neal’s nose, when I want a complex
+against marriage stored away in his mind’s dark chambers and
+forgotten. Stowed right next on the shelf to the secret he had to
+keep; the secret that smashed his life to chips for a while—the secret
+he’d like to forget, but couldn’t. So far so good, Judy?”
+
+“Yes——”
+
+“So far so bad would be more like it, I guess. Well, here on the
+ranch, giving his heart to it, giving his energy and his time to it,
+having you Quilter women to compare with the women he met, making them
+look pretty small, Neal didn’t have much of a fight with this marriage
+complex until Mrs. Ursula Thornton showed up. (Maybe I should have
+told you that Miss MacDonald went at all this a little differently
+from what I have. She began this analysis of Neal and his complexes
+about sixteen or seventeen years farther back than I have. Freud, you
+know. But that always seemed like drawing a pretty long bow, to me.)
+Anyway, Ursula wasn’t so much unlike your mother, Judy, nor so much
+unlike you girls. She came about as close to being a Quilter as she
+could come without having been born into the family: beautiful, smart,
+good—all the attributes. Neal loved her on the dot. She loved him. No
+use beating around the bush—that’s what happened.
+
+“Fine and dandy? Look; not so you could notice. Here comes the
+marriage complex. Let’s turn it into the boil again on the end of his
+nose. Neal can’t see it any longer. Eyes are set for looking crooked,
+the other way. Neal has plumb forgot he had it. What’s the trouble
+then? It’s still there—that’s the trouble. It’s been there, all these
+years, growing bigger and meaner all the time.
+
+“Marriage means to Neal, by this time, murder, disgrace, terror,
+humiliation. Will he accept it? He will not. Who would? Will he get
+around it? He will, if he can. Will he admit that he doesn’t want to
+marry the woman he loves? Lord bless us—he can’t. He doesn’t know it.
+You can’t admit something you don’t know. What’s he going to do,
+then?”
+
+Judith said: “Make a substitution. Put an unreal reason for his
+refusal to marry in the place of the real reason?”
+
+“That’s it. Next job for Neal is to find the substitute. Substitutes,
+in cases of this kind, aren’t always so doggone easy to find. Neal had
+his, right at hand. All he needed to do was to tinker it some, and it
+was in good shape for use. I mean the secret that had been burdening
+him, torturing the living soul out of him for years. He didn’t want
+that secret, Judy. He never had wanted it. Look, here’s what happened.
+
+“Up bobs Mr. Modern Devil, alias repressions, and just as sly and
+wicked as the old-fashioned red one with horns and a tail. Up he comes
+from modern hell, our subconscious minds—just as black and rotten a
+region as the old brimstone-and-fire affair—and he says, ‘Leave it to
+me.’
+
+“‘That secret,’ says Mr. Modern Devil, ‘isn’t any use to us. Turn it
+into a reason for your not marrying, and make it of some account.’
+
+“Easy enough for Neal to do. He’d had the idea in his mind, anyway,
+since 1900. Look. Here we have it. ‘A man who murdered his own father
+is not fit to marry. I murdered my own father. I am not fit to marry.’
+Slick? Good reason for avoiding marriage. And, Neal being Neal, the
+supersentimentalist, the secret revised into a form that seems,
+anyhow, a little easier to bear.
+
+“Just one thing is the matter now. It is a nasty, poisonous mess, this
+work of Neal’s personal devil. A sane mind can’t function with a mess
+of that kind in it, any more than a healthy stomach could function,
+properly, with a dish of poisonous toadstools in its middle. But,
+thank the Lord—or, maybe, Miss MacDonald—we’ve got the antidote to
+feed Neal: The truth.”
+
+“He won’t take it, Dr. Joe. He scorns, hates modern psychology.”
+
+“Sure he does. Why wouldn’t he? He’s afraid of it—scared to death of
+it.”
+
+“Yes, I know. But, if he won’t take it, what are we going to do?”
+
+“Remember how the ads used to read in pre-prohibition days? ‘A few
+drops in his coffee. Taste not detectable.’ Look, Judy. I mean we can
+tell Neal the truth without labelling it psychology, can’t we? The
+truth is all he needs. Truth, in these cases, is the catharsis—the
+cure. Miss MacDonald kind of held out for an absolute verbal
+acknowledgment. She says that will be by a long shot the best. But I
+know, darn well, that, even if we can’t get the acknowledgment from
+him in words, it will be all right if we can get him to make it to
+himself. Yes, and there’s a lot of stuff about reëducation after
+freeing the repression. But I’ll bet you that, if Neal has the truth,
+Ursula will do for the reëducation.
+
+“Look, though, Judy. We’ll have to be real delicate about feeding him
+the truth. I’d suggest sort of oozing it into him. We don’t want to
+gag him with it, and choke him to death. I told Miss MacDonald not to
+worry about that for a minute. Tact, I told her, was your middle name.
+I knew you could manage it fine.”
+
+“I?”—a mouse of a word, caught in a trap and squeaking.
+
+“How do you mean, Judy?”
+
+“Dr. Joe, dear Dr. Joe—I can’t. Won’t you?”
+
+“Oh, now, bless my soul to glory, Judy——”
+
+“Please, Dr. Joe? You’re a man, you’re——”
+
+“Hold on there, Judy! Yes? Look. Just about a minute you’d have been
+talking baby talk, or worse, if I hadn’t stopped you. I never trust a
+woman when she starts by telling me I’m a man. Flatterer. No, but,
+Judy, I’ll try this, if you want me to. Sure I will. I think you’d do
+it better than I would; but, if you don’t think so, I’ll try——
+Hezekiah and the egg, you know.”
+
+“Dr. Joe— Dr. Joe, you’re—you’re——”
+
+“Don’t say it, Judy. Don’t you do it.”
+
+“Divine.”
+
+“All right. Just for that, now, I’m going to send you a bill.”
+
+
+  II
+
+Dr. Elm gave a stiffening shake to the newspaper, and reread the
+recipe for hot-water pie crust. The clock on the mantel spun three
+cool, silver threads, and a black and red spark from the fire beneath
+them spit out on the polished floor. Dr. Elm rose, kicked the spark to
+the hearth, fumbled in his pocket for a cigar, bit the end of it, and
+returned it to his pocket.
+
+“’Lo, Neal.”
+
+“Hel-lo, Dr. Joe! This is fine. I didn’t know you’d come. Judy just
+now ’phoned down to me, and I rode right up. Great to see you here
+again. Did you have a pleasant trip to San Francisco?”
+
+“No. Not so very. I went for my health, you know.”
+
+“I didn’t know! What’s the trouble, man?”
+
+“I’m getting along, Neal. Getting pretty old. I’ve been thinking, here
+lately, that I’ll likely be shuffling along and out of here before
+many months.”
+
+“Rubbish, Dr. Joe! You’re fit as a fiddle. How come?”
+
+Dr. Elm returned to the wing chair and sank heavily into it with a
+slow, showy sigh. Neal curved an arm on the mantel and frowned at the
+fire.
+
+“Sit down, boy. You’ll burn your clothes—that fire is popping like
+corn. Besides, if you can spare me a few minutes, I’d like to have a
+little talk with you. I’ve got to ask kind of a favour of you, Neal. I
+hate it worse than hell—but I can’t see any way out of it.”
+
+“Yes, you bet. But you couldn’t ask a favour of me, Dr. Joe—not to
+save your life. Anything I could do for you would be a favour to me,
+and you know it. So cut the favour stuff, and go ahead from there.”
+
+“That’s nice of you, Neal. I certainly appreciate it a lot. But——
+Well, no matter now. Anything I’ve got to say will hold over all
+right. Kind of a shame to bother you—— I expect you’d like to hear
+about my trip? We’ll let the other ride, for the present——”
+
+“Dr. Joe! For the love of Pete, what did I say? See here, man—put it
+any way you care to put it. But, for God’s sake, if I can help you——”
+
+“That’s all right. That’s all right, boy. You didn’t say anything.
+No—just changed my old fool mind, that’s all.”
+
+“But you can’t do it, Dr. Joe. You can’t get away with it—not with me.
+What is it? Money? You’ve attended this entire family for half a
+century, and you’ve never seen the colour of Quilter money yet——”
+
+“No, no, Neal. Not money. No, it’s more serious than that. Funny, how
+precious our old, miserable, tag-end years get to us, when we feel the
+last of them approaching.”
+
+“See here, Dr. Joe. You’re the best friend I have on earth—the best
+friend any Quilter has. Now, a minute ago, you began to tell me what I
+could do—what you’d allow me to do. Then I made some cursed, damn-fool
+break and spoiled it all. I’m not going to sleep to-night until you
+and I get this thing straight.”
+
+“No, Neal, you didn’t make any break. I just looked at you, and I
+thought you didn’t look so well yourself. And this—this request of
+mine wasn’t going to be pleasant for you, boy. I just thought I’d
+better let up on it, maybe, till you got a little more fit yourself.
+Look. It will keep——”
+
+“Not on your life it won’t keep. I was never sounder than I am right
+now. Of course, I’ve been a little worried here of late—one thing and
+another, you know how it goes—but physically I’m as tough and healthy
+as a Q 2 heifer.”
+
+“That’s what I meant, Neal. I thought you looked kind of worried, or
+something. No time to be bothering you with my troubles——”
+
+“Only that I suppose the knowledge that you are in trouble, and that
+you won’t give me a chance to help you—if I could—would be a more
+serious trouble, worry, than any other I could have.”
+
+“Well, of course, if you put it that way, Neal. Look. What do you know
+about this new-fangled psychology stuff?”
+
+“Not a doggone thing. And I’d like to know less. Chris shoves it at
+me, now and then: conscious, subconscious, complexes, dreams. Dreams,
+if you please. Rot, all of it, from beginning to end!”
+
+“Yes? Well, I expect you’re right. It always had a phoney sound to me.
+But what I was wondering about it, was this: Could worry, kind of
+linked up with a guilty conscience, just sort of get the best of a man
+of my age? That’s the way I feel, boy. Bless my soul to glory, I feel
+like if I couldn’t rid myself of this eternal load of worry, get
+things straightened out for myself, and get away from under it, I feel
+like it would pound me right down into my grave. I can’t sleep any
+more. I can’t eat. I can’t get anything out of a good cigar. I thought
+maybe a trip away would fix me up a little. Got worse. Just now, Neal,
+you said I couldn’t ask a favour of you to save my life. Well, that’s
+about what I’m doing. Look. I’m asking this favour, hoping that it
+will give me a new lease on life. I wouldn’t ask you, Neal, if I knew
+anyone else on God’s green footstool to ask——”
+
+“Wouldn’t? Well, if you say it, I guess I deserve it.”
+
+“No, no. You got me wrong there. I’d sooner ask help of you than of
+any other living man, except—about this one thing. It is the most
+painful thing in your life, boy. That’s the damn trouble about
+bringing it up to you.”
+
+“You must mean, then, that it has something to do with—1900.”
+
+“That’s about the size of it, Neal. I killed Dick.”
+
+“That’s a damn lie! And you know it!”
+
+“Take it easy, boy, if you can. I’m sorry. I knew I shouldn’t unburden
+on you. We’ll drop it. Let well enough alone. Pull the bell there,
+will you? I’d like a glass of water. I get these kind of rushing,
+dizzy spells———”
+
+“Dr. Joe, listen. I——”
+
+“That’s all right, boy. I knew better than to tell you, but——”
+
+“In the name of God, where did you get this mad idea? You weren’t here
+on the ranch. You were in Portland, more than two hundred miles away.”
+
+“That’s what I said at the time. I had to say it. Neal, listen a
+minute, if you can, before you jump down my throat. It wasn’t
+cold-blooded murder. It was——I did it for Dick. I did it because he
+begged and prayed me to. I did it because he threatened, a threat he
+meant to keep and I knew it, that if I wouldn’t do it for him, he’d
+ask—well, somebody else, who would.”
+
+Neal said, “A pitcher of water, please,” to two white-trousered legs,
+and they vanished.
+
+“You see, my boy, your father’s ailment was cancer. He knew it, and I
+knew it. He took my promise not to tell. When he was shot, he had
+maybe three months of life ahead of him—maybe not so long. Three
+months of slow agony. He wasn’t afraid of them. No. He was afraid of
+losing Q 2 for his family and his children and their children. He
+wouldn’t have been afraid of that, either—not the way he was afraid—if
+he had been going to live to see you all through. But he wasn’t going
+to live; and there were old people, and his sister, and his three
+children and an invalid boy all going to be left to shift for
+themselves, and nothing to shift with. He gave into Chris about
+selling, not because of any false pride—never knew a Quilter yet who
+had an ounce of it—but because he knew he wouldn’t be alive another
+six months to keep Chris from selling. Chris was a good boy, and he’s
+been getting better ever since; but, right then, anybody with a lick
+of sense knew that it was a question of now or later with Chris. Dick
+knew; but he had to be certain sure of it. You’re right, this weather
+is——”
+
+Neal said, “All right, Gee Sing. Thanks. Skip.”
+
+“Yes, as I was saying, Dick needed to know, and he found out—if Chris
+didn’t sell in October, he’d sell in December.
+
+“Now your father, Neal, was your grandfather’s own son. He’d been
+brought up on your grandfather’s philosophy. Schiller, you know, and
+his realistic pantheism; his insistence on sacrificing the individual
+to the species. (Seems to me that I remember your grandfather was
+making a new translation of Schiller, just about that time.) And Hume,
+with his insistence that no act that was useful could possibly be
+criminal. Dick believed these principles with all his soul. His death,
+by accident, would be useful—damn useful. It would give his folks
+money to hold on to Q 2, and to provide, not only for them, but for
+all future generations of Quilters. If Chris had sold Q 2 in 1900,
+he’d have sold a lot more than the ranch. Some of the folks here said
+that, at the time. Dick hated like thunder to think of the old people
+in poverty; he hated to think of you as a farm hand; of Greg and Judy
+having to surrender in Colorado; of Lucy’s genius winding up by
+ringing a school bell at nine every morning.
+
+“These, and other things—including whether or not the Quilter family
+was worth saving—were the things he had to balance against cheating an
+insurance company that had cheated him. (He didn’t balance his death.
+He was dying, and a quick, easy death was a mercy and a blessing.)
+Greatest good for the greatest number—that weighed heavily. It was a
+shyster company, cheating right and left, wherever it could. Dick
+decided to sacrifice the company’s exchequer—you know how impersonal
+companies seem—to the good of the species, Quilter.
+
+“Of course I know that some men would rather see their families sink
+into want, would rather die a lingering, suffering death and leave
+their old folks on the grater of poverty, and their children’s futures
+unprovided for, than to work a graft on a darn rotten insurance
+company. Some men would. I don’t honestly know whether or not I’m glad
+that Dick, Thaddeus Quilter’s son, wouldn’t. But it is true, anyway.
+He wouldn’t. And he believed, ‘No act that is useful can possibly be
+criminal.’
+
+“Thinking the thing over and over, as I have, sometimes I’ve wondered
+if the old gentleman could, maybe, have anyway guessed the truth. You
+know how fine and flip he kept up through it all. Olympe’s fake play
+bowled him over, for a few minutes, but he was up again and at it
+within the hour. Right at the head of things, managing, like he always
+had. Yes, fine and flip until your Uncle Phineas came home with the
+money for the mine. Took to his bed that night, and never got up
+again. It almost seemed as if that was what knocked him out—the
+uselessness of Dick’s and my planning; the uselessness of what we’d
+done. Like the uselessness of it, maybe, had turned it into a crime.
+
+“Planning? We certainly planned. Yes, but here I’m putting myself into
+it too soon. Before he ever said a word to me about it, Dick tried to
+arrange an accidental death for himself. You remember—when the wagon
+tongue broke while he was driving a skittish team over Quilter
+Mountain? Scared the living pie out of him when he got home and found
+that, if he had succeeded, you’d been blamed and would have blamed
+yourself to your dying day. He made up his mind, then and there, that
+he’d play safe with the next attempt. It wasn’t as easy to do as you
+might think. Drowning, for instance? Suicide for sure. No, he had to
+have it fixed so that the death could be proved, positively, to have
+been accidental. Neal? Neal, my boy, are you listening to me?”
+
+“I’m listening.”
+
+“Excuse me. I kind of thought you’d dropped off to sleep, or
+something. Mind if I keep along with the story? Well, after the
+Quilter Mountain accident, Dick found, too, how your Aunt Gracia was
+going to feel about his dying in sin—or not in a state of grace, I
+guess she put it. He knew that a sudden shocking death was going to be
+pretty hard on the family for a while. If he could make it even a mite
+easier for any one of you, he was going to do it. He did. Went and got
+himself baptized as a Siloamite. You know, without my telling you,
+what that meant to your auntie, especially those last weeks before she
+died.
+
+“Well, Dick planned alone, and we planned together. By Gad, Neal, but
+we tried. We thought that we had everything fixed slick from beginning
+to end. Every single member of the family locked tight in their rooms.
+Dick got the keys that afternoon, and did the locking himself that
+night. (Damn hard luck about Irene being locked out. Jehoshaphat, but
+that was a bad one!) He left all the other doors in the house unlocked
+to make getting in and out seem easy. But he thought that the rope was
+the best bet of all to prove an outsider. Dick fixed the rope himself,
+and moved the bed, so’s it would look for certain that the criminal
+had got out of the window, down the rope and clean away.
+
+“He thought that Chris would climb out of the window in his room,
+sooner or later, and come along the roof, and get into his room and
+see the keys—Dick had put them there in plain sight—and let the others
+out of their locked rooms.
+
+“When Irene, instead of Chris, came running into his room, Dick used
+his last breath to save me—and the family. He looked toward the open
+window and said, or tried to, that a man wearing a red mask had got
+away. I’ve wondered how he happened to say red. Maybe the colour on
+his nightshirt made him think of it. Maybe he thought some poor devil
+might be found with a black mask—but a red mask never would be found.
+I don’t know.
+
+“You see, boy, how it was? Planned and planned for, everything fixed.
+And then the damn snow came and ruined it all, ruined the whole works
+from beginning to end. First time in a quarter century that Quilter
+County had had snow in October. Snow isn’t noisy. Dick in his bed, I
+in my hiding place—we had no notion of the snow. We’d planned it all
+for earlier, too; but Dick would have it that we wait until the
+missionaries and Dong Lee were out of the house. Suspicion wouldn’t
+touch a Quilter. But a religious fanatic, or a Chinaman, they’d be
+something else again.
+
+“That’s the end of it, I guess, Neal. No matter, much, about things
+from then on. This is what is killing me, boy. That all these years
+I’ve been coming a coward and a hypocrite among you folks, taking your
+friendship, and all that, and never daring to own up. Of course, I’m
+bound to stick up for myself and say that, sometimes, it still seems
+to me that I didn’t do such an awful thing. It was hard, Neal—it was
+damn, damn hard; but Dick begged and prayed me to. And, of course, as
+the movies say, I’ve paid. Yes, I’ve paid—paid through the teeth. And
+now, when I’m getting old——”
+
+“Dr. Joe, would you mind a lot, just—keeping still for a minute or
+two? Sorry. I’ve got to think. I’ve got to think.”
+
+In the hall a door banged, and an oak log in the fire broke down into
+its coals. A rill of laughter came coursing through the room, pursued
+by a little girl with red cheeks and a green frock. She caught her
+step and dipped to a courtesy. “How-do-you-do, Dr. Joe? I didn’t know
+that you were here. I’m very glad to see you. I was looking for
+Mother, Uncle Neal.”
+
+Neal said, “I haven’t seen Lucy for two hours.”
+
+“It is rather important. Baby Thad keeps saying, ‘Wee’ and it sounds
+as if he were speaking French.”
+
+Dr. Elm said, “Have you told your father?”
+
+“Father is engrossed, enraptured. It was he who sent me for Mother.
+Oh, there’s Christopher, home from Quilterville so soon. Coo-ee——
+Chris?”
+
+A sleek, yellow-haired boy parted the curtains. “What-ho, child? Why,
+how-do-you-do, Dr. Joe? Glad to see you. Did you drive over in your
+new Chaptler? Dad is going to give me a sport model Ford for my
+birthday. I’ve left off smoking. Makes me hungry all the time. If
+you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll raid the kitchen. You’re invited,
+Delidah. Coming?”
+
+“By Gad, Neal,” Dr. Elm said, when another door had trapped the
+chatter and the laughter, “I can’t even enjoy the kids, any more. It
+is killing me, and I wish it would—if it would make haste about it. I
+can’t eat. I can’t sleep——”
+
+“Wait a minute. Shall we go up to my room? Would you as soon? It’s
+more private there. I—— I’ve something to tell you, Dr. Joe. Explain.
+Shall we go up?”
+
+The hall was full of sunshine. Out from the living room, the first
+bars of Schumann’s _Abendlied_ came softly, but with certainty.
+
+Neal paused for a moment on the stairway. “That’s Judy,” he said. “She
+plays Schumann well. Ursula plays him better.”
+
+
+  III
+
+Dr. Elm pressed his elbows into the table and rubbed his smooth pink
+baldness in the palms of his hands. He said: “That’s good of you,
+Neal. It’s mighty good of you, and I appreciate it. But, of course,
+you couldn’t expect me to believe that I’d up and—forget, or whatever
+you call it, about the most tragic experience of my life. No. Men lie
+to themselves; but they lie in their own favour. They don’t make
+mistakes, as you’ve been saying—not about whether or not they killed a
+friend.”
+
+“Listen, man! I’ve listened to you. You’ve got to listen to me. Yes,
+you’ve got to do a damn sight more than listen. You’ve got to believe
+me. I know. And I’ll tell you how I know.
+
+“In a way it makes it more incredible; but, get this, Dr. Joe, I’m
+under oath. I’m telling you God’s own truth. I am swearing to you
+that, for the past two years or more, until about half an hour
+ago—somewhere along in your talk to me—I have thought exactly the same
+thing about myself. I am swearing to you, Dr. Joe—swearing,
+remember—that I’ve done what you’ve done, and what you declare it is
+impossible for men to do. I have forgotten; that is, I’ve got things
+all twisted. I thought, and I believed—as you believe about
+yourself—that I killed Father; I myself. If it is necessary, to
+convince you, I’ll drag Judy into this. I’d rather not; but I will, to
+get you straightened out. I told Judy, here about two weeks ago, that
+I had killed Father.”
+
+“Now, now, Neal. You and Judy——”
+
+“Damn it! I’m not a liar. We won’t get any place if you keep this up.
+I’ve known for years that my mind and my senses played tricks on me.
+You must have had similar experiences? Try to remember. Haven’t you
+been fooled, by yourself, before this, on less important matters?”
+
+“Yes. Yes, I have. I imagine most men have. But that’s everyday,
+come-along business.”
+
+“Maybe. Maybe not. I know this. My case was a lot worse than yours is.
+I had had all the facts, the same as you had them, and from the same
+source—I’m positive of that. You remembered most of the facts. I had
+forgotten every last one of them. I’d forgotten that Father planned
+his own death. I was in a lot worse condition than yours, because I’d
+got so addled that I thought I stepped into Father’s room that night
+and shot him—just as any other brute of a murderer might have done—to
+gain something for myself. I’d forgotten that Father had cancer. I’d
+forgotten every damn thing, but that Monday night and Irene—with blood
+on her wrapper.
+
+“Do I know how to sympathize with you? Say! Do I? I’ve been living in
+hell here, for the last few years. I’ve been getting worse all the
+time. Lord, but it’s queer—the things men’s minds will do! Night after
+night I’ve walked this floor fighting suicide. You remembered the
+extenuations. I forgot every damn thing. If this hadn’t come up
+to-day—I don’t know. I was about as near crazy as a man could get, and
+stay sane.”
+
+Dr. Elm puffed out a long-drawn breath. “Hot,” he said, “up here. Too
+hot. Bless my soul to glory if I can understand you, Neal. You thought
+you’d done it, you say, until I told you that I had. Look. Now you
+seem to be saying that you know I didn’t. No. No, you’re too deep for
+me.”
+
+“I thought I had done it—I’m a fool with words—I thought I had done it
+until you talked to me. Until I heard you explaining—much as I had had
+it explained to me twenty-eight years ago. I could hear the very words
+I had heard before; see the gestures; feel the—horror? shock? Well,
+whatever I felt, then, it was pretty bad. Word for word this
+afternoon, all of it over again: Father’s illness; his plan to save
+the ranch and the family; his accident; the change of rooms on account
+of distance; his baptism; the waiting for the missionaries to leave——
+I’d heard it all before, Dr. Joe, as you’d heard it and at about the
+same time, twenty-eight years ago. The rope to mislead us. All of us
+locked in our rooms. The mistake about Irene. And then—I guess the
+real tragedy—the snow. Good God, what the sight of that impossible
+October snow must have meant! How, in the name of suffering, could I
+have forgotten? How could I have heard it all explained—and forgotten
+it! But I did. I had. That’s that. And so have you.”
+
+“Look, Neal. I’m wondering whether there could be something in this
+new psychology, after all? If we could dig the explanations of our
+tricky minds, as you say, out of it, maybe?”
+
+“Lord, no! Nothing like that. It is altogether different—sexy stuff,
+dreams, gosh knows what all; offensive and silly. No, this is plain
+common sense. All this amounts to, I guess, is a lapse of memory. The
+strangest part of it is that both of us, you and I, should have had
+the same lapse—brain storm used to be the word. But we have had
+it—that’s evident. And, again, that’s that. After all, it is another
+proof of how even the best friends can be strangers. Here we’ve been,
+living in hells of our own devising, when any time in the past years,
+if we’d got together and talked, we’d probably have set each other
+free—got the truth, as we have to-day.
+
+“You mean—— You think you have the truth, Neal?”
+
+“Think? I know I have. Gosh, I can’t get over it. Queerest experience
+I have ever heard of a man having. And then, on top of that,
+discovering that my best friend has had exactly the same experience.”
+
+“Do you mean, when you say you have the truth, that you know who
+killed Dick? You say you know I didn’t do it. All right. If I didn’t
+do it, who did?”
+
+“Look at it this way. Father made his plan. He needed help. He had to
+have sure, competent help. He needed a cool head and a steady hand. He
+needed a pile of courage—before and after. He needed self-command and
+discretion. He needed someone who was willing to sacrifice his peace
+of mind for all his remaining years, and to sacrifice a problematical
+eternity, for the sake of the Quilter family He needed all the
+virtues, and one small saving grace of sin. Who, then, would he have
+told of his cancer, and have turned to for his help?”
+
+“Your Aunt Gracia?”
+
+“No. I hoped you’d see it. You haven’t? That puts it up to me. He’d
+want me to tell you. He wasn’t afraid to load his gun and carry it
+next door into Father’s room that night and—back again to his own
+room. He wasn’t afraid, at the end, to tell me. I mean, Dr.
+Joe—Grandfather.”
+
+
+  The End
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
+
+This transcription follows the text of 1929 edition published by
+Doubleday, Doran & Co. However, the following are believed to be
+unambiguous errors in the text, and have been corrected:
+
+ * “Four hundred” was changed to “Five hundred” to match the context
+   (Chapter I).
+ * “Galvestion” was changed to “Galveston” (Chapter IX).
+ * “with out little” was changed to “with our little” (Chapter XVIII).
+ * “by hear-” was changed to “by hearing” (Chapter XVIII).
+ * “realties” was changed to “realities” (Chapter XIX).
+ * Four occurrences of mismatched quotation marks have been repaired.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75577 ***
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+<title>Footprints | Project Gutenberg</title>
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75577 ***</div>
+
+<figure>
+  <img id="coverpage" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Book cover">
+</figure>
+
+<div class="section" id="titlepage">
+
+<h1>Footprints</h1>
+<p class="authorprefix">by</p>
+<p class="author">Kay Cleaver Strahan</p>
+<p class="publisher">Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.</p>
+<p class="publisher">1929.</p>
+<p class="copyright">Copyright, 1928, 1929, by The Butterick Publishing Co.</p>
+
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section" id="contents">
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table class="toc">
+<tr><td><a href="#ch01">Chapter I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch02">Chapter II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch03">Chapter III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch04">Chapter IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch05">Chapter V</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch06">Chapter VI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch07">Chapter VII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch08">Chapter VIII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch09">Chapter IX</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch10">Chapter X</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch11">Chapter XI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch12">Chapter XII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch13">Chapter XIII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch14">Chapter XIV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch15">Chapter XV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch16">Chapter XVI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch17">Chapter XVII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch18">Chapter XVIII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch19">Chapter XIX</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch20">Chapter XX</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#ch21">Chapter XXI</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch01">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>The heavy glass and bronze door revolved, and
+released from its sections, out of the grizzly
+November mist and into the rosy and fragrant hotel
+lobby, malice and envy, joy and enthusiasm, vanity
+and greed. Fear, masked with dignity, wrapped in
+sealskin and topped with a charming bright red hat,
+came quickly and alone.</p>
+
+<p>Two egg-shaped matrons glanced, lengthened and
+set their glances.</p>
+
+<p>Purple-and-henna breathed, “Beautiful wrap.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll tell you about her in a minute.”
+Brown-and-gold spoke from her throat.</p>
+
+<p>Their gazes followed the sealskin down the long strip
+of Mosul to the mahogany desk behind which a glossy
+clerk suddenly discovered reverence and added it to
+his attitude.</p>
+
+<p>“She’s one of the Quilters,” Brown-and-gold informed.
+“They are among the best-known families here
+in Oregon. They have an enormous ranch over east of
+the mountains in Quilter County; half of that country
+over there seems to be named for them. They’re
+millionaires. Ken says everything they touch turns into
+money.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve never met her—exactly; that’s why I didn’t
+speak. But she was at a tea where I was, two years
+ago; it was given for the blind. Quilters are supposed to
+be very charitable; but why shouldn’t they be? As I
+told Ken, a dollar doesn’t mean any more to them than
+a thin dime does to us.” She paused to sigh.</p>
+
+<p>“Does she live here at this hotel?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. No—she lives out at the ranch. I can’t imagine
+anyone wanting to live away from things, like that.
+The ranch is beautiful, though; quite a show place.
+Too bad you’re leaving so soon—we might motor over
+to see it. Her brother, Neal Quilter, has been stopping
+here for a couple of days. I suppose she is here to see
+him. I’ve seen him twice lately in the dining room. He
+is awfully handsome—a bachelor, too. Will you look
+at the bellhop sliding to ring the elevator bell for her?
+I’m always allowed to ring it for myself. I hope she has
+to wait as long for that elevator as I usually do. The
+service here seems to be getting worse and worse; and,
+considering the prices they ask——”</p>
+
+<p>“She’s as slim as an old maid. Or is she married?”</p>
+
+<p>“She’s a widow. Judith Quilter Whitefield. Has been,
+for years and years. Funny she’s never married again,
+with her money. She’s kind of sweet looking yet, don’t
+you think? I guess she just didn’t want to marry. I
+don’t blame her; why should she? She toured Europe
+last year with her sister, Lucy Quilter Cerini, and her
+husband——”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! Is that who she is? I didn’t connect the names
+at all. I reviewed one of Lucy Quilter Cerini’s books
+for our ladies’ literary society, back home, last year.
+I remember I found then that she was born in
+Oregon, but I didn’t place her at first. So she’s her
+sister?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. I’ve never read any of her works. Was the book
+you read good?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well—yes. You know she’s very highly spoken
+of——”</p>
+
+<p>The elevator door slid open, clinked shut.</p>
+
+<p>Judith looked into the panelled mirror. She was too
+pale. She ducked her head and pinched pink into her
+cheeks with trembling fingers.</p>
+
+<p>“Fifth floor, madam. To your right.”</p>
+
+<p>Five hundred and two—buckle my shoe. Five hundred
+and four—shut the door. Five hundred and——How
+slyly, furtively soft these felt-padded carpets
+were. They had turned her into a sleuth, creeping,
+sneaking up on Neal. She wished that her advent might
+have been heralded by at least the smart clicking of
+heels. One could not, of course, whistle down hotel
+corridors. Perhaps she should have asked the clerk to
+telephone. But no, last night and again this morning
+she had thought and thought of that, and had rejected
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Five hundred and sixteen. She paused, unfastened
+her fur collar and set it back from her firm white throat.
+She unclasped her handbag, took from it a gold locket
+of the sort that dangled from long bead chains in the
+eighteen nineties, and snapped it open. In one of its
+circles was the picture of an old gentleman with a white,
+squarely cut beard, a wide brow, small sensitive
+nostrils, and a humorous quirk near the eyes that miraculously
+saved the face from the frailty of saintliness. In
+the opposite circle, printed in tiny letters, was, Judith
+had long thought, a truer portrait of her grandfather.
+He had called it a rule of conduct, and had given it to
+her during the happiest period of her life: just after
+she and Gregory Whitefield had announced their
+engagement; months before the suspicion that “Greg’s
+bad cold” could be serious.</p>
+
+<p>“Judith Quilter,” the words read. “Achieve
+tranquillity.”</p>
+
+<p>Greg had never fully understood. Once, during those
+tremulous months in Colorado, when all life’s worth
+hung on the slender thread of mercury in the clinical
+thermometer, he had asked, when she had opened the
+locket: “What’s the magic of it, dear? How does it
+make things better for you?”</p>
+
+<p>“It doesn’t,” she had declared. “Not a bit. All it
+does is to make me better for things.”</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-eight years ago; and now, still: “Judith
+Quilter. Achieve tranquillity.”</p>
+
+<p>She closed the locket, tucked it into the perfumed
+silk of her bag, pulled off her glove. At any rate, her
+knock should not sound surreptitious.</p>
+
+<p>She snatched her hand from the door and put its
+knuckles to her parted lips. “Oh, dear!” she
+whispered. How could she have done that? How could she
+have produced that insultingly authoritative racket,
+which must, because of its very quarrelsomeness, be
+met with the rebuke of this smothering silence?</p>
+
+<p>“Judy! You doggone pesty little hound!” The kiss
+prickled at the sides, but it was heavily, satisfactorily,
+smokily Neal.</p>
+
+<p>“Golly, but you’re pretty, Jude. Been pinching your
+cheeks, I’ll bet a dollar——”</p>
+
+<p>“Look, dear. My new hat.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, at your age! Running around buying gaudy red
+hats and smelling of violets—no, of one violet. Stand
+off; let’s have a look at you—you friendly little Jezebel,
+you!”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Neal, don’t you like the new hat?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not much. It’s too shockingly becoming. But,
+whither, Judy? I thought I left you at home forcing
+Lucy’s babies to entertain your guest?”</p>
+
+<p>“I brought Ursula with me, silly. We felt the need
+for some shopping so we motored over yesterday evening.
+We got in late, and rose rather late this morning.
+But there’s been time for the hat, and some toys, and
+luncheon. Then I happened to think you might have
+tea with us, later; so I’ve run up to ask you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your naïveté is faultless, darling.”</p>
+
+<p>“Neal! If you have to be a killjoy, you might try to
+be a humane one.”</p>
+
+<p>Achieve tranquillity. Do not notice the shadow,
+dimming the splendid blondness, the averted eyes, the
+contracted shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>“Judith, how did you know that I was here?”</p>
+
+<p>“But, dear, where should you be? You have never
+stayed at another hotel in Portland, have you? I felt a
+traitor myself. But I did wish to impress Ursula with
+the glories of the Trensonian. I think, though, Neal,
+that before you left you might have stuck a note on
+your pincushion, or——”</p>
+
+<p>“Drop it, Jude. Is Ursula going back to Q 2 with
+you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Did she bore you? Was it she who drove you away,
+silly?”</p>
+
+<p>“Heavy tact. You know and I know; so, what’s the
+use? I’m mad about her. Repellent, isn’t it? A man of
+my age. I’m forty-six damn years old.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, so you say. But Ursula isn’t a young girl. She
+has been a widow for eight years. She loves our West,
+and our Q 2, and——”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re as sentimental as a hammock.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t care. She does. And she loves you, too, and
+has for the past three years. You’d have known it if
+you hadn’t been blind. Neal—— What is it?”</p>
+
+<p>Merely a dream: a preposterous dream, about an
+absurd play in which a man, who looked like Neal,
+went towering, shaking blond fists at his own shoulders;
+went muttering, giving an amusingly over-acted
+performance of rage. Neal, who was always gentle and
+funny and kind, would laugh at such exaggerations and
+say, “the cross-patch,” or something of the sort.
+Though, if Neal were ill, he might—— Lucy said that
+Neal was ill, very ill. Lucy was a genius. She should be
+here. Judith was a simple, stupid old woman. Judith
+Quilter. Achieve tranquillity.</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry, Neal, if I was inept. Something seems to be
+quite the trouble. Perhaps, if you’d care to tell me, I
+might understand.”</p>
+
+<p>“Understand?” he accepted the word and seemed
+for a moment to caress it. “Understand!” he snarled
+it to pieces and flung it back, a shattered brutality.
+“Try understanding this, then. And, when you’ve
+finished with it, give it to the graceful Ursula, and see
+whether she can understand——”</p>
+
+<p>“Neal, dear! Don’t!”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t! I thought not. You’ve guessed it, of course.
+You and Lucy guessed it years ago, together. And now
+you tell me—don’t. Don’t tell the truth. Keep my
+secret, since I’ve kept it only a lifetime. God, what
+I’ve lived through! Sorry. Almost began on that foxy
+Spartan stuff. No matter. I’ve kept my mouth shut.
+I promised. Or—did I? Sometimes I think my life has
+been pinned shut with a promise. Sometimes I think it
+has been fear, pride—— Take your choice. I’ve kept
+my secret. And I would have kept it if you’d let me
+alone. It’s your fault. You brought Ursula. Bent on
+your matchmaking mummery. I came away, didn’t I?
+Here you are, with Ursula in the offing. Tracking me
+down, sneaking—— Sorry. You’re sweet, Judy. But I
+tell you, you’ve forced a confidence. You’ve forced me,
+and I’m glad of it, into the luxury of a confession. Take
+it!</p>
+
+<p>“I killed Father. I did, I tell you. I knew about the
+insurance. It seemed the only way out. I fooled them
+all. I cut the red mask from Olympe’s satin frock.
+I—— Judy, don’t look like that. Put your new hat on. Stop
+rumpling your hair. Lovely gray hair you have, Judy. See,
+dear, it needn’t matter a lot now—about the murder. We’ll
+never tell it—you and I? It needn’t matter at all—except
+for Ursula. I can’t marry her. I can’t ever marry,
+Jude. That needn’t matter. I’ve never cared a lot about
+marrying. Loathed women, mostly. All but you girls,
+and—Ursula.</p>
+
+<p>“Think we’d better tell Ursula? Think that’s the
+immediate decency required? She’ll run away back to her
+Italy, then, and thank her stars she’s well out of this.
+She wouldn’t tell on me, do you think? I’d hate being
+hanged, you know. All the aspects—personal and
+public, is that the way it goes?—of hanging I’d
+hate——”</p>
+
+<p>“Neal——”</p>
+
+<p>“Wait, Judy. I want the straight of this. The
+low-down on it. Am I mad? Wasn’t that why Lucy had the
+psychiatrist visiting at Q 2? No, not what you are
+thinking. I committed the murder. I’m guilty—guilty
+as a dog. But am I mad? I might well be, having done
+in a member of the family. Do you remember, wasn’t
+Aunt Gracia a bit mad? All that bunk of her religion—that
+Siloamite stuff? We none of us ever admitted it,
+of course. And Father—— I wonder whether normal,
+sane people ever do kill? What I’m getting at is, there
+may be a strain of insanity in the family. Oh, for the
+Lord’s sake, Judy, won’t you stop pushing the waves
+all out of your hair?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, dear, of course. I was trying to think about this
+madness. I’m sure that you are mistaken. Aunt Gracia
+was a mystic. But you must remember how sane and
+wise she was. There may have been something a bit
+bleak about her wisdom, but it was deliberate. Father
+killed the man exactly as he might have killed a
+rattlesnake coiled to strike at Mother. But you, Neal,
+forgive me, don’t seem entirely sane to me to-day.”</p>
+
+<p>“Convenient insanity?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no, Neal. Why be cruel? You suggested it; but
+I did say it stupidly. I should have said that you are
+quite sane, but that your memory isn’t. The whole
+trouble is merely a question of memory. If you will
+remember, it is absolutely impossible that you could
+have killed Father. I don’t mean morally impossible—that,
+too, of course—but physically impossible.
+Remember. You were locked in your room at the time.
+Within two minutes after the shot was heard, Lucy came
+running from her room into yours, through the connecting
+door, and found you trying to batter down your
+door, that led into the hall, with a chair.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lucy was only a kid at the time. She was much too
+frightened to know what she saw.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not at all, Neal. Lucy was twelve, and unusually
+precocious.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, and I was eighteen, and—unusually precocious.
+I tell you, I did it. But I’m not going to tell even you
+how I managed it. If the thing should be raked up, and
+come to a trial, you wouldn’t wish to know. And, in
+the event of a trial, I’d like my little alibi.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dear me, Neal! Really, you are talking now like
+a book; a third-rate detective thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“Third rate, nothing of the sort. They are sweeter
+than the sex stuff, and a pile more interesting. I’ve been
+going in for them lately; and pausing to thank my lucky
+stars that we didn’t have a French or a Thorndike at
+Q 2 Ranch in 1900. It wouldn’t have taken one of those
+birds long to see through seven doors being locked with
+ten keys, or the rope from our own attic being swung
+out of Father’s window, or Olympe’s being killed the
+same way Father was——”</p>
+
+<p>“See, Neal, how false your memory is? Olympe was
+not killed that night. She lived for years after that.
+Since your memory has begun to play tricks of this sort,
+why won’t you trust our memories—my memory? I
+know, and all the others know, that there is no
+possibility of your having had anything to do with Father’s
+murder.”</p>
+
+<p>“You weren’t there, Judy; so, naturally, you’d
+remember all about it. Yes, you bet. But that’s what
+I want you to know, just the same. You, and the
+others. It hasn’t mattered much, until Ursula——”</p>
+
+<p>“Marry Ursula, and it won’t matter then.”</p>
+
+<p>“Chris’s duplex psychology?”</p>
+
+<p>“I suppose so. I’m not clever with it. Come home
+with us this afternoon. Tell Chris what you’ve told me.
+He’ll straighten it out for you.”</p>
+
+<p>“For me—or for Irene?”</p>
+
+<p>“Shame on you, Neal.”</p>
+
+<p>“Surely. Sorry. But it has always bothered Chris a
+lot, you know, having that dapper honour of his sort
+of uncreased, as it were, by the fact that Irene was out
+straying around loose in the hall that night when the
+rest of us were locked up. If you don’t mind, that is, a
+lot, I think I’ll ask you not to mention this to
+Chris—nor to anyone.”</p>
+
+<p>“I shouldn’t have, in any case.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ursula?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think not. Since it is unimportant and false, it
+couldn’t interest her particularly. I regard it, rather,
+as a wave you’ve done, or had done, to your memory.
+You know, exactly like those horrid permanent kinks
+that Irene had put in her hair a few years ago. It is
+artificial and false and ugly. But, like the hair kinks,
+it will grow out straight in time. Until then, the less
+attention we call to it the better, I should say.”</p>
+
+<p>“I should say so, too; for that reason, or—another.”</p>
+
+<p>“About going home, dear. We had planned to leave
+shortly after tea, have dinner at that delightful new
+place on the highway, and spend the night there. Then,
+with easy driving, we should be at the ranch in time for
+luncheon to-morrow. Would that suit you?”</p>
+
+<p>“On the square, Judy, I am sick of it here. But, if
+I go back with you, will you ship Ursula as soon as you
+can?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, Neal. If that seems fair to you, I will.”</p>
+
+<p>“Damn that red hat, Jude. It is the same colour
+that the mask was. I hate red, anyway.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll have to endure it.
+It cost too much. Will you join us for tea?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think not. Thanks, all that. Did you drive over,
+or did you bring George?”</p>
+
+<p>“We brought George. He was so avid to show off
+Irene’s conception of a proper uniform for a chauffeur
+that I hadn’t the courage to refuse him. He’s a perfect
+guy in it, Neal; but as happy as Hallelujah.”</p>
+
+<p>“Fine. I’ll ride in front with him, then. Be sure to
+fix it that way, will you, honey?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I will. Shall we come by for you at half-past
+five?”</p>
+
+<p>“Wait, Judy, listen. No, I mean really listen. You
+remember the snow the night Father was killed? Well,
+if anyone from the outside had done it, there’d have
+been bound to be footprints——”</p>
+
+<p>“Neal, dear, that was twenty-eight years ago. Need
+we go over it all, again, right now? I’ve always believed
+that, by the time any of you had regained your senses
+enough to look for footprints, the new-falling snow
+had covered them.”</p>
+
+<p>“It won’t go, Jude. The snow had stopped before we
+heard the shot. We looked within half an hour. The
+footprints Chris made, going to the barn, were there plain
+as print in the morning. That is—— Weren’t they?”</p>
+
+<p>“So you wrote to me, Neal. In all your letters you
+made a particular point of the absence of footprints in
+the snow. Do you think you would have written like
+that if you’d been trying to hide your own guilt?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know. I don’t know anything; except that,
+sometimes, I think I’ve brooded over this too long.
+I admit that I do get hazy about it now. Only——There
+is this, Judy. If I didn’t do it, who did?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Neal, I believe that is what we are going to
+have to find out.”</p>
+
+<p>“Golly, Judy, you’re the prettiest thing I ever saw
+when you poke up pert like that.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’d be especially fit to look at yourself, dear, if
+you would shave. Half-past five, then? Good-bye.”</p>
+
+<p>No, she could not stop and lean against the wall. She
+must walk steadily, oblivious of reeling worlds. She
+must keep her chin high; she must point her toes
+out—no, straight in front; she had been mistaught about
+toes. She must not snatch the hideous, vivid thing from
+her head and throw it on the elevator’s floor. She
+must———What was that thing? Achieve tranquillity.
+But how was that possible? What did tranquillity mean?</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>If the taxicab would stop bouncing her up and down
+through the streaming city she could make up her
+mind what she must say, or, more important, what
+she must not say to Dr. Joe. “We are concerned about
+Neal.” No. “Neal, of late, hasn’t seemed quite well.”
+No. Neal. Neal. Neal.</p>
+
+<p>The not too tall, very fat man, whose white hair
+crowned his pink baldness childishly like a daisy wreath,
+took her shivering hands into a grasp that was tight,
+and warm, and secure.</p>
+
+<p>She said: “Dr. Joe, I’ve found Neal. I mean—Neal
+has been here in the city for the past two days. I
+mean—Neal.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sure, I know, Judy. Here, let me help you with that
+coat. Too hot in this office for a fur coat. Pretty lining.
+That’s a pretty hat, too. Cheerful, but small—that’s
+the rule for a hat.”</p>
+
+<p>Ten twirling minutes later he said: “Look, Judy.
+What is it you want me to do? I’ll drive over to Q 2 for
+the week-end, and only too glad of an excuse. But Neal
+will be fit as a fiddle. I guess you know that his trouble
+is mental, not physical.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Dr. Joe, after all, is there a difference?”</p>
+
+<p>“Hello, there! Been taking up Watson?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is so beautifully utilitarian. Sort of in defence,
+you know, against Chris’s everlasting Freud, and Jung,
+and the rest.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now you let your cousin Christopher alone. He’s
+a good boy. He’s getting better all the time. How old is
+Chris by now?”</p>
+
+<p>“In his late fifties. He doesn’t look it.”</p>
+
+<p>“He couldn’t. He’s a Quilter. Judy, here’s what I’ve
+been thinking. You had that psychiatrist—the Vienna
+man—at your place for quite a while last year, didn’t
+you?”</p>
+
+<p>“For six weeks. He was a friend of Lucy’s, you know.
+But we weren’t positive, then, that anything was really
+wrong with Neal. So we wouldn’t allow Dr. Koreth to
+hector him. He and Chris had a splendid time together;
+but, as far as Neal was concerned, Dr. Koreth’s visit
+was useless.”</p>
+
+<p>“You can’t blame him for that, Judy. I couldn’t cut
+out a man’s tonsils if I wasn’t allowed to let him know
+that anything was the matter with him.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know. But what could we do? Neal’s prejudices
+are so strong that he never would have submitted to
+an analysis, nor to any treatments along that line.
+That is what is going to make it so frightfully difficult
+now. I—I——”</p>
+
+<p>“Now, now, now, Judy. Keep a stiff upper lip. There’s
+more than one way into the woods—and out of them.
+That’s what I’ve learned by being an old mutt of a
+general practitioner for forty-five years. We were talking
+about a certain Watson just now. Since then I’ve been
+thinking of another one—better known. Sherlock
+Holmes’s Dr. Watson.</p>
+
+<p>“Look. What I believe is that this murder business
+in 1900 has just plum got the best of Neal. He was
+eighteen. Adolescence is a tricky time. What I’m
+betting is, that if we could find out who did kill Dick,
+and prove it to Neal, he would come through with
+banners flying. That’s common sense, so I guess it is
+good psychology.”</p>
+
+<p>“But——”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I know, Judy. But you wait a minute. There’s
+a woman down in ’Frisco, and from what I’ve read
+about her I think she’s all right. I think she’s a good
+woman; a real nice one. She’s a Miss Lynn MacDonald,
+and she calls herself a crime analyst. Now suppose we
+could get her to come up to Q 2? Lot of us oldsters are
+still hanging around who could post her up. Look,
+Judy. Neal doesn’t believe in psychoanalysis, but I’ll
+bet a cooky he believes in Craig Kennedy. Last time I
+saw him, about three months ago, he was down at
+Gill’s Bookstore buying mystery by the pound like it
+was bacon.</p>
+
+<p>“Why not have her up to the ranch, Judy? Get her
+to outline a good case—you know how they do it.
+Getting evidence, and piling up proofs from here,
+there, and everywhere. Then give the result to Neal.
+He’ll be satisfied, and behave himself and get married,
+like he should have done twenty years ago, and have
+some babies.”</p>
+
+<p>“Father was killed twenty-eight years ago last
+month, Dr. Joe.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know it. But, look, how I mean—— In some ways
+that will make it easier instead of harder.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean imaginary proofs to find an imaginary
+culprit? No, Dr. Joe, that wouldn’t do. It is difficult to
+understand, but most of the time Neal is the keenest
+one of the family—the most clear-headed and sensible.
+These queernesses of his come on in flashes—and are
+gone. Entirely gone. One moment he will be—well, odd.
+And, in the next moment, he will be wholly himself
+again.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, that isn’t hard to understand, Judy. Most of
+them—lots of them are like that. We couldn’t fool Neal
+on anything he was sane about. But I think we could
+fool him on something he is——”</p>
+
+<p>“Finish it, Dr. Joe. Do you think that Neal is
+actually insane?”</p>
+
+<p>“Look, my girl. We can’t say that Neal is sensible
+on the subject of Dick’s death, can we? Jehoshaphat,
+Judy, I wish we could get him straightened out pretty
+quick now! Jehoshaphat, but I do!”</p>
+
+<p>“He’ll not get better, you think, Dr. Joe?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, look, Judy. You’re asking me. He has been
+getting steadily worse for two—almost three—years
+now. Of course, you haven’t told me what he said to
+you to-day. But I’ve made my living by guessing for
+the last forty-odd years. Man ought to be a good
+guesser by that time, if he’s ever going to be. So I guess
+I know what Neal said to-day that sent you up here
+in the condition you were in when you came. That’s
+what I’ve been getting at. I want you to bring this
+Lynn MacDonald woman up to the ranch, and have
+her prove to Neal that he didn’t murder his own
+father.”</p>
+
+<p>“He didn’t, Dr. Joe.”</p>
+
+<p>“Bless my soul to glory, Judith Quilter! What are
+you telling me that for? Telling me like that, I mean?”</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Koreth had much to say about a faculty called
+empathy. You know—putting one’s self in the place of
+another. Identifying, I think he called it. That is what
+Neal has done; has overdone. He has put himself in the
+place of some other member of the family.”</p>
+
+<p>“Talk’s cheap. You could never make me believe
+that. Boy and man, I’ve known the Quilter family for
+the last fifty years. Of course, lots of people wouldn’t
+agree with me; but, you know, I think I’m a darn good
+man. I think I’ve poked along, slow, and done a lot
+of good in the world. I think I’ve led a darn decent life.
+Most of my goals have been pretty flat, I guess. Most of
+my Rubicons—ditches, maybe. But what I’m getting at
+is this: The reason I am any good on earth is because
+your grandfather, Thaddeus Quilter, took me in hand
+when I was a lad. It should begin a biography, or be
+put in a preface, or something. ‘I owe——’ You know
+how they do it. Well, he was in the house that night.
+Do you think that he killed Dick?”</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Joe!”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s the worst blasphemy I ever uttered, Judith.
+I ask the Lord’s and your forgiveness. But, look. Your
+Aunt Gracia was there that night. Think that she——”</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Joe!”</p>
+
+<p>“What did I tell you, Judy? It isn’t right for you to
+say what you said. It’s damn wicked for you to think
+it. It’s worse than wicked; it’s unhealthy. You’ll be
+getting yourself where Neal is. What makes you think
+like that, talk like that, my girl?”</p>
+
+<p>“Because—— How well do you remember the
+details, Dr. Joe?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well enough. Well enough.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well enough to remember that the ground was
+covered with freshly fallen snow, and that no footprints
+leading away from the house were found that night,
+or later? That Aunt Gracia and Grandfather, with all
+the others, searched the house with their thoroughness,
+all during the night?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes. I remember that footprint stuff. Fooey,
+for your footprints! I’m sorry to say it, Judith, but I
+thought better of you than this. The house at Q 2 is
+bigger than six barns. Couldn’t some damn scoundrel
+have hidden there, before and after, even if those poor
+souls, sick with grief and useless from shock and fear
+and excitement, did search the house, or try to? I don’t
+know what’s got hold of you. But it would take more
+than the absence of footprints to make me, an outsider,
+doubt a member of your family, or any friend of theirs.”</p>
+
+<p>“It would take more than that to make me doubt,
+too, Dr. Joe.”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t say! Look, Judith, you’re getting me sore.
+I’m warning you. By Gad, I wouldn’t let another person
+sit there in my chair and say what you’re saying. I’d
+slap them over!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I’m sure you would, Dr. Joe. But—— No matter.
+I think that your suggestion about engaging this
+crime analyst is an excellent one. She was the woman
+who got to the bottom of that dreadful Hollywood
+affair, wasn’t she? I remember the name. Only—I’ll
+want the truth from her. Neal, mentally disabled, is
+so much keener than most mentally sound people that
+he’d reject a falsity. I know it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Like you said just now, Judy, it was all over
+twenty-eight years ago. Look, we couldn’t go to
+anybody—not to Sherlock Holmes himself—and say,
+‘There was a murder on the Q 2 Ranch back in 1900.
+Some few oldsters are living yet who were around at
+the time and could tell you something about it—what
+they can remember. The house is still there, though
+it has been remodelled and refurnished a couple of times.
+A good many people studied over the case in 1900, but
+they all had to give it up. People have been studying
+over it ever since, for that matter; but they can’t get
+any place with it at all. What we want from you, now,
+is for you to get the thing straightened out as soon
+as possible, and produce, or anyway name, the guilty
+wretch or wretches.’ ”</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Joe, Greg and I went to Colorado in March,
+1900. Lucy, with her passion for writing, wrote long
+letters to me until late September. Father was killed
+on the eighth of October. On the tenth of October, Neal
+took up the letter writing. (I couldn’t leave Greg alone,
+and, of course, I couldn’t bring him home to the
+horror there.)”</p>
+
+<p>“I should say you couldn’t. You were a good wife,
+Judy. Greg was a fine, true husband. But you should
+have married again—had babies.”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps. About the letters, Dr. Joe. I have read and
+reread them. To me they seem tremendously significant.
+Significant, maybe, by omission; but significant,
+nevertheless. This is particularly true of Lucy’s letters.
+Queer things, very queer things began to happen at
+Q 2 long before Father was killed. The family
+discord—— But I won’t go into that. There were other
+things. The accident, in which Father narrowly escaped
+with his life. The absurdity of his baptism——”</p>
+
+<p>“How old was Lucy when she was writing you all
+this truck?”</p>
+
+<p>“She was twelve years old. Yes, I know—but you
+must remember that Lucy was a genius, even then. Dr.
+Koreth said, one evening, that modern criminologists
+are coming to value the accuracy of children’s
+testimony. From Lucy I may well have what may have been
+the motivating factor, or factors. From Neal, with a
+man’s intelligence and a boy’s honesty and eagerness,
+I have the results. A day-by-day account, for several
+weeks, of all the findings, the suspicions, the theories,
+and—well, the clues.</p>
+
+<p>“Like Lucy and Chris, Neal was a born scribbler.
+He never had time to give to it, but he loved even
+the physical act of writing. He began his letters to
+me with the avowal that he was writing them in order
+that I might, with the facts placed before me, help him
+to discover Father’s murderer. He thought it was the
+truth. But the letters show that his real reason for
+writing to me was to have an outlet for the stuff that
+was torturing his mind. What I am trying to say, Dr.
+Joe, and am saying so stupidly, is that Neal gave me,
+unconsciously, more than a bare recountal of facts.
+It seems possible, at least, that a mind trained in
+criminal analysis could take these letters, and Lucy’s,
+and read the truth from them. I can’t decipher the most
+simple code. But the Rosetta stone has been
+deciphered.”</p>
+
+<p>“Didn’t the other folks write you letters during that
+time, too?”</p>
+
+<p>“None that I kept. They were all troubled at home,
+and their letters weren’t like them. I kept Lucy’s
+because—well, because they were Lucy’s, I suppose.
+At the time, it seemed more loyal to destroy the
+others. Then, after Father’s death, none of them told
+me the truth—so I destroyed them. But I have Lucy’s,
+and I have Neal’s. Three hours ago I wouldn’t have
+given them to a stranger—no, not to a friend—to read
+for anything in the world. But now——”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t believe you need to, Judy. Look. If we,
+backed up by this crime analyst, could make believe
+that something was the truth—why wouldn’t that do?
+No, you won’t have it? Well, look, I’m going to have
+to be pretty mean. I’m going to have to tell you that I
+think that will be the best we can do. I don’t believe
+anybody, trained analyst or not, could get at the fact
+of Dick’s murder at this late date; not from a packet
+of letters, twenty-eight years old, written by a couple
+of kids.”</p>
+
+<p>“You wouldn’t diagnose the simplest case without
+seeing the patient. Those letters are here in my
+safety-deposit vault at the bank. I’m going now and get them
+and bring them to you. Will you read them? And will
+you come to Q 2 over the week-end, and tell me what
+you think of them? I’d come to the city, but I don’t
+like to leave Neal——”</p>
+
+<p>“Look, Judy. I’d read the complete works of Ouida
+if you asked me to, and you know it. I’ve been dying
+to come to the ranch all fall. I’ve been kind of bashful,
+though, hanging back and waiting for an invitation.
+There, there, never mind about that. Run along, and
+be a good girl. You’ll have to hop to it to make the
+bank before three——”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, Dr. Joe. Thank you, and——”</p>
+
+<p>“You run along now, like I told you, or I’ll send you
+a bill!”</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Judith watched the fire twisting around the oak
+logs in the living-room fireplace and wondered why Dr.
+Joe had created a niece for himself since she had seen
+him in his office last Wednesday.</p>
+
+<p>Irene, faultlessly blonde, buoyantly obtuse, appeared
+in the doorway, shook an arch forefinger, chirped, “Oh,
+you two——” and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joseph Elm said: “Her legs are too fat. She ought
+to wear longer skirts. Old lady like her. But, as I was
+saying, Judy, this niece of mine has been fussing and
+fussing—you know how it is—to have me come down
+to ’Frisco to see her. Look, I think I’ll go down
+to-morrow or the next day; and, while I’m there, I might
+just as well hunt up this Miss MacDonald. Save you
+a trip down. You can post me up on what to say——”</p>
+
+<p>“You’ve read the letters, Dr. Joe. What do you think
+of them?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, now, Judy—I hardly know.”</p>
+
+<p>“But honestly, Dr. Joe?”</p>
+
+<p>“Judy, since you want it, I believe that somebody
+real smart might get something or other out of the
+letters. They give a lot of facts, and they seem to give
+them pretty straight.”</p>
+
+<p>“You think, as I think, Dr. Joe, that it must have
+been one of us?”</p>
+
+<p>“Bless my soul to glory, if I do! Look, Judy. It does
+seem like whoever did it must have been in the house
+before—and quite a while afterward. But those were
+the days of lamps and candles out here on the ranch.
+Somebody might have hidden in the house for a couple
+of days—cellar, attic. Anyway, look! What’s the sense
+of amateurs like us tinkering around and worrying over
+this thing when we can get a professional, a specialist,
+to take it in hand? I don’t examine a man’s teeth; I
+send him to his dentist. Since I’m going to be in ’Frisco
+anyway, I might as well stop in and make a dicker with
+this crime analyst. I’ve been thinking. It might be a
+good plan to fetch her right up here. She could get the
+lay of the land then. And while she was studying over
+the letters she could talk to you and Lucy, and you could
+answer any questions for her. What do you think?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’d agree, except for Neal. He has been himself
+since we came home on Thursday. But I am afraid that
+it wouldn’t do to have him know we were delving into
+the thing again. I’m sure it wouldn’t be safe. I fancy,
+though, considering her profession, that this woman
+would be willing to come as a friend of Lucy’s, or
+as—your niece.”</p>
+
+<p>“Or as a hired girl, something along that line?”</p>
+
+<p>“It would be much easier to explain a guest at Q 2
+than it would be to explain a new servant, after all
+these years of Tilda, and Lily, and George, and Gee
+Sing.”</p>
+
+<p>“Look, Judy. I’ll size her up. If she’s ornery ordinary,
+I’ll wire you, and you’ll have to sandwich her in as help
+for Tilda or something. If she’s just common ordinary,
+the niece racket would be all right. And if she should
+happen to be extraordinary, we’ll work the friend of
+Lucy’s stunt.</p>
+
+<p>“Never mind. I’ll take it you’ve said it, and thanks.
+Look, Judy, you don’t need to compliment my
+relatives, though, because I’m going to be pretty mean
+about one of yours right now. Irene’s a doggone chatterbox.
+And, like most of that kind, she isn’t smart enough
+to show, either. Seems to me it would be better not to
+let Irene in on this. I don’t mean that she’s malicious.
+But she’d spill the beans, sure as fate, some place
+where Neal would find them.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know. But I’m afraid Chris would resent it if we
+didn’t tell her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Look. There’s no law been passed that we have
+to tell Chris, either. Did you mean to go tearing the lace
+off your silly handkerchief, Judy?”</p>
+
+<p>She dropped the nervous fluff into her lap. “This is
+going to be hard to carry through, Dr. Joe.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re right. It is going to be hard. Hard as blazes.
+Are you sure you want to, my girl?”</p>
+
+<p>“I haven’t any choice.”</p>
+
+<p>“I hate to say this, Judy; but you know there is a
+chance, or half a chance that you, or even Neal, might
+be partly right about this: that some one of the
+family——”</p>
+
+<p>“I know. That’s why I think we should tell Chris the
+truth about this woman, if she comes here. You see,
+Lucy and I will know who she is.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lucy was a kid. You were in Colorado. Look, Judy.
+Chris is a good boy, and he’s getting better all the
+time. But he’s been married to Irene for twenty-odd
+years—and, bless my soul to glory, he’s been in love
+with her all the while, and is yet. Tell Chris, and you’ve
+told Irene.”</p>
+
+<p>“I suppose so.”</p>
+
+<p>“Here’s another thing. If there can be anything
+comparative about one Quilter’s feelings for another
+Quilter, I’d say that Neal and Chris were less partial
+to each other than any other members of the family.
+It would bust Chris all up to have Neal get worse. But
+he’d have that happen even before he’d haul what he
+calls the Quilter honour down from the flagstaff where
+he keeps it hoisted.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m not sure; but I believe that isn’t fair to Chris.”</p>
+
+<p>“You bet it is. Look, Judy. It is a matter of taste
+whether you’d rather have one cousin wind up in a
+nice, comfortable sanitarium somewhere, or whether
+you’d rather have it proved that your aunt, or your
+uncle (by Jolly, Judy, Phineas was a great old boy,
+wasn’t he! Letters seemed to bring him right back to
+me), or another cousin, or—yourself, or your wife,
+maybe, killed a member of the family. I’m for you,
+Judy. I’m with you to the finish. Always have been.
+I’m in love with you, you know. If I wasn’t, I’d send
+you a bill. But yet you can’t blame Chris for the stand
+he’d be bound to take, either.”</p>
+
+<p>“No.”</p>
+
+<p>“Want to change your mind, my girl? We could drop
+this thing right here, flat as a pancake.”</p>
+
+<p>“Neal is my little brother. I mean—— Well, when
+I was seven years old, Neal was three. He had fat little
+legs, and he followed me about wherever I went. I
+mean—I always did take good care of him. He knew
+I would. Forgive me, Dr. Joe. I’m naturally
+sentimental; but you and Neal seem to be the only people
+who tempt me to display it. All I was trying to say was
+that I have determined to go through with this.
+And—I wish I could think of some way to thank you. It
+seemed almost impossible for either Lucy or me to
+go to San Francisco just now.”</p>
+
+<p>“Going to ’Frisco anyhow. Funny fellow if I couldn’t
+do a little neighbourly errand for a friend.”</p>
+
+<p>“I understand about the trip, and the niece.”</p>
+
+<p>“Judy, you’re flirting with me. Shame on you—an
+old lady like you!”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m not. I’m adoring you.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re darn right. You’d better, or I’d send you a
+bill.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think this crime analyst will come up to
+Q 2, Dr. Joe?”</p>
+
+<p>“Come? She’ll jump at the chance.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch02">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>Dr. Joseph Elm said: “Look, Miss MacDonald,
+I’m not asking you to say whether or not you’ll
+take the case. All I’m asking you to do is to read these
+letters.”</p>
+
+<p>“Letters,” Lynn MacDonald explained, “that pertain
+to a murder committed twenty-eight years ago.
+Many of them, you have told me, written by a twelve-year-old
+child. Yes, I admit the fact that the child was
+Lucy Quilter does make some difference—but not
+enough. The remainder written by a boy who since has
+confessed to the murder. At the very best, I could
+form a theory or two. Any possibility of proving those
+theories has been removed by time. I am sorry, Dr.
+Elm, but——”</p>
+
+<p>“Will you read these letters, just read them, I mean,
+for five hundred dollars?”</p>
+
+<p>“My time——”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. I know about time. Everybody’s time. Will
+you read them for a thousand dollars?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am not a highway robber, Dr. Elm.”</p>
+
+<p>“No? Well, bless my soul to glory if I know what
+you are. You’re a darn good crime analyst, or so I hear.
+But if you’re not a better analyst than you are a
+woman, you’ve nothing to show. Look. As a woman,
+you’re a mess. You haven’t any kindness, or patience,
+or sympathy—not even pity. You haven’t any
+courage—afraid to take a chance. You haven’t much of
+anything but lack of time.”</p>
+
+<p>He settled back patiently in his chair. If he had
+guessed rightly about that red hair and those clear
+gray eyes, something was going to happen in half a
+minute now.</p>
+
+<p>Lynn MacDonald stood, tall, behind her desk.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps you are right,” she said. “Certainly you are
+right about my lack of time. I have no time to sit here
+and listen to insults from importunate strangers.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm added to his patience an air of solid
+permanence.</p>
+
+<p>“Funny thing,” he offered, “about women. Tell
+them the truth and ninety-nine out of a hundred will
+think you are insulting them. I kind of figured, maybe
+you’d be the hundredth. But I see now where I made
+my mistake. I should have tried to wheedle instead
+of——”</p>
+
+<p>“Bullying,” supplied Miss MacDonald.</p>
+
+<p>“All right. Look. I’ve found out one thing you’ve
+got—that’s a temper. Glad to see it. Makes you a person.
+You’re Scotch-Irish, I judge. Best debtors in the world.
+Never had a Scotch-Irish bill yet that wasn’t paid.
+Look. You won’t read those letters for love or money.
+Will you read them to pay a debt?</p>
+
+<p>“Hold on. Let me tell you. I’m a professional man,
+same as you’re a professional woman. I’ve got a consulting
+room, too. It isn’t near as stylish as this one of
+yours. One thing, I’ve had it forty-odd years, and it’s
+kind of worn down some, and rubbed off. Another
+thing, I don’t much favour elegant consulting rooms.
+Patients likely to get impressed. ’Tisn’t a good thing
+to impress your patients. Many a stomachache has
+turned into appendicitis just from the patient being
+ashamed to own up to an ordinary stomach ache in the
+midst of walnut furniture and Persian rugs. Look.
+Here’s what I’m getting to.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve been sitting up there, afternoons, for the past
+forty years. I’ve had time and patience, all that while,
+to listen to women—two thirds of them nervous, hysterical
+things, poor souls—telling me about their backaches,
+and their numb spells, and their throbbing heads.
+Until the last ten years or so about all I could do was
+to listen, and then pat them on the shoulders, and tell
+them they were fine, brave girls, and give them some
+healthy advice, and send them home. About all I can
+do yet, for that matter. Say psychiatrist to most women
+and they’ll up and act like you did just now when I was
+trying to tell you something. No. I sit and cluck, like
+an old hen eating, and listen. I suppose the time I’ve
+wasted listening to and pitying your sister-women
+would aggregate about twenty years. Money doesn’t
+pay for it—if I got paid with money, which I generally
+don’t, because I can’t cure them. Thanks might pay,
+but I’ve never got thanked—much. (‘Old Dr. Elm
+simply could not find what my trouble was. So I went
+to young Dr. Sawbones, and he cut it right out. I
+wouldn’t have lived three months without the operation.’)
+But I’ve kept along. I’ll go back, when I leave
+here, and sit up there and listen, and cluck, till I die.
+But I’ve always kind of thought, maybe, sometime I’d
+get paid back. I’ve never asked a favour of a woman
+in my life, Miss MacDonald. Never even asked a girl
+to marry me. Well, I’m asking a favour now. You can
+read these letters in less than the time you could read
+a novel. How about it? A couple of evenings, as pay for
+twenty years? And if you tell me there’s no reason why
+you should pay for all the time I’ve given to your
+sister-women, I’ll tell you that, come to it, there generally
+isn’t a reason for most of the fine, grand things folks
+have done. Florence Nightingale, Father Damien,
+or——”</p>
+
+<p>Lynn MacDonald, sitting behind her desk, resting
+her chin on her bridging fingers, smiled. “Or,” she
+questioned, “Dr. Joseph Elm?”</p>
+
+<p>“I get you. It’s below the belt, all the same.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, no, you didn’t ‘get’ me. I meant, any real
+reason for him to come here and offer me what he has
+just offered me. Oh, yes. I know what it is. In spite of
+your opinion of me, I have some of it myself—in payment
+for a service, not for himself, but for friends of
+his?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, of course, if it comes to that, the Quilters have
+always seemed a lot more like relations than friends.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see. Now, then, Dr. Elm, since I am to read the
+letters, perhaps if you could give me just the outlines
+of the case? None of the details, but facts enough to
+allow me to study the letters with some understanding
+from the beginning?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, you bet. That’s what I thought, too. If we
+could kind of whittle through the thing together, before
+you began on the letters, it might save you a lot of
+time.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss MacDonald’s pink palms met meekly in her
+lap. Her face was quiet, but the comprehension in her
+gray eyes was visible.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>“Here,” said Dr. Elm, “we are.” He produced a
+derelict notebook from his pocket, and flicked through
+it with a dampened forefinger. “Yes. I’ve made out a
+list of characters—like in a play——”</p>
+
+<p>“First, if you will,” suggested Miss MacDonald,
+“I’d rather hear, again, the outlines of the case. Where
+the murder was done, when, and how. Later, perhaps,
+the people who were on the premises at the time would
+be helpful. I have understood you to say that Richard
+Quilter was shot when he was in bed in his room at
+night. That the absence of a weapon precluded all
+possibilities of suicide. That a rope was found hanging from
+his window, out across a porch roof beneath the window,
+and to the ground. That the freshly fallen snow on the
+roof and the rope indicated that the rope had not been
+used as a means for escape. That careful searching of
+the grounds that night, particularly in front of each
+window and door, seemed to prove that no one had left
+the house after the shot was heard.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s right, so far; exactly right. Now let me see.
+Yes, here it is. The time was Monday around midnight,
+on the eighth of October, in the year 1900. The place
+was the Quilters’ big cattle ranch, Q 2 Ranch, in Quilter
+County, eastern Oregon.”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps,” suggested Miss MacDonald, with a last
+clutch at her dinner engagement, “if you have it all
+written in the notebook, you might leave it, with the
+letters?”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm squeezed the book shut and sunk it into his
+pocket. “You couldn’t,” he explained, “make heads or
+tails of that. Let me see. Where was I?</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes. On Monday night, October the eighth, the
+Quilter family went to bed early, as usual. Irene Quilter,
+the young bride of Christopher Quilter (Chris was
+Richard’s—Dick’s—cousin) couldn’t sleep, so she got
+up about ten o’clock, put on her slippers and her
+wrapper, took a candle and went downstairs to the sitting
+room. She lighted the hanging lamp down there, and
+poked up the fire, and read until a little after eleven
+o’clock. Then she went back upstairs. When she tried
+to go into her room and Chris’s, she found that the door
+was locked.</p>
+
+<p>“Now Irene, like most people who haven’t much pride,
+was awfully precious with what she did have. She was
+too proud to knock. Also, it made her mad all over to
+think Chris had locked her out. She turned around
+and sneaked straight downstairs again, and fixed herself
+a bed, with Indian blankets, on the sofa in the sitting
+room.</p>
+
+<p>“I judge that the more she thought about it the madder
+she got. You see, she and Chris had had a little tiff
+before he went to sleep. She decided that Chris would
+be ashamed of himself pretty soon—as he would have
+been, sure enough, if he’d played such a mean trick on
+his wife—and come downstairs to find her and to try to
+make it up. So what does she do but bolt the door to
+the back stairway—it came down into the sitting
+room—and go into the front hall and bolt the door to the
+front stairway. (It comes out in the letters how the
+Quilters were never much for locking doors. But they
+had to have bolts on these stairway doors so that they
+wouldn’t blow open and bang in the winter, when they
+tried to keep the upstairs shut off.) Locking Chris
+out—showing him two could play at that lock-out game,
+as she put it—made Irene feel enough better so that she
+cozied right up in her sofa bed to cry, but, by mistake,
+she dropped off to sleep. The next thing she knew she
+heard a revolver shot upstairs. It sounded, everybody
+said, like a cannon in the quiet of the place.</p>
+
+<p>“She jumped up, lighted her candle, got into her
+wrapper and slippers, and ran upstairs. When she
+reached the upper hall, she must have thought
+everybody had gone crazy, for they were all pounding on
+their doors, on the inside, and shaking them, and
+shouting. They were, like I told you a while ago, all
+locked in their rooms. She ran down the hall toward
+Chris’s and her room. When she came to Dick’s room
+she saw that the door was open and a lamp was lighted
+in there, so she ran in. She found Dick in bed, shot
+though the left chest.</p>
+
+<p>“She ran to him. The window was wide open. That
+wasn’t the custom in those days—three inches down
+from the top—and she said he turned his eyes toward
+the open window and muttered something that sounded
+like ‘Got away.’ At first Irene was sure he had said ‘Got
+away.’ Later, when folks quizzed her, she admitted
+that he might have said, ‘Go away.’ But his next words,
+she declared up and down, were, ‘Red mask.’</p>
+
+<p>“She kind of lifted him up—worst thing in the world
+to do, of course, but Irene was an awfully stupid
+woman—and then he said the names of his three
+children: ‘Neal, Judith, Lucy.’ It was then, Irene said,
+when she was stooping over him, that she got blood on
+the front of her wrapper and on her sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>“She thought he wanted the children brought to him;
+but she didn’t like to leave him, and she didn’t know
+what to do. She had it firmly fixed in her mind, in spite
+of what he had tried to say when he glanced toward
+the window, that he had shot himself; so she never
+thought of asking him even one question. She wouldn’t.
+Well, anyway, she finally started to go for Neal and
+Lucy—Judith wasn’t at home—and he spoke out again
+and said, ‘Wait, Father.’ He meant his own father,
+Thaddeus Quilter.</p>
+
+<p>“Irene went back to Dick and he said, clearer this
+time, putting all his strength into it, ‘Bring Father. I
+must tell him.’ He repeated, ‘Must tell Father,’ and
+that was the end.</p>
+
+<p>“Sometime, during all of this, it had dawned on her
+what the trouble in the hall was. I mean, that the family
+were all locked in their rooms. Right there on Dick’s
+bedside table, under his lamp, she saw a scatter of keys.
+She put them in her wrapper pocket and ran out and
+unlocked the doors. All the locks upstairs were the
+same; otherwise Irene never would have got the keys
+sorted out and the doors unlocked, I guess. Lucy’s door
+was opposite Dick’s, so Irene unlocked it first. Neal was
+in Lucy’s room. They ran across the hall—Irene had
+said, ‘Your father,’ to them—but it was too late. Dick
+was dead when Lucy reached him. That’s the story,
+as briefly as I can tell it.”</p>
+
+<p>“He lived and was conscious for some few minutes
+after he was shot. How about the position of the bed?
+Would there have been any possibility that he could
+have thrown the revolver from him, through the open
+window?”</p>
+
+<p>“Look. The bed was ten or twelve feet from the
+window. The gun would have had to land on the porch
+roof, just beneath the window. The snow on the roof
+was unbroken. There was nothing on it, or in it, except
+the rope. The only other gun in the room was on the
+top shelf of a closet, the length of the room, at least
+twenty feet, from the bed. It was found fully loaded.
+Now about the rope——”</p>
+
+<p>“Forgive me, Dr. Elm. You got your details from the
+letters, didn’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. Of course I’d heard a lot of talk at the time. I
+got to Q 2 as fast as I could after they sent me word. I
+got there early Wednesday morning. But I’d forgotten
+some, and most of the details I never had any too
+straight, anyway. I was too busy looking after the
+family to take the interest I should have, maybe.
+Anyhow, what I really thought, in spite of heck and high
+water, was that some dirty cur had got into the house
+and killed the boy and got out again—some way or
+other. It was what I wanted to believe, so I’ve kept at
+believing it until—here recently.”</p>
+
+<p>“These letters, nothing else, have forced you to
+change your mind?”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s about the size of it, I guess.”</p>
+
+<p>“The letters, that is, which recount all the findings of
+the murder, and which were written by the person who
+has since confessed to it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. Neal wrote them, thank the Lord. If he hadn’t
+written these letters when he was eighteen, it might be
+a lot harder for us now when he is forty-six.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see. Now, then, if you will, tell me about the people
+who were in the house at the time. Then, when I begin
+to read the letters, I can recognize the members of the
+family, and the others, in their proper relationships.”</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm said: “Miss MacDonald, I’ve never won
+any fame for driving a hard bargain, and I don’t care
+about starting to this late in life. You’ve agreed to read
+the letters; nothing else. If you say the word, I’ll begin
+right here with descriptions of the family. But, look;
+you mentioned relationships. There’s another relationship
+that is mighty important. I mean the relationship
+of the Quilter family, for the past two hundred and some
+years, to their environment. You can’t snatch a parcel
+of folks away from their backgrounds and then account
+for the way the folks act. People live in a pattern.
+Whether the pattern is entirely of their own formation,
+or whether it isn’t, hasn’t much of anything to do with
+it. The pattern is there—just as sure as it is here in this
+pretty rug of yours. And, to see folks honestly, you have
+to see them with relation to their pattern. This is so
+true that, if you haven’t their right pattern, you’ll
+give them another. That’s why I quarrel with the
+Behaviourists.</p>
+
+<p>“Now as soon as you begin to read Lucy’s letters
+you’ll begin to wonder. They don’t sound like the letters
+of a little back-country ranch girl. And Neal’s don’t
+sound like the letters of a country bumpkin, nor yet of a
+buckaroo in eastern Oregon in 1900. From start to
+finish of these letters, you’ll be bothered finding the
+original Quilter pattern. I can give it to you in five
+minutes, if you’ll let me. Will you?”</p>
+
+<p>“But,” began Miss MacDonald, and amended a
+quick, “of course.” She refused herself a glance at her
+wrist watch and repeated, by way of improvement,
+“But of course.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, then, in 1624 James the First made a big land
+grant in Virginia to Sir Christopher Quilter—tenth
+great grandfather, the children call him. You know your
+American history well enough to know that the fact
+that Sir Christopher and his wife Delidah stayed right
+there and succeeded in laying the foundations for a
+great family estate means something. I could spend all
+afternoon telling you Quilter history, but I won’t.
+Right from then on it is a history of decent, striving,
+successful men and women, with heroes scattered thick
+as fleas on a dog’s back. One of the Quilters was a warm
+personal friend of Washington’s—so on.</p>
+
+<p>“In 1848 the original grant, or most of it, was still
+owned by a Christopher Quilter. He had three sons:
+Christopher, Thaddeus, and Phineas. When Christopher
+and Thaddeus had come of age, the old man had given
+them free leases on plantations of their own—slaves and
+all. These two lads had been educated at Oxford. That
+gave them a chance, maybe, to get a perspective on the
+question of slavery.</p>
+
+<p>“Christopher, the eldest son, was thirty years old in
+1848. Thaddeus, the second son, was twenty-eight
+years old. Phineas, the youngest, was fifteen. He was in
+England. Well, the two older boys put their heads
+together and decided to leave the South. They hated
+slavery, like most decent men did. Also, they hated
+the sectional differences; and being as smart as some
+and smarter than most, both of them saw pretty well
+what was going to happen in the nation, sooner or
+later.</p>
+
+<p>“They talked it over with their father, of course, and
+he agreed with them, right down to the ground. He was
+less of an abolitionist, maybe, than his sons were. But
+he thought that the South would secede and get away
+with it—and he hated the idea worse than poison.
+He’d have come with the boys to the Oregon territory, I
+think, but for the question of the slaves on the
+plantation.</p>
+
+<p>“Maybe you’ve heard about fine, grand abolitionists
+in the South who freed their slaves and went North?
+Yes. Look, maybe you’ve heard, too, about people who
+moved and left their cats, free as air, to starve. Decent
+Southerners, in those days, didn’t free their slaves and
+walk off. No more than a decent father, nowadays, frees
+his children and walks off.</p>
+
+<p>“No, siree. Great-grandfather Quilter sold the two
+plantations that his sons had been managing, and gave
+them the money he got for them. Christopher and
+Thaddeus took the money, and their wives, and came
+out to Oregon in 1848. Great-grandfather stayed in
+Virginia, and took care of the slaves until he died, during
+the last year of the Civil War.</p>
+
+<p>“Sure, Christopher and Thaddeus came as wealthy
+men. But I don’t need to tell you that they gave up
+lives of luxury and ease for the hardships of pioneering.
+They had two reasons. I don’t know which loomed
+larger to them. One was to get clear shed of the wickedness
+of slavery. The second was to found another family
+estate in a safe land. Phineas and Thaddeus both
+fought on the side of the North during the war. When
+the war was over, they came home to the Q 2 Ranch.
+And there they’ve lived and raised their families; and
+there their children and their children’s children are
+living up to now, 1928. Pretty decent-looking pattern?
+Nearly as I can judge it’s made of material that hasn’t
+any wrong side to it, nor any seams. That is, until this
+cussed murder business ripped through it in 1900.</p>
+
+<p>“Christopher, the eldest brother, and his wife had
+both died by that time, and Thaddeus Quilter was the
+head of the family. He was eighty years old in 1900.
+Eighty years of the finest, cleanest, most holy-honest
+living that a man ever put through. He was the father
+of the murdered boy, Richard Quilter. He was the
+father of the lady called Aunt Gracia in the letters.
+And he was the grandfather of Richard’s three children:
+Neal, Judith, and Lucy. Their grandmother, Thaddeus
+Quilter’s wife, had been dead a good many years.</p>
+
+<p>“Taking them in the order of their ages, Phineas
+Quilter, the youngest of the three brothers, you know,
+comes next. He was sixty-seven years old in 1900, and
+he was a great old boy. He’d spent a good part of his
+time hunting for gold mines in Oregon and Nevada;
+he never fared very far, but he fared often. It was his
+diversion. He was a happy-go-lucky, but good—good
+as his gold all the way through. He was a cut-up, strong
+for practical jokes—all like that. A little gay and fizzy
+in his youth, maybe; but he came out fine and mellow
+in his old age. His wife called him Pan when she was in
+a real good humour. He liked it. That gives a slant,
+maybe. But don’t forget that, like Thaddeus Quilter,
+he was a fine, honourable old gentleman. Phineas loved
+Dick like he would have loved his own son, if he’d had
+one.</p>
+
+<p>“Olympe, Phineas’s wife, comes next in order of age.
+She was all right, a real nice lady. Phineas met her when
+he went South, after the war, to try to settle up the
+estate. She was what they used to call a reigning
+beauty. She was studying elocution, and hoping to be a
+great actress. So Phineas met her, and married her a
+few weeks later, and brought her out to Oregon to live
+on a cattle ranch—de luxe, but a frontier ranch, just the
+same. Nowadays the marriage might have wound up in
+a divorce court, in spite of the fact that they loved each
+other a lot, right up to the end. Anyway, Olympe did
+what women in those days generally did do, she stayed
+married, and made the best of it. I can sort of imagine
+her thinking it over, those first months on the ranch,
+looking far across the sage and the bunch grass to the
+hills, and saying to herself something like this: ‘I wished
+to be a famous actress. I could have been, too, if I
+hadn’t fallen for this young Lochinvar-came-out-of-the-West
+stuff. Well, I did. Here I am, stranded on an eastern
+Oregon cattle ranch. By Jolly, I’ll be a great actress
+anyway.’ And then she went to it.</p>
+
+<p>“From that day on she used the Q 2 Ranch for her
+stage, and acted on it, with the family and their friends
+for her lifelong audience. Now here’s the catch in it.
+This acting business made her seem like more or less of a
+fool. Yet the whole family loved her and respected her.
+Folks will give love free, sometimes, but they won’t give
+respect free. Olympe had to earn that. Bless my soul to
+glory, if I know how she earned it—but she did. She was
+selfish. She didn’t know much about gratitude. She was
+vain. She slipped up on a lot of the virtues. And yet, I
+respected her, and I respect her memory. I used to puff
+all up with pride when she’d deign to be nice to me.</p>
+
+<p>“That covers the oldsters. Did you get them?
+Thaddeus Quilter, father of the murdered man; Phineas
+Quilter and his wife Olympe, uncle and aunt of the
+murdered man?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. I have them straight.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dick himself would be next of age. Do you want to
+hear about him?”</p>
+
+<p>“By all means; yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, he took after his father, Thaddeus Quilter.
+Dick was more of a plodder, not quite so brilliant nor
+quite so interesting as the old gentleman, maybe, but
+not dull; not by a long shot. Bone-good, Dick was—a
+fine, honourable, hard-working lad. He married young,
+and he loved his wife enough to make her happy. It
+busted Dick all up when she died. But he didn’t brood.
+He took what energy he might have put into grieving
+and used it toward being a darn fine father to the three
+children she’d left him. Dick worshipped his own
+father—but all the Quilters did that. I’m bound to say
+that it was Dick, more than the old gentleman, who
+pulled the Q 2 Ranch through the lean years and kept
+it from going under. Dick loved Q 2 like a mother. He
+had to mortgage, but he never sold an acre of it. Not
+even when young Christopher, Dick’s cousin, was spending
+a small fortune off it, gallivanting around back East
+and in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>“Gracia Quilter comes next—Dick’s sister, the old
+gentleman’s one daughter. She was a healthy, sweet-hearted,
+normal girl until she got kind of soured because
+of a mighty unfortunate love affair. Right after that,
+by cracky, she embarrassed the family a lot by up and
+joining a new-fangled religious sect that called
+themselves Siloamites. You never hear anything at all about
+them any more, but they were pretty strong in Oregon
+and Idaho and around there for a while. They were all
+right, a fine class of people. I never knew better folks,
+anywhere, than the general run of them. A couple of
+handsome young missionaries came along and caught
+Gracia on the rebound from this love affair. She was
+emotional, and something of a mystic—she took after
+her mamma in that. So she up and joins the church, and
+gets baptized and everything. Never did her nor anybody
+else a mite of harm that I could see. One of the
+Siloamite tenets was never to thrust their religion on
+other folks. But the Quilter family, including even the
+old gentleman, felt pretty sorry about the whole thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did her religion amount to fanaticism? Did it in any
+way seem to affect her mind?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, not a bit of it. Not a bit of it. I’m mentioning it
+because it seems to me to be the one rift in the Quilters’
+lute. The one thing that any Quilter ever did that all the
+other Quilters didn’t root for. You know, like
+Chesterton’s neighbours, sitting on the fence and shouting
+‘Hooray!’ Something about Chesterton always reminded
+me a little of Phineas. Great old boys, both of
+them—though Phineas certainly kept his figure better.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, that brings us to Christopher. He was the
+elder Christopher’s son. Makes him a nephew of Thaddeus
+Quilter’s, and a cousin of Dick’s. Chris was the
+real showy member of the family. Handsome, as ladies
+used to say, as a Greek god. He took more after his
+Uncle Phineas than he did after his father. Though
+instead of dreaming he’d find a gold mine, Chris dreamed
+he could write plays. I don’t know, yet, why he couldn’t.
+He’d had a fine education, here and abroad, and he was
+real smart. But he couldn’t; and he wasted a pile of the
+family’s money trying to. Chris was selfish, and too
+easily influenced. Still, you’d go far before you’d find a
+better lad than Chris was. He is a fine man, too; and, as I
+always say, he’s getting better all the time.</p>
+
+<p>“Just like his Uncle Phineas, though, he went and
+married an Eastern girl who didn’t have a mite of
+talent for an isolated ranch. Her name, Irene, didn’t
+live up to its Greek meaning. I can’t say that I ever
+liked Irene much; still, there was always something
+amiable about my dislike for her. She was one of these
+irritatingly helpmate-ish sort of women. Never knew a
+stupid woman to marry a real smart man and not try
+to run him.”</p>
+
+<p>“You think, then, that Irene—Mrs. Christopher
+Quilter—was a stupid woman? And, also, an egotistical
+woman?”</p>
+
+<p>“Was and is. Look. She, as they say nowadays, goes
+in for it. She’s sort of deliberately arch—if you know
+what I mean. One of the poor-little-me type. But she has
+more to show than I have—a couple of fine sons and a
+sweet little daughter, so I don’t know why I should be
+running her down. She’s been a true wife to Chris.</p>
+
+<p>“Judy, Mrs. Judith Quilter Whitefield, Dick’s eldest
+daughter, comes next. She was in Colorado at the time,
+taking care of her invalid husband. Married only a
+year——”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps, Dr. Elm, to avoid confusion, if we could
+keep to the people who were at the ranch on the night of
+the murder?”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s right. But here I went and told you all
+about Phineas, and he wasn’t at the ranch the night
+Dick was murdered, either.”</p>
+
+<p>“It doesn’t matter. Now, the others?”</p>
+
+<p>“Neal Quilter was next of age. Dick’s son. The one
+who wrote the letters to Judy. The one on whose account
+we need to get this thing straightened out. He took
+after his father and grandfather. Bone-good. Smart as a
+whip. Never had any real schooling to amount to
+anything. His grandfather and his Aunt Gracia taught him.
+The kid was reading Latin better than I could when he
+was ten years old. When he was eighteen he passed
+the entrance examinations for Oregon Agricultural
+College and was graduated from it just two years later,
+with all the honours. He was keen about writing, always
+scribbling things at odd minutes. But he couldn’t serve
+two masters, and Q 2 was his passion. His grandfather
+was his idol; but he loved his father better than most
+boys do. Chris’s sons think a pile of Chris, but it isn’t
+like the way Neal thought of Dick.</p>
+
+<p>“Lucy Quilter, the little girl who wrote the letters,
+comes next. She was twelve years old at the time, small
+and dainty, and pretty as a peach—is yet. At twelve
+she was the bud of what she’s bloomed into since. I
+guess, from what you said, I don’t need to tell you
+what she is now.”</p>
+
+<p>“Scarcely. It must be marvellous to know her as you
+do.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what I think, when I’m away from her.
+Soon as I get with her I forget that she’s a famous lady,
+and start trying to boss her about her babies, or to
+advise her about taking care of her health better, or
+something of the kind. She’s as simple as common sense—and
+as rare. Let me see—Neal, Lucy. Yes, that finishes off
+the list.”</p>
+
+<p>“No servants? No visitors?”</p>
+
+<p>“From 1893 to 1900 were the seven lean years on the
+Q 2 Ranch. They had a Chinese house boy, Dong Lee.
+But, aside from him, Gracia and Judy—until she went
+away—with Lucy’s help were doing all the inside work.
+Dick and Neal were doing most of the outside work.
+They had to have help, of course; but they got the
+neighbouring men to come in when they needed them.
+So many of the ranches went under in ’93 and ’94 that
+help was easy enough to get that way, in those days.
+But Dong Lee wasn’t there the night Dick was killed.
+He’d been having trouble with his teeth—Dong Lee,
+that is—and he’d gone to Portland to see a dentist.</p>
+
+<p>“Now as to visitors. Gracia had had a couple of her
+church friends, missionaries, there on the place for ten
+days. There was one room built in the attic, and the
+boys had occupied it. But they’d left the day before.
+Nice, clean lads, both of them. I always thought it was a
+lucky thing for them that they were well out of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are certain that they both had left?”</p>
+
+<p>“Look. Dick was killed on Monday night, around
+midnight. Late Monday afternoon the two lads were in
+my office in Portland, a matter of two hundred miles
+distant (remember we didn’t have automobiles in those
+days), delivering a message from Dick to me. He wanted
+a prescription refilled and sent to him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Was he ill at the time?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. Dick had been having a lot of trouble with his
+stomach.”</p>
+
+<p>“Had it made him unpleasant, difficult to live with?”</p>
+
+<p>“It had not. Quieted him down a mite. I think that
+is an over-exploited theory, about pain making folks
+mean. If they’re naturally mean, it gives them an
+excuse for indulging. In my experience, I’ve found that
+real suffering is anyway as apt to make a saint as a
+sinner. But that’s beside the point, I guess.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, I think not. But about these visitors. I suppose
+you are certain that the two men who came to your
+office, with the message, were the same two men who
+had been visiting at the farm?”</p>
+
+<p>“At the ranch? Yes, dead certain. I’d known the lads
+before. I knew them afterward. Not a shadow of doubt
+about it.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see. Now, then, Dr. Elm, the situation you have
+presented to me amounts to this:</p>
+
+<p>“First, you give me stately, unassailable traditions.
+That is, traditions based on proven performances of
+integrity, stability, courage, reaching through two
+hundred years. Then you give me the Quilter family of
+1900, true to these traditions—wise, honourable, cultured
+people, with strong family loyalty and affection.
+A dearly loved member of this family is found murdered
+in his room at night. That a member of the Quilter
+family, which you have presented to me, could be
+guilty of such a crime seems to be entirely without the
+bounds of reason.</p>
+
+<p>“But there was newly fallen snow that night. No one
+could have gone away from the house without leaving
+footprints in the snow. You declare that there were no
+footprints. Someone might have hidden in the house,
+and remained there until escape was possible. One of
+your first insistences was that, because of the reliability
+of the people who searched the house, no one could have
+been hiding there. Also, the house was so carefully
+guarded that an escape, after the first hour, would have
+been impossible.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you see it? You have precluded all possibility
+that the murder was committed by a member of the
+Quilter family. You have precluded all possibility that
+the murder was committed by anyone who was not a
+member of the Quilter family. And you state that it
+happened twenty-eight years ago.</p>
+
+<p>“Wait. You are a reasonable, sensible man. Why
+didn’t you tell me, at first, that you didn’t expect, nor
+entirely desire, me to arrive at the truth? That you
+wanted a sound-seeming theory, which could be evolved
+from the letters, and which might, by fixing on some
+guilty stranger, cure your friend of his delusion? I may be
+able to do that for you. If I can do it, harmlessly, I will.
+I know, as you know, that I can’t do better than that.”</p>
+
+<p>“I hate to hear you talk that way, my girl. Quitting
+before you’ve begun. I sized you up as having more
+spunk than that. One thing I admired the most about
+you was your spunk and——”</p>
+
+<p>“Temper your admiration, Dr. Elm. You aren’t in
+your consulting room just now, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t think that’s very nice of you, Miss
+MacDonald, trying to abash an old, white-haired man like
+me.”</p>
+
+<p>“I only wish that I thought I had, or could. Your
+methods shame Machiavelli. I’m in terror of you.
+You’ve bullied me into reading your letters. You’ve
+bullied me into promising a harmless lie. If the harmless
+lie seems inadequate, you’ll doubtless bully me into a
+pernicious one, and the penitentiary.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm said, “Bless your heart,” stood, put his
+overcoat across his arm, bowed; and, though his two
+hundred and fifty pounds would seem to necessitate a
+definite solidity of carriage, Lynn MacDonald was left
+with the impression that some gentle breeze had wafted
+him delicately away.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, the rueful smile of grudging admiration
+confronting the confusion of charm and guile. She
+looked at her watch. It was too late to go home and
+dress and keep her dinner engagement; it was too early
+for anything else. An hour’s reading should take her far
+through the letters. Then home, and dinner, and the
+restful evening she had been needing for so long. First,
+the list of people, again:</p>
+
+<table class="personae">
+<tr>
+  <td>1. </td><td>Richard Quilter: </td><td>the murdered man.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>2. </td><td>Thaddeus Quilter: </td><td>Richard’s father.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>3. </td><td>Phineas Quilter: </td><td>Richard’s uncle.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>4. </td><td>Olympe Quilter: </td><td>Richard’s aunt. Phineas’s wife.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>5. </td><td>Gracia Quilter: </td><td>Richard’s sister.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>6. </td><td>Christopher Quilter: </td><td>Richard’s cousin.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>7. </td><td>Irene Quilter: </td><td>Christopher Quilter’s wife.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>8. </td><td>Neal Quilter: </td><td>Richard’s son.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>9. </td><td>Lucy Quilter: </td><td>Richard’s daughter.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm had told her that Phineas Quilter was not at
+the Q 2 Ranch on the night of the murder. She put a
+check beside his name, and reached for the smaller
+packet of letters.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch03">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">March 12, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dearest, dear Judy-pudy:</span>
+Uncle Phineas’s
+dictum, “Never begin a letter or end a love affair
+with an apology,” has been a hindrance to me in the
+starting of this letter. Perhaps if I state that Dong
+Lee has had another toothache, and that Christopher
+sent us a telegram that came two days after you and
+Greg left, and that said he had been married the week
+before and would arrive at Q 2 on Saturday, March
+ninth, with his wife, you may understand why I have
+not had time to write to you.</p>
+
+<p>All the preparations were exciting and much fun.
+Grandfather himself helped me shine the best silver on
+Friday afternoon. Dong Lee had been compelled to lie
+down with a bag of hot salt on his face. Aunt Gracia
+made new curtains for Chris’s room, and Olympe put
+her best cloisonné rose jar on the lowboy. The one
+drawback was that something so pleasant going to happen
+made us miss you and Greg more tensely. We couldn’t
+say, once, as we had said the day of the hailstorm and
+rain after you left, “Thank goodness, Judy and Greg
+aren’t here.”</p>
+
+<p>Father and Uncle Phineas met Chris and Irene at the
+train with the carriage. Neal had worked hard getting it
+mended and washed and polished; but, of course, there
+had been no time to paint it. Bread and Butter were not
+as dashing as I wished they might be. Though Neal had
+curried them carefully, they somehow did seem to betray
+the fact they were generally used for ploughing. I
+hoped that Irene might not notice it. I fear that she did.</p>
+
+<p>Irene is pretty. Her hair is yellow. Her cheeks are
+pink, and her eyes are turquoise blue. But, though it is
+hard to explain, her prettiness seems inexpensive: like
+the things we don’t buy in the shops because, though
+attractive, we feel sure they won’t be durable. I should
+add that this is not very noticeable except when she is
+close to Aunt Gracia, and that, even then, Irene’s
+clothes do much to counteract the impression.</p>
+
+<p>Her clothes are very beautiful, and she rustles in them
+as if she were walking knee-deep in autumn leaves.
+Her trains make Aunt Gracia’s and Olympe’s seem like
+something they just happened to be dragging about
+behind them. On just one hat she has eight plumes, and
+she said the shortest one was sixteen inches long.</p>
+
+<p>She was very enthusiastic over all of us, and the place,
+on Saturday evening. She has a way of expressing
+appreciation by saying “oo,” with rising and falling
+inflections. Sometimes it sounds as if she were running a
+scale. She showed all sorts of deference to Grandfather
+by constantly calling him “sir,” and acting humble. I
+am sure that Grandfather disliked it.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe came downstairs rather late, as she usually
+does when we have company. She looked beautiful in
+her old white lace ball gown and with her “Prince of
+Wales” magenta plumes in her gray hair. Irene seemed
+much astonished at Olympe; but then, you know,
+strangers often do. Olympe was at her best. She lifted
+her lovely chin (not once all evening did she forget and
+droop her chin) and told Irene how great artists had
+painted her portraits. It seems that a great artist once
+wished to paint Irene’s picture, too. It is interesting, I
+think, to have two beauties in the family at one time. It
+is a pity that Irene uses so much White Rose perfume
+that, whenever Olympe stays close to her, Olympe begins
+to sneeze with hay fever as she usually does only in
+August. But, excluding that, and a few other things, I
+think the general exchanged impressions on Saturday
+evening were all at least moderately favourable. Irene
+made me happy by saying that I looked like a Reginald
+Birch child. I was glad to be able to repay her at once,
+and honestly, by saying that she looked like a Penrhyn
+Stanlaws lady. But it was not original. She said that so
+she had often been told.</p>
+
+<p>On Sunday morning, when Father, Chris, and I were
+showing her about the ranch she said, “But, Booful!”
+(She calls Chris “Booful” in public. I thought, for some
+time, that she would spell it “Boofel,” or “Boofle,”
+and that it was a joke with perhaps interesting origins. I
+have since discovered that she means “Beautiful.”
+I should think Chris would abhor it.) “But, Booful!”
+she said, “I didn’t know that your funny farm was a
+truck farm.”</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Judy dear, I quote exactly. I was extremely glad
+that Grandfather had not come with us to be wounded.</p>
+
+<p>Darling Father, as usual, met the situation superbly.
+He explained to her that, during the hard times, it had
+seemed wise to him to put in enough garden to supply
+the family table, with perhaps a bit over, for occasional
+trading at the stores, until the worst pressure was past.
+He told her, of course, we still had cattle and horses,
+and that, now, the South African War was raising the
+cattle prices, so that the stockmen would soon come into
+their own again. He added that after this he would
+always have a family garden, however, and a large one.</p>
+
+<p>She said, “It is a large family, isn’t it?” She has a
+syrup-sweet voice; but, someway, the things she says
+with it often seem to ruin its timbre.</p>
+
+<p>When I told Aunt Gracia what Irene had said about
+the family, she asked me why I repeated it. She said,
+“We are a large family, aren’t we, honey-baby?”</p>
+
+<p>“Aunt Gracia,” I said, “we are. But we are not a
+large patch of loco weed that has got a start in the best
+bunch grass.”</p>
+
+<p>Father came in, just then, and when he found I was
+writing to you he asked me to convey this message.
+Your last letter, he said, has distressed him. You must
+spare no expense when it is a question of comfort for
+Greg. Quilters, he thought, had not yet reached the
+place where they found it necessary to practise economy
+on their invalids. He sends you and Greg his dearest
+love. He will write you, at length, in a few days.</p>
+
+<p>Just overnight, almost, economy has stopped here.
+Chris insisted on having all the stoves right out and
+the fireplaces reopened. They eat up wood. He says that
+before next winter we must have the old furnace
+repaired. Probably, before next winter he will understand
+better. He and Irene brought us all presents from the
+East. I have no enthusiasm, as yet, for describing them.
+Perhaps, when you receive yours, my difficulty will be
+clear to you. I think that Olympe is going to send you
+the ice-wool fascinator they brought to her. It is
+beautiful, but Olympe will never wear lavender. It was an
+experience and a lesson to watch Grandfather being
+grateful for <i>Richard Carvel</i> when he had so desired a
+Miss Tarbell’s new Life of Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>I must run now and help Aunt Gracia with supper.
+Dear Judy and Greg, I love you so much that when I
+stand on tiptoes I can touch it in the stars.<span
+class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">March 19, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">My dear, sweet Sister Judy:</span>
+This morning I
+found out an amazing thing. Did you know that Q 2
+Ranch belonged entirely to Christopher? Neal says that
+he had known it, but that it was so unimportant he had
+forgotten it. I had never thought about who owned it.
+If I had, I should have supposed that we all did. But
+to-day I happened to hear Irene say to Chris, “But,
+Booful, the farm belongs entirely to you.” She seemed
+to be wishing him to do something, I don’t know what,
+about the ranch.</p>
+
+<p>I went at once to Grandfather. I suppose that no one
+could question the assertion that Grandfather has one of
+the most beautiful characters that ever was in the
+world. No matter what great man I read about from Da
+Vinci to McKinley, I always decide that Grandfather is
+superior to him. Sometimes I wonder whether any of us
+are grateful enough for the opportunity of having
+Grandfather for an ancestor.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, though I interrupted him when he was deep
+in his new translation of Schiller, he treated me with
+kingly courtesy. That is not an exact description.
+Grandfather, I think, is much more of a gentleman than
+are most kings.</p>
+
+<p>“Grandfather,” I said, respecting his liking for
+directness in all things, “does Q 2 Ranch belong to Cousin
+Christopher?”</p>
+
+<p>“It does,” he replied. And then, I suppose, he read my
+feeling in my face, for he asked, quickly, “But, my
+darling, need that trouble you?”</p>
+
+<p>I told him that if it did not trouble him it would not
+trouble me; but that I should like to understand about
+it.</p>
+
+<p>He placed a chair for me. He explained that, since
+Cousin Christopher had been Uncle Christopher’s eldest
+son, naturally he would inherit the estate. He said
+that when he and Uncle Christopher, and, later, Uncle
+Phineas, had founded this second family estate they
+had agreed that divisions were unwise. So, though both
+Grandfather and Uncle Phineas had put their fortunes
+into the ranch, they had desired it to be inherited,
+though not entailed, as the estates in England are. He
+explained to me why that is the wisest way. I am sure
+you know about that; so I shan’t bother you with a
+repetition. Grandfather also said that, of course, mine
+and thine never had, and never could, mean anything
+to the Quilter family.</p>
+
+<p>We have often heard that. I suppose we have always
+believed it. At any rate, I stopped questioning
+Grandfather and went and looked up the word “bounty” in
+the dictionary. It meant what I had thought. So, when
+Aunt Gracia and I were ironing, I asked her why if
+<i>meum</i> and <i>teum</i> really meant nothing to a Quilter, it
+could be true that we had been living on Christopher’s
+bounty all these years.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed shocked, but controlledly so, and said
+what a very funny baby I was, and where had I
+managed to pick up so mad an idea.</p>
+
+<p>I told her Irene had said to Chris that, after all, the
+“farm” belonged to him, and that all these people had
+been living on his bounty for years and years.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia said that, of course, I had to do what
+seemed best to me; but that she was sorry my ideas of
+rectitude, and of being Grandfather’s granddaughter,
+seemed to allow me to eavesdrop. She finished ironing
+one of Irene’s beautiful corset covers, trimmed with
+yards of lace ruffling, before she said another word. I
+ironed plain pillow shams in silent humiliation. Oddly,
+the next thing she said was, “What did Christopher
+say?”</p>
+
+<p>“He called her a delightful little imbecile,” I said,
+“and that ended the conversation.”</p>
+
+<p>“Necessarily, one would think,” Aunt Gracia smiled.
+But I explained that they stopped conversing in order
+to begin kissing. They kiss constantly. Uncle Phineas
+says that is entirely good form for honeymoons. Perhaps
+he is joking. It seems strange. You and Greg didn’t.
+At least, not lavishly and in public.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe came into the kitchen to see whether her
+second-best taffeta petticoat had split from being
+laundered. (It had.)</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia said, “Olympe, dear, why do some
+women like to be called imbeciles?”</p>
+
+<p>“Because they are,” Olympe answered. “It is an
+acid test. However, if that young person doesn’t stop
+calling me Aunt Olympe, I shall find something to call
+her that won’t please her.”</p>
+
+<p>We have told Irene that Olympe objects to the
+“Aunt,” but Irene says she can’t remember. I think
+Olympe and Irene do not love each other, as yet. I
+believe I haven’t told you of an odd mannerism of
+Irene’s. She talks all the time—incessantly is the
+exact word. It is particularly hard for Olympe. Since all
+the rest of the family are so busy—Chris has pitched
+right in and is helping Father and Neal with the ranch
+work—it leaves only Olympe for Irene to talk to. We
+could say now, though we do not, how fortunate it is that
+Greg is not here. Olympe does not have to sit quietly in
+a chair. She can walk away. She often does.</p>
+
+<p>Your letter telling of Greg’s improvement brought
+us all bright joy. I love you so much that if it were
+planted as a clover seed it would grow as a
+meadow.<span class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">March 26, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dearest, dearest Judith:</span>
+You asked me in your letter
+that came last Monday to write to you more about
+Grandfather. Grandfather, of late, has spent more time
+than usual in his room, and has been more subdued.
+There seemed to be not much to write about him. So,
+after I had read your letter, I decided to have a talk
+with him in order to gather material for my next letter
+to you.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe—this is not changing the subject—has
+developed deafness. As you know, she has been very
+slightly deaf for some time; but, of late, she pretends to
+be totally deaf. I say pretends, because she is deaf only
+when she is with Irene. My problem was: is that wise of
+Olympe, or is it wrong?</p>
+
+<p>For several months I have felt that it would be beneficial
+for me to discuss the question of right and wrong,
+again, with Grandfather. Last year, when I wished to
+discuss it, he gave me a rule of conduct, you know,
+“Search for beauty,” and said we would better
+postpone the other for a while.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday, then, after a quick ride with Neal over
+the south range (Neal was so adorable. He let me ride
+Tuesday’s Child for the first time, and took Thursday’s
+Child for himself), to pink my cheeks as Grandfather
+likes to see them, I went and rapped on his door.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose a man would have to be as great as Grandfather
+is to be able to make other, quite unimportant,
+people feel almost great themselves when they enter his
+presence.</p>
+
+<p>I gave my problem to him. He laughed very heartily
+and then said that, according to Hume, whom he had
+been reading when I came in, Olympe was justified.
+Hume, he told me, was an Eighteenth Century historian
+and philosopher—a better philosopher than historian—who
+held that utility was the chief element of all
+virtue.</p>
+
+<p>“You see,” he explained, “according to this gentleman,
+Olympe’s act, since it is so useful, could not be
+wrong.”</p>
+
+<p>Disappointingly, with that he changed the subject
+and began to talk about loyalty. It was all interesting,
+as related by Grandfather; but, since it was mostly the
+same history of the Quilter family, and their courage
+and loyalty since the time of Cromwell, you would not
+care to have me repeat it here. Grandfather, of course,
+knew that I had heard it many times before, and
+explained that he was using it to make his point—since
+Irene was now a Quilter we owed loyalty to her.</p>
+
+<p>“Then,” I questioned, “if you didn’t laugh, you’d
+really think it was wrong of Olympe to pretend to be
+deaf?”</p>
+
+<p>Again Grandfather disappointed me by saying that I
+was a bit young to penetrate Hume.</p>
+
+<p>I picked up my notebook and started to go away.
+Grandfather asked me what I had there. I told him I
+had brought my notebook to write in it what he would
+tell me about right and wrong. He asked me what I
+had written. I had not written anything. He was
+troubled. I hurried to explain that it did not matter.
+He was still troubled. I suggested that it might be wise
+for me to ask Aunt Gracia about right and wrong. She
+has them both so neatly.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather said, “Heaven forbid.” And, again, he
+said that I was too young to be delving into moral issues.
+He said, perhaps, I would allow him to write a few simple
+rules of conduct in my notebook for me to use until
+I was older. He took my book and wrote:</p>
+
+<p>“Darling little Lucy Quilter. Be proud. Be loyal. Be
+gay. Be generous rather than just.”</p>
+
+<p>After I left Grandfather’s room I met Uncle Phineas
+and Irene in the hall. She had been talking to him. She
+went away. I said to Uncle Phineas, because Irene had
+looked so pink and blue and gold, “How lovely she is!”</p>
+
+<p>He pulled my top curl and made up a face at me.</p>
+
+<p>“I mean,” I explained, feeling that lovely had been a
+little extravagant—you know, one would call Aunt
+Gracia lovely, “how pretty, how delicate.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” Uncle Phineas said, “pretty and delicate as a
+somersault.” Uncle Phineas does not like Irene at all.</p>
+
+<p>I told him then, since I thought he should know, what
+Grandfather had been telling me about our owing Irene
+our loyalty. How family loyalty was one of our strongest
+traditions. Uncle Phineas said: “Thad goes about
+brandishing Quilter loyalty like a club.” You may imagine
+what a terrible humour Uncle Phineas must have been
+in to criticize Grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>Later that evening, when I was showing Neal my
+new rules of conduct, Uncle Phineas came up. Neal
+showed them to him, after asking my permission, which
+it seemed rude to withhold.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Phineas said he would give me one more. He
+took my notebook, and wrote, scrawlingly, right under
+Grandfather’s beautiful, patient lettering: “Be wise.
+Use Wisdom’s Robertine.” That, as you may not know,
+is a cosmetic which comes in dark blue glass bottles.
+Irene has one, and she gave one to Olympe. I thought it
+generous of her. Neal says that Irene will never miss one
+bottle.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to explain, but here of late, hatefulness
+seems to have got hold of all of us. I should say, all of us
+except Grandfather, who is too perfect, and Father,
+who is too busy. Darling Father, not busy, wouldn’t be
+hateful, either, I am sure. But the thought of work as a
+producer of virtue has given me an idea for a story. I
+have put it in my notebook, and shall write it when I
+am grown up. It is to be about two men; one who has all
+the virtues, and one who has none of them, but who is
+egotistic and avaricious. He has to work so hard to
+satisfy his vanity and his avarice, and he has to do such
+good things to get the glory and admiration he wants,
+that he leads as virtuous a life as does the good man.
+When they both die, they are regarded with equal
+respect by their neighbours. <i>Two Roads</i> would be the
+title for it.</p>
+
+<p>As I finished writing that last paragraph, Neal came
+in. I told him that I had come to the end of my letter,
+but that I was trying to think of some extra special
+way to express my love for you and Greg. I asked him
+how he liked, “I love you so much that, just from what
+spills over, I love the whole world.” He evaded, and
+teased, and said he did not want to be loved from leakage,
+and so on. But, finally, though he was very sweet,
+he reminded me of Grandfather’s rule about simplicity,
+and he said that it seemed to him that love, more than
+anything else, should be simply expressed. I suppose he
+is right. So, I love you. I love Greg.<span class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch04">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">April 12, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dearest, dearest Judy-pudy:</span>
+“Begin at
+the beginning,” like many other rules, seems very
+simple. It is not. How is one to know where the
+beginning is?</p>
+
+<p>I have decided that, probably, the beginning of this
+very long letter, which I am planning to write to you
+this afternoon and evening, should be that Irene does
+not like Q 2 Ranch. She does not wish to live here, or to
+have Christopher live here.</p>
+
+<p>When they came last month, they came only for a
+visit. But when Chris found that we had been sending
+him all the ready money we could get, and had been
+forced to practise rigid economy, he refused to take
+Irene back to New York. Father agrees with Chris that
+he and Irene should stay here for the present.</p>
+
+<p>Chris says certainly, that nothing else is to be
+considered. He says if he had had the least notion of how
+things were with us here at home, he would have come
+home two years ago when he returned from the Continent.
+He said that, of course, by staying in New York
+and attempting to get his play produced, he felt that he
+was doing his share. Because, if <i>Gold</i> had been
+successful, we never would have had another money worry
+again. He says effort must weigh, as well as
+accomplishment.</p>
+
+<p>Irene said that Booful had worked very hard and
+lived most frugally in New York. Chris said that he had
+not lived half as frugally as he would have had he
+known that his living was literally coming out of our
+pantry and off our backs.</p>
+
+<p>Irene and Father both said “Nonsense” to that, but
+they said it differently. Just the same, Judy, in spite of
+Father’s “Nonsense,” can you ever remember a time
+when about all the ready money we had did not have to
+be sent off to Cousin Christopher?</p>
+
+<p>Chris said that he had had his chance, and that you
+had not had yours (he meant about your not going to a
+university), but that now we must all pull together to
+see that Neal and I had ours.</p>
+
+<p>Father agreed with him. He rather overagreed with
+him. He said that Chris had had a bit more than his
+chance, he thought. That he had two degrees, and two
+years of European travel. He said that Chris was a
+sophomore at Princeton when he was Neal’s age.</p>
+
+<p>Neal began to say, as he always says, that he did not
+care for a classical education; that all he needed was a
+few years at a good agricultural college. Father spoke
+almost abruptly to him. Neal walked right away out of
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>When Neal was gone, that left Grandfather, Father,
+Chris, Irene, and me in the sitting room. I was reading
+in the window nook. I think that the others did not
+know I was there. I was not eavesdropping because, if
+any of them had turned around and looked at me, I was
+plainly there to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Irene said that if an agricultural college was all Neal
+cared about, why couldn’t he be sent to the Oregon one,
+which she had heard was fairly possible.</p>
+
+<p>Darling Father has been having that stomach trouble
+again. You know how quiet and patient it makes him.
+He just sat there, white, and did not answer Irene at all.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather told her that, just now, even the state
+agricultural college was a bit more than we could
+manage.</p>
+
+<p>Irene said, “Couldn’t you mortgage some more of
+Chris’s land?”</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather explained to her that the ranch was
+over-mortgaged now. He went on and told her about how bad
+ranching conditions had been, and how in 1895 cows
+were selling for from five to seven dollars, and calves for
+two, and horses about the same. He told how it had
+been necessary to disperse most of the herds because we
+could not afford to keep them. And then he told how
+timber and teams had kept us going. And how, after that,
+the mortgages had been necessary to buy new herds,
+and to pay debts contracted when we couldn’t even
+mortgage. He finished by telling her how, if we could
+devote the coming two or three years to keeping up our
+interest, and our herds, and so on, we were bound to win
+through with flying colours.</p>
+
+<p>I don’t know why that should have made Irene angry.
+It did. It made her so angry that her voice trembled as
+she asked Grandfather whether he actually meant that
+the place was so deeply in debt that no more money
+could be raised on it.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather told her that he doubted whether another
+hundred dollars could be borrowed on the place.
+He said that now it need not be borrowed. He said she
+had spoken of raising money. We were now, he told her,
+engaged in raising money—cattle and horses.</p>
+
+<p>She has a queer way, I think I may have mentioned it
+before, of seeming to hear only a part, the first part of
+whatever one says to her. She has another odd mannerism.
+She interrupts. She interrupted Grandfather then,
+and said that, in other words, the place was worthless.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather said to Christopher, “Sir, can you
+explain to me how your wife happens to be labouring
+under such a misconception?”</p>
+
+<p>Usually, when anybody asks Christopher a question,
+Irene answers it. “I know,” she said, “that when a farm
+of this size is mortgaged up to the hilt, so that not even
+a hundred dollars can be raised on it, that it is a failure.
+I don’t believe in throwing good money after bad. It
+seems to me that the only thing to do is to sell the place,
+if possible, and invest the money more wisely.”</p>
+
+<p>Judy, did you ever consider how much worse things
+words can say than people can ever do? I think that
+must be because actions can be met with actions, but
+some words have no words for answers.</p>
+
+<p>For quite a long time no one said anything. I felt my
+heart drop into my stomach, and then—I actually could
+feel this—my stomach closed around it somewhat as a
+sea anemone closes—and stuck to it. It was painful.</p>
+
+<p>“Uncle Thaddeus, Dick,” Christopher managed to
+say, “Irene doesn’t understand.”</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather stood up. He looked majestic. “That,
+Christopher,” he said, “is, I think, your fault and not
+your wife’s. You should have explained to her that men
+do not sell their inheritance. That it is not theirs to sell.”</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather and Father went out of the room
+together.</p>
+
+<p>Christopher said to Irene, “Uncle Thaddeus is right,
+sweetheart. It is my fault. I should have explained——”</p>
+
+<p>“Explain!” she burst out. “If there is anything in
+the world that you haven’t explained to me concerning
+Quilter precedents and traditions, I hope I may never
+have to hear it. You go about, every one of you, buttered
+with precedent, greased with traditions. Like the pig
+at the circus. One tries to get hold of you, and traditions
+slip you through one’s hands. What I need to have
+explained now is why a farm, admittedly worthless,
+should be kept as a home for the aged and infirm. We
+could better afford to put them all into institutions for
+indigent old age. As for the younger generation, your
+cousins are strong and capable—let them earn their
+livings elsewhere. Why should we keep them with our
+lives? Them, and their children, and——”</p>
+
+<p>I made a dreadful sound. It was like the first part of
+an enormous hiccup. It was drawing my breath in after
+smothering for so long.</p>
+
+<p>Christopher turned and saw me. He was glad, I
+think, to have me there to vent his wrath upon. He
+lowered his voice and became aggressively polite—you
+know the way Quilter men do when they are angry. He
+begged my pardon for intruding on my privacy, and so
+on; and, at last, he said that he was bound to ask for my
+promise that I would not repeat a syllable of what I
+had, surely inadvertently, overheard.</p>
+
+<p>Irene said bother promising anything. She said I
+might run and tell every word she’d said, for all she
+cared. She said she wished I would, and save her the
+trouble; because, if I didn’t, she meant to.</p>
+
+<p>Christopher, looking exactly like the man in the
+Gibson picture, “Hearts Are Trumps,” said, “No, I think
+not, Irene.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have already,” she declared, like a dare. “Long
+ago, I spoke to your Uncle Phineas about the possibility
+of selling the farm. I’ve mentioned it, since, to your Aunt
+Olympe and your Cousin Gracia.”</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps if Irene knew it was like cracking us on our
+crazy bones every time she said “farm,” she might stop
+it. Perhaps she might not.</p>
+
+<p>“I am sorry to hear that, Irene,” Christopher said,
+very much in Grandfather’s manner. “Because such
+talk succeeds only in making my family dislike and
+distrust you, and accomplishes no other end whatever.
+Possibility of my selling Q 2 Ranch ranks, in the range of
+possibilities, exactly on a par with my selling one of the
+children, or committing a murder or a
+robbery—something of the sort.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are robbing,” Irene declared. “You are robbing
+us of our chance for happiness. Not murder, perhaps.
+But you are condemning yourself and your wife to a
+sort of everlasting suicide. You prefer that, I suppose,
+to——”</p>
+
+<p>“Infinitely,” Christopher interrupted (he got the
+habit from Irene, I think). “But that must be said for
+you alone, Irene. I love Q 2: I haven’t been as loyal to it
+as the others have been; but I love it, and them. If you
+would give me a chance, I could be very happy here.”</p>
+
+<p>“Pleasant,” Irene said, “and interesting to hear you,
+after we have been married seven weeks, talking about
+me alone. Dividing us. Leaving me alone, while you step
+to the other side with your precious family.”</p>
+
+<p>“If there is a division,” Christopher said—I am sure
+that they had both forgotten all about me—“you are
+making it.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” she said. “Not yet. But understand this,
+Christopher, I will not plan a life here—not even with
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Olympe came into the room. She has
+been wearing all her silk petticoats for everyday, since
+Irene came, so she rustles almost as crisply as Irene does.
+She was well into the room, she had come down the back
+stairway, before she noticed us near the fireplace. I was
+crying. Irene looked as if she were burning, and
+Christopher looked like her ashes—gray-white.</p>
+
+<p>Irene flamed out at Olympe: “I was telling Christopher
+that I will not stay here in this hole. That, if he
+plans to live the remainder of his life here, he will plan
+to live it without me.”</p>
+
+<p>Think, Judy, what a wonderful opportunity it would
+have been for Olympe’s “Quilter men” speech, the one
+she does like gray velvet, or even her “God help the
+Quilter wives” speech. But she remained stone deaf.
+She came to me, and put her arm around my shoulders,
+and said, “Come with Olympe, sweetheart,” and gave
+me one of her exquisite handkerchiefs and led me out of
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>We met Uncle Phineas and Aunt Gracia. Uncle
+Phineas, of course, began to hug and kiss me and quote
+the Queen: “Consider what o’clock it is! Consider
+anything, only don’t cry!” Aunt Gracia tried to get me
+away from Uncle Phineas to find out whether I’d been
+bumped or burned, and everyone was all excited and
+concerned as they always are when I cry. I wish they
+wouldn’t do that way. I wish I might indulge more often
+in the luxury of tears. It should be, I think, one of the
+recompenses for the length of time one has to be a child.
+Neal says they fuss so because I open my mouth so
+wide and make such a noise. I can’t help it. I believe
+no one can be heartbroken and fastidious at the same
+time.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe was very angry. She said a great deal. Among
+other things she said that Q 2 was no longer a fit place
+for a child, and that I had been forced to witness a
+disgusting scene, and that Irene was threatening to leave
+Christopher.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Phineas said: “Hoop-la! That’s the best news
+I’ve heard since McKinley beat Bryan.”</p>
+
+<p>Olympe said, “Pan!”</p>
+
+<p>After supper Irene apologized to Grandfather before
+all of us. She said that she had not understood about
+Q 2, but that now Christopher had made things plain to
+her. Of course, she went on to say, she had never
+intended that the entire “farm” be sold. Her idea had
+been to sell small sections of it, here and there; just
+enough to supply us with what money we needed for the
+present.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Phineas told the story about the man who
+loved his dog so much that, when he had to cut his tail
+off, he chopped it in small chunks, so as not to hurt
+the poor creature so much. Aunt Gracia suggested
+that we go into the back parlour and have some music.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Phineas played and Irene sang some of the new
+coon songs she brought from the East. Then Irene and
+Christopher did a queer new dance that is called a
+“Cake-walk.” They say it is much more effective
+when there are several couples. Aunt Gracia sang for the
+rest of us. While she was singing Irene sat by me and
+talked.</p>
+
+<p>She told me about the new moving photography. She
+says every face is recognizable, and that every motion
+is made. I should love to see it; but, probably, they will
+never have it in Oregon. She told me, too, that she and
+Christopher had seen several of the new horseless
+carriages in New York. She says it is positively eerie
+to see them gliding along by themselves. No one here,
+except Grandfather, thinks that they will ever be more
+than a fad; but Grandfather predicts that, in time, they
+will at least share equal honours with the horse.</p>
+
+<p>I love you, dear, and I love Greg.<span class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch05">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">May 1, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dearest Judy:</span>
+Neal says that when you say
+for me not to write anything about people unless
+I can write good things about them you are displaying
+the worst sort of Quilter sentimentality. Uncle Phineas
+says that your dictum would deplete the libraries. He
+says to tell you that, if you don’t know your Plato, you
+should know your Boswell and your Pepys. But Grandfather
+says that the whole secret of the art of letter writing
+lies in writing not what one wishes to chronicle, but
+what the recipient can find delight in reading. So, I
+shall try to write only good things about everyone in
+your letters. Just now that may be difficult. It can’t be
+helped. And, if you should change your mind, after
+having Neal’s and Uncle Phineas’s opinions, please let me
+know.</p>
+
+<p>You ask what has happened to my lessons. It was
+necessary to discontinue them for a while, after Chris
+and Irene came home. Aunt Gracia was too busy to hear
+them. But now I am having them every day with Chris.
+And, of course, my Latin twice a week with
+Grandfather, and my music and French with Olympe.</p>
+
+<p>Chris has time now for my lessons. He has stopped
+helping Father and Neal with the ranch work and has
+begun his writing again. He was no real help, anyway, to
+Father and Neal. And, when he writes, there is always a
+possibility that he may make a great deal of money
+and also achieve fame. He has begun a new play and
+has the cast of characters all made out. The leading
+man’s rôle is to be for Nat Goodwin.</p>
+
+<p>Irene is happier now that Christopher stays in the
+house all the time with her. We have tried to get her to
+ride with us, but she is afraid even of Wednesday’s
+Child. She says she would not be afraid to ride in a
+ladies’ phaëton, if we had one. She has sent to New York
+for some of her household things that she left there.
+When they come she is going to fix up her room and
+Chris’s so that it can be called a studio.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday was Olympe’s sixty-first birthday. We had
+dinner in the evening and a celebration. Olympe sat in
+Grandfather’s chair at the head of the table, and
+remembered her chin, and was superb. Especially superb
+when everyone stood and drank her toast with the table
+claret we had left over from your wedding. Dong Lee
+baked a triumph of a cake, and we put one tall wax
+taper in its centre. (White wax tapers always remind me
+of Aunt Gracia.) I wish we might celebrate for Olympe
+several times each year. She is so transcendent when she
+is happy. Even Irene said, last night, that Olympe was
+not unlike Sarah Bernhardt. We missed you and Greg
+so much that not one of us mentioned either of you all
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>I fear that what you suggest about my sense of
+humour may be just. It has often troubled me. But
+Grandfather says humour is a faculty which develops
+late. He says one should not blame me for not having a
+fully developed sense of humour, unless one is willing
+to blame me for not having a fully developed stature.
+He says that my sense of humour is coming on nicely;
+that I have a sense of wit and a sense of the ludicrous,
+and that the more subtle sense will develop as I develop.
+I hope it is true. But I know that Grandfather is
+inclined to overrate my abilities. Irene says he greatly
+overrates them. She has a little girl friend, only fourteen
+years old, who is a reporter on one of the big New York
+daily papers. Grandfather said that he presumed the
+child was an orphan. Irene said no indeed she was not.
+Are orphans supposed to be brighter than other
+children?</p>
+
+<p>Dear sister, I send very much love to you and
+Greg.<span class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">May 30, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dearest Judy dear:</span>
+I am glad that you have given
+me some leeway about writing. Until your letter came,
+it seemed impossible for me to write at all.</p>
+
+<p>It is Uncle Phineas’s fault. He wishes to join the new
+gold rush to Nome, Alaska, and he is trying to get Chris
+to go with him. Uncle Phineas, while he doesn’t seem
+old, is edging close to seventy. Chris has had no training
+for hardships, and would not know a gold mine from a
+gopher hole. We could not raise money anywhere for
+them to go properly equipped. If we could, according
+to the warnings in the newspapers, the expedition would
+be, as Grandfather says, criminal folly. (Of course, all
+I have been writing about this is gleanings from the
+elders.) The <i>Oregonian</i>, a few days ago, had an account
+of the dreadful dangers and hardships that gold seekers
+are having to endure. But, in spite of everything, Uncle
+Phineas and Chris forge right ahead with their plans.
+It makes one think that Aunt Gracia is right about the
+childishness of men—though Grandfather and darling
+Father would have to be the exceptions that prove
+that rule.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe is wearing her dreariest gowns and is more
+tragic than I have ever seen her. She has added ever
+so many clauses to her Quilter men speech (none of them
+pleasant), and has revised the Quilter wives’ speech
+until it is almost heartbreaking. But Irene has reformed.
+She offers quite often to dust the rooms. She reads
+Elbert Hubbard, and Neal says that she is conspicuously
+living, loving, laughing, and doing things worth while.
+That seems well enough to me. Neal says that it is
+wormy. Everything is wormy for Neal, lately. It is an
+unpleasant new word of his. Marriage, he says, is wormy.
+He has resolved never to marry. Even love, he says, is
+wormy. He says it does to men what barnacles do to
+ships. He says to look at what a fine, free-sailing craft
+Chris was, before Irene barnacled him all over with her
+messy love. Neal is growing cynical and pessimistic.
+Grandfather says it doesn’t matter; it is an unavoidable
+phase of male adolescence.</p>
+
+<p>Some of Irene’s household things have come. She has
+not unpacked them yet, as she doesn’t care to have
+the room called a studio if Chris goes to Nome. Possibly,
+then, she would like a <i>boudoir</i>. (She has been asking me
+how to spell French and Latin words for her, when she
+writes to her friends. I have told her for weeks. But,
+after thinking it over, I decided, one day, it would be
+kinder to tell her what Grandfather said about using
+foreign words in one’s letters. She cried, and told Chris
+that I had said she was vulgar. I had not. I apologized,
+though, to please her. I didn’t mind at all.) She has
+unpacked some of her linen, to put it in the blue closet so
+it won’t turn yellow. It is not as handsome as our best
+linen, but better than our third best and much more
+fancy. She has big initials embroidered on it. The initial
+is “B.” I asked her why, since I had thought her name
+had been Irene Guildersen.</p>
+
+<p>She was much astonished to discover that the others
+had not told me Christopher was her second husband.
+She seemed proud of it. She told me very admirable
+things about her first husband, who is still living. She
+divorced him.</p>
+
+<p>Later, when discussing the matter with members of
+the family, I found that all of them, except Aunt Gracia,
+approve of divorce and think there is nothing even odd
+about it if, they said, it was procured because of genuine
+provocation. These opinions of theirs make it hard for
+me to understand why none of them had told me about
+Irene’s divorce. Sometimes, though rarely, I agree with
+Neal, who is declaring, of late, that there is no
+accounting for Quilters.</p>
+
+<p>I love you dearly. I love Greg dearly, too.<span
+class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch06">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">June 9, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dearest Judy-pudy:</span>
+Dr. Joe came out last
+Thursday to see Father and, as Neal says, to sit
+and worship at Grandfather’s feet. Neal himself
+worships Grandfather, you know. That is why it makes him
+angry for anyone else to do so. I made an epigram about
+it: “Gods are not jealous. It is people who are jealous
+of them.” Grandfather says it is creditable for a
+twelve-year-old.</p>
+
+<p>I love Dr. Joe. I think if he couldn’t dispense any
+medicine he would still be a splendid doctor. When he
+steps in, and smiles, everything always seems to
+improve. He told Uncle Phineas there was no possibility
+that, with his blood pressure, he could survive the
+hardships of Nome. So that worry is off our minds. Chris has
+decided to finish his play. He has it well in hand, and the
+cast of characters all written.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday, Uncle Phineas started off on a prospecting
+trip by himself. It was a blow to us, because we had
+hoped that Uncle Phineas had given over prospecting
+with that last unfortunate trip of his in 1897. But he
+was so offended about his blood pressure that he drew
+thirty dollars from the bank and went down into
+Malheur County. (Irene thinks it odd that the checking
+account at the bank is a joint one for all the elders. She
+said so.)</p>
+
+<p>Irene has stopped living, loving, laughing, and doing
+things worth while. She broke a Spode cup on Friday.
+Aunt Gracia cried. Irene said such a fuss over a cup,
+when Haviland was prettier, and one of the Portland
+department stores had advertised a sale of Haviland
+china cups and saucers for eight cents each only last
+week. She said for Aunt Gracia to dry her tears and
+she would send ninety-six cents and get a dozen.
+Doesn’t it seem strange that anyone, even Irene, should
+not comprehend real Spode? It must mean that her
+backgrounds are murky.</p>
+
+<p>Something of the sort would need to be the matter
+with a person who could do what Irene did yesterday.
+She asked Olympe to give her and Christopher the room
+that is Uncle Phineas’s and Olympe’s. Olympe was so
+amazed that she forgot to be deaf. Besides being amazed
+she was angry, and scornful, and amused, and several
+other feelings. She, herself, did not seem to have her
+emotions well sorted.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia asked Olympe what answer she had given
+to Irene.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe replied that she had told Irene it seemed to
+her that Grandfather’s room was, perhaps, even more
+attractive; and that, since Grandfather had had his
+longer, he was, doubtless, more tired of it than she and
+Pan were of their room. She suggested that Irene offer to
+exchange rooms with Grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia put down the chopping bowl and went
+running right out of the kitchen. When she came back
+she, too, was angry and laughing. She said she had
+caught Irene on her way to Grandfather’s room.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe shrugged, in that sophisticated foreign manner
+of hers, which Neal so derides, and asked why Aunt
+Gracia had stopped her. It was time, Olympe declared,
+that Grandfather was beginning to see that young
+person in her true colours.</p>
+
+<p>It is odd about words, isn’t it, dear? Now “young,” by
+itself, is a pleasant word; and “person,” though lacking
+in charm, is surely respectable and blameless. But by
+putting the two words together as Olympe does, they
+make an insult. Neal says so it is with people. He says,
+take a pleasant girl and a respectable and blameless
+man, and marry them and, likely as not, the result will
+be a joke, or an insult, or even a curse or a crime. But, as
+I have told you, Neal is developing into a regular Timon.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe asked how Aunt Gracia had managed to
+halt Irene. Aunt Gracia answered cryptically (this is the
+exact word because I have just looked it up in the
+dictionary), “Blackmail.”</p>
+
+<p>Olympe laughed one of those ruffling lacy laughs of
+hers and went away, because the kitchen was steamy
+and unpleasant. I do not know whether she understood
+what Aunt Gracia meant by blackmail. I understood.
+Aunt Gracia did not know that I understood.</p>
+
+<p>Irene, you, see, had told me all about it. Her first
+husband, whose name is Archie Biggil (isn’t that too
+bad?) was still madly, devotedly, ardently, tenderly in
+love with her. He is an importer, and had been in Brazil
+when she had married Chris. Now he has returned to
+New York. He has found out about Irene’s second
+marriage, and where she is living. He is writing her
+passionate letters. There is much more to it than that;
+but nothing, I think, that you would care to hear.
+Irene was worried for fear Chris would find out about
+her receiving the passionate letters. She told me because
+she had to tell someone. I don’t know why she told Aunt
+Gracia. I trust that Chris will not find out about the
+letters. I feel certain they would annoy him. He acts,
+lately, as if he were as much annoyed as a man could be
+and remain in health. I think he was disappointed about
+Nome and the gold mine.</p>
+
+<p>I love you and Greg very dearly.<span class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">June 25, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dearest, dear Judy:</span>
+I thought it very sweet of you
+to be sorry for Irene, and to have her remind you of
+Ruth, sick for home, standing in tears among the alien
+corn. Neal does not agree with me. He says misplaced
+sympathy is the trademark of the sentimentalist, and
+that anyone who could be sorry for Irene here, on Q 2
+Ranch, would be sorry for the Black Hole of Calcutta
+because it had to have all those people packed into it.
+I am giving you Neal’s opinion, not because I think it is
+very smart, but because I fear it is true.</p>
+
+<p>I believe, if you really feel like being sorry for anyone
+in particular now, it would be wise to be sorry for
+Christopher because he is the only one here who deeply
+loves Irene. Not loving, and not being loved, does give
+one such a satisfactory removed feeling. You know, we
+were so miserable when we thought Whatof was killing
+the chickens; but when we found that it was a coyote
+and not Whatof, nearly all of the heavy, hurting feeling
+went away. I suppose, though, if we were to think that
+through, as Grandfather always advises, we should
+discover that it made no difference to the chickens, the
+real sufferers in the event, whether they were killed by
+a dog or a coyote. To carry out the analogy, we on the
+Q 2 Ranch, now, are in the positions of the chickens.
+Losing Q 2 would be a little worse than dying, don’t you
+think?</p>
+
+<p>Christopher has had an offer from one of the big land
+companies for the ranch. They buy the big ranches and
+divide them and sell them as small farms to the settlers
+who are coming in from Nebraska and Missouri and
+Utah. At first Christopher was indignant about the
+offer. It was an insultingly small sum, he declared. But,
+in a day or two, he was saying that suppose he did sell
+a part of Q 2, leaving the direct home place and forty or
+fifty acres surrounding it——Darling Father said that if
+Christopher would show him how to make a living for
+eleven people from forty acres of land, particularly the
+forty surrounding the house, he would not have another
+word to say.</p>
+
+<p>Christopher said if he and Irene left the place they
+would never take another penny from it, but would go
+on their own from that time on.</p>
+
+<p>Neal, who was present, asked, “Own what, Chris?”</p>
+
+<p>Irene answered, “Not our own property.”</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia said, the other evening, “Christopher,
+do you ever stop to think that right up to now you have
+never wanted anything, education, travel, leisure, that
+Q 2 hasn’t given you?”</p>
+
+<p>Christopher said: “I’m not forgetting, don’t worry,
+Gracia. Though that is over, now. I’ll never take
+another dollar from the place that I don’t earn right
+here.” (He is working hard on his new play. He has it
+well in hand, and the cast of characters all written. The
+principal part is to be for Mr. Sothern.) “What is
+troubling me now is Irene’s health.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not Dick’s health?” Aunt Gracia asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Dick’s health, too, and of course,” Christopher said.
+“But I am not responsible for Dick. I can’t do anything
+about his health.”</p>
+
+<p>“Can’t you?” Aunt Gracia inquired.</p>
+
+<p>“Meaning, my dear?” Chris answered.</p>
+
+<p>“That Dick is ill. That he is doing the work of six
+men. That you could stop worrying him, and insist that
+your wife stop it.” Aunt Gracia, talking like that, gives
+you an idea of the conditions here.</p>
+
+<p>Irene mopes around all the time and says she does not
+feel well. She doesn’t look well, either. But she
+eats—well, at least heartily and often—and she will never go
+outside the house, not even in this new June weather.
+Dr. Joe says that he is damned if he knows what is the
+matter with her. Christopher said, “Sir, do you mean
+to suggest that my wife is malingering?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” Dr. Joe said. “Do you?”</p>
+
+<p>I must run now and help Aunt Gracia. I love you
+both, Greg and you, dear, very dearly.<span
+class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch07">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">July 6, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear, dear Sister Judy:</span>
+Last night I had
+a terrible nightmare. I screamed and woke. I
+found unhappiness sitting like a giant on my chest. I
+began to cry. Neal came in, wrapped in his dressing
+gown. You know how Neal seems to lose command of
+himself when I cry, so almost at once I had to stop. I
+hoped he might go back to bed again. He would not.
+He insisted on sitting on the foot of my bed until we
+could, as he said, discover together what troubled me
+until I woke crying in the night. Finally, after quite a
+talk, we found that it was, probably, fear. Fear, you
+know, of our losing Q 2.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking of fear usually makes Neal impatient. Last
+night he said—he is often sarcastic of late, but
+Grandfather told me, privately, that was but another
+manifestation of his age—of course crying was the best thing
+to do in the face of fear or danger. He said when Teddy
+charged up San Juan Hill he got afraid they were going
+to lose the battle, about midway up the hill, and put his
+head down and wept salt tears into his horse’s mane.
+He said that was the way to win battles—to sit and cry,
+as Olympe did, and make plans for the poorhouse.</p>
+
+<p>I told Neal that, if we called it a battle, Irene must be
+the foe, and that she cried most of the time—always
+when either Christopher or Father was present.</p>
+
+<p>Neal said tears were her weapons, not ours, he hoped.</p>
+
+<p>I explained that I was not using tears for weapons.
+I was using them for lamentations over having to
+leave Q 2.</p>
+
+<p>Neal said, who was going to leave? He wasn’t. If
+worst came to worst, he would stay in Q 2 as a stableboy
+for some Swede farmer. He said he would stay just as he
+would stay in America and be an American if some
+foreign power, even Spain, should conquer us. He said,
+too, that just as there was nothing he wouldn’t do,
+including the shedding of blood, to save his country from
+foreign usurpation, so there was nothing he would not do
+to save Q 2 for the Quilters. (For one thing, I think, it
+was the Fourth of July only day before yesterday.)</p>
+
+<p>What we must do, Neal said, was what Uncle Phineas
+had tried to do with the Nome scheme: separate Irene
+and Christopher. He thinks Christopher would stop
+thinking about selling Q 2 if he were removed from what
+Neal calls the venom of Irene’s proximity.</p>
+
+<p>I thought separating them would be wrong, since they
+loved each other. Neal said it was not love. It was
+infatuation. He called me an idiot. I did not like it, so
+perhaps I am not one.</p>
+
+<p>I told Neal that it was difficult for me to understand
+how so much trouble could be caused about nothing but
+money. Money is real. It can be handled and earned,
+and lost. People have it, to save or to spend. I have
+always fancied that real trouble had to be about vague
+things, such as love, or hate; or about unobtainable
+things, like health for darling Father and Greg, or a
+baby for Uncle Phineas and Olympe; or unpreventable
+things, like war and death.</p>
+
+<p>Father just came in. Aunt Gracia needs me, so I
+must end this letter. Father looks very tired most of the
+time lately. He told Neal the other day that he could
+not work and fight both, and that he had to work. He
+said for you not to worry about Bryan’s nomination.
+That he would have been elected in 1896, if he had ever
+been going to be. He sends you and Greg his dearest
+love, and a check, and says there is plenty more of both
+where these came from.</p>
+
+<p>I hope what I have written about money won’t worry
+you, dear. Aunt Gracia said the other day that what we
+send to you and Greg to live on would not be pin money
+for Chris, let alone Chris and Irene.</p>
+
+<p>I love you, Judy. I love dear Greg. I love you both
+together.<span class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">July 31, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dearest dear Judy-pudy:</span>
+Olympe says that she
+wrote to you several days ago and told you about darling
+Father’s narrow escape from death. All of me goes
+empty, even yet, when I think of it. Fancy the wagon’s
+tongue breaking when Father was driving Bell and
+Zebub over Quilter Mountain! Grandfather had advised
+against the team, but Father was in a hurry and Bread
+and Butter are so slow.</p>
+
+<p>If Indian Charles, from 3 O X, had not happened to be
+right there, Father would certainly have been killed.
+Aunt Gracia thinks that God put Indian Charles at that
+particular curve to stop the horses, though, as
+Grandfather says, that bears thinking through. It does seem
+that the simpler way would have been to have had Neal
+notice the tongue when he was overhauling the wagon.
+Darling Father would be angry if he knew I had written
+that. He says overhauling the wagon was his job and
+not Neal’s, and that Neal is in no way responsible for
+the accident. Poor Neal keeps declaring that the tongue
+was in good shape a week ago, and everyone is being so
+exaggeratedly nice to him that I scarcely see how he can
+endure it. Even Dong Lee baked Neal’s special tart for
+supper that evening.</p>
+
+<p>Father makes light of the whole affair, though he
+strained the ligaments in his wrist and has to wear his
+arm in a sling. About all that Father is, is thankful.
+Irene and Christopher were going with him and, at the
+last moment, decided against it. If three people had been
+on the seat, Father thinks none of them could have
+stayed there. Aunt Gracia attributes Christopher’s and
+Irene’s decision to God, too. Isn’t it strange how trying
+to see the hand of Providence in things does confuse
+them? I have been thinking a great deal, lately, about
+God. I wrote a poem about Him. It is the accident, I
+think. Until Uncle Phineas came home, the accident
+had a most sobering, almost religious effect on all of us.</p>
+
+<p>This is odd. When you and Greg went away, it seemed
+as if the happiness we had had because of having you
+with us never had equalled, nor made up for, the
+unhappiness we had to endure because you were gone.
+But, when Uncle Phineas came home on Wednesday, it
+seemed as if the unhappiness of having him away had
+been nothing compared to the fun of having him home
+again. Uncle Phineas, I believe, is one of those people
+whom his family appreciate more after they have been
+without him for rather a long time.</p>
+
+<p>He is in splendid high spirits. Perhaps he has found
+another gold mine. No one, I think, has remembered to
+ask him. While he was away, Olympe kept longing for
+his return in order that he and she might make their
+plans together for the poorhouse. But she has been so
+happy since he came that she has forgotten all about the
+poorhouse. She is wearing her gayer frocks, and giving
+only her lighter, more whimsical speeches.</p>
+
+<p>Since the accident, I haven’t heard either Irene or
+Chris mention selling the place. Chris is working hard
+on his new play. Mr. Joseph Jefferson is to have the
+leading rôle. Also, Chris has done another sonnet to
+Irene. He did it yesterday during our lesson time. It is
+fortunate that Irene has so many splendid rhymes:
+green, serene, sheen, queen, been (as Grandfather
+pronounces it), clean, and dozens of others. Greg would
+have a hard time rhyming you into a sonnet. But Greg
+would never think of writing a sonnet to you. Aren’t you
+glad? Not, of course, that I disapprove of authors, since
+I am planning to be one. But I am going to be a writer,
+rather than an author. When I told Chris that, and that
+I was going to cover pages and pages with real written
+words, and then stack them up and sell them, he said:
+“Precisely. You are going to be a hardy perennial
+author.” And then he gave me quite a lecture about
+ambitions and bandbox zeniths. But Grandfather said,
+not at all. That he had yet to associate real genius with
+the ability for being enterprisingly unproductive.</p>
+
+<p>It is past bedtime. I love you both very dearly, and I
+send my love to you both in this letter.<span class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch08">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">August 1, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dearest Judy dear:</span>
+Father and Uncle
+Phineas and Chris have all gone to Portland for
+a few days. They left here last Thursday. I think that
+they will return to-morrow. Father had to see Dr. Joe.
+I don’t know why the others went, unless it was,
+perhaps, for the trip.</p>
+
+<p>Christopher was no sooner out of sight than Irene
+began to move Father’s belongings out of his room,
+preparing to unpack her boxes and to instal herself and
+Christopher in Father’s room. She said she positively
+had not asked Father to exchange rooms with her. She
+said he had offered to do so, because he had heard that
+she wanted a cupola room in order to fix the cupola up
+as an Oriental cozy corner.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe asked her why she had not made the exchange
+while Christopher had been at home. Irene said
+because she wished to surprise him. (It is only by
+remembering Grandfather’s sixth rule, under “B,” that I
+am restraining myself from underlining almost every
+word in this letter, and clubbing it all up with ! ! !)</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia and Olympe tried to reason with Irene.
+She kept right along dumping things out of Father’s
+room and tugging her things in. I ran and told
+Grandfather. He would not budge. Grandfather, of late,
+budges less and less. The only thing he has said about
+the entire affair he said this morning when Irene took
+him into the room to show it to him. He said: “My
+word! My wordless word!”</p>
+
+<p>Neal declares that he and I should try to be
+broad-minded and receptive toward the new. He says that
+forward steps should be made in house furnishings as
+well as in other things. He says that perhaps the
+ultra-moderns are right in attempting to get away from the
+austerity of the early colonial furnishings. He says that
+perhaps we do need more colour, more daintiness, more
+luxury, and more invitations to relaxation.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia says that if Neal and I find daintiness in
+that room, her imagination pales before our conception
+of a really honest, cleanly junk heap. She said that a
+fishnet stuck full of trash was not merely inartistic, it
+was also a wall-wide inducement to dirt. She said she
+could get all the colour she needed from the Turkey
+carpets in the front and back parlours that
+Great-great-grandfather had bought in the Orient, or from the
+pulled rugs that Great-grandmother and her sister-in-law
+had made. She said the Oriental cozy corner was
+not an invitation to relaxation. She said it was an
+invitation to assassination.</p>
+
+<p>Poor, lovely Aunt Gracia has grown bitter of late.
+For one thing, I think that her blackmailing, as she
+called it, has turned into a boomerang. Irene told me
+about it. That is, Irene said that if Chris knew she
+didn’t have to stay here, that Archie was pleading
+with her to return to him, and that he would send her
+the money for the trip at any time, she thought that
+Chris would act very differently.</p>
+
+<p>I asked Irene why, then, if she wished Chris to act
+differently, she did not tell him about Archie? She said
+that she was tempted to, every minute of the day; but
+that Gracia advised so strongly against it she was afraid
+to. She said that Gracia had known Chris longer than
+she, Irene, had known him; and that Gracia was afraid
+such a disclosure might result in tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>I asked Irene what sort of tragedy. Irene did not
+know. So I went and asked Aunt Gracia.</p>
+
+<p>I could not get any satisfaction from her because she
+was indignant with Irene for having told me about
+Archie Biggil and his passionate letter, and the rest.
+Aunt Gracia is sweet but odd. She does not understand
+that I know all there is to know about at least the
+theories of love and passion from having read widely about
+them in books.</p>
+
+<p>She said that unless I would promise her never again
+to listen to Irene when she talked on subjects of the
+sort, she would take the matter up with Grandfather.
+I told her I would not promise, because it was
+unreasonable for her to ask me to. Not, you understand, Judy
+dear, that I liked listening to the sort of thing Irene was
+always telling me. Dr. Joe did not like to cut up
+cadavers when he was in medical college, either. It was a
+part of his education that he had to endure. So I thought
+that, since live men did actually say to live women:
+“My God! The haunting beauty of your white body
+never leaves me day or night!” I should, as a prospective
+writer, know it. That is what I told Aunt Gracia.</p>
+
+<p>She put her arm around me and said let us go and
+talk to Grandfather. We did so. Aunt Gracia and I were
+both astonished to find that he knew all about Archie
+Biggil. Irene had told him, he said, because she was
+troubled and needed to confide in someone.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather said that I had been quite right in refusing
+to promise not to listen to Irene; that is, if I wished
+to be a writer of the Laura Jean Libby or Marie Corelli
+school. He had thought, he said, that I cared more for
+Dickens, Thackeray, and Scott; but, evidently, he had
+been labouring under a misconception.</p>
+
+<p>I had a feeling that Grandfather was what Chris calls
+“spoofing” me; but I could not be sure. Perhaps I was
+mistaken. At any rate, quite soon, we got it straightened
+out tidily.</p>
+
+<p>An author, Grandfather says, must go about collecting
+material constantly. But, despite that, an author
+must use a definite discrimination about the sort of
+material he chooses to collect. Grandfather says that no
+person can gather all the sorts, because it is a physiological
+fact that one’s brain has room for only a certain
+amount. It was necessary, he said, to decide quite early
+on one’s standards, and then collect in line with them,
+to the exclusion of other material, in order that one’s
+mind should not become hopelessly cluttered.</p>
+
+<p>I feel that Grandfather should have given me this
+information long ago. I am thankful to have obtained
+it now before it is entirely too late.</p>
+
+<p>It took us some time, you see, to get to the
+explanation of the tragedy that Aunt Gracia feared.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather said to her that he, like Lucy, was not
+quite clear on this point. He could not, he said, visualize
+Christopher running about menacing fatuous
+ex-husbands.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia replied that it seemed to her the real
+tragedy impending was for Christopher to discover
+Irene.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather smiled that heavenly smile of his that
+usually means a pearl. “He won’t, dearest. Set your
+mind at rest. He won’t. That, in itself, constitutes the
+tragedy—or the triumph—of marriage.”</p>
+
+<p>I think that I do not fully understand this. But, since
+I am sure it is a pearl, I am quoting it for you. You are
+married. You may understand it. At any rate, no matter
+what it means, exactly, it must mean that no tragedy,
+like <i>Hamlet</i>, with everyone lying about dead, is apt to
+happen.</p>
+
+<p>Judy dear, I love you. Will you tell Greg that I love
+him, too?<span class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">August 28, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear, dear Judy-pudy:</span>
+It was good of you to take so
+long to explain to me what Grandfather meant about the
+tragedy, or the triumph, of marriage. I think it rather
+bold of you to say that Grandfather, who is eighty years
+old, is wrong about it. You are only twenty-two years
+old. But it does not matter. I am no longer interested in
+marriage. I have decided, with Neal, never to marry.</p>
+
+<p>Though, of late, I dislike to be on Neal’s side about
+anything. Some great change, terrible, grewsome, seems
+to have occurred within him. (I know that is a poor sentence,
+and that it is of a literary flavour which I despise.
+But I have tried several drafts on scratch paper and it
+seems to be the best I can do.) Or, to put it simply as
+Grandfather always advises: If Neal had been a dog for
+the past few months we should have been afraid he
+would bite us. Now he acts as if he had bitten us and
+were glad of it.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know what has caused this change in Neal,
+but I know who has. The person is Uncle Phineas.
+When Uncle Phineas came home from his prospecting
+trip last month, he came home with a secret. He told
+Neal the secret. I am sure of this. They got off alone
+together and whispered about the secret.</p>
+
+<p>When I said this to Neal he was angry. He said to
+have a person like me in it was a scourge to any family.
+He did not mean that, I am sure. But he was very
+polite, and talked in a low voice, even when he called
+names, such as “rubberneck” and threatened. After the
+many years of deep study that I have devoted to
+character, I hope I have at least discovered that no one
+gets as angry over anything as Neal got unless it is the
+truth. If I had been making a childishly simple mistake,
+Neal would have teased me and laughed at me.</p>
+
+<p>Neal said that it was crumby—everything is crumby
+with Neal, just now, but that is an improvement over
+wormy—for me to think that Uncle Phineas would
+share a secret with him and with no other member of the
+family. It isn’t—crumby, I mean—because, if it were
+rather a naughty or mischievous secret, as it probably
+would be since Uncle Phineas had it for his, Neal would
+be more in sympathy with it than would any other
+member of the family. Not, of course, that either Neal
+or Uncle Phineas would do any wrong thing, but—well,
+you understand what I mean. For instance, Uncle
+Phineas, I believe, is the only member of the family
+who would join Neal in his plan to separate Irene and
+Christopher. Of course I have no proof that Uncle
+Phineas has not shared his secret with some other member
+of the family. All I know about that is, if he has
+shared it with someone else it has not affected the
+someone as it has affected Neal.</p>
+
+<p>Father has changed a bit since he returned from
+Portland, but, if possible, for the better. I think that is
+because Chris has stopped worrying him. Did I tell you
+that Christopher went to Portland to try to raise some
+money? He couldn’t. He has come home again and is
+working hard on his new play.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Phineas has remained in Portland. Even though
+he is not running up hotel bills, but is visiting Dr. Joe, it
+does seem strange for him to remain in the city for so
+long. Olympe is furious about it. She does fury
+beautifully—not at all in an ordinary fashion, but with dignity
+and hauteur. She manages it so nicely, I think, because
+she blames Irene and not Uncle Phineas. She pretends
+that no person in his senses would stay on the same
+ranch with Irene if he could stay elsewhere. I should
+think that she might blame Chris because he is responsible
+for Irene. She does not. She pities him. That is worse
+than blaming, of course. Though poor Chris does seem
+to deserve to be pitied.</p>
+
+<p>Judy, dear, he was stunned when he discovered that
+Irene had exchanged rooms with Father. He came downstairs
+alone, looking faded and like a poor photograph
+of himself.</p>
+
+<p>“Dick, old boy,” he said to Father, “I’m tremendously
+sorry about this fracas upstairs. It isn’t that
+Irene is selfish. She’s the most generous little thing in
+the world, really. She doesn’t understand——”</p>
+
+<p>Father said of course she didn’t, and neither did he.
+He said there was no tradition that he was aware of
+which would keep the various members of the family
+from making an exchange of rooms, when the exchange
+was advantageous.</p>
+
+<p>It may be advantageous for Irene. For all the rest of
+us it is an irritation. A dozen times a day, beginning with
+the morning towels and ending with the evening lamps,
+some one of us makes a mistake about the rooms. We
+stand and knock at the door of the room that is now
+Father’s thinking that Irene or Christopher may be in
+it. And, since we know that Father is never in his room
+in the daytime, we open that door and walk right in,
+intruding on Irene and Christopher in a most
+humiliating fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Father himself forgets. He came from his bath, the
+other evening—he was very tired—and opened the door
+to his old room and walked right in. He came so quietly,
+in his slippers, that Irene had not heard him. She was in
+the room alone and she was frightened. (She said it was
+partly because she had never seen Father in his
+dressing gown before.) She screamed and screamed and
+screamed. She cried, and had what she calls a heart
+attack. Chris was frantic, and poor, darling Father was
+stunned from the shock of having caused a lady such
+distress.</p>
+
+<p>During the heart attack, Irene said that any decent
+house would have keys to the doors. Wednesday, Aunt
+Gracia went to the attic and found the keys for the
+doors, and shined them up with Sapolio and put them in
+the keyholes. None of us use them, except Irene. Neal
+is very smart about them. He says they open a new era
+on the Q 2 Ranch. He has made up a song, to the tune of
+“Bringing in the Sheaves,” which he calls “Turning
+Quilter Keys,” and which he sings about, objectionably.</p>
+
+<p>I send my love to you, dear, and to Greg.<span class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch09">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">September 10, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Judith dearest:</span>
+Christopher, I think, is going
+to sell Q 2 Ranch. It seems odd and perhaps not
+right that a private disaster like this should completely
+overshadow, for us, the terrible disaster in Galveston
+day before yesterday. But it has. I think that Christopher
+gave us credit for more altruism, and so told us
+yesterday when we were all so troubled over the Galveston
+sufferers. I think that he thought our own trouble
+would diminish by comparison. It has not.</p>
+
+<p>When all the mortgages are paid, Christopher will
+have about $9,000 left over. If he and Irene take half,
+that will leave $4,500 for Grandfather, Father, Olympe,
+Uncle Phineas, Aunt Gracia, you, Greg, Neal, and me.</p>
+
+<p>Christopher says that we can buy a pleasant Willamette
+Valley farm for less than half of that, and start
+free and clear. That will be much better, he says, since
+this place is too large for Father and Neal to handle,
+especially since Father’s health is so uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, Christopher declares, Father’s health is one of
+his chief reasons for selling. He thinks it is not fair to
+expect Father to carry on this struggle under a load of
+debt. Aside from the sentiment attached to the place,
+Christopher says, a smaller place, clear of debt, would
+be better for everyone. However, he says he will not
+act hastily, nor counter to our wishes in the matter.
+The offer is open for sixty days.</p>
+
+<p>No one says anything. No one will say anything. I
+mean, not anything at all. I mean, not one single word.
+Not, “Yes, Christopher,” or, “No, Christopher.” I
+believe that Uncle Phineas might talk, if he were here.
+Uncle Phineas is lost.</p>
+
+<p>Neal and I are the only ones who know this. After
+Christopher broke the news to us yesterday morning,
+Neal and I rode to Quilterville. We sent a telegram to
+Uncle Phineas, in care of Dr. Joe. Neal had to tell me
+what he was going to do because he had to borrow my
+pocket money, to put with his money, to send the
+telegram. We stayed in Quilterville several hours
+waiting for the reply. When it came it was from Dr. Joe.
+It said: “Phineas not here. Mum’s the word. No occasion
+for worry. He is O. K. Joe.”</p>
+
+<p>We had no money to answer that telegram. Neal says
+he thinks that Uncle Phineas has gone on another
+prospecting trip. It is odd, because Olympe got a letter
+from him this morning, written in Portland and mailed
+from there. I picked up the envelope and looked to see
+the postmark.</p>
+
+<p>Neal thinks that Uncle Phineas wrote several letters,
+and left them for Dr. Joe to mail in regular order. It
+would not be unlike Uncle Phineas. The fact that
+Olympe had sent him her garnet set to be cleaned, and
+that he did not mention it in this letter, might seem
+to prove Neal right. Olympe has written, now, to have
+him sell the set instead.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia is going to sell Great-great-great-grandmother’s
+silver tea set. It is hers, you know.
+Olympe says the Turkey carpets belong to Uncle Phineas
+and have ever since he settled the estate in Virginia.
+She is going to have him sell them. The amount should
+keep you and Greg in comparative comfort for a long
+time, she thinks. Aunt Gracia is hoping for a teacher’s
+position. She is hunting out old books to bone up for the
+examinations. Neal plans to stay right here and work
+for his board only, if necessary. Grandfather will apply
+for his pension after all these years. It will be about
+seventeen dollars a month.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia has asked me to come and help her
+now, so I must go. Dear, I love you and Greg very,
+very much.<span class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">September 21, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dearest, dearest Judy-pudy:</span>
+If you have worked
+out, in your philosophy for living, any special thing to
+say or to do to prepare you for a shock, it would be
+wise to say or do it right now. I have very bad news to
+tell you.</p>
+
+<p>The stress and worry of the last several months,
+combined with darling Father’s ill health and the final
+news that Q 2 is to be sold, has unhinged his mind. Just
+a little bit, Judy dear. Not enough so that any of us had
+noticed it. Truly, truly. We had no idea of such a thing,
+before the blow fell. And, if the blow had not fallen,
+we would not know it now. He seems just the same as
+always. Truly he does, Judy. Perhaps a little sweeter
+and kinder—but really just the same. So, when you
+think of dear, darling Father, think of him as acting
+just as he acted when you and Greg left home in March.
+If you were to walk right into the room this minute,
+you would not see a bit of difference in Father’s
+mentality. Truly, truly you wouldn’t, Judy. But, dear, the
+truth is that Father is now a baptized Siloamite. But
+remember quickly, Judy, before this makes you ill or
+anything: <em>Father is just the same wonderful man.</em></p>
+
+<p>Wednesday those two pleasant young missionaries,
+Mr. Cordinger and Mr. Withmore, came to the house.
+Since they knew nothing about our troubles, and were
+jolly and interesting, it was almost a blessing to have
+them. If they had not unhinged dear, darling Father’s
+mind, it would still be better than not to have them here.
+They are staying on, in the attic room, for a week or so.
+You know they never force their religious views on
+anyone, or even ask anyone to join their church; so how
+it could have happened that they unhinged Father’s
+mind, I cannot understand.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, when they and Aunt Gracia and darling
+Father started to drive to Quilter River, we had no idea
+that Father was not in a normal state. Judith, when
+they got to Quilter River, Father allowed himself to be
+baptized in it. They all came home and deliberately
+told us.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing Father as we know him, and knowing his
+opinions of even less ornamental nonconformist religions,
+of course such an act can mean but one thing. I
+have not found courage yet to discuss the matter with
+anyone except Neal, not even with Grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>Neal says that he thinks there is some dark, sinister
+meaning behind it, like blackmail. Neal says that Christopher
+thinks so, too. If Christopher does think this, it
+seems odd that he has now ridden to Quilterville to mail
+a letter asking Dr. Joe to come to Father.</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe that it was blackmail. Those two
+young missionaries are the sort that Grandfather calls
+clean, wholesome chaps. And, if they were wicked, how
+could they blackmail a man like darling Father who has
+led a perfect life?</p>
+
+<p>Judith, dear, I think I am not able to write more now.
+If I had found any consolation for myself, I would give
+it to you. But I have found none. I have nothing to give
+to you but my love.<span class="sig">—Lucy.</span></p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">September 22, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dearest Judy dear:</span>
+If only I had not sent that
+letter to you yesterday! Or if only I had not spent all my
+money with Neal’s telegraphing to Uncle Phineas, and
+could telegraph to you now to disregard letter, as
+Christopher did that time in the university when he
+planned to commit suicide, and wrote to us about it,
+and then changed his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Neal and I have discovered that Father is not, and
+never was for one moment, insane. I can write that
+word now. I could not write it yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>Last night Neal decided to go straight to Father and
+ask him why he had been baptized. I advised against it,
+fearing that it might make Father worse again. Neal,
+fortunately this time, paid no more attention to my
+advice than he usually does.</p>
+
+<p>Neal was excited and frightened, though he denied it.
+He went rushing upstairs and followed his own quick
+knock straight into Irene and Christopher’s room.
+Christopher had forgotten, again, to lock their door.
+Irene had her hair done up in kid curlers. Neal apologized
+and pretended not to see. Irene had a slight heart
+attack. I think because she has assumed, without
+actually saying it, that her hair waved naturally. It was
+unlike Neal to tell about the kid curlers. He would not
+have told a month ago. Sometimes it seems as if
+Christopher were selling more of the Quilters than just
+their family estate. Yesterday, I thought, he had sold
+darling Father’s sanity. That is not true, because this
+is what Father told Neal.</p>
+
+<p>He said that he liked to pay his debts. He said that
+the accident had frightened Aunt Gracia and had
+started her to worrying, again, about his immortal soul.
+She thought that if he had died not in a state of grace,
+as she calls it, he would have been doomed to whatever
+Avernus the Siloamites had manufactured. He did not
+have their conception of it clearly in his mind, but he
+was sure that it was shockingly unpleasant. He said that
+Aunt Gracia had been a mother to us children, and had
+stood with him, shoulder to shoulder, all his life. He said
+she had enough to trouble her, just now, without being
+troubled about him. And for him to allow himself to
+be dipped, once, into Quilter River seemed to him a very
+small payment to make to her.</p>
+
+<p>Neal told Father that he could not go with him in
+that argument. Neal said that he thought hypocrisy
+was never justified. Father said he had tried to foil his
+conscience with the same casuistry, but that he could
+not. Father said kindness was its own justification. He
+said that the sacrifice he had made to please Gracia
+and to set her mind at ease was so genuine that it
+cancelled hypocrisy. Neal said that he did not believe in
+sacrifice. Father said, “Neither does Christopher.”</p>
+
+<p>Neal had to admit, of course, that it always depended
+upon the sacrifice and who made it. Neal could not
+understand why Aunt Gracia should have worried about
+Father, in particular. Neal said he had never heard of
+her worrying about any other Quilter’s immortal soul.</p>
+
+<p>Father told him why. Father said that we children
+were old enough to know, and that he had meant, for
+some time, to tell us.</p>
+
+<p>Judy, a few months before Neal was born, a man
+who lived in these parts then was courting Aunt Gracia.
+Aunt Gracia was infatuated with him. Mother never
+did like him, and she had once complained to Father
+that the man stared at her. But Father said Mother was
+so very beautiful that he could not blame anyone for
+looking at her. Still, Father kept an eye on the man;
+but he soon succeeded in convincing Father that he was
+interested only in Aunt Gracia.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, when Father knew that the man was on
+our place, Father stopped work a bit early. He did not
+distrust the man in the least, or he would not have
+allowed him to be courting Aunt Gracia. So he doesn’t
+know why he stopped work early that evening—he
+just did so. And, as he was coming through the oak
+grove, he heard Mother scream. Father spurred his
+Cayuse, and got there just in time to shoot and kill the
+man before he had harmed Mother.</p>
+
+<p>Father went straight to the sheriff. In a few days they
+had a trial. The jury acquitted Father without leaving
+the courtroom. And the judge apologized to Father for
+having bothered him with the affair.</p>
+
+<p>None of this has ever troubled Father’s conscience at
+all. He said there was but one thing to do, and he did it.
+But he says that, since Aunt Gracia deep in her own
+heart has never truly forgiven him, she thinks the Lord
+has not forgiven him either. She even thinks that the
+Lord would not forgive Father, unless Father made
+some special kowtow in his direction. So Father made
+the kowtow to gratify Aunt Gracia.</p>
+
+<p>Not long after the trouble, Father said, the missionaries
+of the Siloamites came to the house, and Aunt
+Gracia became a convert to their faith. The religion
+turned Aunt Gracia from a hard, bitter, broken person
+into a useful, serene, lovable woman again. Because
+of this, Father said, he felt that he also owed a certain
+debt to the Siloamites—a debt that he was glad to pay.</p>
+
+<p>Father said he told Aunt Gracia that he could not say
+her religious beliefs were true, because he did not know.
+He could not say that they were false, because he did
+not know. He knew nothing. But, since her religion was
+a beautiful, kind, and just religion, he hoped that
+it might be true. And that, if with nothing stronger
+for a foundation than hope, his baptism would mean
+anything to her, he was willing to go through with the
+ceremony. She told him that it would mean everything
+to her. He was baptized.</p>
+
+<p>Neal asked Father why Aunt Gracia’s foolish happiness
+meant more to him than the humiliation of the rest
+of the family, particularly yours, Judy, and Neal’s and
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>Father answered that if an act, which was both kind
+and useful, could humiliate his children, then he was
+sorry.</p>
+
+<p>Since you have asked for it twice, I will send you my
+poem about God. Grandfather says that it has a thought
+in it; but he says that he thinks my medium will prove
+to be the stately splendour of English prose. He named
+my poem for me.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="verse">
+
+  <p class="title">Omnipotence</p>
+
+  <p class="i0">God was sad, and he sighed,</p>
+  <p class="i1">“How little the earth men know,</p>
+  <p class="i0">They think I am satisfied</p>
+  <p class="i1">With my work down there below.</p>
+  <p class="i0">So they blame me for blunders of hand,</p>
+  <p class="i1">And they scorn me for tasks ill done.</p>
+  <p class="i0">Why can’t they understand</p>
+  <p class="i1">That I have only begun?</p>
+  <p class="i0">Do they think I am unaware</p>
+  <p class="i1">That much I have wrought has been wrong?</p>
+  <p class="i0">My burdens are heavy to bear.</p>
+  <p class="i1">Why won’t they help me along?”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>A knock, demand nicely moderated by deference,
+tapped on the glass of Lynn MacDonald’s office door.</p>
+
+<p>Her secretary said, “Shall I have your car brought
+around, Miss MacDonald, or shall I order your dinner
+sent up to you?”</p>
+
+<p>Lynn MacDonald added the last page of Lucy’s final
+letter to the pile of pages in front of her and smoothed
+it flat with her palms. Near the telephone were Neal
+Quilter’s letters, a package of neatly taped temptation.</p>
+
+<p>“Neither just now, Miss Kingsbury. I think I shall
+stay here for half an hour or so longer. But you must go
+straight home. I thought you had gone some time ago.”</p>
+
+<p>“I can’t help you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not now, thank you.”</p>
+
+<p>The tape untied easily. From the envelope with the
+blue figure 1 on it she took Neal Quilter’s first letter,
+and shook the thick folded pages free from their creases.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch10">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline-day">Wednesday night,</p>
+<p class="dateline">October 10, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+I am just home from Quilterville
+where I got your telegram asking me to tell you
+the truth about what has happened here. I told Grandfather
+and the others that they had no right to lie to you,
+and that they couldn’t fool you if they tried. I knew you
+could tell from the crazy telegram we sent to you that
+we were hiding something from you.</p>
+
+<p>Judy, I’m going to do for you what I’d want you to
+do for me. I’m going to tell you the truth. This business
+of sparing you and all that is sentimental twaddle. It
+isn’t only your right to know, it is your duty to know
+that Father did not die mercifully and peacefully and
+all that rot last Monday night.</p>
+
+<p>Father was murdered in his room. He was shot and
+killed. That would seem horror enough, wouldn’t it?
+That isn’t the horror. That isn’t why we have been lying
+to you. That isn’t what has beaten us. I’ll tell you what
+the real horror is. And yet—it can’t be true. If it can’t
+be true, it must be false. I’ll tell you why. I’ve thought
+it all out. I’ve thought it all out carefully. It can’t be
+true. I mean, it can’t be true that some one of us right
+here in the house that night, some member of our family,
+the Quilter family, murdered Father.</p>
+
+<p>That is the first thing we have to do, Judy, you and I.
+We have to prove that no member of the Quilter family
+murdered Father. When that is out of the way, we can
+think straight again. We can go ahead and find out who
+did do it—damn him! And we’ll attend the hanging.</p>
+
+<p>That’s why, before I tell you anything else, I’ll have
+to tell you what I have thought out about the family.
+You know I’m not as crumby about the family as the
+rest of you are. You know I can think more clearly
+about them than you could. I know that we are a doggone
+faulty bunch. I have accepted that. I think it wise
+to accept that, first.</p>
+
+<p>Beginning with Grandfather, who is the best of the
+lot now Father is dead. Grandfather is a sentimentalist,
+and something of a poseur, and—— Let it go at that.
+What’s the use? Next to Father, Grandfather is the
+decentest person, man or woman, that I have ever
+known or ever shall know. He’s not perfect, I suppose.
+But he comes too darn near being for me to point his
+imperfections. Any denial of wrongdoing for Grandfather
+would be desecration. Grandfather’s world
+revolved around Father—and Aunt Gracia and Lucy.</p>
+
+<p>Now for the handsome Christopher. Chris is wormy
+with selfishness, and lazy as a dog, and weak as water,
+and conceited. All right. But when it comes to
+murder—he’s as clean out of it as Grandfather or Lucy, and
+there’s no sense in dodging it. Chris would half kill
+Father with worry—he’s been at that, hard, for six
+months now. But, in his way, we are bound to grant
+that Chris loved Father. He wouldn’t shoot him, if he
+had the best reason in the world for doing it. We know
+that. And we know, too, that right now Chris needed
+to have Father alive, as an excuse for selling Q 2 and to
+manage the smaller ranch Chris said he was going to
+get for us. Father’s death puts a decided crimp in
+Chris’s plans.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe. She’s vain and affected, and has her share of
+common ordinary faults. But could any living being, in
+his senses, suggest that Olympe would shoot a dying
+kitten to put it out of its misery? If Chris has sold us out,
+as he was threatening to do, Father’s ability to establish
+us on another place was Olympe’s best chance for keeping
+out of the poorhouse she’s been talking about all the
+time lately. Olympe loved Father.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia. She has had her mind all mussed up
+for years with that fool religion of hers. She has gone a
+bit sour, of late, as the rest of us have, from overwork
+and overworry. But anyone who would whisper murder
+in the same breath with Aunt Gracia’s name would be a
+liar and a criminal fool, and I know it, and you know it,
+and everyone who has ever seen her knows it. Just
+writing it makes me hot. Aunt Gracia loved Father.</p>
+
+<p>Irene. She is one of the crumbiest specimens I ever
+saw. She’s at the bottom of Chris’s threatening to sell
+the place—she has nagged him into it. She has caused
+all sorts of trouble here from the first night she came.
+I’ve hated her like a burr under the saddle. I hate her
+yet. Partly because of that I know that she would not
+commit a murder—could not have committed this
+murder. It took a smart person, and a plucky person,
+and a darn tricky person to get away with this business
+on Monday night. Irene is a first-rate idiot. She is a
+chatterbox, and a coward. Tell me that a woman who
+is afraid of a cow will walk into a room and shoot a
+man dead? Not on your life she wouldn’t. If she had
+wanted Father out of the way, she might have tried slow
+poison. She had no reason for wanting Father out of the
+way. She didn’t love him, or anyone. But she liked
+Father; she couldn’t help it. Three months ago Father
+gave up trying to influence Chris in any way about
+selling Q 2. Irene needed Father alive for the same
+reason Chris needed him—his ill health as an excuse for
+selling us out; his ability to manage the new place for us.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy and I were the only other people in the house on
+Monday night. The missionaries who had been visiting
+here left Q 2 early Monday morning, and old Dong Lee
+went in with them to Portland to see a dentist.</p>
+
+<p>I’ll be damned if I’ll defend Lucy. And Neal Quilter
+didn’t do it. I know that. The others here may not know
+it. If I were any one of them, I’d suspect Neal Quilter,
+and with good cause.</p>
+
+<p>Read this, Jude. I’ve had plenty of reason to think,
+here lately, that Father was losing his mind. His giving
+up, and allowing Chris to plan to sell us out. And then
+that baptism junk. Lucy wrote it to you. Father’s
+explanation satisfied her. It didn’t satisfy me—not by a
+long shot; not from Father. Father was no sap. Well,
+then, suppose I knew that he’d rather be cleanly dead
+than living with his mind worse than dead—and he
+would. Suppose I knew that Father would rather die
+than to have the Quilter name tainted with insanity?
+He would have. You know Father, and Grandfather,
+and their “ten generations of sound-minded, clean-bodied
+men and women.” All right. I am smart enough,
+and I have pluck enough to have planned this thing, and
+to have done it.</p>
+
+<p>Read this. Having Father dead doesn’t do any of us
+any good. Having Chris die would have saved the Q 2
+Ranch. Since Chris had no sons, the ranch would have
+gone to Grandfather. Well, Father and Chris have
+changed rooms lately. All of us were always butting
+into the wrong rooms. I starred at it. Irene was
+downstairs in the sitting room when Father was shot.
+Suppose I had meant to sneak in and kill Chris, and had
+been so excited—I would have been excited, I suppose—that
+I got into the wrong room. Suppose I had seen a
+man there in bed, and suppose I’d shot on the instant,
+thinking that he was Chris. That is, suppose I had meant
+to kill Chris and had killed Father, by mistake.</p>
+
+<p>I am the only member of the family who is unsentimental
+enough to do it. Or mean enough. Or, funny how
+we’ll stand up for our precious selves, loyal enough to
+Q 2 Ranch. Not long ago I told Lucy that I’d stop at
+nothing, including bloodshed, to save the place. I said it.
+I meant it. I must have had murder in my mind—or
+the potentialities for murder—to have said a thing of
+the sort.</p>
+
+<p>You see, assuming that I did it, it works out smoothly
+enough. I didn’t do it. I swear to God that I know I did
+not. If I had done it, I’d know it. I didn’t do it. Lucy
+knows that I didn’t. Lucy knows that within two
+minutes after we’d heard the shot, she came running
+into my room, through our inside door, and found
+him—me, I mean—hammering at the door into the hall,
+trying to break the damn thing down. But then you
+know, Jude, that Lucy would lie herself into Hades to
+save me from being suspected. This, though, isn’t a
+question of her needing to lie. I mean, she did find me
+locked in my room. I know that. It is a fact. I’ve got to
+keep hold of it, and of one or two other facts that I have.
+You see, you and I have to prove, first, that I didn’t
+murder Father. I mean, that none of the Quilters did
+do it. I mean——</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Later, Wednesday night.</p>
+
+<p>I stopped writing there and went out and walked
+to the road and back. Breathed some sweet snow air into
+my lungs. Cleared my head. Time I did, I guess. That
+last page or so seems to be rather raving. Sorry. But I
+am going to send it along because I want you to have
+all this straight, and because, as Grandfather always
+says, we do have to think this thing through—straight
+through.</p>
+
+<p>Straight thinking isn’t easy as yet. Writing does me a
+pile of good. To write a thing you have to get it more or
+less into shape. That is what I’m going to do. I’m going
+to sit here—I am staying up for a few nights—and write
+the whole thing out, in black letters on white paper to
+you. It will keep my thoughts in order—you’ve no
+notion what a filthy mess they have been in for the past
+two days. It will do more than that.</p>
+
+<p>I said, in the beginning of this, that it was your duty
+to know the truth. This is what I meant. It would be
+just like you not to think so, but you’ve a long way the
+best of it, being off in Colorado and not in the midst
+of this hell here. You should be able to think better and
+to see more clearly than I can. I’ll give you a straight
+account of facts from here. You’ll have the enormous
+advantage of perspective. Together we’ll get the truth.
+We have to. You and I are young. The others are old.
+I don’t wish to be crumby and sentimental about it.
+But you and I won’t even have a right to die until we
+find who murdered Father. Out in the air, just now, I
+decided that, if a member of the family did do it—then
+we must find that out, too. You know, Judy; if not for
+the sake of punishment, at least for the sake of justice
+to the others.</p>
+
+<p>Take a brace then, dear, and get ready for the facts.
+They aren’t sweet, I’ll warn you.</p>
+
+<p>On Monday evening we all milled around in the
+sitting room, about the same as usual, as far as I can
+remember. I have been so darn grouchy, lately, though,
+and so much interested in <i>Descent of Man</i> that I haven’t
+paid much attention to the folks. I have asked Chris
+about Monday evening (one doesn’t quizz Grandfather),
+and he says that no one acted nervous, or excited, or
+peculiar in any way. An opinion worth nothing, I am
+afraid, since he was so busy spooning with Irene that he
+probably would not have noticed a fit on the hearthrug.
+I think perhaps Lucy will know whether anyone acted
+in an unusual way. But Lucy, poor little kid, isn’t fit
+to be questioned just now. Aunt Gracia agrees with
+Chris. So, for the present, we’ll record that everyone
+acted as he usually does act.</p>
+
+<p>Around nine o’clock Olympe went up to bed. Then
+Grandfather went, and Aunt Gracia went with him, as
+usual, to turn down his bed and so on. Chris and Irene
+ambled out together. I waited until I was sure I
+wouldn’t meet them hugging in the hall, and then I went
+and suggested to Lucy that it was time for her to come.
+She said she would when she had finished the chapter
+she was reading. I heard her come into her room, just
+before I went to sleep. I don’t know, nor does anyone
+seem to know, what time Father came up to his room.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing I knew I heard the shot, loud as a
+cannon, bang through the house. I jumped out of bed
+and ran to my door. It was locked. I ran back to the
+table and got the lamp lighted and began to hunt around
+for the key. I don’t know why, but I thought that the
+door was locked on the inside. I couldn’t find the key.
+I was scared. I grabbed a chair and began to try to
+bang through the door with it. At about the second
+bang, Lucy came running into my room in her nightgown,
+screaming my name, and what was it, and that her
+door was locked. I didn’t pay much attention to her. I
+was crazy by that time, for the house was a bedlam.
+Everyone was trying to do what I was trying to
+do—get doors open. And everyone was shouting and
+screaming to everyone else.</p>
+
+<p>I had busted two of the bedroom chairs before I
+realized what a fool I was—trying to crash a heavy oak
+door with a frail maple chair.</p>
+
+<p>I noticed that Lucy had gone. I ran into her room. Her
+lamp was lighted, and she was showing more sense than
+I had shown by trying nail files and hairpins in her
+keyhole. All the time the noise in the hall kept up.
+Everyone was shouting and calling and rattling his door and
+trying to bang it down—everyone, that is, but Olympe.
+I’ll tell you about her later.</p>
+
+<p>I ran to Lucy’s window. I had some wild idea of
+getting out that way. For a second, then, I almost
+keeled over. Things seemed to break loose and stampede
+in my head, and the only thought I could corral
+had to do with Aunt Gracia’s judgment day. It took me
+fully half a minute to realize that the new world out
+there meant merely a heavy fall of snow. I opened the
+window. Snow was two inches deep on the sill. I leaned
+out. A cloud uncovered a ghastly moon. The snow had
+stopped. Lucy came and caught hold of me and said
+that we could not get out of that window. All this seems
+unimportant; but I wish I had as definite an account of
+everything that went on behind the other locked doors.
+This may not seem unimportant to you. I am trying to
+give you facts. You must try to interpret them.</p>
+
+<p>I knew that Lucy was right about attempting to get
+out of the window. I closed it. She was shivering from
+cold and fright, so I got her wrapper and made her put
+it on. She went back to her job of trying to unlock the
+door with a nail file. I looked on her bureau to find
+something that might work better. I noticed the time by her
+little clock. It said ten minutes to twelve. It had seemed
+much longer, but I believe it had been less than ten
+minutes since we had heard the shot. Chris said that he
+looked at his clock, as he lighted his lamp, and it said
+a quarter to twelve. That tallies closely enough, I guess.</p>
+
+<p>Chris missed Irene, for the first time, when the shot
+woke him, and he admits that he was senseless from
+fright. If he hadn’t been, he could have climbed out of
+his window and have run along the porch roof right
+there to the window of Father’s room. He did not know,
+of course, that the shot had been fired in Father’s room.
+But, if he’d had his senses—something that none of us
+did have—he surely would have used the window and
+the porch roof to get with some other member of the
+family.</p>
+
+<p>I found a glove buttoner on Lucy’s bureau and tried
+it in the keyhole—fool’s work, of course. I think the
+others were trying the same racket, though, for most
+of the noise had stopped by that time. I suppose because
+Lucy and I were together was the reason that we didn’t
+call to the others. All the rest of them called. Aunt
+Gracia, in particular, kept shouting to Grandfather,
+over and over: “Father! Are you hurt? Father! Are
+you all right?” Lucy and I could hear Grandfather
+answering her, but Aunt Gracia seemed not to hear him. I
+think she was too excited, and too frightened to listen.
+Chris kept shouting like a Comanche for Irene.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder, Jude, how we all knew that some terrible
+thing had happened? Nothing terrible ever had
+happened on Q 2. Why, then, the minute we all heard a
+gunshot in the house, late at night, did it throw us into
+a panic? I suppose the locked doors would be the
+answer. Yes, of course it was the locked doors and not
+the sound of the shot that locoed all of us.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy and I were still monkeying with the lock when
+Irene shoved the key into it. She unlocked the door and
+said, or sort of mewed at us, “Your father!” and ran
+across the hall to Chris’s room.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy’s door was the first one that Irene unlocked.
+Lucy was in front of me; so she was the first one into
+Father’s room—that is, since Irene had left it. Father
+was lying in bed. Irene had pulled the counterpane
+close under his chin. Lucy ran to him and caught him
+up in her arms.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy is a thoroughbred all the way through. She
+didn’t scream. She didn’t faint. She didn’t utter a sound.
+She turned her head and looked at me. That was all.
+The trouble is, the same paralyzed look is still on her
+face. It has not worn off, not in two days.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch11">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>I can’t star myself, much, for the next few minutes.
+Chris, Grandfather, Aunt Gracia, and Irene were in
+the room before I had realized that Father was dead.
+Then I thought that he had shot himself.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather took Lucy’s place beside Father. He
+looked up at us and told us, “Richard has been shot and
+killed.”</p>
+
+<p>It would be Grandfather, wouldn’t it, out of the whole
+herd of us, who would know without any proof, simply
+and surely know, that Father was not a suicide? I don’t
+mean to be crumby and sentimental about it; but it is
+pretty rotten to think that, though Father had spent his
+life earning such a surety, Grandfather was the only one
+of us who would give it to him, then, on the minute and
+without proof. I wish I might even say that, having
+been told, we accepted Grandfather’s statement on the
+instant. We did not. No, not us.</p>
+
+<p>Chris said something about where was the gun. He
+began to tear through the bedding hunting for it. So
+did Aunt Gracia. So did Irene. So did I. There was no
+gun to be found. Father was not a suicide. He was shot,
+from a distance of at least several feet, with a .38
+calibre gun. Since every man in the county who has a
+gun has a .38 calibre Colt’s, we are not, in spite of
+Chris’s contentions to the contrary, going to be able to
+do much with that information. The point I am making,
+now, is that Father was not a suicide. I’ll go into it
+more fully, later.</p>
+
+<p>It was Lucy who first called our attention to the open
+window and to the rope. Now, Judy, read this carefully
+and see what you can do with it.</p>
+
+<p>The window was wide open from the bottom. There
+was a thick rope hanging over the sill and out of it. One
+end of the rope had been tied with a slip knot around
+one of the heavy legs of the bed. The rope went across
+the carpet to the window, across the window sill, across
+the porch roof beneath the window, and dangled to the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>Looks easy, doesn’t it? Some dirty cur had shot
+Father and had got out of the window by means of the
+rope. But the rope was covered with snow, and there
+was not a handprint in the snow on the window sill, nor
+a footprint in the new snow on the roof.</p>
+
+<p>When I saw that rope, I would have jumped right
+out on to the roof, if Chris had not stopped me. He told
+me not to track the snow. He said that we must have a
+lantern. I ran down to the kitchen and got one. Read
+this, Jude. I have told you once, but I want to tell you
+again. We swung the lantern out over the porch roof,
+and the snow was a clean, unbroken sheet.</p>
+
+<p>Chris looked at the clock on Father’s mantelpiece. It
+said ten minutes past twelve. Twenty-five minutes, at
+the most, since we had heard the shot. Not long enough
+for the snow, if it had been snowing hard, to have
+covered the footprints. We went to the window again. No
+snow was falling. And I know that none had been falling
+at ten minutes to twelve. There is no dodging it: the
+rope had not been used. Or, as Chris keeps insisting, it
+had not been used as a means of escape. Since he can’t
+produce any sort of theory as to what it might have been
+used for, I’ll leave you that, for what it is worth, and
+get along.</p>
+
+<p>The murderer had not climbed out of the window.
+There were, then, just two things that he could have
+done:</p>
+
+<p>1. He could have got out of the house some other way.</p>
+
+<p>2. He could have stayed in the house.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather said: “He has not escaped this way. He
+has escaped some other way.”</p>
+
+<p>“If he has escaped,” Chris said. “If he hasn’t, he is
+not going to.”</p>
+
+<p>Irene screamed, “He may still be right here in this
+room,” and would have had a heart attack, if there had
+been time; but there wasn’t.</p>
+
+<p>With Grandfather directing, we made a quick,
+thorough search of Father’s room. Chris, clinging to the
+suicide theory, I suppose, devoted his time to the bed.
+(He made one queer discovery; but, since it cannot
+amount to anything, I’ll get along and tell you about it
+later.) He found no gun, of course. The only gun in
+Father’s room was in his clothes closet, twenty feet
+away from the bed. His gun was fully loaded, and behind
+some boxes on the top closet shelf. You don’t need
+this, but I’ll give it to you. With the wound, if he had
+had strength to move, which he had not, Father could
+not have moved without leaving a trail of blood. Irene
+had blood on the front of her wrapper and on her sleeve.
+She got it there when she had been lifting Father.
+Those were the only blood-stains anywhere that were
+not on the bed covers.</p>
+
+<p>The room was easy to search. There was nothing anyone
+could have got under but the bed, and nothing to
+hide behind. We pounded through the clothes closet, and
+that ended the search there.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather said that Chris, he, and I would go to
+search the house. He said for Aunt Gracia, Irene, and
+Lucy to stay in Father’s room, lock the door after us
+when we left, and close and lock the window.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy said, “But where is Olympe?”</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>We all, including Grandfather, forgot the plan of
+having the ladies lock themselves in Father’s room. We
+all went rushing like mad things down to Olympe’s
+room. Irene kept mooing: “I unlocked her door. I
+unlocked her door last of all.”</p>
+
+<p>The door was unlocked. There, stretched straight on
+the floor in her nightgown, was Olympe. Irene screamed
+as only Irene can scream. She thought, I guess, as I
+thought—that Olympe had been murdered, too. Aunt
+Gracia ran to her. She found that she was breathing all
+right, that she had merely fainted.</p>
+
+<p>Every second seemed precious to us, just then. So,
+after we had made a quick but absolutely complete
+search of Olympe’s room, we left Lucy and Irene with
+her, and went on to go through the rest of the house.</p>
+
+<p>I had brought two lanterns from the kitchen. I had a
+notion of taking one of them and running out to search
+the grounds. Grandfather pointed that, if the fellow
+was outside he was, and far on his way. But, if he was
+inside, we had a chance of finding him and keeping him
+here.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia had insisted upon coming with us men.
+That made Grandfather, Aunt Gracia, Chris, and I the
+ones who searched the house that first hour. Grandfather
+said for Aunt Gracia and Chris to take one of
+the lanterns and search the front of the house, and for
+him and me to take the other lantern and search the
+back of the house. Chris got the gun out of Father’s
+closet and, at Grandfather’s bidding, I got
+Grandfather’s gun out of the commode drawer in his room.
+We thought it fortunate, just then, that both guns had
+their chambers full, ready for use.</p>
+
+<p>While we had been getting the guns, Grandfather had
+been locking the bedroom doors on the outside. Irene
+had left the keys in the locks, of course. Grandfather
+explained, as he finished that job, that if the man was
+hiding in any of those rooms he would stay there until
+we were ready for him, or break his neck trying to get
+out of a window.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather and I went down the back stairway. We
+found the door at the foot of it locked on the sitting-room
+side. (Irene had locked it earlier in the evening.
+That comes in her story. Perhaps I should have told
+her story to you first of all. But I think I shall do better
+if I try to keep to the order of events as they came to me.)</p>
+
+<p>As Grandfather and I ran back upstairs, to go down
+the front stairway, I happened to think that the door
+to the attic stairway had had no key, and that it should
+be locked. Grandfather told me that he had locked it
+with the key to my door. I am telling you this, in
+particular, to show you how quick, and fast, and
+straight Grandfather was thinking that night. But for
+him and his alertness some loophole might have been
+left, something might have been overlooked, as Dr. Joe
+persists. I know that with Grandfather directing as he
+directed all that night, nothing was overlooked.</p>
+
+<p>We made a thorough search of every inch of space
+downstairs. Then Grandfather insisted on going with
+Chris to search the cellar. He asked me to stay on the
+first floor with Aunt Gracia. She and I went all through
+the downstairs rooms and halls again, and found
+nothing. We went back upstairs to Olympe’s room.
+She had revived, but had not got hold of anything as
+yet. She looked old, years older than Grandfather, lying
+there in her bed, asking over and over: “What is it?
+Why are you all up? What is the trouble?”</p>
+
+<p>I thought that we should tell her. The others wouldn’t
+let her be told. They said we must wait until she was
+stronger. Aunt Gracia skipped out to get some peach
+brandy for Olympe. I noticed, then, that Lucy was
+fingering a gun, fooling with it as she might have been
+fooling with a hairbrush. I went and took it away from
+her and asked her where she had got it.</p>
+
+<p>“It was under Olympe on the floor when we picked
+her up,” Lucy said. “I hadn’t really noticed what it
+was.”</p>
+
+<p>It was Uncle Phineas’s old .32 Colt’s. I broke it. The
+chambers were all empty; so it could not have been
+either harmful or useful.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather came upstairs. He said that he and Chris
+had found no one in the cellar, and no traces of anyone’s
+having been there. He had left Chris downstairs, with
+Father’s gun, guarding the lower floor. He said for me
+to go down and help Chris, while he searched the
+attic and the upper floor. I couldn’t quite see Grandfather
+searching the most dangerous parts of the house,
+alone, while I went to squire Chris. Before I had time
+to object, Aunt Gracia, who had come back with the
+peach brandy, said nonsense. She would go down with
+Chris, if he needed someone, and I should go with
+Grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>Since Uncle Phineas’s old gun was in my hands, I
+hunted around and found some cartridges for it, and
+gave Grandfather’s gun back to him. The attic was
+the same old story. We were pretty thankful up there
+for Aunt Gracia’s housekeeping niceties. It was easier
+to search than the parlour had been. All the trunks,
+chests, and boxes against the wall—nothing but vacant
+spaces. Grandfather and I opened all the chests and
+trunks that weren’t locked—that was all of them
+except Irene’s three big trunks—and poked through all
+the boxes, big and little. The partitioned room up there
+was as clean and as empty as a dish in the cupboard.
+The bed covers were all put away, the mattress rolled
+back, the wardrobe open to air.</p>
+
+<p>We came downstairs. But before we had unlocked a
+bedroom door, Chris shouted to us from the lower hall
+and asked us to come down.</p>
+
+<p>He had got an idea, and a doggone good one. He had
+been to all the downstairs windows and doors. Each
+window sill had rolls of unbroken snow on it, and so
+had each of the three door sills. Unbroken, that is,
+except for the slight crumbling caused by Chris’s having
+opened the windows and doors. He had put candles into
+empty cans—they throw a much better light than a
+lantern does, you know—and we used them at each
+downstairs window and door. Read this, Judy. Nowhere
+near a window, nowhere near a door, was there
+a footprint nor a break in the snow of any kind. As far
+as we could throw the light, say eight to ten yards at
+least, the snow was a clean unbroken sheet.</p>
+
+<p>Put it like this, to make it clearer. The fellow had not
+got away before the shot was fired. If he had got away
+since, he would have had to leave some sort of tracks
+in the snow. There were no tracks in the snow. Ergo:
+he had not got away. Ergo: he was in the house.</p>
+
+<p>I said, “He is right here in this house!”</p>
+
+<p>Chris cursed and said that he was. “What’s more,”
+he added, “we’ll keep him right here. I think we’ll find
+a good use for him—later.”</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Well, Jude, I guess we kept him here. I guess he is
+still here with us. We spent all that night, or, rather,
+that morning, searching and re-searching the house and
+guarding to keep anyone from leaving it. No one left it.
+Up to the present, two o’clock Thursday morning, we
+have found no one in hiding here.</p>
+
+<p>About four o’clock Tuesday morning Chris took a
+notion to go to Quilterville and inform the sheriff—Gus
+Wildoch still has the job, you’ll remember—and
+telegraph to Dr. Joe. He started out of the back door
+down toward the barn. Irene stood in the doorway and
+yelped until she made Chris come back. I couldn’t
+blame her much. Grandfather thought, too, that it
+would be wiser to wait until dawn.</p>
+
+<p>When Chris came back, we tested our lights’ efficiency
+on his tracks. They showed clearly. And, when
+daylight came, there they were—a deep line of woven
+footprints going part way to the barn and coming back
+to the house. Any other tracks, which had been made
+any time after the snow had stopped, around
+midnight, would have shown as plainly as those that
+Chris had made.</p>
+
+<p>I didn’t think of it at the time, but I believe now that
+that fact had something to do with curbing Chris’s
+enthusiasm for bringing Gus Wildoch to the place. At
+any rate, instead of leaving at dawn, Chris yielded
+to Aunt Gracia’s urging and waited for some of the
+hot coffee she was making.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after six o’clock we gathered about the table
+in the dining room. Lucy had finally crawled into bed
+with Olympe, and they had both got off to sleep about
+five; so, naturally, we did not disturb them.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia poured Grandfather’s coffee, passed it,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>“No one has left the place since Dick was killed last
+night. No one is hiding in the house at present. That
+can mean just this: Whoever murdered Dick is in this
+house and is not in hiding.”</p>
+
+<p>How was that for a stunner, Judy, after the night we
+had all put in?</p>
+
+<p>Irene stuttered something about not understanding.</p>
+
+<p>Whether she did or not, and I’ll bet she did,
+Grandfather and Chris and I understood right enough. For
+the first time in my life, I guess, I heard Grandfather’s
+voice go harsh when he spoke to Aunt Gracia.</p>
+
+<p>“My daughter,” he said, “that conclusion is
+premature.”</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia replied, “I’m sorry, Father; but I have
+been sitting quiet for hours, praying for guidance and
+thinking. I can reach no other conclusion.”</p>
+
+<p>We had tried to get her to stay in Olympe’s room
+with Olympe and Irene and Lucy, but we could not
+keep her there. So, at last, we allowed her to sit in the
+lower front hall through the night. It seemed the safest
+place, since we had the front stairway door locked. We
+thought that no one would risk making a getaway
+through the front door. I gave her Uncle Phineas’s
+old gun and I took my rifle. Grandfather stayed in the
+back of the house with his gun. Chris kept making a
+steady round of the house, using Father’s gun. Chris
+and I changed places—I was in the upper hall—from
+three to four o’clock. At four, because she insisted,
+and because we felt certain there was no danger by
+that time, we allowed Aunt Gracia to make another
+thorough search with Chris. Irene, who had come out
+of Olympe’s room when Chris had started for Quilterville,
+tagged along with him and Aunt Gracia on this
+last search of theirs. Except for not whistling up Whatof
+and Keeper, which did not occur to any of us until they
+showed up for their breakfasts on Tuesday morning, I
+can’t see that we overlooked a single bet. Can you?</p>
+
+<p>Returning to our coffee-cup conversation, Grandfather
+said, in answer to Aunt Gracia’s reply about
+thinking: “I have been thinking myself, dear—or
+attempting to do so. We have all been trying to think,
+I fancy. I, too, have reached but one conclusion: that
+constructive thinking is impossible for any of us, as
+yet. Minds in the states that our minds are in just now
+are illy working machines, Gracia. We’ll do well not to
+rely on them, for the present.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Father,” Aunt Gracia actually said, “that won’t
+do. Christopher is going, in a few minutes, to town
+for the sheriff. Before he gets here, with other outsiders,
+it is necessary for us to put our minds in order. Seven
+people were in this house last night after Dick was
+killed. No one could have left the house without making
+footprints in the snow. There are no footprints. We
+knew that in the night. This morning has proved it.
+There are no footprints. Whether we are willing to admit
+it or not, each one of us here knows that no one is
+hiding in this house. That brings us to this, and evasion
+is useless: One of us seven must be the person who
+killed Dick.”</p>
+
+<p>“Seven people, yes,” Grandfather said. “But seven
+people all locked in their rooms. No judgment that does
+not take into consideration those locked doors, is
+sound.”</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia said, “Six people locked in their rooms.”</p>
+
+<p>Judy, if she had smashed a bomb down on the dining
+table she couldn’t have caused a worse explosion. I
+don’t know what the others had thought about Irene
+being out, wandering around alone in the halls at
+midnight. I had not thought anything. I hadn’t had time
+to give it a thought. Grandfather was right, as he always
+is, about our minds being broken machines that night
+and morning. Mine is yet, for that matter. I’d be crazy
+if it weren’t for the order I was getting by writing this
+all out to you.</p>
+
+<p>Irene began a bout of violent hysteria, screeching
+wedlock’s warcry at Chris: “I told you so! I told you
+so!”</p>
+
+<p>Chris lost his head completely. He cursed, and
+banged the table with his fists, and shook his long
+forefinger, arm’s length, at Aunt Gracia, and shouted.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather stood up, straight, at the head of the
+table. Gosh, but he can tower! I’ll remember him like
+that. He said to Chris, “Sir, restrain yourself, and
+comfort and quiet your wife.” He turned to Aunt
+Gracia. “Daughter, explain to me the meaning of your
+last statement.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I thought you knew, Father,” Aunt Gracia
+said, “that Irene was not locked in her room last night.”</p>
+
+<p>While Grandfather said: “I had not known that. I
+had thought that Christopher had been the first to
+succeed in opening his bedroom door, and that he had
+sent Irene to release us while he stayed with Dick,” he
+kept on towering. Then he put his palms flat on the
+table and, slowly, sat down again in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>Chris roared, “Uncle Thaddeus, are you going to sit
+calmly there and allow Gracia to accuse my wife of
+murder?”</p>
+
+<p>Irene said: “She did it herself. That’s why she is
+accusing me.”</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Judith, this conversation took place on the Q 2
+Ranch, in the year 1900.</p>
+
+<p>By some blessed miracle, Grandfather did not hear
+this speech of Irene’s. He spoke to Chris. “I think
+Gracia made no such accusation, Christopher.” And to
+Aunt Gracia, “You meant to make none, did you,
+Daughter?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” Aunt Gracia answered. “I said, only, that
+Irene was not locked in her room last night. That she
+was in the hall, with the keys, and that she let us all
+out of our rooms. I think that circumstance should be
+explained.”</p>
+
+<p>Chris started up a lot of con talk about his wife doing
+no explaining. Grandfather said, “If you please,
+Christopher?” and little Chris subsided.</p>
+
+<p>“My dear,” Grandfather said to Irene, “if you will,
+please tell us exactly what occurred last night with
+reference to yourself. I ask for this, you all understand,
+not as an explanation of Irene’s actions, but as a possible
+means for helping us all forward toward the truth.”</p>
+
+<p>Irene lifted her head from Chris’s padded shoulder
+and looked first at Aunt Gracia and then at me. I felt
+as if she were clawing those light blue eyes of hers into
+my face. I thought: “She thinks I murdered Father,”
+and looked up to see Grandfather following her stare.
+I met his eyes. They didn’t claw, Judy. They did something
+worse than that. Just for an instant, before they
+looked away, they speculated—they doubted. You’ll
+say I imagined that. All right. Remember the time we
+tried lying to Grandfather about the Evans kids’
+bobsled? Did we imagine that look, that time?</p>
+
+<p>Say, Jude, wouldn’t it be horrible if a person could
+do some vile thing and then, from the shock of it,
+or something, forget about it right off? I mean—not
+know that he had done it. But Lucy was right in my
+room, within two minutes after we had heard the shot.</p>
+
+<p>No matter. What I am trying to get to is Irene’s
+story. This was the first time that any of us, except
+Chris, I suppose, had heard it. That is why I have
+waited to tell you. If I am to get this thing organized, at
+all, I’ll have to keep the events in order as nearly as I
+can.</p>
+
+<p>I think I’ll step outside again, and get another whiff
+or two of cold air before I begin on Irene’s story. I
+don’t know how important it is, or may be. But I want
+to present it to you as clearly as I can.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch12">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<p>One thing I am bound to say for Irene: she was
+eager to tell what she knew. Chris did not wish
+her to tell. She insisted and got snaky with him for
+trying to stop her.</p>
+
+<p>She said that, on Monday night, she couldn’t sleep;
+so she got up—she thought it was then about ten o’clock,
+though she was not certain—put on her slippers and her
+wrapper, took a candle, and went downstairs to the
+sitting room. She said she was going to read, and she
+was afraid a light in the bedroom would disturb Chris.
+She said, also, that she was cold, and she thought the
+fire might still be burning in the sitting-room fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>The fire was burning. She mended it, lighted the
+hanging lamp, and finished reading her book. She
+thought that it was close around eleven o’clock when
+she went upstairs again. The door to her room and
+Chris’s was locked. She said that she and Chris had had
+a “trifling quarrel” before Chris had gone to sleep. She
+thought, in consequence, that he had misunderstood
+her reason for leaving the room and had locked her out.
+(That gives a fair notion of her perceptions. She’d been
+married to Chris for seven months, and yet she could
+fancy that he was capable of a cad’s trick such as that.
+Chris is faulty, but he’s no mucker.) She said that this
+made her very, very unhappy and a little bit angry.
+She didn’t desire the family to know that Chris could
+do such a thing; so without making a particle of noise,
+she tiptoed downstairs again and made a bed for
+herself on the sofa, with the Indian blankets.</p>
+
+<p>Her next move was to pull the bolts on the doors to
+the front and back stairways. She did that because, she
+said, she felt sure Chris would feel ashamed of himself
+before long and come down and try to make it up with
+her. I guess she was pretty hot, all right, for she said
+she thought the bolted doors would show him that two
+could play at that lock-out game. Locked doors are
+a mania of hers, anyway. So is insomnia, though she
+sleeps until noon often enough. This trick of going
+downstairs to read was, as far as I know, a new one
+with her. I fancy the trifling quarrel was responsible
+for that.</p>
+
+<p>After she had locked the doors, she blew out the light,
+got into her sofa bed, and settled for a long, comfortable
+weeping spell. Or, as she explained it, she lay down
+and cried herself to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>She was wakened by the sound of the shot upstairs.
+The room Father had then—Chris’s old room—is right
+above the sitting room, you know. She said she thought
+it was Chris shooting himself because she had been
+unkind to him. (She is the sort of woman to whom such
+an action would seem not merely reasonable but also
+admirable.) She jumped from the sofa, got into her
+wrapper and slippers, lighted her candle, ran through
+the rooms, unbolted the door to the front stairway, and
+ran upstairs. All the noises had begun up there, she
+said, before she had got the door unbolted. If anyone
+had been running through the upper hall, or trying to
+come down the back stairway, there would have been
+no chance of her having heard him.</p>
+
+<p>She started straight down the hall for Chris’s and
+her room. She says she is sure she did not get hold of
+the idea, then, that we were all locked in our rooms.
+She said that she did hear Grandfather shout, “Let
+me out of here!” but she was too badly frightened to
+make any meanings at all.</p>
+
+<p>She passed Olympe’s room and Grandfather’s room
+on her left, and Aunt Gracia’s, and yours, and Lucy’s
+on her right before she came to Father’s door. It was
+standing open. The light was burning, so she ran in
+there. For the minute, and for the first time, too, she
+had forgotten about the exchange of rooms.</p>
+
+<p>She said that, when she saw Father lying there in
+bed, it took her a minute to realize that he was not
+Christopher. Father was lying with his head tipped back
+on his pillows, and with blood streaming out over his
+nightshirt. She ran to him. She put her candle on the
+table there, and sort of lifted him in her arms. That
+was when she got her wrapper smeared with blood. She
+says he turned his eyes toward the open window and
+murmured, “Got away.” At first, Irene was certain
+that Father had said, “Got away.” But, when Aunt
+Gracia questioned her, she admitted that Father spoke
+indistinctly and that he might have said, “Go away.”
+But I know that her best impression is that Father
+said, “Got away.” Then, she declares that Father said,
+quite distinctly, “Red mask.” There was no shaking
+her certainty about that. She said that he used his lips
+to say it, and that she was watching them, and that
+she would swear that he said, “Red mask.”</p>
+
+<p>It stands to reason, Judy, that Father did not say
+“Red mask.” Now what could he have said that sounds
+like red mask? Repeat it over to yourself. I have; but
+I can’t get it. “Dead” sounds something like “red.”
+“Dead past.” That’s senseless, isn’t it? “May ask,”
+sounds like “mask,” and takes the lip pressure that
+Irene insists he made. But “may ask” is meaningless,
+isn’t it? I can’t get it. I am hoping that Lucy may be
+able to, later. She is such a little word wizard.</p>
+
+<p>Irene knew that Father was dying. She thought
+that he had shot himself. She did not try to question
+him. We can’t blame her for that. She wanted to do
+something for him, but she didn’t know what to do.
+She attempted to ease his position; to stop the flow
+of blood with the sheets.</p>
+
+<p>He said our names: “Neal. Judith. Lucy.” She started
+to leave him, then, to bring Lucy and me to him. He
+said, more loudly than he had spoken before: “Wait.
+Father.” She ran back to him, and he said, slowly and
+plainly: “Bring Father. I must tell <em>him</em>.” He repeated,
+“Must tell Father.” That was the end.</p>
+
+<p>Irene declares that there can be no doubt about it:
+Father had something that he wished to tell Grandfather
+and no one else. It seems to me that can mean
+but one thing: Father knew who killed him. He was
+willing to tell Grandfather, no one else, who that person
+was. This would seem to preclude an outsider. Though
+there may be still some events in Father’s past life of
+which we children have not been informed.</p>
+
+<p>That ends Irene’s story, in so far as Father is concerned.
+She left him, then, and ran to the door and back
+again to get her candle before going into the dark hall.
+On the table, beside her candle, and in the light ring
+from Father’s lamp, she saw the keys lying scattered.
+Then, she thinks, for the first time she made the
+connection of the noise in the hall with the doors. That
+is reasonable enough—for Irene. She said she could
+not get the keys picked up. She kept dropping them.
+At last she put them in the pocket of her wrapper and,
+with her candle, came into the hall. Lucy’s door is
+directly across the hall from Father’s room, as you
+know. Irene poked one of the keys into the lock and
+unlocked it.</p>
+
+<p>I asked her how she had known which key to use.
+She said that she had never thought of that. She took
+the keys from her pocket, one at a time, and each one
+fitted the lock she put it in. That is straight. The locks
+on the upstairs doors are all alike, and so are the keys.
+Chris made me go with him Tuesday while he proved
+this to me.</p>
+
+<p>When Irene had finished telling her story, Tuesday
+morning, Aunt Gracia asked her why she had unlocked
+Lucy’s door first. She added that Lucy was the one child
+in the household. It was stupid of Aunt Gracia to ask
+that, because Irene had just told us how it had
+happened. I didn’t blame Chris for getting hot.</p>
+
+<p>He said Aunt Gracia was assuming that Irene ran
+out of Father’s door in full possession of all her
+faculties; that Irene was in a condition to stop and reason
+quietly about which door it would be wise to open first,
+establishing orders of precedence, giving us all a rating
+as to age and importance. There was tragedy, Chris
+said. There was a duty for Irene to perform. She
+performed it, and she deserved high admiration for her
+composure and courage. We might, or not, give her
+that admiration, he said. But he would brook no word
+of criticism.</p>
+
+<p>In a way, I agree with Chris. I wish Irene had got us
+out sooner; but I can see her position. Father was dying.
+She felt as if she should do something for him, right
+there, instead of rushing off and leaving him. When
+she did start to leave him, he called her back to him—that
+is, told her to wait. I don’t like Irene. But I guess
+she did about as well as any of us younger ones would
+have done.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia seemed to pay no attention to Chris’s
+speech. Her next question was downright crumby.
+She asked Irene why she had thought Christopher had
+shot himself, when she must have known that
+Christopher had no gun.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather settled that in a hurry. He apologized
+for Aunt Gracia; and then he explained to her that
+sudden fright, as she knew, precluded rationalization,
+and that it was natural that Irene’s first anxiety should
+be for her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia said, “You haven’t a gun, have you,
+Christopher?”</p>
+
+<p>“Beginning already?” Chris was ugly about it. “No,
+Gracia, I have no gun. Have you?”</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia said: “No, I haven’t. But that is an
+honest question, and you had a right to ask it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Irene,” Grandfather said, “Christopher and Gracia
+were both locked in their rooms, were they not? You
+unlocked both their doors?”</p>
+
+<p>“I did, Uncle Thaddeus,” Irene answered. “I swear
+that I released every member of this family from a
+locked room.”</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me like this, Judy. Either we have to
+believe Irene’s story, all of it, or we have to disbelieve
+it. I am here. I know her. I heard her tell it. I believe
+it, word for word.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather believes it, I know. In spite of her actions,
+I think that Aunt Gracia believes it. Or, perhaps
+I should say, against her own will, I think Aunt Gracia
+believes it. Chris must believe it. But here is the crumby
+thing about Chris. Instead of saying flat, as I can say,
+that he knows Irene’s story is true, he keeps trying to
+prove it.</p>
+
+<p>He got me off and showed me, on Tuesday, that the
+fire had been mended after we left it the night before.
+He showed me the oil in the hanging lamp, nearly
+burned out. He has said, “Irene had no opportunity to
+get rid of a revolver.” As if Irene could not have done
+all the things she said she had done—built the fire,
+burned the oil, made the bed, and then come upstairs
+later and fired the shot. She could have hidden the gun
+in the front of her wrapper, and have got rid of it
+since. Nobody searched her. The only important thing
+about any of Chris’s “proofs” for Irene is that he thinks
+it necessary to hunt for them and use them.</p>
+
+<p>On the square, though he is starring himself in the
+rôle of sleuth, Chris seems to me to be more off his screw
+than any of us. But, perhaps, I haven’t any right to
+say that. Chris told me that I should try to brace up,
+that Lucy, poor little kid, was worrying desperately
+about me. Grandfather told me that we must be careful
+for Aunt Gracia; that it seemed to him the tragedy
+was affecting her more seriously than any of the rest of
+us. Aunt Gracia thinks that Grandfather is harder hit
+than any of us. And, of course, Olympe is still flat in bed.</p>
+
+<p>It is queer about Olympe. She must have heard the
+shot and jumped out of bed and fainted from fright.
+But she has no memory of having heard it at all. That
+shows the sort of tricks one’s memory can play. When
+we found she didn’t know what had happened, we didn’t
+tell her until Dr. Joe got here yesterday, Wednesday
+morning. (I started this letter on Wednesday; but I’ve
+written all night, so it is four o’clock Thursday morning
+now.) Dr. Joe thought it better to break the news to
+her gently than to have her keep on fussing and worrying
+and asking questions. He told her. Leave it to Dr.
+Joe to take for himself, and put right through, any old
+disagreeable job that we are all afraid of attempting.</p>
+
+<p>After our merry little breakfast on Tuesday morning,
+Chris rode to Quilterville to spread the news, send the
+telegram to Dr. Joe, and to send the crazy lying
+telegram, which he and Irene had composed together, to
+you.</p>
+
+<p>Gus Wildoch and Hank Buckerman (he’s coroner
+now) and a couple of other guys came out to the ranch
+with Chris. Gus and Hank were as decent as they could
+be, I guess, under the circumstances. The other guys
+went about issuing invitations to have their faces
+punched in; but again under the circumstances—how
+handy those clichés are—I let them get away with it.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather took charge of Gus and Hank. Gus’s
+attitude seemed to be that, if Grandfather would tell
+him what he wanted done, he’d do it. They stayed
+around about an hour, holding their sombreros like
+stomachers and shaking their heads, and then they left.
+Hank was much embarrassed because there would have
+to be an inquest. He kept apologizing to Grandfather
+about it. When Grandfather suggested that, perhaps,
+the inquest could be discussed later, Hank said sure,
+whenever we said, and, furthermore, it was nothing but
+a damn lot of red tape anyway.</p>
+
+<p>Gus and Hank came out again to the ranch when
+Dr. Joe came, early Wednesday morning. Slim Hyde
+came, too, with his hearse. Dr. Joe had brought him
+because he, Dr. Joe, wished to take Father’s body to
+Quilterville for an autopsy. Hank was a trifle worried
+about the inquest by this time, but Dr. Joe told him
+that the family would not be able to be bothered with
+anything of the sort for several days. The time was
+finally set for Friday morning. Queer, especially since
+old Hank is coroner, how I dread that inquest. If I
+were dog guilty, I couldn’t dread it much more than I
+do. Hank was decent as could be about it. Insisted,
+again, that it was a mere formality, and advised
+Grandfather not to try to attend. Furthermore, he said, that
+went for any of us who weren’t feeling up to snuff on
+Friday morning. All he needed, he declared, were one
+or two folks who could kind of tell a little about how
+things had happened.</p>
+
+<p>Hank himself, as I nearly forgot to tell you, deduced
+a theory almost at once which satisfied him completely.
+Someone, he declared, had shot Father through the
+open window. Since it did not matter at all to Hank
+that there is not a tree of any sort near Father’s room,
+nor that, unless the murderer had been equipped with
+wings, he should have had to stand on the porch roof
+to fire, nobody bothered to quarrel with Hank about
+it, nor about how the fellow had got the window
+open, nor any of it.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe stayed here until shortly after noon. He had
+his hands pretty full, what with attending the entire
+family, and interviewing and dismissing the
+busybodies who had been streaming up since the day
+before, like ants to a sugar bowl.</p>
+
+<p>Chris and I could not see much reason for an autopsy.
+We knew that Father had been shot; and had died from
+that shot. But Dr. Joe was as stubborn as a mule about
+it; so we gave in. He and Slim took Father’s body to
+Quilterville on Wednesday afternoon. It will stay there,
+now, until after the inquest, and then be brought home
+for the funeral, which, I believe, the folks have decided
+to have on Saturday.</p>
+
+<p>I have kept at this all night, in order that you and I
+can start even. I want you to know, when you have
+read this letter, as much as I knew when I wrote it.
+I’ll skip through it now and see whether I have left
+out any points. If not, I’ll ride into Quilterville, as
+soon as Chris gets up at six, and mail this on number
+Twenty-two.</p>
+
+<p>I find several points I have not made in connection
+with Irene’s story. As soon as she had heard the shot,
+she came through the downstairs rooms and up the
+front stairway. The door was locked, until she unlocked
+it. No one could have come downstairs the front way
+then, or she would have met him. The door to the back
+stairs was also locked, on the sitting-room side.
+Someone could have run down the hall and have hidden on
+the back stairway, or in the bathroom, which was
+unlocked. Someone could have gone to the attic. The door
+to the attic was unlocked. Then, while we were all in
+Father’s room, just at the first there, he might have
+managed to sneak through the hall, which was dark,
+and past Father’s door in spite of the fact that it was
+open, and get to some hiding place without any of us
+seeing him. Whatever his previous plans had been, they
+had not included one member of the family, not locked
+in a room, who could unlock the other doors. Nor, of
+course, had his plans included the circumstance of his
+being locked upstairs by means of the bolted stairway
+doors.</p>
+
+<p>I know how this will be bound to seem to you: the
+problem was one of discovering some fellow hiding
+in the house. It would seem so to me, I am sure, if I
+were not right here. Judy, you’ll have to take my word
+for it. No one was hiding in this house on Monday
+night or Tuesday morning. A human being, even a
+child, takes a good-sized space to hide in. There was not
+a foot of space, from cellar to attic, which we had not
+gone over with idiotic thoroughness before it was
+light on Tuesday morning.</p>
+
+<p>I can see you sitting there and thinking of places
+where we did not look. It won’t go, dear. Yes, we looked
+in the old furnace and poked into it, though Lucy could
+not have crawled into the fire box. Yes, we have looked
+in the broom closets and the fruit closets. We have
+looked in the flour and sugar bins, and the wash boilers,
+and the churns, and the bureau drawers. We have
+looked as if we were hunting for a collar button instead
+of a man. And, remember, Aunt Gracia at the time,
+and since, has been over every square inch of the house.
+You know that she can always find any missing thing
+in this house more easily than we can find a word in the
+dictionary. Irene, I think it was—it sounds like her—who
+suggested secret passages and sliding panels. They
+would be convenient, wouldn’t they?</p>
+
+<p>The ground is still covered with snow. Except for the
+paths from the front and back doors, and the necessary
+paths to the barns and outhouses, and the tracks the
+dogs have made, the snow, as far as we can see, is clean
+and unbroken. That would mean, wouldn’t it, that
+anyone who had left the house since Monday night had
+left it through the front or the back door? No one has
+stepped on the side porch, and the snow from that
+door to the yard is still unbroken. We could not keep
+the paths from getting beaten—people coming and
+going, all that. We have kept the outside doors locked,
+and Chris has the keys in his pocket. Nobody could
+pick those locks with a hairpin or a glove buttoner. We
+have kept Whatof chained by the front door and
+Keeper chained by the back door. You know, when
+those dogs have been told to watch, what they would
+do to some sneaking stranger.</p>
+
+<p>After this, it hardly seems worth while to bother about
+telling you what Chris discovered when he was looking
+under Father’s bed that night. But here it is. The bed
+had been moved three or four inches at the foot—pulled
+along over the carpet, I mean, as if some fairly hefty
+weight had been tugging on it. Chris keeps declaring
+that this must be of importance. How can it be
+important? Remember, the rope was covered with snow. The
+snow on the window sill and on the porch roof was
+unbroken. The snow makes it a certainty that no one had
+got out of that window during the past hour, let alone
+the past twenty minutes. Chris maunders about the rope
+having been used for some purpose before the
+snowstorm began. Irene suggested that the fellow might
+have come in that way. Lassoed the leg of the bed, first,
+I suppose, and then climbed right up.</p>
+
+<p>I think that finishes it all then, except this. The folks
+here, for some reason, seem to be getting comfort from
+keeping you and Greg in the dark. Rather often
+somebody pauses to thank goodness that you two don’t
+have to know the truth. I am not asking you to lie for
+me; but, on the level, I wish you would. Things are bad
+enough around here as it is, without having the folks
+all sore at me. In time, they will have to tell you the
+truth. If you could, until they get ready to do so,
+receive whatever hanky-panky they write to you, and not
+let them know that you are on, it would help me a lot.</p>
+
+<p>I’ll write you the truth every night—I’m night herding
+in the house at present. You can write what you
+please to me, of course. As I have said, I need the
+benefit of your thinking. Too, and again of course, you can
+do as you please about giving me away. Perhaps I
+would better say, you can do what you have to do. It
+doesn’t matter, really. What does?</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch13">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline-day">Thursday night,</p>
+<p class="dateline">October 11, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+I said I’d write again to-night, so
+I shall, though I haven’t much to add to what I
+wrote last night. All day I’ve been troubled with
+doubts about the wisdom of this writing. But I have
+started it, and you’ll want the developments, and I
+need your help; so I’ll keep at it for a while, at any rate.
+Particularly, I am sure, you will want news of the
+family.</p>
+
+<p>They are all saying, now, how splendidly Grandfather
+is coming through. He has got the cane that
+Chris duded with in the East, and he totters about
+with it, defying any one of us to think that he needs
+to use it. Physically, he is a dead game sport. But,
+mentally, darn it, Judy, I don’t know. Think this over.
+Is it like Grandfather to insist, in spite of everything,
+to insist without rhyme or reason, that someone
+sneaked in from the outside and killed Father, and got
+away again? No, sir, it is not like him. But that is what
+he is saying. I have decided that either Grandfather does
+think that I did it, and is putting up this con talk to
+save me, or else that, mentally, Grandfather has
+weakened a bit.</p>
+
+<p>That brings the interesting speculation as to whether
+or not Grandfather would try to save me. I know this
+about him. He is the finest, straightest, wisest man I
+have ever known. (If Father had lived, he would have
+been as great as Grandfather, in the end. But
+Grandfather had an edge on Father of thirty-odd years of
+living, and experiencing, and acquiring knowledge and
+wisdom.) Giving that character to Grandfather—or to
+any man—would he, if he felt fairly certain that his
+grandson had killed his own father, even by mistake
+for another man, try to cover traces, shield him, and
+allow him to go free? I think that he would. You know,
+Grandfather has always been strong for the idea of
+usefulness connected with morality and the principle
+of the greatest good for the greatest number. He would
+think that, by saving me from punishment, he was
+saving the entire family from worse punishment. While
+my punishment would be a just one, theirs would be
+fearfully unjust. The family name would be disgraced.
+You and Lucy would be known as the sisters of a
+murderer—a parricide. Your children—had an uncle
+hanged. No, Grandfather would not stick that. A few
+months ago he wrote for Lucy, “Be generous, rather
+than just.” That is what he would do. He would let
+justice slide for me in order to be generous to the rest
+of the family. He would save me in order to save our
+standards, our traditions, and the other Quilters’
+futures. And any one of us would do the same thing. I
+know it.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe is still in bed. She quite simply lies there. I
+went in and talked to her a few minutes to-day. Unless
+the family stops this darn sentimental business of everyone
+trying to “spare” everyone else, we’ll make a fine
+showing on Friday at the inquest. I asked Olympe,
+straight, how she supposed it had happened that
+Uncle Phineas’s old gun was under her when the ladies
+picked her up from the floor.</p>
+
+<p>She said that, since I was asking for suppositions, she
+supposed she had seized it—Olympe would never do less
+than “seize” a gun—and jumped from her bed before
+she fainted. It seems, when Uncle Phineas is away, that
+she always sleeps with his old gun under her pillow.</p>
+
+<p>I told her that it had been unloaded. She said she
+knew it. She would have been afraid to sleep with the
+horrible, dangerous thing beneath her pillow if it were
+not unloaded.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe’s guns would always be unloaded, wouldn’t
+they? As if her life were nothing but motions—useless
+things pretending usefulness; unrealities in the guise
+of reality. Her world is a stage, right enough, and she
+is more merely a player than it seems entirely moral
+for any living person to be.</p>
+
+<p>She said she supposed it must have been the sound
+of the shot that frightened her, though she does not
+remember having heard the shot. (Dr. Joe says that is
+not at all unusual. That, often, when people faint from
+sudden fright, they do not remember the cause of their
+fright when they regain consciousness.) The last things
+that Olympe remembers are rubbing lotion on her
+hands, getting into bed, and blowing out the lamp on
+her bedside table.</p>
+
+<p>I think that her prostration now is by way of being
+distinctive. Sorry. That is a crumby way for me to write
+of Olympe. I am tremendously fond of her, and she
+knows it.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia is doing only fairly well. She looks ill.
+Her grief has intensified her aloofness. Grief is the first
+word to use; but it is grief plus horror with Aunt Gracia.
+She is convinced that some one of us, right here in the
+house now, murdered Father on Monday night. As
+always, she manages to be the most useful member of
+the family. She would die for any one of us, I believe;
+but she hates to live with us—excepting, of course,
+Grandfather and Lucy.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy, poor little kid, is hit hard. She is up and around,
+and she helps Aunt Gracia. But she looks—frightful.
+You’d hardly know her. That shocked expression is
+still on her face, sort of stuck on it, like a mask. She
+was too skinny, anyway, and I’ll bet she has lost ten
+pounds since Monday night. She doesn’t cry. She slips
+about, working, or staying close to Grandfather. She
+has stopped reading. She has stopped writing. When
+she isn’t busy with the little duties Aunt Gracia finds
+for her, she huddles close to Grandfather—Chris
+says—or, when I am in the house, to me, and sits quietly
+with her tiny hands in her lap, and with that expression
+on her face. She took a tablet early this evening and
+began to write to you. She wrote about half a page,
+and then she walked across the room and tossed the
+entire tablet into the fire. I know why. Lucy will not
+write lies. She cannot write the truth. So she has
+quit.</p>
+
+<p>Irene and Chris, I think, have come through better
+than the rest of us. Irene dared to say that she and
+Christopher still had their “great love.” All the rest of
+us, Aunt Gracia and Grandfather, Lucy and I, for
+instance, hate one another, I suppose. I should not
+suggest, though, that Irene is not affected, or that Chris
+is not. Irene cries most of the time. She is as shaky as
+an aspen, and hurt-seeming. She is not withdrawn, as
+Aunt Gracia is; but, poor girl, she gives the impression
+of trying to keep out of the way. I suppose grief is the
+most jealous and the most selfish of all emotions, and
+Irene senses it, even from Chris. We have no reason to
+expect her to feel as we feel, now; and since she cannot
+she is excluded and alone.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to write about Chris, or to understand him.
+He loved Father. He has something to endure that the
+rest of us haven’t—remorse. He made the last few
+months of Father’s life a hell on earth for him, and he
+knows it. When Chris thinks about our loss—he is
+white all the way through. But Chris, like the rest of
+us, has gone rather flooey. Judy, there is no good
+denying it—Chris is scared. And fear seems to make Chris
+rather yellow. I think it often does that to men and
+women.</p>
+
+<p>Chris had got it into his head that, sooner or later,
+Irene is going to be blamed for this, because she was the
+only one who was not locked in a room on Monday
+night. So Chris has turned sleuth. An objectionable rôle
+at best, and one that Chris plays badly. On the square,
+Judy, it is a case of protesting too much. As nearly
+as I can judge, the one thing against Irene is her
+husband’s eagerness to prove that she is innocent.
+Everyone here except Chris knows that she is, without
+proof. I tried to give that to Chris to-day, but he would
+not have it.</p>
+
+<p>He said it was charming of the family, but that
+after the inquest the law might step in. If it did, or
+when it did, he thought it would be well to have some
+proofs a bit more tangible, if less beautiful, than sweet
+family faith.</p>
+
+<p>He has been rounding up these proofs of his since
+Monday night. If he has captured anything that is
+worth a cent for proof of anything, he has not informed
+me. This is the sort of thing he produces:</p>
+
+<p>The rope—his informant was Aunt Gracia—had been
+in the attic for a year or more. It was bought to be
+used for a clothes-line. It was too thick for the clothespins
+to straddle, so it was put in the attic. This fact,
+that the rope was taken from our attic, Chris professes
+to believe is of enormous import. Remember little
+sentimental Lucy, aged four, when Uncle Phineas sneaked
+her off to the circus, inquiring as she watched the clown,
+“If he weren’t tho thad, would he be funny?”</p>
+
+<p>To-day, Chris has been directing his attention to the
+question of who locked us all in our rooms. I told him
+that meant, merely, that he was directing his attention
+to who murdered Father. Any boob would know that
+whoever did the one thing did the other. He essayed
+shrewdness with his “Perhaps.”</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Later on Thursday night.</p>
+
+<p>As I finished writing that last paragraph Aunt
+Gracia came into the sitting room. I think she suspects
+that I am giving you the truth, though she neither
+accuses nor questions. She had brought some darning
+with her, and for the first time since Tuesday morning
+she seemed to wish to talk. So I have put this aside for
+an hour, and we have been talking.</p>
+
+<p>It is Chris, I suppose, who has started Aunt Gracia
+to worrying about the locked doors. She asked me if
+it didn’t seem strange to me that anyone could have
+gone through the upper hall, locking all the doors,
+and not have waked any of us.</p>
+
+<p>I told her, perhaps a bit, but not very strange. She
+and Lucy and I sleep like stones and always have.
+Olympe is slightly deaf. Chris is a sound sleeper, too;
+and if he had heard someone monkeying around he
+would have thought it was Irene. Irene, downstairs,
+with the doors closed and locked, couldn’t have heard
+anyone who was trying to be quiet in the upper hall.</p>
+
+<p>“That is all very well,” she said, “but what about
+your grandfather? Do you think that anyone could
+open his door, remove the key from the inside lock,
+close the door and lock it on the outside, without his
+hearing a sound? He sleeps like an Indian.”</p>
+
+<p>“For that matter,” I said, “Father slept lightly, too.
+But the doors were locked, and no one heard it being done.
+Why bother with conjectures when we have facts?”</p>
+
+<p>She declared that we had no facts, as yet. She said
+that I was wrong about Father sleeping lightly. That is,
+he had not been sleeping lightly of late, because there
+was something to make him sleep heavily in the medicine
+Dr. Joe had been prescribing for him. She said she
+meant to talk to Dr. Joe about that, later. Just now, she
+wished to talk to me about the locked doors.</p>
+
+<p>“What I believe,” she said, “is that the keys for the
+doors were collected sometime early in the evening, or,
+perhaps, in the afternoon. Then, when the murderer
+slipped through the hall that night he had nothing to
+do but fit the keys into the locks and turn them. It is
+possible that Father would not have heard so slight
+a sound as that. It is not possible that anyone could
+have opened his door without his hearing it. Not one of
+us, I think, except Irene would have noticed if our key
+was not in its lock when we went to bed. Not one of us
+used our bedroom key, except Irene.”</p>
+
+<p>“Was her key in the lock when she went to bed?” I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia said, “I don’t know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why don’t you ask her?” I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>“I have asked her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Couldn’t she remember? Or wouldn’t she tell you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, she told me. She said that it was not in the
+lock. She said she missed it, at once, and told
+Christopher that it was gone. He said, no matter—something
+of the sort.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Aunt Gracia?” I asked. I guess she could
+see the chip on my shoulder. I don’t like Irene a bit
+better than Aunt Gracia likes her. But I seem to like
+fair play a lot better than Aunt Gracia does.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” she sort of mocked, “since the key was missing
+at nine o’clock, doesn’t it seem odd to you that
+when, at eleven or thereabouts, Irene found the door
+locked against her, she should have decided that
+Christopher had locked her out?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not at all,” I said. “She was angry, and her feelings
+were hurt. Why should she stop to wonder about the
+key? The door was locked, wasn’t it? Irene and I seem,
+at least, to have a feeling for facts in common. The door
+was locked. All right—Chris could have got up, found
+the key, and locked it, couldn’t he? Keys aren’t
+stationary things.”</p>
+
+<p>“Evidently not,” Aunt Gracia said, without lifting
+her eyes from her sewing. “I’ve asked everyone but
+you, Neal. No one can say whether his key was on the
+inside or outside of his lock, that night, or whether it
+was missing entirely. Do you know about the key to
+your door?”</p>
+
+<p>I didn’t, of course. I hadn’t touched the thing since
+she had put it in the lock, weeks ago.</p>
+
+<p>“No one,” she said, “in this house, ever touched
+keys, or thought keys, but Irene. Understand, Neal,”
+she went on quickly, because, I think, she saw that her
+injustice was making me hot, “I do not think that Irene
+walked into Dick’s room on Monday night and shot him.
+I do know this. We all know it. Irene was out in the hall
+that night, with the keys to all the doors. She could
+lock or unlock as she chose. She could have locked us
+all in our rooms. She could have spent the ten minutes
+or so, after we heard the shot, in Dick’s room with
+him as she says she did, or she could have spent that
+time in helping someone to escape, or hide, or——(Dick’s
+last words, as quoted by Irene, particularly the ‘red
+mask’ remark, did not carry conviction to me. Did they
+to you?) Then, when she was certain that her—shall we
+say friend?—her friend was safe, she could have
+unlocked our doors. Lucy’s first—the child of the
+household.</p>
+
+<p>“Fine!” I said. “Except that no one was hidden in
+the house, and that no one has escaped. Irene unlocked
+Lucy’s door because it was straight in front of
+her as she ran from Father’s room. If, as you’ve been
+hinting, Irene had planned with somebody to kill
+Father, would she have agreed to a plan that would
+put her in the position she is in now—that is, the only
+one of us who was not locked in a room?”</p>
+
+<p>“Irene is stupid. She might have agreed blindly,
+if the person who did the planning was clever. But
+there is this, Neal. I repeat, I insist that Irene is
+stupid. Suppose, this seems more probable, that whoever
+planned to kill Dick did not tell Irene the truth
+about what he was planning to do. Suppose he made her
+believe that something else—no, I have no idea what—was
+going to be done that night. The rope might come
+into it there. And the snow probably spoiled some extra
+plan. No one could have reckoned on snow in October.
+In all my memory, snow in October has come just once
+before this—that was when I was a little girl. In other
+words, suppose that Irene helped, but unwittingly—as
+a dupe, a cat’s-paw. That is possible, isn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” I said. “Irene couldn’t keep a secret to save
+her life. If she had got mixed up in this, but was innocent
+of any wrong intentions, she would have told Chris,
+either purposely or by mistake. It takes stouter stuff
+than Irene has to keep a secret at a time like this. If
+she had told Chris anything of that sort, he would have
+told us. You may, or may not, have a right to doubt
+Irene’s honesty. You can’t doubt Chris’s—not in an
+affair of this sort.”</p>
+
+<p>“I can,” Aunt Gracia said. “I do. I doubt everyone
+in this house, for one reason or another, except your
+Grandfather and, perhaps, Lucy.”</p>
+
+<p>That “perhaps” made me see red. “And yourself?”
+I said. I was a mucker for saying it as I did.</p>
+
+<p>She answered me quietly: “No. Sometimes I doubt
+myself.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s all right,” I said, “but you can stop doubting
+Lucy, here and now——”</p>
+
+<p>“I have never thought,” Aunt Gracia interrupted,
+“that Lucy walked into Dick’s room and shot him.
+Don’t be absurd, Neal.”</p>
+
+<p>“Whatever you thought about her,” I said, “makes
+no particular difference. She was in my room within
+two minutes, within a minute, I should say, after the
+shot was fired. If you could have seen her then——”
+I was too sore to try to talk about it.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. I knew about her coming directly into your
+room, Neal,” was what Aunt Gracia said with words.</p>
+
+<p>I got up and put a log on the fire. I didn’t dare trust
+myself to answer her.</p>
+
+<p>After a minute or two, she went on talking. She
+wished that I would stop standing up for Irene. She
+said that it didn’t matter what I said to the family;
+but, when outsiders, people in authority, came to
+question me, she thought it unnecessary for me to
+make my defences of Irene so angrily and so staunchly.
+She finished by saying: “You don’t like her, Neal. You
+have never liked her. You have said to me that you
+hated her. Why should you, now, take this attitude
+toward her? You resent even her husband’s attempts to
+prove her story—resent them on the grounds that
+Irene never could, under any provocation, do an
+unworthy deed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rot!” I said. “Look here, there is a difference
+between an unworthy deed, as you say, and murder—or
+even helping a murderer along.”</p>
+
+<p>“To be sure,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>I decided to answer her, this time. “Do you believe,”
+I said, “that I murdered Father, and that Irene
+helped me?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think,” she answered, straight, “that Irene had
+to help either you, or Christopher, or Olympe—or
+someone from the outside who has eluded us. My clear
+thinking forces me to give up hope of an outsider. You
+notice that I have left out Father, myself, and Lucy.
+The madness of the past few days has, sometimes, made
+me almost doubt myself; but I know that is
+madness—nothing else. No one could doubt Father, or
+Lucy—I suppose.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right, Aunt Gracia,” I answered—I can’t explain
+it, but her saying that she had had moments of
+doubting herself was mighty good for me to hear—“let’s
+look at it this way. What reason would Chris, or
+Olympe, or you—let’s include you—or I have for
+killing Father? I mean, why would any one of us have
+done it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why does anyone ever murder?” she asked.
+“Because, since his mind his not become one with his
+Creator’s mind, he can lose it—can be insane for a
+longer or shorter time. Why did Dick murder Enos
+Karabass?”</p>
+
+<p>“Because he tried to assault Mother,” I answered.</p>
+
+<p>“So Dick said, and, I suppose—believed. Enos loved
+me. He worshipped me, I tell you. I loved—worshipped
+him. Our punishment came because we did worship
+each other, instead of our Creator. But, loving me as he
+did, and loving all women because of me, do you
+suppose—— Oh, how mad of me to talk to you like this!
+No matter. I will say it. Dick was insanely, wildly
+jealous. You are Dick’s son. But vengeance is the Lord’s.
+If you did do this thing, I hope you may go free, as
+Dick went free; and that, before you die, you may be
+saved, forgiven, and ready to enter one of the highest
+states of glory, as Dick was ready.”</p>
+
+<p>I don’t know why that didn’t make me hot. It didn’t.
+It was as if I’d had a curtain over a part of my mind,
+and Aunt Gracia’s accusation had drawn it aside, and
+had shown me, in the light, that the dim, queer things
+I had sort of halfway feared myself, were—cobwebs.</p>
+
+<p>My own relief, I suppose, made me capable of sympathy
+for her. I was dead sorry for her, and her doubts,
+and her poor, battered-up love affair. I tried to say
+what I thought might comfort her.</p>
+
+<p>“It was a wonderful thing, Aunt Gracia,” I proffered,
+“that, if Father had to die, he should have died so
+soon after his baptism. That he could go, as you say,
+saved, forgiven, and ready for one of the highest states
+of glory——”</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted me sharply: “Why do you talk to me
+like that? You don’t believe any of it, and I know that
+you don’t. What are you trying to do? Trap me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Trap you?” I echoed like a fool. I didn’t get her at
+all. You know how I am, Judy. I can use the old bean
+all right, but it takes time—plenty and plenty of time.
+Mark Twain, wasn’t it, who said, “When in doubt,
+tell the truth?” I tried it. “I was attempting to
+comfort you, dear,” I said.</p>
+
+<p>“No, you weren’t,” she rewarded me. “But you have.
+You have made me remember. Sometimes I forget.
+What you have just said is the meaning of it all. That
+is why I can endure it. Anything that has a meaning
+can be endured.”</p>
+
+<p>She went away quickly, and left me alone. I have
+been sitting here, trying to think.</p>
+
+<p>“Trap me,” she said. Can you beat it, Judy? You see
+her meaning, don’t you? Chris, as a sleuth, has done
+much talking about motives. If Aunt Gracia had wished
+to be sure that Father would attain one of those highest
+states of her glory——— You see? Before Father had had
+time to backslide. A motive for Aunt Gracia. But who
+would ever have thought of it but Aunt Gracia
+herself?</p>
+
+<p>Isn’t she the queerest proposition? Just when we get
+to thinking that she is almost loony, she snaps around
+on us and is brighter than we are. No mind that was
+not in excellent working condition could have caught
+me up like that, “What are you trying to do? Trap me?”
+in half a second.</p>
+
+<p>Though, as you know, Judy, all this is rot. Suppose
+we got about it as Chris has been going of late. Suppose
+we try to put salt on the tails of nonexistent clues, and
+to materialize what Chris chooses to call “proofs” out
+of the air.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia’s voice was the one Lucy and I heard
+first, and all the time on Monday night, calling and
+calling to Grandfather from behind her locked door.
+Aunt Gracia has lived a good many years now with
+one of her high states of glory as her own objective.
+Would she sacrifice it for Father’s sake? She would
+not. If she had been guilty, would she have revealed her
+motive, offhand, to me? She would not. All this, you
+understand, would be Chris’s “proofs.” Mine would be
+that I know Aunt Gracia. That I have known her all
+my life. That she is a Quilter—Grandfather’s daughter
+and Father’s sister. These are good enough proofs for
+me.</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch14">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline-day">Friday night,</p>
+<p class="dateline">October 12, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+We have been all day in Quilterville,
+attending the coroner’s inquest. It was
+pretty bad. Worse than I had expected. Hank Buckerman
+was all right, decent as could be. But a fly guy
+from the district attorney’s office was there, trying to
+show off—make a name for himself; Lord only knows
+what he was trying to do besides chivy us. His name is
+Benjamin Thopson. He put the screws on, right enough.</p>
+
+<p>The men on the jury were John Skrope, Roy Ulander,
+George Houndel, Pete Garret, and a couple of
+Swedes that have just bought the livery stable Jim
+Murtaine used to have, down near the river. It was the
+Swedes, I’ll bet, who kept the jury out so long. Two
+hours and ten minutes, Jude, while we hung around
+waiting, before they brought in their verdict: Died on
+the night of October eighth, from the results of a
+gunshot wound inflicted by person or persons unknown.</p>
+
+<p>None of us said so while we were waiting. None of us
+has said so yet. But I know what I was afraid of, and
+I know what the others were afraid of: a verdict against
+Irene, or against Irene and Chris together. That is
+what they would have handed us, Jude, just as sure as
+I’m living to tell it, if it had not been for Aunt Gracia.
+But I must tell you that later. It is early evening now.
+I have all night to write in. I want to give you the thing
+straight, from beginning to end.</p>
+
+<p>I had never been in that courtroom before, and I
+know you have never been there. It is a dirty, dark
+hole of a place, with the windows too high and the
+ceiling too low. They kept the windows shut, and the
+big coal stove in the centre of the room blazing away,
+red hot all the way around part of the time, and eating
+up the air.</p>
+
+<p>Hank, looking like a good-humoured eagle, sat up
+behind a desk where the judge sits during trials. This
+smart aleck Thopson and Bruno Ward—the Portland
+lawyer, you know, whom Father and Dr. Joe have
+been consulting since Mr. White died—and Mattie
+Blaine sat at a long table below and in front of Hank’s
+desk. (Mattie had to take the whole works down in
+shorthand.) We Quilters sat together in a front seat,
+to the side. The remainder of the room was filled,
+chiefly, with canaille. While I was in the witness chair
+I had a chance to size up our audience. I was pleased
+to see how many people we knew had enough good
+taste and tact to stay away. None of the Beckers were
+there, and none of the Youngs. Chris said Tod Eldon
+was there with his wife, but I didn’t see them. None of
+the Binghams were there. But a quarter section of the
+room was filled with the Dunlapper tribe.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe testified first. Death was caused by an
+intrathoracic hemorrhage, due to a bullet shot into the
+left chest. The bullet entered the left chest between
+the fifth and sixth ribs, pierced the pericardium without
+injury to the heart, traversed the lung, and lodged
+near the left scapula. (I’ve got this from Dr. Joe since
+then.)</p>
+
+<p>Thopson asked, “Any possibility of suicide, Dr.
+Elm?”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe said, none. The absence of a weapon proved
+that suicide was impossible. Also, absence of powder
+burns showed that the gun had been fired from a
+distance of several feet.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson asked Dr. Joe whether he knew what sort
+of gun had been used. Dr. Joe told him that he had
+recovered the bullet. That it had been fired, evidently,
+from a .38 calibre Colt’s.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson said: “You were present in the house at the
+time of the murder, Dr. Elm? You were among the first
+to discover the body?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said Dr. Joe.</p>
+
+<p>“Your testimony, then, regarding the absence of a
+weapon near the bedside, was given from hearsay?”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe said, “If Dick had had a gun in his hand when
+they found him, the absence of powder burns, and the
+position of the bullet, and the whole thing would prove
+that he couldn’t have shot himself—if that’s what you’re
+getting at.”</p>
+
+<p>Thopson said he was through with the witness.
+Hank excused Dr. Joe and called Irene to the stand.</p>
+
+<p>The procedure, after that, was to call the witness,
+swear him or her in, ask the name in full, where they
+lived, what the relationship was to the victim, that
+sort of thing, and then Hank would say, “Tell the
+jury what you know about the shooting.”</p>
+
+<p>Irene seemed delicate, and pretty, and out of place
+stuck up there in that dirty old hole.</p>
+
+<p>She told her story straight, just as she had told it
+to us at home. Except she said that, when she found
+the door locked she thought that Chris was trying to
+play a joke on her. She omitted their quarrel, you
+see—good job, too—and the part about having cried herself
+to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson led off by asking, “Is your husband in the
+habit of locking you out of your room at night, for a
+joke?”</p>
+
+<p>Irene said, “No, he isn’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“How many times has he locked you out?”</p>
+
+<p>“He has never locked me out.”</p>
+
+<p>“What gave you the idea, then, that it was a joke?”</p>
+
+<p>Irene said, “It could have been nothing else.”</p>
+
+<p>“It wasn’t a joke, though, in the end, was it?”</p>
+
+<p>“It proved not to be. It also proved not to have been
+my husband who had locked the door.”</p>
+
+<p>“It never occurred to you to knock on your own door
+and find out why your husband was—er—playing this
+joke on you?”</p>
+
+<p>“I did not wish to disturb the family.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very considerate. A light rap, with a dainty hand,
+on your own door, would have aroused and disturbed
+the entire family, you think?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ward jumped up. “Mr. Coroner,” he said, “this
+is a deliberate baiting of the witness, and a waste of
+time. This lady has explained that, though she thought
+the locked door was a joke, she was not entirely in
+sympathy with it. Mr. Thopson questions because she
+did not pound on the door like a vixen. It depends, I
+suppose, upon one’s experience with ladies. This lady
+slipped quietly away, arranged, as she has told us, a
+neat little retaliation, and went to sleep.”</p>
+
+<p>I had thought that Dr. Joe was making a sucker play
+when he had got Mr. Ward to come over from Portland.
+I changed my mind. Mr. Ward wasn’t particularly
+brilliant, not one, two, three compared to Aunt Gracia,
+but he was as useful as a left leg. Whenever this fly
+Thopson would get too smart, Mr. Ward would jump
+up and appeal to Hank, and Hank would shut Thopson
+off. Then, if Thopson started hollering about it, Hank
+would inquire: “What’s eating you, say? This ain’t a
+trial.”</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it wasn’t a trial. But it came too close to
+being one to suit me. Though, in another way, a real
+trial might have been better. Right at the beginning, if
+Mr. Ward could have defended Irene, it would, at least,
+have carried the enormous advantage of straight dealing.
+He couldn’t defend Irene, because no one had accused
+her. What he was fighting was the accusation.
+But he had to hide even that.</p>
+
+<p>He played the rope, which the fiend had been afraid
+to use, and the weapon that the fiend had carried
+away with him, hard and fast. The trouble, or the chief
+trouble was, I think, that he did not believe in them
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson chivied Irene, next, on what he called “the
+victim’s last words.”</p>
+
+<p>Irene had told that Father had said, “Got away,”
+and then, “Red mask.”</p>
+
+<p>“You think the victim meant to indicate that some
+person, wearing a red mask, had got away?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know what the words indicated. I only know
+that he said them.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have, perhaps, thought of some other meaning
+that the words were meant to convey?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, I have not.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have given the matter no thought whatever?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ward stopped that. He asked whether the purpose
+of this investigation was to discover the facts of
+the case or to allow Mr. Thopson to torture a grief-stricken
+lady. He said that, clearly, Richard Quilter’s
+last words had meant to indicate that the man who
+had murdered him had been masked, and had escaped.
+Knowing, Mr. Ward said, that the family’s chief future
+concern would be to apprehend the fiend who had
+committed this heinous crime, Richard Quilter had, in
+spite of the fact that he was a dying man, done his best
+to aid his dear ones with the frightful task which he
+knew, even then, would soon devolve upon them. “His
+duty, first, gentlemen, though Richard Quilter
+performed it from the edge of the grave. Duty done, he
+called for his children, for his aged father——” On and
+on. But Ward was no fool. Remember, Judy, the men
+who were on the jury. Ward was merely heating his
+wind for the shorn lambs, as it were; or, at least, that
+was the way I sized him up.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson asked Mr. Ward, directly, if he thought that
+red masks were the customary apparel for murderers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ward said, “Dying men don’t lie, Mr. Thopson.”</p>
+
+<p>Thopson said, “No. Dying men do not.”</p>
+
+<p>But I think that went high over the heads of the jury.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson then began on the keys. How had Irene
+happened to see them there on the table?</p>
+
+<p>“They were directly under the lamp and beside the
+candlestick I had put down.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what gave you the assurance that those
+particular keys were the keys to the bedroom doors?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing gave me that assurance. At last I understood
+what the noise in the hall must have meant—was
+meaning, that the others were locked in their rooms. I
+saw keys there. I took the keys and went to unlock
+the doors.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well. How long would you say it was from the
+time you heard the shot until you happened to see the
+keys on the table, put them into your pocket, and went
+and unlocked the doors?”</p>
+
+<p>“The others say it was about ten minutes—or a bit
+longer—after the shot was heard, before I unlocked the
+first door.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am not asking you what the others say. I am
+asking you for your own opinion.”</p>
+
+<p>“I should have thought it was longer than that.”</p>
+
+<p>“Time passed slowly, dragged, between the time of
+the shot and the time to unlock the doors?”</p>
+
+<p>Irene didn’t get it. I think the jury didn’t, either.</p>
+
+<p>“It seemed a long time,” she answered.</p>
+
+<p>“During this long time,” Thopson said, “did you
+make any search, near the bed, for the weapon you
+thought the victim had used to kill himself?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. I was very much frightened and shocked. I
+did not know what to do.”</p>
+
+<p>“Were any weapons—any guns, that is—discovered
+later in the house?”</p>
+
+<p>“Dick’s own gun was in the closet of his room. But
+the closet was a long distance from the bed. The gun
+was on a high shelf, behind some boxes, and it was
+found fully loaded.”</p>
+
+<p>“That was the only gun in the house?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. There were others. But they were all locked in
+the rooms with the people who were locked in.”</p>
+
+<p>“Through with witness,” Thopson said, and sat
+down.</p>
+
+<p>They called me next, swore me in, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>I told my story; just about what I have written to
+you, though in less detail. How I had heard the shot,
+jumped out of bed, tried the door—— I was scared
+stiff, Jude. I thought, after what Thopson had given
+Irene, when she was a lady and a pretty one, there was
+no imagining what he might do to me. When I stopped
+talking and he said he was through with me, and Hank
+said, “Witness excused,” I was so amazed that I kept
+right on sitting there until he said again, “Witness
+excused.”</p>
+
+<p>They called for Lucy, next. But Grandfather had not
+allowed her to come. He said that it was no place for
+her, that she was not physically fit to go through with
+anything of the sort, and that, since someone must
+stay at home with Olympe, Lucy should stay.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ward said, “Mr. Coroner, Lucy Quilter, a little
+girl, twelve years old, ill herself from shock and grief,
+is not in the courtroom. I may add that she is at home
+attending her aunt, who is seriously indisposed.”</p>
+
+<p>“And furthermore,” Hank said (“furthermore” is one
+of his pet words, you know; he pronounces it
+“futthermore”), “anybody who tries to start anything about
+that little motherless and fatherless child being kep’
+at home where she belongs, will find theirselves in a
+contempt of court—or worse.”</p>
+
+<p>He called Chris as a witness.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Chris told the same story. He had heard the shot—so
+on. All the same—his fright, the noises we were
+making.</p>
+
+<p>About then one of the Swedes got a bright idea. He
+wanted to know if there weren’t any windows in our
+house, and why none of us had tried to get out of our
+room by way of the window.</p>
+
+<p>Chris told him that the rooms across the front of
+the house had windows out on to the sloping roof of
+the downstairs porch, but that the windows across the
+back of the house faced a sheer drop of close to thirty
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Swede then decided that he had to have a plan
+of the upstairs rooms drawn on the blackboard, right
+then and there. Hank asked one of us to draw it. Who
+volunteered? Who would? Aunt Gracia, of course. It
+looked about like the sketch that I enclose.</p>
+
+<figure>
+  <img src="images/plan.jpg" alt="A hand-drawn plan of the upper
+      floor of a house, consisting of eight bedrooms and one bathroom.
+      A hallway runs through the middle from front to back, with
+      stairs leading down on either end. There are also stairs leading
+      up to the attic in the back, behind a narrow door. The porch
+      roof runs along one side of the building, underneath the windows
+      of the four bedrooms on that side, belonging to Christoper,
+      Richard, Thaddeus, and Olympe. Opposite these are the bedrooms
+      belonging to Neal, Lucy, Judith, and Gracia.">
+  <figcaption>Gracia Quilter’s Sketch of the Second Floor</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Some fools tittered. I could have killed them. She had
+no ruler, and the sketch was shaky, of course. But it
+was plain enough, and gave the Swede exactly what he
+had wanted. That is, it showed that Chris, or
+Grandfather, or Olympe could have got out of a window and
+gone along the porch roof to Father’s room.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson asked Chris why he had not done just that.</p>
+
+<p>Chris said: “I was out of my mind with fright. My wife
+was missing from our room. Someone had been shot.
+I could tell from the noises that others of the family
+were also locked in their rooms. My one idea was to get
+my door opened. Possibly, in another five minutes or
+so, the idea of the window might have occurred to me.
+I don’t know. I know that I did not, at the time, give
+a thought to the window.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ward went to the blackboard and marked more
+plainly the situation of the window with regard to the
+roof—showing the distance, about five feet, of Chris’s
+cupola window from the roof. He drew a slanted line,
+to indicate a third pitch roof. He made a speech, trying
+to convey the impression that any thought of the roof,
+in connection with the case, was an absurdity. I don’t
+know about the jury, but I do know that I remained
+unconvinced.</p>
+
+<p>You understand, Judy, I am not slurring at Chris, or
+anything of the sort. But it is doggone queer that he
+did not think of that window at all. What I really believe
+about it is this: Physically, Chris has always been
+something of a coward. Three months ago I’d have
+denied moral cowardice for him; but his planning to sell
+us out because Irene nagged him, makes me less
+inclined to that denial. You remember the time Chris
+didn’t pull Lucy out of the river when she had a cramp?
+The time you jumped in with all your clothes on, and
+did? And the time he fell out of the cherry tree into a
+a hammock and fainted from fright, though he wasn’t
+even bumped? It seems a lot more probable to me that
+Chris did think of the window—that he looked out of it.
+The fact that a man doesn’t drop out of a window on to
+a slippery, slanted porch roof, at night, by no means
+makes him a murderer. There are different sorts of
+courage. Chris married Irene and brought her home
+to Q 2.</p>
+
+<p>I was afraid that Chris was in for a bad few minutes
+concerning the window; but while Mr. Ward had been
+talking, Pete Garret had, apparently, laboured. He
+brought forth a mouse. He asked Chris why he had
+locked Irene out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Chris said, “I did not lock my wife out of the room.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ward reminded the jury that the key to Chris’s
+door had been found, along with the keys to the other
+locked doors, on the table in Father’s room.</p>
+
+<p>“The fiend,” said Mr. Ward, “having no idea that
+this little lady was below stairs, had locked that door,
+when he locked the other doors, in order to make sure
+of the time required to effect his escape.”</p>
+
+<p>I don’t know why Thopson had waited so long to take
+up the subject of footprints. I imagine a good look at
+the jury had decided him not to crowd them with ideas.
+Though Mr. Ward had missed no opportunity to mention
+escape, Thopson had stopped Irene’s story, and
+mine, when we had come to the place about rushing into
+Father’s room after Irene had unlocked the doors.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Ward,” Thopson said to Chris, “keeps mentioning
+the escape of the criminal. Will you tell the jury, Mr.
+Quilter, exactly how you think this escape was made?”</p>
+
+<p>Chris said, “I have no idea as to his method of
+escape.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Ward has made repeated mention of a rope
+hanging out of the open window of the victim’s room.
+Will you please give us the exact situation of that rope?”</p>
+
+<p>Chris told them what I have written to you.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you agree with Mr. Ward that this rope was not
+used as a means of escape?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I agree.”</p>
+
+<p>“Will you tell us why?”</p>
+
+<p>Chris told them.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Mr. Quilter, will you please tell the jury where
+you did discover footprints that you had reason to
+believe were made by the escaping criminal?”</p>
+
+<p>Chris is a good looker, all right, Judy. I wasn’t
+ashamed of him, sitting up there so clean and so alien
+to that dirty hole, answering the questions in that low,
+educated voice of his.</p>
+
+<p>“There were no discoverable footprints,” he said,
+“anywhere about our grounds.”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed? That makes your perplexity,
+your—er—vagueness about his method of escape readily
+understandable.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nevertheless,” Chris inserted, “that he did find
+some method of escape is evinced by the fact that he
+has not been found in hiding in our home.”</p>
+
+<p>“You all searched the place pretty well, I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p>“We have searched repeatedly, and with absolute
+thoroughness.”</p>
+
+<p>One of the Swedes spoke up, in that slow, drawling,
+damnable way they have, “Yoost a minute, Mr. Coroner.
+Maaybe the fella is in the Quilter house yet, but
+not hiding behind a door—aye?”</p>
+
+<p>Hank said, “Say, get tired, can’t you? You guys
+don’t seem to understand the offices of this here inquiry.
+What we’re here for ain’t to put up a lot of tall talk.
+Futthermore, it is to find out how the dirty son of a
+sea cook got into the Quilter mansion and killed Dick
+Quilter—one of the squarest men that ever lived—and
+got away. We’ve got time, sure. But, at that, we ain’t
+got all week, either, to set here and listen to you guys
+beef about what ain’t got anything to do with the offices
+of this inquiry. Futthermore, witness testified that there
+weren’t no footprints they could find. Well, then, either
+they overlooked the footprints, the which would be
+easy enough on a place of that size, or else the guy hid in
+the house somewheres. Futthermore, to sit here and
+yappy-yap about him not hiding behind a door is
+wasting everybody’s time. Nobody said he hid behind a
+door, did they? Shut up! I’m talking, ain’t I? Present
+witness excused. We’ll ask Mr. Quilter, Senior, to take
+the stand, if he feels able. And we’ll try to listen to him
+with the respect his years merit, to say nothing of his
+attainments. Shut up! Am I coroner of Quilter County,
+or ain’t I? Am I supposed to run these proceedings, or
+had I better quit and turn them over to a rah-rah boy?
+Thank you, Chris. You done fine. Now, then, Mr.
+Quilter, if you’d as lief take the stand?”</p>
+
+<p>I got that speech straight from Mattie’s notes. She
+and I were talking together while we were waiting for
+the verdict. She’s a good kid. I’ll admit that I was sort of
+assuming the light and airy for her benefit—self-defence,
+Judy, not orneriness; I can’t advertise my reserves—and
+I said that speech of Hank’s was a classic, and that
+I’d like to have it to preserve, word for word. She said,
+“I’ll copy it from my notes for you,” and sat down and
+got to work. An hour later, she came up with a bunch of
+papers, torn from her notebook. “I thought you might
+like to have Miss Quilter’s testimony, too,” she said.
+“She was so wonderful,” and she handed me the papers
+and skipped. It made me sort of think that somebody
+must have told her about me pushing Lump Jones’s
+face in for him, the night of the Youngs’ straw ride.
+Gosh, but that seems twenty years removed from this
+afternoon, and Grandfather’s having to take the
+witness stand, and be questioned.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Except for his manner of telling it, Grandfather’s
+story was not very different from Chris’s or mine.</p>
+
+<p>He had been wakened from his sleep by the sound of
+a gunshot. (I think Grandfather called it a revolver
+shot.) He had been mightily disturbed. He had lighted
+his lamp, risen from his bed, and gone to the door. He
+had found it locked—a circumstance that greatly
+increased his anxiety. He had donned his dressing gown
+and slippers. He had looked about him for a key, and he
+had made various futile attempts to open his door
+without it. He had gone to his window and opened it—had
+perceived that snow had fallen. Caution, which his
+increasing years had put upon him, had warned him
+against the folly of attempting to retain his balance on
+the sloping, snow-covered roof. He had turned again to
+his room, in search of some heavy implement with which
+to batter down his door. He had been unable to find
+anything of the sort. The turmoil made by other members
+of the family in their varied attempts to open their own
+doors had materially abetted his own agitation. Several
+times he had heard his daughter Gracia’s voice, calling
+to him from behind her locked door, to ascertain the
+state of his welfare. He had answered, but had seemed
+unable to reassure her. Finally, after what had seemed
+an interminable period of time, he had heard the
+welcome sound of running feet in the hall. Shortly after
+that, his niece, Mrs. Christopher Quilter, had unlocked
+his door.</p>
+
+<p>She had said to him his son’s name, “Dick!” and had
+hastened up the hall.</p>
+
+<p>He had gone at once to his son’s room. His nephew,
+Christopher, and his son’s children, Lucy and Neal,
+had been in the room when he had reached it. His son
+was dead. “Gentlemen, I invite your questioning.”</p>
+
+<p>Thopson came clear off his perch and asked Grandfather,
+most respectfully, whether he knew of anyone
+who would benefit by the death of Richard Quilter.</p>
+
+<p>“Sir,” Grandfather answered, “my son’s death, far
+from proving a benefit to any living person, has and will
+prove a severe loss to many. I am speaking now merely
+of material loss. My son was the manager of Q 2 Ranch.
+On his ability and acumen the fortune of our entire
+family largely depended.”</p>
+
+<p>“I had heard,” Thopson said, “that there had been
+some talk of selling the Q 2 Ranch.”</p>
+
+<p>“My nephew, Christopher, had been approached
+with offers of purchase. Up to the present time, he has
+accepted none of them. However, is that not beside the
+point? Had the present Quilter properties been sold,
+others would have been immediately purchased as an
+estate for the family. My son’s services would have been
+more necessary, if possible, on the new ranch than they
+have been on the old.”</p>
+
+<p>Roy Ulander spoke up from the jury. For a minute,
+when he began to speak, I was crazy mad, remembering
+all Grandfather had done for him, and thinking that
+Roy was going to quiz him. I was mistaken. Roy took
+that minute to attempt to console Grandfather. He said
+that he knew Neal and Phineas and he—Grandfather—would
+be able to carry the ranch along all right. He
+added, not wholly to my delight, that I was a good,
+steady lad and a fine worker, with an old head on young
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather thanked him.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson wanted to know whether Father had left a
+will.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather said that he had not.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson commented, “Very strange.”</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather begged leave to differ with him. He
+explained that, aside from Father’s modest personal
+effects, Father had nothing to will to anyone.</p>
+
+<p>“No life insurance?”</p>
+
+<p>“None, sir,” Grandfather said.</p>
+
+<p>“I see.” But Thopson managed to put into those two
+words a commentary, caustic, on the character of a
+man who ventures to die without life insurance.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather rebutted with the information that,
+until 1893, both he and Father had carried large
+policies. Since that time, Grandfather said, they had
+been unable to keep up the premiums.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson grew faintly argumentative. He stated that
+the better companies carried their policy holders for
+several years.</p>
+
+<p>“As did our company, sir, for six years,” Grandfather
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson observed that it was difficult for him to
+understand why a family, who had ample means for all
+the luxuries of life, including education in Eastern
+universities, foreign travel, and what-not, could not afford
+the necessity of keeping up small life-insurance
+premiums.</p>
+
+<p>“The premiums,” Grandfather informed him,
+“amounted to well over fifteen hundred dollars a year.
+However, my understanding is, that the purpose of this
+inquiry was to discover, if possible, where, when, and
+by what means Richard Quilter came to his death.
+That its purpose was not to inquire into the details of
+our domestic financial managements and expenditures.”</p>
+
+<p>“Precisely, Mr. Quilter,” Thopson accepted.
+“Precisely. Our purpose is to discover, as you have said,
+where, when, and by what means Richard Quilter came
+to his death. Now, Mr. Quilter, I think I may say,
+without fear of contradiction, that you more than anyone
+else in this room are desirous of discovering, also,
+the person who is responsible for the death of your son.
+May I, then, offer you the results of my experience?”
+(Hot lot of experience that guy has had. He is still
+downy.)</p>
+
+<p>His question, of course, was rhetorical. But Grandfather
+answered it, when Thopson stopped to breathe.</p>
+
+<p>“You may, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“In cases of this sort, the logical approach is to find,
+if possible, the reason for the crime. That is to say,
+before we can discover who committed the crime it is
+necessary to discover why the crime was committed.
+Now, if your son had left money to some person, there
+we would have what we professional men call a motive
+for the murder.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have made yourself clear,” Grandfather said.
+“However, unfortunately, perhaps, for you professional
+men, my son left not one cent on earth.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are positive of that?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“You aren’t?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir. I am confident of it. I am positive of
+nothing.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then,” Thopson produced, “perhaps it won’t surprise
+you greatly when I tell you that Richard Quilter
+did leave a neat little sum of money.”</p>
+
+<p>For one flickering instant Grandfather exposed his
+complete stupefaction to the rabble. Then, as he often
+does, he built a blind of his Johnson and got behind it.</p>
+
+<p>“You do not surprise me, sir. You do astonish me.
+Proceed, if you please, to enlighten me.”</p>
+
+<p>Up to this time, as I have said, Thopson had been as
+decent as a mucker of his sort could be toward
+Grandfather. But now that he was to enlighten, he assumed
+an oily, confidential, between-you-and-me manner that
+made me have to hang on to my chair to keep from lifting
+myself out of it and giving him a swift kick. Chris,
+who was sitting between Irene and me, saw that I was
+getting hot, I think, because right then he caught hold
+of my arm with a firm grip.</p>
+
+<p>In this new manner of his, Thopson informed Grandfather,
+and all of us, that, by the merest chance, he had
+discovered that Father had carried an accident policy
+for the past eight years. A friend of Thopson’s was an
+underwriter for the firm that Father had been insured
+with. This agent—that’s a good enough word for
+me—had told Thopson that, if Richard Quilter’s death
+proved to be accidental, their company would have to
+pay the heirs ten thousand dollars.</p>
+
+<p>“Sir,” Grandfather said, “I can but wish that your
+informant had been himself correctly informed. My son
+did carry such a policy. Unfortunately, it was allowed
+to lapse only last year.”</p>
+
+<p>Thopson forgot himself. “Not on your life it wasn’t.
+The premium was only forty dollars a year. If Richard
+Quilter himself didn’t keep up the payments, then
+somebody else has kept them up. Undoubtedly, some
+member of the family. Now, if we can find who made
+the last payment——”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe stood up. “I made that last payment,” he
+said, and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson chose to get suddenly solemn. “Mr. Quilter,
+were you aware of the fact that Dr. Elm had made this
+payment?”</p>
+
+<p>Hank said, “Don’t answer him, Mr. Quilter. You’ve
+told him once. If he’s deaf, we can’t fiddle-faddle around
+with him all week. Futthermore, he’s a waste of time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Thopson,” Grandfather said, “I was not aware
+of the fact that anyone had made the payment. My
+belief was that the policy had been allowed to lapse.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Quilter, can you give any reasonable explanation
+of the fact that your son had not told you of Dr.
+Elm’s having paid this premium?”</p>
+
+<p>“I trust, sir,” Grandfather replied, “that I should not
+attempt an unreasonable explanation. I give you what
+seems to me a most reasonable one when I state that I
+fancy my son was not cognizant of the fact that his
+friend, Dr. Elm, had met this obligation for him.”</p>
+
+<p>And again Thopson forgot himself. “You mean he
+didn’t know it? You bet he knew it. Last August he
+went to the company’s office, in Portland, and tried to
+collect damages for a sprained wrist, or something.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe stood up, emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson said, “One moment, Dr. Elm.”</p>
+
+<p>Hank said, “Go on ahead, Doc, if you’ve got
+something to say.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe said, “Oh—plenty of time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Quilter,” Thopson had retrieved himself,
+solemnity and all, “would ten thousand dollars make
+any particular difference to anyone on the Q 2 Ranch
+at the present time?”</p>
+
+<p>“The answer to the question, which I infer you are
+trying to put, is: Yes, sir, it would.”</p>
+
+<p>“To whom?”</p>
+
+<p>“To all of us.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then,” Thopson shot out, “if this ten thousand
+dollars is collectible, every person on the Q 2 Ranch at
+present would benefit because of it?”</p>
+
+<p>“That is true,” Grandfather said.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson said he had finished with the witness. Mr.
+Ward stood.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Quilter,” he asked, “in all matters you were
+your son’s confidant, were you not?”</p>
+
+<p>“So I believed,” Grandfather answered.</p>
+
+<p>“Since he had not told you that this policy was still
+operative, is it probable that he had told any other
+member of the family?”</p>
+
+<p>“It would seem not. However, I cannot be certain.
+My son had never attached importance to that policy.
+He believed that the company was an unreliable one.
+My son’s failure to tell me of Dr. Elm’s kindness might
+have been because he knew of my dislike for monetary
+dealings with our friends. It might have been that so
+trivial an episode passed out of his mind. Or, it might
+have been that Dr. Elm himself asked Richard not to
+mention his act of kindness. In any of these events, it
+would seem unlikely that Richard had mentioned the
+affair to any other member of the family. I have
+expressed myself poorly. My meaning is, that the same
+considerations which would have kept Richard from
+telling me of this would have kept him, also, from telling
+anyone else.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, Mr. Quilter. One more question, if you
+will be so good. You have told Mr. Thopson that your
+family would benefit from the payment of the ten
+thousand dollars’ indemnity. There are few families, I
+should think by the way, to whom ten thousand dollars
+would be of no benefit whatever. The same question,
+put to any member of the jury, would, I am certain,
+be answered as you have answered it. My point is this:
+Would the money, for any reason, be more acceptable
+to you now than it would have been at any time in
+the past ten years? Or, to put it still more clearly: One
+year ago your son’s life was insured for a large
+amount—twenty, thirty thousand dollars. Would not thirty
+thousand dollars have been more useful to Q 2 Ranch
+than ten thousand dollars?”</p>
+
+<p>You see what he did, Judy? He asked the first question,
+and then he would not allow Grandfather to answer
+it. He kept right on going. And the question which
+Grandfather finally had to answer was: Which is the
+larger amount, ten or thirty thousand dollars?</p>
+
+<p>Do you know why Mr. Ward did that? I know. It was
+because he believes that one of us Quilters is guilty. It
+is because he was afraid of Grandfather’s honesty.</p>
+
+<p>I thought that Grandfather might scorn the loophole.
+He did not. He answered, “Sir, thirty thousand dollars
+would surely have been more useful to the Q 2 Ranch
+than a problematical ten thousand dollars. I may add,
+that my son’s life insurance was with an old, reliable
+company. Have I correctly answered your question?”</p>
+
+<p>“You have; and thank you, Mr. Quilter.”</p>
+
+<p>I told you why Mr. Ward had asked the question as
+he had. I think I don’t need to tell you why Grandfather
+answered it as he did. Or, perhaps I should say, I
+have told you before this why Grandfather answered
+it as he did.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather came back to his seat beside Aunt
+Gracia. Dr. Joe was called to the stand.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>Thopson elected sternness. “Dr. Elm, where were you
+on the night of Monday, October eighth?”</p>
+
+<p>“I was attending Mrs. H. F. Ferndell, in Portland,
+Oregon. She gave birth to an infant daughter at one
+o’clock in the morning.”</p>
+
+<p>“You can, of course, produce witnesses to
+substantiate this alibi?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not an alibi,” Dr. Joe said, with perfect gravity.
+“A birth.”</p>
+
+<p>“You can prove that you were where you claim at
+have been on the night of Richard Quilter’s death. And
+allow me to remind you, Dr. Elm, that this is no place
+to indulge in forced witticisms.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe said, “How does it go? ‘ “There’s nae ill in a
+merry wind,” quo’ the wife when she whistled through
+the kirk.’ Well, get on. Get on!”</p>
+
+<p>“I have asked you whether you could prove that
+you were where you claim to have been in Portland, on
+the night of October eighth.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know. There were two grandmothers, three
+or four uncles and aunts, the father, the patient, and,
+of course, the infant. The whole thing hinges on whether
+or not those people could be got to confess that they had
+me for their physician. I should say it was doubtful.
+Oh, get on, you—you. Of course I can prove it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well. Will you, then, tell this jury how it
+happened that a man in your circumstances should have
+undertaken to keep up an insurance policy for another
+man?”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe said, “I paid my board bill last month. Did
+you?”</p>
+
+<p>Thopson turned to Hank. “Mr. Coroner, I
+appeal——”</p>
+
+<p>Hank said, “He asked you a civil question. Can’t you
+answer it?”</p>
+
+<p>One of the Swedes found voice. “Maaybe, I tank the
+doctor he don’t want to tell about paying oop the
+insurance.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe said, “Sure, I’d just as lief tell. I was out at
+Dick’s house, early last year, when the bill came for his
+premium on this policy. Dick said that he thought he
+would drop it—that it was a shyster company. And it
+was—there’s something else I can prove,
+Mr.—What’s-your-name—though I didn’t know it at the time. I
+had a policy of my own with the same company. I told
+Dick I thought it was foolish to drop a thing like that,
+for forty a year. He said forty was too much to waste,
+and that he had spent his last available cent for the
+month, anyway. I asked him to let me pay it this
+year—said he could count it against what I owed him.”</p>
+
+<p>“You were in debt to the deceased?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. To him and his family.”</p>
+
+<p>“What was the amount of this debt?”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe said, “I was afraid I might be asked that, so
+I reckoned it up in cold figures here lately. It came to
+a million and four dollars and twenty cents. Or, though
+likely you won’t understand, I am in debt to these
+people for friendship, for a place that feels like home,
+for——”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not a question, however, of actual monetary
+debt?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, I don’t suppose you’d think so. Well, anyhow,
+I asked him to let me send the check in for him this year,
+or until he was in cash again.</p>
+
+<p>“He refused, point-blank. And there, as he thought,
+the matter ended. When I left the ranch, I swiped the
+bill; and, later in the month, I sent in a check with a
+letter telling the company to be sure to send the receipt
+to me. Warning them, under no circumstances, to send
+it to Q 2. Consequently, they mailed Dick the
+receipted bill in the next mail.</p>
+
+<p>“In the meantime, he had told Mr. Quilter here that
+he had decided to allow the policy to lapse. Mr. Quilter
+agreed with him that it was as well to have done so.
+Time will probably prove that he was right about it.
+He usually is.</p>
+
+<p>“When Dick got the receipted bill, he knew what I
+had done. I can’t say that he was particularly grateful
+to me. He insisted that I take his note—all that sort of
+stuff. He said that he wouldn’t say anything to his
+father about it, because his father hated being under
+obligations to friends. I told him he had better not tell
+his father. Threat—you see. I guess that ends the story.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe started to walk away. Thopson winged him
+with: “One minute, please. Did the deceased tell any
+other member of his family about this somewhat
+unusual proceeding?”</p>
+
+<p>“They are here,” Dr. Joe said. “Do you want me to
+ask them?”</p>
+
+<p>Hank said, “This ain’t a trial. I’ll ask them. Save
+time. Miss Quilter—never mind leaving your seat for a
+little informal matter like this—did you know Dick
+had this fake accident policy?”</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia said that she had known of it, several
+years ago. But that Father had told her, when he had
+told Grandfather, that he had decided to let it lapse.</p>
+
+<p>“What about you, Neal?” Hank asked.</p>
+
+<p>I told him I had known nothing about it. I had known
+that Father was all cut up about having to let the life
+insurance go; and I had supposed that it left him
+entirely uninsured.</p>
+
+<p>Hank began to ask Chris, next; but Thopson got
+funny and said that he insisted on having these answers
+under oath. I didn’t think Hank would allow him to
+get away with it, but he did. I suppose he had to.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson took Irene first. He asked her whether she
+had known about the policy. She said that she had not.
+The witness was excused.</p>
+
+<p>Chris was called, and sworn in. “Yes,” he said, “I
+knew that Dick was carrying some sort of an accident
+policy. When we were in Portland together, last August,
+my Uncle Phineas and I went with Dick to put in his
+claim for payment because of his injured wrist.”</p>
+
+<p>“How did all three of you happen to go? Did he think
+he’d need to be backed up?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not at all. We had been lunching together. After
+luncheon, Dick said he was going to stop at the
+company’s office. We stopped with him.” Chris then went
+on to say that they had been treated to various insults,
+had been asked to produce witnesses to the accident,
+among other extraordinary demands, and had finally
+been curtly dismissed with instructions to call again.
+Chris said that he and Uncle Phineas were both angry.
+But that Father had merely said it served him right for
+attempting to deal with crooks, and that he would never
+go to their office again, nor pay another premium. In so
+far as he was concerned, Chris said, he had not given
+the matter of the policy another thought. He had not
+known that it had carried any such indemnity in case of
+accidental death. He had known nothing more
+concerning it.</p>
+
+<p>“Did you,” Thopson questioned, “happen to mention
+this matter to your wife?”</p>
+
+<p>“You have heard my wife’s testimony. I did not.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not in the habit of confiding in your wife, eh?”</p>
+
+<p>Chris kept his temper like a gentleman. It was more
+than I could have done, but I was proud of him for doing
+it. “I am not in the habit of burdening my wife with
+exhaustively trivial details which could neither amuse
+nor interest her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did your uncle, Phineas Quilter, feel the same way
+about confiding in his wife?”</p>
+
+<p>“I should assume that he did. However, I am unable
+to answer for the feelings of my uncle.”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t know, then, whether the lady who is at
+home sick in bed was aware of the ten-thousand-dollar
+indemnity?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think not. My aunt is not a secretive person. Had
+she known, I fancy she would have told some one of us,
+at least. Also, my Uncle Phineas had not known of the
+policy prior to the day when we called at the office of
+the company with my Cousin Dick. Since that time, my
+Uncle Phineas has not returned to Q 2 Ranch.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your uncle, I suppose, never writes any letters to
+his wife?”</p>
+
+<p>“He writes to her, certainly.”</p>
+
+<p>“And if he had written to her about the policy, you
+think she would not agree with you that the
+ten-thousand-dollar indemnity was too trivial to mention?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have told you, under oath, that I had not known
+of that indemnity.”</p>
+
+<p>“It makes quite a difference as to the policy’s
+importance, doesn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>“It does.”</p>
+
+<p>“By the way, Mr. Quilter, have you tried, recently,
+to put another mortgage on Q 2 Ranch?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have.”</p>
+
+<p>“Were you attending to that when you were in
+Portland, last August?”</p>
+
+<p>“I was.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did you succeed in raising the money you wanted?”</p>
+
+<p>“I did not.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Quilter, how long have you and your wife been
+residing on Q 2 Ranch?”</p>
+
+<p>“We came there last March.”</p>
+
+<p>Thopson counted on his stubby fingers. “Seven
+months. You were not at the Q 2 Ranch at any time
+last year, were you?”</p>
+
+<p>“We were not.”</p>
+
+<p>“Finished with the witness.”</p>
+
+<p>I hoped that Mr. Ward would take Chris, then. He
+did not. He sat still.</p>
+
+<p>They called Aunt Gracia to the stand.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch15">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>I had been as nervous as an old woman about Aunt
+Gracia all during these everlasting proceedings. She
+and I had ridden to Quilterville together to keep from
+crowding the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>We were no sooner mounted, and off, than she began
+to talk to me about hoping I’d be “discreet” at the
+inquest. I did not understand her, at first. We had held
+sort of a family council before we had left home and
+Grandfather had talked to us. Over and over—you know
+how unusual it is for Grandfather to be reiterative—he
+had impressed upon us the necessity for telling the
+absolute truth.</p>
+
+<p>He explained, of course, that he did not suppose any
+of us would lie, but that affairs of this sort were apt to
+invite attempted diplomacy, finesse. None of us,
+Grandfather went on to say, had any reason to fear the
+truth. Truth, he asked us to remember, was the one
+thing that could not ultimately be defeated. He gave us
+rather a sermon, insisting that truth bred truth as surely
+as cabbages bred cabbages, or as lies bred lies.
+Grandfather, as you know, would neither dictate nor appeal;
+but he came closer to each, in this talk to us, than I had
+ever heard him come.</p>
+
+<p>I was still thinking of his last statement (Lucy would
+call it a pearl), “One cannot bargain with truth,” when
+Aunt Gracia began her talk about discretion. It seemed
+to me that she was unsaying most of the things Grandfather
+had said; but it was easier to doubt my own
+understanding than it was to doubt either Aunt Gracia’s
+dutifulness or her rigid integrity. It wasn’t long, though,
+until she gave me no opportunity for choice; so then I
+asked her, straight, if she was disagreeing with what
+Grandfather had said to us in the parlour.</p>
+
+<p>She answered that Grandfather was old, very old,
+and at present frightfully weakened from shock, grief,
+and the impending horror of disgrace. She said that,
+fundamentally, what Grandfather had been telling us
+about truth was sound; but, in many circumstances,
+truth should become a delicate thing, to be handled
+delicately, not swung as a bludgeon. She said that truth
+might breed truth, if it were planted in the proper soil.
+If it were tossed carelessly to the four winds it might
+breed nothing—as cabbage seeds sown in the sagebrush
+would breed nothing—or it might breed anything:
+destruction, disgrace. Grandfather’s idealism, she
+remarked, like many other beautiful things, was not
+always the most practical asset in a time of emergency.</p>
+
+<p>You will understand, Judy, that I actually had to turn
+in my saddle and look to make sure that it was Aunt
+Gracia, of the nonadjustable moralities, who was riding
+beside me.</p>
+
+<p>She misread my look, because she said: “Exactly,
+Neal. We are to use the truth to-day, but we are to use
+it carefully, with discretion. For instance, dear, the
+fact that I can find comfort in the knowledge that Dick
+died in a state of perfect grace, need not be brought out.
+Unless we are directly questioned, I should think the
+entire circumstance of Dick’s recent baptism might
+better be omitted from the testimony. Too, I can see
+no reason for telling anyone who may be there to-day
+about the fact that Dick and Christopher had recently
+exchanged rooms.”</p>
+
+<p>“Aunt Gracia,” I asked, “do you think that some
+one of us meant to kill Chris, and blundered into
+Father’s room, by mistake?”</p>
+
+<p>She evaded that by saying it was more important,
+now, to plan for the future than it was to probe into
+the past.</p>
+
+<p>I told her that I agreed with her. But, I fancy, we did
+not mean the same thing. It was a peach of a morning,
+Judy. The snow had melted. The air was sweet. Hiroshige
+had done the sky, and our brown old hills lay softly
+in front of it. It was not the realization of death, it was
+the realization of life—of a world alive; even our hills
+were only napping—that made me go suddenly rabid.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia interrupted my ravings. “Don’t, Neal.
+Don’t,” she commanded. “You sound like Jasper in
+<i>Edwin Drood</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>That was plain enough, wasn’t it? “Aunt Gracia,” I
+said, “it is bothering you, isn’t it, to decide whether
+I shot Father because I thought that he was going
+insane, or whether I meant to go into Chris’s room that
+night, and shot Father by mistake?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why do you say that?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Because you say we must mention neither the baptism
+nor the changed rooms at the inquest to-day. Because
+I know that you have suspected me, from the first.
+Would it help you any to have me swear to you, out
+here in the open, that I am as innocent as you are?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“I swear it, Aunt Gracia.”</p>
+
+<p>We rode along and had made the ford before she
+said another word. She came up beside me on the east
+river path.</p>
+
+<p>“Neal,” she said, “this is an irreligious community.
+Consequently, there are two words they like to roll
+around their tongues—‘Religious fanatic.’ I am hoping
+they won’t think of those two words to-day.”</p>
+
+<p>She grew intense. She does, you know, once in a blue
+moon. She said that she wasn’t a coward. She said she
+would be glad to say that she had killed Father, and
+then go to join him, and Mother, and the others in one
+of the highest states of glory. But, she said, such a false
+confession could do nothing but bring added shame and
+grief to the family. If only, she said, she were not a
+Quilter—then how eagerly she would sacrifice her own
+life and honour for the honour of the Quilters.</p>
+
+<p>I felt, of course, like asking her not to be an idiot. I
+didn’t. I produced some banality about the uselessness
+of such a sacrifice—allowing the real criminal to go free,
+all that.</p>
+
+<p>“I know,” she answered, “but—the ecstasy of it!
+The exquisite, vivid ecstasy of such a sacrifice. Or—of
+any sacrifice. Isn’t it odd, Neal, that no one ever pities
+Isaac?”</p>
+
+<p>You can understand, Judy, that that just about
+knocked me a twister. You can understand, too, why I
+had been dreading Aunt Gracia’s turn as a witness. I
+tell you what, Jude, every one of the family has got the
+rotten habit of thinking that, because Aunt Gracia’s
+mind is different from our own, it is inferior—deformed.
+We have no right to the comparison. It is as unfair as
+comparing—well, say ice and water. I’d be bound to
+muddle a metaphor here—but Aunt Gracia’s mind is
+surely more fluid in its mysticism than are ours in their
+set materialism. This is all pretty poor. I wish you might
+have been there, to-day, to see and hear Aunt Gracia.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>When I saw her gather up the skirt of her long black
+riding habit and walk across that dirty room and take
+her place in the witness chair, the thought flashed
+through my mind that it was a wonder that Olympe, ill
+or not, would have forgone such an opportunity. Only,
+and I’m not meaning to knock Olympe, either, Aunt
+Gracia’s dignity and distinction were natural,
+untrimmed: the difference between one of our Percherons
+in a meadow or decked out in a circus parade.</p>
+
+<p>Hank put her through the usual preliminaries, and
+then asked her, as he had asked us, to tell the jury what
+she knew about the murder.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting there, dressed in black in that gloomy room,
+with her face a white oval and her long hands, white
+and still in her lap, she needed a Rembrandt. She is old,
+past thirty, but she is beautiful; especially beautiful
+with her head tipped as she had it this afternoon, so
+that her thin features are a bit foreshortened. And as for
+her voice—they can extol soft, velvety, throaty voices
+for women. But I’ll take Aunt Gracia’s voice every
+time—it is like a clear glass bell being rung with
+decorum.</p>
+
+<p>“My story,” she said, “would be precisely the same
+as the stories the others have told you. My fright, my
+efforts to open my door, my release, could further in
+no way the purposes of this inquiry. You have listened,
+patiently, to three accounts of the sort; but you are, I
+believe, no nearer the truth than you were in the beginning.
+It seems wise to me, now, to bring several matters
+to your attention.</p>
+
+<p>“You have not taken into account the fact that
+whoever was in my brother’s room on Monday night must
+have been there for sometime before the shot was fired.
+The rope was not put in place after the shot was fired.
+From the position of the rope in the snow, and from
+the amount of snow that had fallen on it, we were able
+to tell that the rope must have been lying, for at least
+an hour, exactly where we found it.</p>
+
+<p>“My brother was a light sleeper. Does it seem reasonable,
+even possible, that anyone could come into his
+room, open a window, tie a rope around his bedstead,
+toss the rope out of the window, while he slept? Or,
+while he lay there in bed and calmly watched the person
+making these preparations? If, for some reason, my
+brother had been unable to move—though he was not
+unable to move—don’t you know that he would have
+called, cried out for help? You have listened to the
+testimony that members of the family could be plainly
+heard shouting to one another through the closed
+locked doors. Would my brother, would any man, lie in
+silence, motionless, and allow some intruder to remain
+in his room?</p>
+
+<p>“No; not unless he were forced to do so. What could
+have forced him? The gun that killed him—nothing else.
+But not the gun alone. The gun in the hands of some
+strong, powerful person of whom my brother would
+have been afraid.</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder how many people in this county would
+testify that Richard Quilter was a brave man? Every
+person, I think, who knew him. I wonder how many
+people would have dared to sneak into my brother’s
+room and menace him with a gun. Very few, I believe.</p>
+
+<p>“It has been suggested, or, perhaps, I should say
+insinuated, that my cousin, Irene Quilter, shot my
+brother. Look at her. Do you think she would have
+dared? Assume that she did dare. Do you think that
+she could have frightened my brother—a man six feet
+tall and afraid of nothing? How long do you think it
+would have taken him to leap from his bed and seize
+any weapon held in her trembling hands? She is a frail
+woman, bred in an Eastern city. Probably she has never
+discharged a gun in her life. She, as you must know,
+could not menace a coward for five minutes. Could she
+have menaced Richard Quilter for an hour—two hours?</p>
+
+<p>“It took a man who was expert with a gun to be able
+to keep my brother covered while he stooped to tie
+that rope around the foot of the bed. True, he had it in
+readiness, or so it would surely seem. He had one loop
+made, shall we say? But, gentlemen, to draw fifty feet
+of rope through a loop is not the work of an instant.
+The murderer had to stoop to fasten the rope. He had
+to do it with his left hand, while his right hand held the
+gun that cowed my brother.</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Elm has told me, and will testify under oath,
+that my brother was not drugged at the time of his
+death; that he had been given no drug of any sort before
+his death. Can you see Dick Quilter, as you knew him,
+alert, active, fearless, lying there in bed while some
+weak, inadequate person crouched to place that rope? I
+think you cannot.</p>
+
+<p>“Three women were in the house that night: an old
+lady, past sixty—my aunt, Olympe Quilter—Irene
+Quilter, and I. Also, there was my little niece, Richard’s
+daughter, a twelve-year-old child. Do you think that
+Richard would have allowed any one of us to threaten
+him with a gun for a longer time than it took him to
+reach us and take the thing away from us?</p>
+
+<p>“My father was in the house that night. You know
+him. But, aside from that, you have seen him on the
+witness stand to-day. He is eighty years old. Would
+Richard have been afraid to unarm him, do you fancy?
+Would Richard have been afraid to unarm this eighteen-year-old
+son of his? Or, could Richard have been afraid
+of our cousin, Christopher Quilter?</p>
+
+<p>“I dislike saying this, here, but I will say it because I
+must. My brother loved our Cousin Christopher; but he
+scorned him. He thought, perhaps rightly, that
+Christopher was a weakling. Though Richard had been ill for
+some time, he could work all day at tasks that tired
+Christopher in a few hours. What opportunity in an
+Eastern university, in his studies abroad, had
+Christopher had to develop prowess with a gun? He was
+never a sportsman. As a boy he never went hunting.
+I doubt that he has fired a gun half a dozen times in
+his life. All of which would mean nothing, perhaps, but
+for the fact that Richard knew it as well as I know it.
+Do you think that Christopher, a man of much frailer
+physique than my brother, could have frightened him
+for five minutes; could have kept him cowed and silent
+for an hour? Do you think that Dick Quilter, with any
+one of these seven people, would not have made an
+attempt to save himself?”</p>
+
+<p>Thopson interrupted and wanted to know if Aunt
+Gracia was not overlooking the fact that, perhaps,
+Richard Quilter was in the act of making that attempt
+when he was shot.</p>
+
+<p>“I will remind you,” Aunt Gracia said, “that the
+rope had been in the position we found it for at least an
+hour. Nothing but knowledge that such an attempt
+would mean certain death could have held my brother
+passive for an hour. As you suggest, it is possible that
+at last, in desperation, he did make an attempt to save
+himself. You know the result.</p>
+
+<p>“There is another point that has not been touched
+upon: the lighted lamp in Richard’s room that night. I
+had put the small bedside lamp, newly filled, as usual,
+in his room that evening. At midnight, the lamp was
+burning low; the oil was all but exhausted. Since, I have
+refilled the lamp and tested it for time. It took two hours
+and a half to consume as much oil as had been consumed
+on Monday night. It had never been my brother’s
+practice to read in bed. There was no book or magazine
+near his bed. Why should the lamp have burned
+throughout the night?</p>
+
+<p>“Assume that when Richard went into his room
+that night, the murderer was hiding there—probably
+in the clothes closet—and, after Richard had got into
+bed, but before he had reached to extinguish the light,
+the man had stepped out, with the gun levelled on
+him——”</p>
+
+<p>“Wouldn’t you say, Miss Quilter, that two hours
+and a half was a long time for the murderer to have
+spent in your brother’s room?”</p>
+
+<p>“I should, indeed.”</p>
+
+<p>“A long time, too, for such a man as your brother to
+have allowed himself to be ‘menaced’ without making
+an attempt to disarm the fellow, without raising his
+voice in outcry?”</p>
+
+<p>“It seems to me that is precisely what I have been
+contending, Mr. Thopson. I presume, however, that
+you have thought ahead to the second point which I
+was about to make. This:</p>
+
+<p>“We have no way of knowing what went on in Dick’s
+room that night. None of us, I am sure, knows all
+there is to be known about any other person. We think
+that there was no hidden chapter, no hidden page or
+paragraph in my brother’s life. We cannot know it.
+Suppose some ruffian was making a blackmailing demand
+from Richard. Suppose that Richard was as eager
+as was the man himself to keep the rest of us from
+knowing that he—the murderer, I mean—was in the
+house; had any reason for being there.</p>
+
+<p>“We know nothing of these possibilities now. I hope
+we may know, in time. What we do know now is that
+no member of this family could have caused Richard one
+moment’s alarm. That he could have and would have
+disarmed any one of us in the snatch of a second, and
+sent us ashamed away from him.</p>
+
+<p>“My brother’s corpse is lying in the adjoining room. I
+ask the jury to look at it. To see the size of the man,
+the breadth of his shoulders. I ask them to see what can
+be seen in his dead face—the strength, the purpose, the
+courage. I ask them to return and look at us, here. Then
+they will know, since they are just, wise men, that I
+have spoken the truth.”</p>
+
+<p>Impressive? Golly, Jude, it was a knockout. On the
+square, it is thanks to Aunt Gracia—the family disgrace
+because she happens to be a mystic—that Irene, or
+Chris, or, probably, both of them aren’t going to have
+to appear before the Grand Jury. And, if you will forgive
+the old wise crack, it wasn’t so much what she said
+as the way she said it. Sitting there, so aloof and so
+lovely, speaking in that clear, unafraid voice of hers, she
+conveyed the impression that no man’s doubt could
+damage her; that any man’s doubt would prove him a
+fool or a monster. One doesn’t, you know, look at the
+white moon in a black night’s sky and remark, “I don’t
+believe it.” And yet, after all, the moon is not a large
+and luminous dinner plate.</p>
+
+<p>Note, Judy: Aunt Gracia had made a special point,
+to me in private, of the fact that Father was taking
+medicine that made him sleep heavily. Dr. Joe knew
+it. Would he have called a sleeping medicine “drugs”?
+Possibly, almost certainly, not if he had had a talk with
+Aunt Gracia before the inquest. Because, you see, if
+Father had been drugged into a heavy sleep, all Aunt
+Gracia’s arguments would amount to nothing. The
+person could have crept into the room, made the
+arrangements with the rope without waking Father; could
+have fired the shot, and could have got away. Smash
+goes the fact of Father’s lack of fear; smash goes the
+fact of his disarming any one of us; smash goes the
+expert gunman—smash for all of it. Not much bravery
+is required to shoot a sleeping man.</p>
+
+<p>It doesn’t seem reasonable to suppose that, even if
+Father had been drugged and asleep, some guy would
+have had the nerve to stick around in the room for a
+couple of hours with the lamp burning. But it is possible,
+anyway, that Father got into bed and was so dopey, and
+tired that he dropped off to sleep and forgot to blow out
+the light.</p>
+
+<p>Here is another thing, Judy. If the guy had been hiding
+in Father’s room before Father came into it, couldn’t
+he have fixed the rope then? Sure he could. Father
+didn’t look under his bed at night, did he? He would
+have noticed if the window had been open and the rope
+stretched across to it as we found it. But he wouldn’t
+have noticed a loop of rope around the leg of his bed.
+The fellow did not, necessarily, have to pull the fifty
+feet of rope through the loop with one hand while he
+used the other hand to keep Father covered with a gun.</p>
+
+<p>Since I didn’t think through to any of this until I was
+riding home from Quilterville this evening, I am fairly
+certain that the jury hasn’t come to it yet. For one
+thing, as I have said, Aunt Gracia obviated doubt by
+making it seem idiotic and indecent. For another thing,
+the jury, at the last, was straining every nerve to live up
+to her description and look like wise and just men.</p>
+
+<p>When Aunt Gracia had finished her speech, which
+I’ve copied straight from Mattie’s notes for you, she
+began to gather her skirts into one hand, preparatory to
+leaving the witness chair.</p>
+
+<p>Chris whispered to me, “Bless her, she’s turned the
+tide!”</p>
+
+<p>Thopson said, “One moment, please, Miss Quilter.”</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia sat back in her chair, and dropped her
+hands, quiet as dead things, into her lap again.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Thopson started off with a lot of con talk about how
+helpful she had been, and about how she had his
+gratitude and the gratitude of the jury for her plain
+speaking. It was only through such methods as hers,
+extolled he, that the guilty wretch could ever be brought
+to justice. It sounded great. But I felt, like the
+carpenter, that the butter was spread too thick. Aunt
+Gracia sat, pale and placid, and looking about as
+susceptible to flattery as my but recently mentioned
+moon.</p>
+
+<p>“You have implied,” Thopson finally came to it,
+“that your brother might have had an enemy. By a
+rigorous searching of your memory, would it be possible
+for you to recall who this enemy might be?”</p>
+
+<p>“But, of course,” Aunt Gracia answered, “I thought
+that you knew. Seventeen, nearly eighteen years ago,
+my brother killed a man as he would have killed a mad
+dog, or a rattlesnake, or any dangerous thing that was
+attacking his wife. He was tried, and acquitted. The
+jury did not leave the room. The judge apologized to
+Richard—or so I have been told—explaining that the
+trial had been merely a conformance to the letter of the
+law.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know the name of the man whom Richard
+Quilter killed?”</p>
+
+<p>“Enos Karabass. The Pennsylvania Dutch, I believe,
+are unfortunate people to anger.”</p>
+
+<p>“His family lives in this vicinity?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, they do not.”</p>
+
+<p>“Were they informed concerning the manner of his
+death?”</p>
+
+<p>“We were unable to find that he had any people.”</p>
+
+<p>Thopson gave himself over to pity. “But, my dear
+Miss Quilter——”</p>
+
+<p>“You asked me if it could be possible that my brother
+had an enemy. Any man who has ever killed another
+man might, it seems to me, have dangerous enemies from
+that time forth.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see. I see. Granted, then, for the sake of argument
+that that man had a brother, or a son, who wanted to
+avenge his death. Would it have been possible for him
+to enter your home without detection?”</p>
+
+<p>“Quite possible. Our outside doors are never locked
+until the last thing at night. While we were at supper, in
+the dining room, anyone could have walked in, quietly,
+and gone upstairs.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have no watchdogs on your place?”</p>
+
+<p>“We have two dogs. I mentioned suppertime because,
+usually at that hour, the dogs are at the back of the
+house waiting for, or eating, their suppers.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well. He could have gotten into the house. He
+could have hidden in your brother’s bedroom. But—— Could
+he have gotten out of the house? That is, could
+he have gotten out of the house without leaving any
+footprints in the snow? This does seem to bring us back
+to the beginning, doesn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia said, “He could have got out of the
+house, because he did get out. How he escaped we have
+not, as yet, been able to discover. That is the problem
+to be solved. We have one fact. He is not in our home
+at present. That leads to another fact, unexplained,
+but not conjectural. He has escaped. It is stupid, and
+so it is an insult to the intelligence of this jury for us to
+keep insisting that the man could not have got out of the
+house, when we all know that he <em>has</em> got out of the
+house.”</p>
+
+<p>The jury shone from the sensation of having their
+intelligences mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>“Very well,” Thopson assumed acceptance, “we’ll
+rest that for the present. Now, if you please, I’d like to
+take up, with you, the matter of the locked doors.”</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia invited, “Yes. I wish you would.”</p>
+
+<p>I am asking you, Judy, is she a clever woman, or isn’t
+she?</p>
+
+<p>“All of the outside doors were locked, on the inside, I
+presume, on the night of October eighth?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. We have three outside doors. The side door was
+locked, on the inside. Both the front and back doors
+were unlocked. Anyone could have come downstairs
+and have walked straight out of the house through
+either of those doors.”</p>
+
+<p>“Without leaving footprints in the snow?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am sorry,” Aunt Gracia said, “I thought that we
+were speaking now only of the doors.”</p>
+
+<p>“Whose duty was it to lock those outside doors at
+night?”</p>
+
+<p>“It was no one’s duty. Usually, the last person
+downstairs, in the evening, attended to locking the
+house.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who was the last person downstairs that night?”</p>
+
+<p>“My brother. That is, he was the last person to retire.
+It should have been his care to lock the doors.”</p>
+
+<p>“Would it have been possible for him to have
+forgotten to lock them?”</p>
+
+<p>“Very possible. Locked doors are given, or were
+given, very little attention on our ranch. I fancy that
+we slept many nights with the doors unlocked.”</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to me that, if I had been in Thopson’s
+place, I should have asked, then, how it happened, in a
+house where locked doors were given no attention, that
+there were keys for all the upstairs doors. (Aunt Gracia’s
+statement was truthful enough. She had said, “were
+given.” A month or so ago, not one of our bedroom
+doors had a key to it. Aunt Gracia had had to hunt
+them all out from the hardware box in the attic.) Thopson
+missed it, however, and went on to ask her to tell
+him exactly which doors were locked that night.</p>
+
+<p>“Except for the seven bedroom doors, which were
+locked on the outside,” she said, “and for the side door,
+downstairs, I think every door in the house was unlocked,
+including the inside and outside cellar doors. To
+be sure, I had almost forgotten, the door to the back
+stairway was locked. Irene Quilter has told you how that
+came to be locked.”</p>
+
+<p>“Into what downstairs room,” Thopson inquired,
+“does the back stairway lead?”</p>
+
+<p>“Into the sitting room.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not the room in which Mrs. Christopher Quilter
+was sleeping that night?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, then, did Mrs. Christopher Quilter not unlock
+that door, and go up the back stairway, instead of
+going through the several downstairs rooms, in order
+to use the front stairway?”</p>
+
+<p>“That question is easily answered, Mr. Thopson.
+The back stairway is crooked and narrow. We none of
+us ever use it. In her terrorized state, my cousin would
+surely act according to habit. Her habit was to use the
+front stairway.”</p>
+
+<p>Can you sort the truth out of that, Judy? Irene, who
+never did any work, and who was never in a hurry,
+generally did use the front stairway. The rest of us used
+the back stairway as often as we used the front one.
+Do you know why Aunt Gracia deliberately lied about
+it? I don’t know, entirely. And I don’t know why Irene
+did not run right up the back stairway that night. I wish
+that I did know. Though, surely, Aunt Gracia might
+have been right about Irene’s acting according to habit.
+It was her habit to go upstairs the front way, and she
+was badly frightened. I guess we’ll have to let it go at
+that.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson’s next question was a stunner. “Could you
+swear, Miss Quilter, that no member of your family
+could have gone into Richard Quilter’s room, committed
+the murder, slipped out through the hall and back into
+his own room? I understand that the turmoil in the hall
+would have covered any slight noise that night.”</p>
+
+<p>For the first time, Aunt Gracia hedged. “I think that
+I understand your question, Mr. Thopson; but may I
+ask you to state it a bit more directly, so that I may
+give a direct answer?”</p>
+
+<p>“Would you swear that there was not time for any
+member of your family to have gone into your brother’s
+room, committed the murder, and got back into his
+own room, before Irene Quilter came into the upper
+hall?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. I could not swear to that, because there was
+time. I could and do swear, however, that no member
+of our family did do what you have suggested because,
+though there was time, there was not opportunity.
+I make this oath for two reasons. The one reason, I have
+given you: No member of our family could have kept
+Dick Quilter cowed for five minutes—much less for an
+hour or longer. The second reason I have not, as yet,
+given to you. It is this: Each member of the Quilter
+family was locked in his or her room that night at the
+time of the murder. All seven bedroom doors were
+locked on the outside. One of the bedrooms was
+unoccupied—but that door was also locked. Irene Quilter
+found seven keys in my brother’s room, and used one
+key to unlock each door. No, Mr. Thopson, we have
+more than Irene’s word for that. The keys were left on
+the outside of the locks. Only a few minutes later my
+father and I turned all those keys again. We did this,
+hoping that the murderer might be hiding in one of these
+rooms, and that we could keep him locked there while
+we searched the remainder of the house.”</p>
+
+<p>“Granted,” Thopson said, “that six of you were
+locked in your rooms on that night. There still remains
+a seventh, Miss Quilter, who was not locked in her
+room.”</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia said: “Mr. Thopson, please be fair about
+this. Can you imagine anyone who would plan a murder
+by carefully establishing alibis for every person in the
+house except herself? Do you suppose that if Irene
+Quilter had planned to kill my brother, she would have
+arranged to be the one person in the house who was not
+locked in a room at the time?”</p>
+
+<p>“Am I unfair when I suggest that plans sometimes
+miscarry?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, you are not. That is a fair thing to say. But no
+person ever plans a murder so that the burden of
+suspicion, even stupid suspicion, falls upon himself. It
+would seem, too, Mr. Thopson, that in this instance the
+murderer’s carefully laid plans had not miscarried. My
+brother is dead. The murderer has escaped—got clear
+and away, and, as yet, no one of us has one clue as to his
+identity.”</p>
+
+<p>She put it over, Judy. All honour to Aunt Gracia!
+Mr. Ward knew better than to say a word when Thopson
+signified that he was ready to excuse her. It was she,
+the family misfortune, who got the verdict for us—the
+verdict that allowed us all to go free.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson called Dr. Joe again. Dr. Joe testified, under
+oath, that Father had been given no drug of any sort
+that night. Do you suppose that Dr. Joe could salve his
+conscience, if he needed to, with the difference between
+“had been given no drug” and “had taken no drug”?</p>
+
+<p>As Dr. Joe came back to sit with us, Gus Wildoch and
+the two guys who had been at the ranch with him came
+sneaking in at the back of the room. They had been
+subpœnaed for witnesses, and had been called right
+after Dr. Joe—as I should have mentioned. But Hank
+had explained that they had sent in word that they
+might be a little late, owing to a rush of duties, and
+he had proceeded to go along without them. I fancy
+that Hank was trying to keep them out of it. Or, perhaps
+Gus himself, with his regard for the elder Quilters, was
+trying to evade testifying. Their evidence, however, was
+certainly not damaging.</p>
+
+<p>Since each of them said the same thing, in almost the
+same way, I’ll lump their testimony to save your time
+and my space.</p>
+
+<p>They had come with Christopher Quilter, at his request,
+to Q 2 Ranch on the morning of Tuesday, October
+the ninth. They had seen and had carefully examined the
+body of Richard Quilter. He had been shot through the
+left chest. Rigor mortis had been complete when they
+had arrived. They had inspected the Quilter mansion
+and grounds. They couldn’t say as to footprints—the
+place was pretty well tracked up by the time they got
+there. Gus didn’t “go much on these here footprints,
+anyhow—too many ways to get around them, such as
+wearing the other fellow’s shoes.” They had been unable
+to form any opinions as to who the murderer might be.</p>
+
+<p>Thopson tried none of his baiting with them. The two
+deputies, I was later informed, were Gus’s two brothers
+who have come recently from Texas, and the three
+made rather a formidable trio: combined heights about
+nineteen feet; combined weights close to six hundred
+pounds.</p>
+
+<p>They were excused, and Hank grew confidential with
+the jury. He told them that if they wanted to go into
+the other room and talk things over for a few minutes,
+they could—he guessed. But he reminded them that
+they and he should get home and get their milking and
+other chores put through. He guessed that they saw,
+as he saw, that a lot of time had been wasted, and that,
+“futthermore,” there wasn’t sense nor reason in
+fiddle-faddling much longer. Some dirty son of a sea cook had
+broken into the Quilter mansion and shot Dick Quilter
+and made a getaway. Hank finished by expressing his
+deep regret that the law wasn’t able to help the Quilters
+out in any way, right now; and, adding his fervent
+hope that soon it might be able to lay hands on the
+Dutchman, or whatever dirty crook had done it, he
+turned the case over to the jury.</p>
+
+<p>If I had been writing a book, I’d have kept their
+verdict a dark secret until now. But since I have
+sacrificed my literary style to your peace of mind, I have
+had to miss my climax.</p>
+
+<p>However, perhaps this will serve: What Aunt Gracia
+told the jury, with my comments appended.</p>
+
+<ol>
+
+  <li>Father was the strongest member of the family.
+
+    <p>True a year ago. Not true a week ago.</p></li>
+
+  <li>Father could have disarmed any member of the
+      family.
+
+    <p>Doubtful, certainly, a week ago. But, say that he
+    could have disarmed any one of us. Would he have
+    tried to? Can you see Father jumping at any one of
+    us, and snatching a gun from us? I can’t. Judy, you
+    and I know that he would have lain there in bed and
+    tried to shame us out of our nonsense. Aunt Gracia
+    was right about that. He couldn’t have feared a one
+    of us. He would have thought that we were staging
+    a bluff. Would he have called it? Yes, and for any
+    length of time. I can imagine him lying there in bed
+    and laughing at us.</p></li>
+
+  <li>Father had not been drugged. He was in full
+      possession of all his faculties.
+
+   <p>Is this the truth? Did Dr. Joe lie helpfully?</p></li>
+
+  <li>None of us ever used the back stairway.
+
+   <p>We all used it, except possibly Irene.</p></li>
+
+  <li>Since the murderer was not in our house, he must
+      have escaped from it.
+
+   <p>You don’t need me to point the sophistry of that.</p></li>
+
+  <li>We were all locked in our rooms. Proof: Irene found
+      seven keys, unlocked seven doors, and left seven keys
+      on the outside of the doors.
+
+   <p>There are ten doors in our upper hall. Irene found
+   and used seven keys. You can think that out. I’m not
+   going to write it. Remember that all the keys to the
+   locks in the upper hall are interchangeable. The attic
+   door had had no key. It has now. I have brought it
+   down from the hardware box in the attic. My one bit
+   of sleuthing. But whether that was its first or second
+   trip downstairs within the week, it did not say.</p></li>
+
+</ol>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>Judy, I’m not crazy—though sometimes I feel, almost,
+as if I were. I am not trying to prove, with this
+quibbling, that some member of the Quilter family
+shot and killed Father. It seems to me that the single
+hope I have left, for anything, is to prove that no
+member of the family is a murderer. But I am bound to
+be with Grandfather concerning truth. I have to get my
+proof through truth—nothing else can satisfy me. I
+have to establish Quilter innocence, and reëstablish
+Quilter honour, before I can begin to try to establish
+anything else.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia proved Quilter innocence to the six
+good men and true. I’d give a thousand of the best
+grazing acres on Q 2 to have had her prove it to me. I’d
+give more than that. My own life, of course—but it is
+not worth shucks. I’d give Lucy’s life, or Grandfather’s,
+just as they would give them, for that certainty.</p>
+
+<p>Do you know, I have found one way I can almost get
+it. My way hasn’t anything to do with ropes, or keys,
+or coal oil. It hasn’t anything to do with footprints, or
+motives, or drugs.</p>
+
+<p>I do this. I take us, one at a time. I begin with
+Grandfather, and I come straight through the list to Lucy. I
+stop at each name. I think. I put into that thinking
+every particle of knowledge I have concerning each
+person, and I keep out of it every particle of prejudice
+and every atom of affection or of admiration. I judge
+them as objectively as I judge cattle for buying or
+breeding. Each time I do it, I come out with a clean slate.
+That method, and nothing else, gives me my certainty,
+my sure knowledge that not one of the Quilter family
+could be guilty of crime.</p>
+
+<p>And that, after consideration, I am bound to state is
+a lie. It gives me my certainty—with one exception.
+That is why I don’t go after it more often. That is why
+I am afraid of my certainty. Each time, more positively
+than the last, it omits one person. Probably you don’t
+need to have me tell you who the one person is. Neal
+Quilter.</p>
+
+<p>Neal Quilter could have done it. Suppose that he had.
+Suppose that he had planned the thing keenly, as it was
+planned, from beginning to end. And then, as Aunt
+Gracia said, since we are dealing with suppositions,
+suppose that the horror of having done such a thing should
+have driven him clear out of his mind; should have
+caused a real brain storm—so that, when the storm had
+cleared, he had forgotten every incident connected with
+the crime.</p>
+
+<p>I wish I knew more about minds. I wish I knew
+whether a thing of the sort ever had happened or ever
+could happen. Chris says that great strides in psychology
+are to be made within the next decade. I tried to pump
+him about it, since he is interested in the subject. But
+of course, since I was unwilling to say to him what I
+have said to you, I got no real satisfaction. Still, since
+it is recognizedly possible that a man may forget his
+entire past, including his own name, and continue to
+go about as a fairly normal person, I don’t see why it
+should be impossible for him to forget, entirely, some
+one particular horror.</p>
+
+<p>Granting the amnesia, I could have done it. I could
+have gone upstairs some time in the late afternoon and
+fixed that rope on the bed, and collected the keys from
+the inside of the doors. (Where I got a gun, and what I
+did with it afterwards, are, of course, other things I
+would have forgotten. I can reconstruct with the
+material now at hand. I cannot remember.) Then, on
+Monday night, before Father put out his light, I could
+have stepped across the hall to his room. If I had gone
+in there, threatening him with a gun, do you think he’d
+have jumped out of bed and taken the gun away from
+me? I think not. Aunt Gracia was night about that.
+Father would not have been afraid of any one of us.
+Why, even I would laugh if any member of our family
+came dodging into my room flourishing a gun. Or,
+perhaps I should say, even I, a week ago, would have
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>But we’ll say I didn’t show my gun. We’ll say that I
+kept it in my back pocket for an hour or so while we
+talked, Father and I. If I had decided to kill him rather
+than allow him to go insane, I might have desired a long,
+confirmatory talk. Unless the rope is clear outside the
+whole affair of the murder—as Chris still insists—we
+can no longer suppose that I had meant to shoot Chris,
+and shot Father by mistake. That hour, with the rope
+out across the porch roof, has to be accounted for.</p>
+
+<p>I might have fixed the rope at eleven o’clock, deciding
+that I would use it in the next five minutes. And, after
+that, something might have caused me to delay for
+another hour. The rope hocus-pocus certainly would
+not have caused Father to take either me or my
+threats any more seriously. Can’t you imagine the
+conversation?</p>
+
+<p>“What are you planning to do with the clothes-line,
+my son?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am going to use it to escape out of the window
+after I have shot you.”</p>
+
+<p>We know that Father would have laughed at me;
+unless, of course, he had decided that I had gone mad.
+In that case, he might have started to get out of bed
+to take the gun away from me.</p>
+
+<p>Well, then, I had the rope fixed, we’ll say. I shot
+Father. I went to the window and discovered the snow.
+I knew that the rope could not be used, then, because the
+footprints on the roof would betray me. What might I
+have done? It is absurdly simple. I might have stepped
+across the hall to my own room and locked myself
+in—<em>with the key to the attic door</em>. Yes, as I have said, I
+have since found the key in the hardware box in the
+attic. But if Grandfather, or Aunt Gracia, had
+discovered an extra key in my room, when they were
+searching the house, would they have declaimed
+concerning it, or would they have hidden it away in the
+box?</p>
+
+<p>Why I should have had the key, if I had planned the
+rope escape, I can’t think. Why I should have planned
+the rope, I can’t think. I might have had some wily
+scheme, involving both the key and the rope. Or the
+entire idea of the rope might have been one of the
+fool mistakes that murderers, according to the best
+traditions, always make. Leaving the door between my
+room and Lucy’s unlocked would seem, certainly, to
+have been another mistake.</p>
+
+<p>The question of time is a nice one. I needed, after the
+shot was fired, to have looked out of the window,
+crossed the full width of Father’s room, got across the
+hall and into my own room, locked the door, picked up
+a chair, and battered the door with it. Lucy needed to
+have got out of bed, put on her slippers, lighted her lamp,
+run across her room to my door, opened it. It might
+work out. I don’t know. I think that I couldn’t have
+done my part of it in two minutes. Then I remember
+how long two minutes were when you were taking
+Greg’s temperature.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, the time seems to be against me. What
+I could have done with the gun seems to be for me.
+When I remember how this house was searched, it
+seems impossible that I could have hidden a gun anywhere
+in it. It certainly would have been found. I could
+not have thrown it out of a window. We’d have seen it
+in the snow. Though, after all, I have a good baseball
+arm; I might have thrown it out of Father’s open
+window. No, that’s nonsense. It would have been found,
+long before this. However, the fact that the gun is gone
+doesn’t weigh very heavily against the facts that no
+one got out of the house that night and that no one was
+hiding in the house that night.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose you might suggest that Chris was as capable
+of the crime as I was. It won’t do. Chris loved Father:
+not enough to kill him rather than have him lose that
+splendid mind of his, but too much to kill him for any
+other reason. Father had stopped opposing the sale of
+the ranch. Chris had Father’s ill health and overwork
+on this place to use as an excuse for selling us out. He
+had Father’s ability as a rancher to salve his conscience
+if he stuck us on some dinky valley truck farm. Also,
+Chris is a rank sentimentalist and—may I say
+consequently—something of a coward.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, when I go to calling Chris names, I suspect that
+I should go softly. I have wondered, these last few days,
+whether instead of fighting what I have always decried
+as Quilter sentimentality, I have been fighting, merely,
+a subtle sensitiveness, an ability for loving, which I
+have been too boorish to possess or to understand. The
+thought of marrying some queen and giving her a right
+to paw over me and call me “Boofel,” nauseates me.
+Look at Uncle Phineas tethered to Olympe. Look at
+Chris deeded to Irene! You and Greg are different;
+but you are friends. You bake your bread, instead of
+feasting on the yeast. And—you are a Quilter woman.
+But what I started to say was, that I have wondered
+whether this lack of sentimentality in me denoted
+simply a hard streak, a streak of yellow, perhaps a
+streak of cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>I’ve wondered, too, if the fact that Father killed that
+cur a few months before I was born, and that Mother
+saw him do it, might have made me different. People
+seem to think that prenatal influences are important.
+I have never believed it, because it seems to me if that
+were true of people it would be true of animals. Still,
+what do I know about it? Or about anything? There is
+this: I don’t feel as if I were incapable of love, if love is
+the rather tremendously serious, and yet, someway,
+the very humorous, clutching feeling I have for the
+family and for Q 2. But I do feel as if talking about it,
+showing it off as Irene and Chris show it off, defiled it.</p>
+
+<p>There is Aunt Gracia, to-day, and the feeling I have
+about her. She sat there, lying under oath, to save the
+Quilter family; to save, I know, either Irene and Chris
+or Irene and me. There isn’t one of us, I suppose, who
+would not have been willing to sacrifice his own honour,
+peace of mind, and the rest, to such a cause. But, by
+Jove, I think Aunt Gracia is the only one of us who is
+brave enough to sacrifice eternity. I know exactly what
+she did to-day. Should I go to her and spiel a lot of
+mushy stuff about loving her for it? Should I cheapen
+her magnificence to gratify my own emotionalism?
+Should I write my name in red pencil on the base of a
+marble column?</p>
+
+<p>In other words—what a good boy am I! Sitting here,
+teetering with tragedy, and revelling in congratulatory
+self-analysis. Ask me this, Judy. Ask me why I have not
+mentioned again the important fact that was brought
+out during to-day’s inquisition? That is, why I have so
+carefully avoided further discussion of the fact that
+Father’s death may bring to his family a payment of
+ten thousand needed dollars? Should you believe me if
+I told you that, for the last several hours, I had
+forgotten it? I hope you are too sensible to believe that.
+Ask me why, just now, when I was making out the case
+against myself, I did not mention a ten-thousand-dollar
+motive? Ten thousand dollars would mean
+enough money for Irene and Chris to go where they
+please, with enough left over to carry Q 2 through to
+safety. I remarked, during the inquest, that I had not
+known about the accident policy. I seemed to be
+believed. I seem to have believed myself——</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Later.</p>
+
+<p>Sorry, Judy dear. I am a fool. Even this forgetting
+business would, I suppose, need to stop somewhere. I
+had not known about the policy. And talking is rot.
+My apology, if you’ll have it, is that Father’s death has
+been a knockout. I’ve been feeling too much—unaccustomed
+feelings. I have been thinking, or trying to
+think, until my brain has worn out from effort.</p>
+
+<p>I am all right again now. I’ve been out with Uncle
+Phineas walking and waiting for the sunrise. He is all
+cut up, torn up about Father. And yet, somehow, the
+fact that he was not here on Monday night, and that he
+didn’t have the horror of that first hour, seems to make
+him more wholesome, saner than any of us.</p>
+
+<p>He was here at home when we got back from the inquest
+last evening. He came running down the path to
+meet us, with tears washing out of his eyes and all over
+his cheeks, but he was paying no more attention to them
+than he would have paid to rain. He is one of us—a
+Quilter straight through—and neck deep in trouble
+with us. But it is as if he had come in, on purpose, while
+the rest of us have been chucked in.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe was out of bed, when we came from Quilterville
+yesterday, as chipper as you please in Aunt Gracia’s
+best kitchen dress with a little doily of an apron. She
+actually had helped Lucy prepare supper for the three
+of them. Olympe would be correctly costumed for the
+frying of ham and eggs.</p>
+
+<p>(Dr. Joe has envoys scouring Chinatown for Dong
+Lee, but he is not to be discovered. He was to have
+stayed a week; so we know that he’ll be back on Monday;
+but we could do with him sooner. It is tough for
+Aunt Gracia, this having him gone just now.)</p>
+
+<p>While the rest of us were getting a pick-up supper in
+the kitchen, Olympe disappeared. Sure enough, in a
+few minutes, here she came, wearing that black lace rig
+of hers, with the red roses and red velvet loops ripped
+off of it. A pity, since, by that time, Lucy and I were
+the only ones who had stayed downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe stopped in the kitchen doorway and asked
+us where Pan was. We told her that he had gone to
+Grandfather’s room with him. She trailed forward to
+the table, delivered the first part of her “God help the
+Quilter wives” speech, and turned to sweep from the
+room. Lucy laughed.</p>
+
+<p>You see, in her haste to get into mourning, Olympe
+had forgotten the back of her gown. Do you remember
+its long, square train, caught up in two places with great
+blobs of a horrible shade of red velvet and red roses?
+She had forgotten to remove them.</p>
+
+<p>It was not amusing. Lucy laughed, as you know, not
+in spite of our trouble, but because of it. If Lucy had
+not been all to pieces, unnerved and half hysterical, she
+could no more have laughed at anything about Olympe
+than she could have cat-called in church. I don’t recall
+that any of us children were taught that we must never
+laugh at Olympe. And yet, of course, laughing at her
+has always been one of the major Quilter heresies.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe wheeled about. She was so white that the
+little dabs of rouge on her cheekbones looked as if they
+might tumble off. I went and stood close to Lucy.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe said, “Are you laughing at me?”</p>
+
+<p>I tried to tell her that Lucy was not laughing. That
+she was all to pieces, hysterical, and did not know what
+she was doing.</p>
+
+<p>“She may not know,” Olympe said, “but I know that
+she is laughing at me. Why? Because I am old, and
+weak, and no longer beautiful; because my husband
+humiliates me, and neglects me.”</p>
+
+<p>She trailed away then, riding the trimmings on her
+train. Lucy, of course, burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>I have gone well around Robin Hood’s barn, with all
+this. I wanted to give you something as a sample,
+perhaps as an excuse for what I am going to ask you to
+do.</p>
+
+<p>Judy, I want you to write and insist on having Lucy
+come to you for a time. Don’t hint that it is for Lucy’s
+sake. Lucy is too game to desert. Say that it is for your
+sake. Say that you need her to help you with Greg—so
+on. I don’t need to dictate your letter, but make it
+strong. I’ll manage her railway fare, somehow or other.
+She has to get away from here for the present.</p>
+
+<p>She is twelve years old, imaginative and impressionable.
+We have been fools to leave her alone so much with
+Olympe, here of late. I don’t need to tell you how
+brave and sensible Lucy usually is. She will come
+through even this all right, if we give her half a chance.
+She won’t get the half chance, here, now, with Olympe
+treating her to scenes like the one last evening, and
+telling her—the Lord knows what, and making her
+promise not to tell. The kid has something extra on her
+mind. And, though Lucy won’t tell me, I am darn sure
+it was Olympe who loaded it there. I couldn’t insist
+that Lucy break a promise. But can you imagine anyone
+who would be fool enough to add the burden of a
+secret and a promise to Lucy’s troubles right now?</p>
+
+<p>When this afternoon is over—the funeral is to be this
+afternoon—I am going to Olympe about it. Not that I
+think it will amount to a hill of beans; but, since we
+won’t be able to get Lucy to you for a week or so, I’ll
+have to get things straightened out for her in the
+meantime.</p>
+
+<p>She is scared, Judy, Lucy is. When I got her quieted
+down, last night, I urged her to go upstairs to bed.
+She wouldn’t go. She said that she was lonesome alone,
+and that she wanted to stay with me. Then, of a
+sudden, you know how she lights and flashes, she said:
+“That is a story, Neal. I’ve turned coward. Please don’t
+tell Grandfather. I am afraid to go upstairs and stay
+alone in my room.”</p>
+
+<p>I fixed her a fine bed, and screened it off from the
+light, on the sitting-room sofa. And, gosh knows, I
+shouldn’t have thought it strange, even from Lucy, if
+she had begun to be afraid a bit sooner—the first night
+or the second. I can’t pretend that any of us has been
+entirely without something that at least approximated
+fear. Grandfather has locked the place himself, each
+night. And, as you know, I have stayed up all night,
+on guard, every night this week. (Chris offered to spell
+me, but I’ve liked the quiet nights for writing to you.
+I have needed the job badly, so I have liked it.) No,
+Lucy’s fear would have been natural enough, if it had
+begun sooner. Coming now, it must mean that whatever
+fool thing Olympe told her yesterday, and made
+her promise not to tell, has frightened her. With this
+added to the rest, I am sure you’ll agree with me that
+we must get Lucy right away from here.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia is in the kitchen attending to breakfast.
+I’ll go and cadge an advance snack, and then I’ll ride
+into Quilterville with this in time to get it off on
+Number Twenty-four.</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p class="dateline">Saturday, October 13, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+We buried Father to-day. To gratify
+Aunt Gracia, we had the Siloamite ceremony. They
+did the best they could to re-break our hearts, if that
+could have been possible. Since mummery is not always
+ineffective, there should be a law decreeing that no one
+but a man’s enemies be allowed to attend his funeral.</p>
+
+<p>The entire county was there, I think. There were
+ponderously perfumed flowers, tortured into unnatural
+shapes, over which furry, caterpillarish-looking letters
+writhed into words, “At Rest,” and such originalities.</p>
+
+<p>When we came home neighbours had been here and
+had done strange, geometrically unfamiliar things to
+the rooms, and had left a table spread with an astonishing
+repast in odd dishes, which we never use. Nothing
+was lacking, you see, from the best funereal traditions—not
+even the baked meats. Nothing was lacking, except
+any sense of the fitness of things, or of the comfort of
+finality, or the dignity of death, or the realization that
+we are a supposedly civilized people, living in the year
+1900 <span class="sc">A. D.</span></p>
+
+<p>Sorry, Judy. I am not fit to write this evening. I am
+going to bed to-night. If Chris wishes to keep up this
+fool night herding he may. I am through.</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch16">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Sunday, October 14, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+Dr. Joe came home with us last
+evening, and spent the night here. This afternoon
+he talked to Grandfather, Uncle Phineas, Chris,
+and me.</p>
+
+<p>He had heard from Mr. Ward, who had been to see
+the insurance people. He said that they were inclined
+to hedge. They had hoped to have it proved that
+Father’s death was suicidal. Mr. Ward writes, however,
+that they haven’t a legal leg to stand on, and that he
+thinks he will have the money for us within two weeks.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather asked me whether I had thought about
+what you and Lucy and I would do with the money. I
+had not, of course. I hadn’t realized that the money
+would come to the three of us. I told Grandfather we’d
+do whatever he advised. He said we should have to
+think it over. We dropped the discussion there.</p>
+
+<p>This evening, when he got me alone, Chris said, flat,
+that I should have to let him have five thousand dollars.
+That is, he said if I’d pay the Brindley mortgage so
+that he could get another mortgage to the extent of five
+thousand dollars, that would satisfy him. But, in some
+way, he had to have at least five thousand at
+once—enough for Irene and him to get back to New York and
+live until he had made a success of his writing. Otherwise,
+he said, he should be forced to accept the offer he had for
+selling the place. He was certain that I would understand
+why he could not ask Irene to remain on Q 2 Ranch.
+No man, he said, could ask any sensitive woman to
+continue life in a place where such a horror had occurred.</p>
+
+<p>I said, “Shall we cast lots for the garments, Chris?”
+and walked away. But it isn’t as decent as that. It is
+refined blackmailing—though I don’t know why I
+modify it.</p>
+
+<p>If we do get the money, he’ll get his five thousand,
+won’t he, Judy? Cheap at the price, to be rid of them.
+The other five thousand will carry us along to safety.</p>
+
+<p>In passing, I wonder whether Irene knew that Chris
+wouldn’t expect or ask her to stay on a place where a
+horror had occurred? Sorry. That is spite—cad’s
+talk—nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>Thank the Lord we’ll get Lucy away from this rotten,
+spite-ridden, fear-ridden hole before long. I wish we
+might get Grandfather away for a while, too. He has
+aged, in the past week. I wish, also, that I could keep
+him from finding out about this last brash move of
+Chris’s, but I don’t know how to do it.</p>
+
+<p>I’m foundered on this writing business, Judy. It is
+doing no good. I think I shall pass it up. But I do want
+to tell you that I have decided I was clear off about
+Grandfather’s suspecting me. I surely had a
+brainstorm, right, there for a few days.</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Monday, October 15, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+Your letter in answer to my first one to
+you came this morning. I’m glad that you think I did
+right when I told you the truth. But I am sorry that
+you thought my purpose in writing to you was to gain
+comfort and consolation for myself.</p>
+
+<p>It is gratifying, of course, to know that you are sure
+I did not go into Father’s room and murder him in cold
+blood. Gratifying, too, to be assured that you can’t
+believe I murdered Father, not even by mistake for
+Chris. As a matter of fact, I had reached both
+conclusions some time ago.</p>
+
+<p>Your judgment, from a few thousand miles of distance,
+that we were all mistaken about nobody hiding
+in the house, and, probably, all mistaken about there
+being no footprints in the snow, is also reassuring. And
+nothing could be more inspirational than your repeated
+assertion that, until I come to my senses and realize
+that no member of the family <em>could possibly</em> have done
+such a wicked thing, I’ll be useless as an aid in discovering
+the real criminal. Too, your persistent demands that
+I stop being foolish, hysterical, and begin to think
+calmly and sanely and search for “clues” (Lord, Jude,
+that searching for clues came near to being the last
+straw!), and evolve some sensible theory and some
+reasonable plan of action, have been carefully noted.</p>
+
+<p>Sorry, but to date I have evolved no such theory or
+plan. However, other members of the family have been
+less dilatory. I shall give you the two theories in vogue
+at present. You may have them to play with, but I
+should advise against your putting them in your
+mouth, because, I fear, they might rub off and give you
+a tummy ache.</p>
+
+<p>The first theory was constructed by Olympe and is,
+I believe, exclusively her own. It was this theory which
+succeeded in frightening Lucy—I had given the child
+credit for much better sense—out of her wits. At Lucy’s
+earnest solicitation, Olympe graciously allowed Lucy
+to repeat the production to me. The author, modestly,
+declined a direct discussion of it.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy tells me that she has enlightened you, to some
+extent, concerning a gentleman unfortunately named
+Archie Biggil—ex-husband of Irene’s. That she has
+told you of his, perhaps belated, ardency; of his
+jealousy, his passion, and other interesting emotions.
+Sweet stuff for a kid like Lucy to have been consuming!</p>
+
+<p>Olympe thinks that this Archie Biggil came, armed
+to the teeth, with great stealth, in the deep darkness of
+the night, to Q 2 Ranch. She thinks that he wore a
+red mask; that he crept into Father’s room and shot
+him, not, as you may be supposing by mistake for
+Chris—though that, too, would involve one or two
+minor discrepancies, such as the fact that Archie, not
+having known of the changed rooms, would have been
+unapt to make such a mistake—but out of revenge for
+the unhappiness that Irene had undergone on Q 2.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe advances that Archie, thoroughly provoked,
+had intended a sort of holocaust, or general slaughter
+of the Quilters. But, possibly due to his astonishment
+at having the first murder prove such a noisy
+undertaking, he had temporarily, though immediately,
+desisted. He had rushed into the hall. He had met Irene,
+who, overcome with some emotion (joy? fright? horror?
+astonishment?), had experienced but one impulse—to
+wit, the getting of Archie under cover. She had herded
+him into the attic. She had locked him in one of her
+trunks for safekeeping! (Your penchant for underscoring
+permits me only the modest exclamation point.
+That sentence bravely deserves more.)</p>
+
+<p>Irene’s three large trunks in the attic were locked.
+They were not searched. They have never, to my
+knowledge, been searched. Since Olympe has never
+helped in our searchings, I do not know how she
+happened to be aware of the locked, unsearched trunks.
+Evidently, someone has told her of them.</p>
+
+<p>To continue, and to repeat, Irene locked the irritable
+Archie in one of her trunks and returned below stairs
+to discover, for the first time, what it was that Archie
+had been up to. Again, the range of her possible
+emotions is a wide one. We may assume that her sense of
+tact soon predominated. Disliking to be involved in
+the affair, she simply left Archie locked in the trunk.
+Though, in due time, Olympe seems to prophesy, Irene
+will relent and unlock Archie.</p>
+
+<p>You may judge what the past week had done to Lucy,
+when you realize that she could admit junk of this sort
+into that straight-thinking mind of hers. It makes me
+ill. Almost as ill as it makes me to wonder why Olympe
+was so badly in need of a theory that she should proffer
+this one.</p>
+
+<p>The second theory, given as the joint production of
+Grandfather and Uncle Phineas, is more ingenuous.</p>
+
+<p>They say they believe that the murderer came to the
+house sometime shortly after dark, probably while we
+were all at supper. That he came in the front door and
+went upstairs. This, I admit, would have been risky,
+but possible. The front of the house, the hall, the
+upstairs, were all dark. They have provided the man with
+a dark lantern of the type that burglars are supposed
+to carry.</p>
+
+<p>At that time, he could have collected the keys in the
+upper hall, and gone upstairs to the attic. It was, they
+think, while he was hiding in the attic that the idea of
+the rope swung out of the window first came to him.
+Uncle Phineas makes the picture: The villain crouching,
+the coil of rope near at hand. He had, so the story goes,
+while he was making his other plans about locking us
+all in our rooms, made also his plan of escape. But the
+coil of rope brought fresh inspirations—a plan for
+misleading us. He took the rope, crept downstairs again,
+tied it around the leg of the bed, moved the bed a bit
+to make us believe that the rope had been used as a
+means of escape down the side of the house to the
+ground. He counted on it to send us all rushing from the
+house in hot pursuit of him. And, they say, but for the
+snow this plan of his would, probably, have accomplished
+his purpose. (Yes, you bet. But for the snow.
+And but for the man’s forehandedness in tossing the
+rope out of the window at least an hour, perhaps two
+hours before he got around to the shooting.) However,
+since the rope had been merely an afterthought, the
+snow made no difference in his original plan of escape.</p>
+
+<p>This plan, they have decided, must have been to get
+out of Father’s room into some safe, previously
+arranged hiding place in the house. Why, with us all
+locked in our rooms, and with no snow to betray him
+with footprints, he should have planned to stay in
+hiding in the house, instead of planning to run right
+down either stairway and out of the house and away,
+I don’t know. The fact that he could not have done
+this, that Irene was downstairs with the stairway doors
+locked, need not make any difference in the speculations
+as to what his original plans may have been.
+He had not, certainly, planned to have Irene locked
+out of her room. But Grandfather and Uncle Phineas,
+wedded to the notion of the rope as a “false clue,”
+insist that, because he wanted us out of the house
+hunting for him he must have planned to stay in the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>After the deed, the murderer returned, posthaste, to
+the attic. He left the attic door unlocked. You may
+choose your answer to that from the following
+suggestions:</p>
+
+<ol>
+  <li>He had left the key in the hardware box by
+      mistake.</li>
+  <li>He thought that an unlocked door would allay
+      suspicion.</li>
+  <li>His hiding place in the attic was so secure that
+      an unlocked door, or two, made no difference to
+      him.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>Here, Jude, is where you can come into your own.
+You are certain that we left some part of the house
+unsearched. You are right. Until late this afternoon, no
+one had searched—the roof.</p>
+
+<p>Since the fact that there is no way to get up on the
+roof except through the trapdoor, directly in the centre
+of the attic roof and about eleven feet from the floor,
+seems to bother no one, it need not bother you.</p>
+
+<p>The stepladder, that Monday night when we
+searched the attic, was nowhere near the trapdoor.
+There was no box, or chest, or anything else that could
+have been used to reach the trapdoor, anywhere near
+it. In answer to Uncle Phineas’s question as to whether
+I could swear that none of these things had been moved
+beneath the trapdoor and, afterwards, put back into
+place—of course I could not. I could swear that nothing
+appeared to be out of place that night in the attic. I
+could swear that, if any object, large or small, had been
+directly in the centre of the attic, beneath the trapdoor,
+both Grandfather and I should have seen it instantly.
+But, that, also, is of no consequence; because, according
+to our most popular theory, this is what happened:</p>
+
+<p>The murderer had moved the stepladder, had ascended
+it, had opened the trapdoor and got out on the
+roof. Since the trapdoor claps shut when it is not held,
+he had fastened it open and had left—— What? Why, a
+rope, of course, dangling. He had then descended the
+ladder and had replaced it against the wall of the room
+up there. Next, he had stolen downstairs and committed
+the murder. He had then returned to the attic,
+climbed up the rope to the roof, pulled the rope up after
+him, and closed the trapdoor. In short, just give that
+guy enough rope and there was nothing he could not do
+with it, from fixing “false clues” to climbing eleven feet
+of it, dangling loose, and excluding, only, hanging
+himself with it.</p>
+
+<p>Once he found himself on the ten-by-twelve flat
+piece of roof, he regarded his escape as having been
+perfectly effected. All that remained for him to do,
+after that, was to wait until he got ready, climb down
+his rope again, come down through the house and
+walk out of it.</p>
+
+<p>In case you don’t like to have him walk out through
+the locked and doubly guarded doors, you may have
+this: He stayed above, fluctuating between the roof
+and the attic, for four or five days. That is, until Friday,
+when we all except Olympe and Lucy had gone to the
+inquest; or until Saturday, when we all had gone to the
+funeral. On either of those days, the snow was melted;
+so he could have got out of a window, or jumped off the
+roof, or climbed down his rope from the roof—couldn’t
+he?—and walked away.</p>
+
+<p>The question of his food and water for five days has,
+also, a nice variety of answers. I prefer my own: That
+he ate his rope, and washed it down with snow water
+from the roof—the special snow that did not come down
+through the open trapdoor into the attic. You see, if the
+trapdoor had been left open for any length of time from
+ten minutes to two hours, during the snowstorm, there
+would have been snow or melted snow on the attic
+floor. Do you think that would have escaped both
+Grandfather and me when we were searching the attic?
+I know that it would not. I know that if anyone had got
+down off that dirty, wet roof, even once, he would have
+left footprints on Aunt Gracia’s spotless floor up there.
+The floor that night looked as it usually looks; that is,
+very much like the bread board.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately—I quote the elders—Aunt Gracia this
+morning thought that the weather was threatening and
+chose to have Dong Lee (he came home last night, garishly
+dentilated, politely sympathetic, but, seemingly,
+unperturbed) hang the washing in the attic instead of
+in the yard. This necessitated the usual cleaning and
+dusting of the attic. This late afternoon it was impossible
+to tell, by coatings of dust or the like, whether
+ladder, chests, boxes, had been recently moved.</p>
+
+<p>Much as she disliked the admission, Aunt Gracia was
+forced to say that nothing in the attic seemed to have
+been disturbed; that no traces, even of the most
+immaculate intruder, had been discoverable. Said Uncle
+Phineas, no traces of the criminal were to be found in
+the attic. Said he, any halfway clever criminal would,
+of course, have removed all traces before leaving the
+attic.</p>
+
+<p>Finis, then? The attic itself could scarcely be neater
+and cleaner than this explanation. All that remains to be
+explained is why Grandfather, Uncle Phineas, Aunt
+Gracia, and Chris declare that they credit such sort of
+stuff. And why do they leave me out in the cold with
+Olympe, Irene, and Lucy?</p>
+
+<p>Stretching a long, long bow I might give Uncle
+Phineas and, perhaps, Chris credit for honesty when
+they declare their belief in this nonsense. I know darn
+well that Aunt Gracia does not believe in it, not for one
+of her clear-sighted seconds. I know that Grandfather
+cannot believe it; unless—well, Grandfather is eighty
+years old, and this week has been a week of steady
+torture for him.</p>
+
+<p>Reverting, again, to your letter. What I seem to have
+said about attending the hanging of Father’s murderer
+has, apparently, shocked you severely. I was one little
+bloodthirsty lad, wasn’t I, when I wrote that first letter
+to you? The scarcely gradual tapering of my tone from
+vengeance to vacuity must prove at least amusing to
+you. But, at least, I am not a clutching backslider. I
+state, conclusively, that I no longer have any desire
+either to discover Father’s murderer or to attend any
+hanging whatsoever. Quite, quite the contrary. I won’t
+subscribe to the darn fool lies the others are propounding.
+But I’d give the spring heifers if I could concoct
+some lucid, logical lie that would clear the Quilter
+family.</p>
+
+<p>You say that I asked you to help me in ferreting out
+the criminal. That should speak volumes for my own
+condition at the time I wrote. I judge that the sheer
+shock of the thing reduced me on the instant to a
+drooling, chattering idiot—swearing my innocence to
+you, beseeching for your reassurance. You have given
+it, Jude; lots of it and lavishly—the reassurance. Shall
+we let it go at that? But, as for the help, I shall have to
+change my order. Can you, by any effort of wits, produce
+the lie we are all so seriously needing at present?</p>
+
+<p>Remember, any compound must include that rope.
+Do you know, sometimes I almost incline to agree with
+Chris’s ex-theory—that the rope was, somehow,
+coincidental. Deserting fiction, for the moment, and
+attempting fact: Can you think of any conceivable reason
+that Father himself might have had for tossing that
+rope out of the window early in the night? Suppose that
+Aunt Gracia’s suggestion about a blackmailer was truer
+than she thought. Might it have been possible that
+Father helped him—or anyone—to <em>get into</em> his room
+that night by means of the rope? Someone, with a fair
+amount of agility, might have been able to get from the
+ground to the porch roof by means of the porch pillars
+and the rope. This would have had to be, of course,
+before the snowfall started. It is at least possible that,
+since the rope had been effectual for an entrance, it
+might have been left in place as an exit. The window’s
+having been left open would seem peculiar, on so cold a
+night; peculiar, but not impossible. The impossible
+element in any of this is the implication that Father
+could have been induced to stoop to underhandedness
+or secrecy of any sort.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia spoke about unknown paragraphs and
+pages in men’s lives. It went with the jury. Let it go.
+But it brings us back again to fiction. My thinking
+machine—I realize that this is in no sense an admission—is
+not, at present, in working order. You take the rope
+as a means of access instead of exit and see whether
+you can produce something that will serve for our
+present needs.</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch17">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Wednesday, October, 17, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+When I wrote to you, day before
+yesterday, I thought that I was through with
+this letter writing. I wrote, then, in the rôle of Mr.
+Wise-guy, scorning you and the rest of the family for not
+serenely knowing that one of the Quilters was a murdering
+cur. Scorning even Grandfather; or, if not quite as
+brash as that, accusing him of senility for using that
+brave old mind of his to reach for the truth. No use of
+my trying it; no use of my loyalty to the family being
+stronger than the absence of footprints in the snow. I
+was going on nineteen years old, wasn’t I? Why shouldn’t
+I be the only wise, honest one in the group? Even
+poor old Olympe did better than I. She tried to think of
+an explanation. It was no good, and she was ashamed of
+it. But she tried, and hoped that Lucy’s clear little mind
+might help with it. Not smart-aleck Neal. He knew.
+There is no good in raving, Judy. But, gosh, I am so
+sick of myself that I feel exactly as I did that time when
+Whatof and I got in a mix-up with the skunk.</p>
+
+<p>No, we haven’t found the murderer. But something
+happened last night that proves, about as clearly as
+anything but finding him and hearing his confession
+could prove, that not one of the family was involved in
+the dirty business. Go on, Judy dear, crow! You can’t
+crow any louder than I wish I had a right to.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the story: Yesterday afternoon Uncle Phineas
+left, again, for Portland. This may seem sort of queer to
+you; but it isn’t. I can’t explain it, right now. It is a
+secret that Uncle Phineas and I have had together for
+a long time. But next week, at the latest, he hopes to
+be able to tell the family. As yet he hasn’t told even
+Grandfather or Olympe.</p>
+
+<p>I was sorry he couldn’t see his way clear to confiding
+in Olympe, because his going right away again hurt her
+feelings like everything. He couldn’t take her with him
+on account of our being so hard up for ready money,
+just now. Uncle Phineas shares Dr. Joe’s room in
+Portland. If he had taken Olympe they would have had
+to go to a hotel, and we couldn’t afford it. All this, then,
+to explain why Olympe returned to her bed, to stay,
+after Uncle Phineas left yesterday afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>At six-thirty Aunt Gracia was going to send Olympe’s
+supper tray up to her by Lucy, but I carried it instead.
+I am darn glad that I did, for now I know what I know.
+She seemed so forlorn that I sat down and talked to her
+while she ate her supper.</p>
+
+<p>She was not in a sunny humour. She has been a bit
+miffed with me, for one thing, ever since I questioned
+her about the gun. Too, she was all cut up about Uncle
+Phineas’s leaving her alone again, as she said, “at a time
+like this.” She has fully determined that he goes solely
+and wholly because he cannot bear to be on the place
+while “that young person,” as she calls Irene, is here.</p>
+
+<p>I didn’t stay with her any longer than seemed necessary.
+When she had eaten her supper, she asked me to
+search her room before I left her alone in it. To humour
+her, I made a thorough job of it. I looked under the bed
+and the sofa, in the closet, behind the curtains, and I
+even opened her old Flemish chest and stirred through
+it. She asked me, next, to put her wrapper handy, so
+that she could slip into it when she got up to lock the
+door after me. I told her that someone would be coming
+up, directly after supper, to keep her company and
+then she’d have to get out of bed and unlock the door
+again. She said that she would not stay a moment
+alone in the house unless she were certain that every
+window and door was locked. (I grinned to myself. One
+of her windows was three inches down from the top,
+right then, as Uncle Phineas always has it when he is at
+home. I had left it like that because I thought the fresh
+air would be good for her headache. That stuffy, purple
+and brown, verbena and liniment atmosphere that
+always pervades Olympe’s room would give me a
+headache at any time.) She said, also, that she was
+in no humour for company this evening. You know
+Olympe’s “Tired, ill, and old” speech—or perhaps you
+don’t. It seems to me that has been devised since you
+left. At any rate, she was unfit for companionship. She
+was, as soon as I left her, going to take some of the
+drops Dr. Joe had given her. She hoped, merely hoped,
+for a little sleep. So, if I would please, ask the others to
+walk quietly when they came through the hall on the
+way to bed?</p>
+
+<p>I promised to deliver the message, took her tray and
+went into the hall. I put it on the stand, and went into
+the bathroom to clean up a bit. As I walked through the
+hall I noticed—I am certain of this—that all the doors
+were standing ajar except the attic door, your door,
+and the door to Father’s room. When I came out of the
+bathroom, I picked up the tray and went downstairs,
+using the back stairway.</p>
+
+<p>The folks were sitting down to supper when I went
+into the dining room. I apologized to Grandfather for
+being late. Dong Lee came in with a tray of muffins,
+and hung around to hear them praised. Aunt Gracia and
+Lucy remarked on their excellence. Chris asked how
+Olympe was feeling. I answered, and delivered her
+message about quiet in the hall. Irene produced a none
+too gentle remark concerning Olympe’s deafness. Chris,
+as usual—one does sort of have to feel sorry for Chris
+at times—tried to cover it with an observation about
+the mantel clock’s being slow. Aunt Gracia thought
+not, and asked Grandfather for the correct time.
+Grandfather took out his watch, opened it, said that it was
+two minutes after seven——</p>
+
+<p>Just at that moment, with every last one of us right
+there around the dining table, the sound of a gunshot
+crashed through the house. It was precisely and exactly
+one too many shots for most of us.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>The next thing I knew, I was running up the back
+stairs, listening to a beast growling in my own throat.
+Since running down the hall, straight to Olympe’s room,
+was the sensible thing to have done, I can’t understand
+why I did it, then; but I did. I was the first one to reach
+her door. It was open. I ran into her room. She was in
+bed. Her night lamp was lighted on the table beside her.
+She is all right, Judy; don’t be frightened. She is as
+sound as she ever was, untouched by anything worse
+than a bad scare.</p>
+
+<p>But I did not know it when I ran to her. The others,
+who came crowding in, didn’t know it, either. I thought
+that, like Father, she had been shot and killed. I thought
+it so certainly that, when I touched her she felt cold;
+and, for one wild, red second, I saw soaking blood. I am
+stopping to tell you this in order to show you what
+sort of tricks my mind and senses will play on me. It is
+a lesson about trusting either of them too far. Even yet,
+I find myself thinking that Olympe is dead, and I have
+to stop and remember painstakingly that she is not.</p>
+
+<p>I heard Aunt Gracia’s voice declaring that Olympe
+was not hurt. I heard the words, but for all the meaning
+they conveyed she might have been reciting the
+multiplication tables. The experience has surely taught me
+much concerning cowardice. How can a fellow be blamed
+for anything when fear, through no volition of his,
+throttles him and robs him of all his faculties? Not, you
+understand, that I was afraid the fellow was going to
+pop out from somewhere and shoot me; such a thought
+never entered my mind, then. I wasn’t afraid, either,
+that he was going to appear and shoot some one of the
+others. I was afraid of what had happened, I suppose—if
+you can find sense in that—and not at all of what
+might happen. I am not starring myself for any of this;
+but I am not blaming myself. I couldn’t help it any
+more than I could help it if a boat capsized and chucked
+me into rapids that I hadn’t strength to swim.</p>
+
+<p>The first inkling of my intelligence returned when I
+heard Irene croak something about Uncle Thaddeus.
+I turned to look at Grandfather, just in time to see him
+loosen his hold on the foot of the bed and slip down into
+a heap on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Again, don’t be frightened. Grandfather is all right
+now—or, at least, as nearly all right as he could be
+after having had a second shock of the sort. He won’t
+stay in bed; and he is declaring that it was all nonsense
+for us to have sent for Dr. Joe. Just the same, I’ll be
+glad to see Dr. Joe put in an appearance here. He’s
+antiseptic, that’s what he is. I wish to the Lord he had
+been here during the fracas yesterday evening.</p>
+
+<p>I am not needing to tell you what seeing Grandfather
+go under did to us. Even Dong Lee, who had come up
+with the others, went clear balmy—pushing us away
+from Grandfather, or trying to, and chattering. Olympe
+revived, and contributed more than her share to the
+bedlam. I’ll not attempt to describe it; I couldn’t,
+anyway. But when I tell you that, after we’d got
+Grandfather to the sofa he lay there, looking as if he were
+dead, and that we could not get his heartbeats, and
+thought that he was dead, or dying, you will understand
+why we were not attending to anyone or anything
+else. You’ll understand why, until Grandfather’s
+ruddiness began to seep back into his cheeks, and his eyes
+were opened and he was talking to us, reassuring us, we
+did not give a damn if a whole regiment of murderers
+were marching, slowly, away from the house. They’d had
+time to, right enough. It was half-past seven before
+Chris began his declamation about this being the same
+thing over again, and his rhetorical questions about
+what were we doing, and where was the murderer, and
+so forth—all pyrotechnical rather than practical.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather, by this time, was sitting up on the
+sofa with one arm around Lucy and one around Aunt
+Gracia, both of whom, unromantically, were
+hiccoughing convulsively. As I looked at them, I had a
+bright idea. They—all of us—needed police protection.</p>
+
+<p>I stated this idea, and, also, that I was going right
+then to ride to Quilterville and get Gus Wildoch and a
+deputy or two. I started off on the run. Grandfather
+called to me.</p>
+
+<p>“My boy,” he said, when I had come back into
+Olympe’s room, “you said that you were going to tell
+the sheriff what had happened here. Do you know what
+has happened here? Does anyone know? I do not.”</p>
+
+<p>If I looked as I felt, I looked like two fools.</p>
+
+<p>“We heard a revolver shot,” Grandfather said. “We
+came to this room and found that Olympe had, again,
+fainted. The similarity of this circumstance with that of
+tragedy proved too much for my strength, I am ashamed
+to say. Olympe, my dear, did you happen to discharge
+a revolver by mistake?”</p>
+
+<p>Olympe pulled herself up higher on her pillows, drew
+her pretty old-rose wrapper about her shoulders, perked
+up her famous chin, and made it known to all present
+that she had never yet fired a revolver on any account,
+either by mistake or purposely, and that, she trusted
+she never should. In the midst of death, as it were,
+Olympe is a gentlewoman. She had just passed through
+a most terrible experience, and still she found space to
+resent with dignity what she considered an implication
+of rowdyism from Grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather apologized, and asked her if she had any
+memory at all of anything that had happened before she
+had fainted.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that we all thought she wouldn’t have.
+Thank the Lord she did have! It took her a long time to
+tell it, but what she told was this:</p>
+
+<p>Right after I left her she had got out of bed and
+locked her door. She had gone immediately back to
+bed. She was lying there, annoyed because she had
+forgotten to take her drops while she had been up. She
+reached for her wrapper, on the foot of her bed, preparatory
+to rising again, and, just as she did so, she heard a
+noise at the cupola window—the one I had purposely
+left open from the top. She turned, and looked across
+the room toward it. She saw a man, wearing a bright
+red mask, slowly pushing open her window. She tried
+to scream, but her throat had closed. She tried to move.
+She could not. She said that the sensation was precisely
+the same as one experiences during nightmares. She
+closed her eyes. She made an effort for prayer. She felt
+that she was suffocating. She could hear the window
+being raised slowly, inch by inch. Something, she said,
+seemed to break in her mind. She thought, “This is
+what death means.” That was the last thing she knew
+until she opened her eyes and saw us all gathered
+around Grandfather on the sofa. She thought that the
+man in the red mask had come into her room and
+killed Grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>That was all she could tell us. She had not heard the
+shot fired. It was enough to tell Gus. A man, wearing a
+red mask, had climbed to the porch roof and into
+Olympe’s room, through her window. He had fired one
+shot, and had escaped.</p>
+
+<p>I asked Grandfather if I might go, now, to
+Quilterville. He said for me to use my own judgment.</p>
+
+<p>Here’s a hot one on me, Judy. While I was saddling
+Tuesday’s Child, I had a queer feeling, which I did not
+entirely recognize. About a quarter of a mile down the
+road, it introduced itself to me. I was scared. Rather
+definitely scared, and this time for my own skin. The
+moon was not up, yet, and there were enough clouds to
+keep the starlight from being showy. I took the short cut
+through the oaks, and every falling leaf or creaking
+branch was the guy in the red mask taking aim at me.
+Out in the open again, he bounded ahead of me like a
+pebble skipped over water. And once, disguised as a ball
+of tumbleweed, he rose up and slew me. For the first
+time it occurred to me that something more potent
+than Irene’s yelping might have kept Chris from starting
+off, alone, to Quilterville the night Father was
+killed.</p>
+
+<p>My fear wasn’t based on altogether faulty reasoning.
+The man had forty minutes’ head start on me. If he
+needed a better start than that, and didn’t want the
+county people on his trail for a while, the smartest
+thing he could have done would have been to pop
+me off on the way. Number Twenty-six, eastbound,
+goes through Quilterville at three o’clock in the
+morning. If he had been planning to catch it, he wouldn’t
+have wanted any advance notices. Evidently, though,
+he had not made any such plans (I think we have
+given him too much credit for smart planning),
+because I got into town sound in wind and limb.</p>
+
+<p>Gus Wildoch had gone to bed; and, since he’d had a
+few drinks too many before he had got there, he was
+rather nasty. Seemed to think that Q 2 was entirely too
+troublesome. Also, he appeared to be annoyed because
+Olympe had not been killed, and unable to discover why
+I had wakened him for any other reason. When he
+further discovered that, so far as I knew, we had not
+been robbed, he washed his hands of the whole
+circumstance until morning.</p>
+
+<p>I rode over to Al Raddy’s and got him to come down
+and open up the station so that I could send a telegram
+to Dr. Joe. Then I borrowed Al’s gun and rode home
+again. I was well over my scare by the time I’d got back
+to the ranch, but I can’t say the same for Chris.</p>
+
+<p>He indulged in one of his beautiful tempers when he
+let me in through the front door and saw that I had
+come alone. We had a sweet passage, in which he said
+my failure to bring help was about what he might have
+expected from me. I made some would-be clever retorts,
+and was getting pretty hot, when I saw that Chris
+was using his rage to cover his fright. I came off my
+perch and asked him whether they had made any
+alarming discoveries while I had been gone. His reply
+was worthy of Olympe.</p>
+
+<p>“Alarming enough,” Chris said, “to make us certain
+that no one’s life is safe on this place until we find the
+man who is, apparently, bent on destroying the Quilter
+family.”</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>After I had left the ranch to go to Quilterville,
+Grandfather, Chris, and Aunt Gracia had made
+another thorough investigation of the house.</p>
+
+<p>The bedroom doors were all locked again on the outside,
+as they had been locked on the night that Father
+was killed. Again, too, the same doors had been left
+unlocked—that is, the attic and the bathroom doors.
+Father’s door, this time, had been locked, and Olympe’s
+locked door had been unlocked and left open. (That
+door unlocked would seem to indicate that the fellow
+had rushed out of it into the hall. But, there is this: the
+instant we heard the shot, all of us, except Irene and
+Chris who came up the front stairway, ran straight up
+the back stairway and into the upper hall. Would he
+have run out to meet us? Olympe’s door is at the far
+end of the hall from the attic door.) The seven keys were
+on Olympe’s bedside table, as they had been on Father’s
+bedside table.</p>
+
+<p>The rope, the same old clothes-line, which had been
+returned to the attic, was on the floor in Olympe’s room.
+It was not tied around the leg of the bed, nor around
+anything. It was lying there, in a loose coil, near the foot
+of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>The bullet from the gun had gone into the wall,
+about three feet above Olympe’s pillows. Evidently,
+he had aimed at her; but his shot had gone wild.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was out of place in Olympe’s room. Exactly
+as it had been in Father’s room—not a chair seemed
+to have been moved, not a drawer opened.</p>
+
+<p>Lying on the floor, directly beneath the open cupola
+window, was a mask, large enough to cover a man’s
+entire face, cut roughly out of bright red satin. So, in
+spite of my surety, it would seem, now, that undoubtedly
+“red mask” were the words that Father had said
+to Irene before he died.</p>
+
+<p>Now, to see what we can do with all this. First, the
+locked doors: There could be, has been, endless speculation
+about those locked doors. But, finally, they seem
+to come to but two hypotheses. Either the fellow is up
+to something of which, as yet, not one of us has begun
+to get an inkling; or else he is a raving maniac, and
+his very lack of purpose is what is throwing us all so
+completely off the scent, and also what is saving him.</p>
+
+<p>I am strong for the second theory—that this is the
+work of a maniac. A smart man might have locked us
+all in our rooms that first night. No man, in his senses,
+would have run the risk of being out in the hall long
+enough to lock all the doors of the vacant rooms last
+evening. He had had to collect the keys from the inside
+of the doors again, and he had had to do it after he had
+come into Olympe’s room through the window. If he
+knew anything, he must have known that no one was in
+any of those rooms he so carefully locked. But he
+repeated, exactly, his first performance; even to leaving
+the bathroom and attic doors unlocked, and the door of
+his victim’s room standing open.</p>
+
+<p>From first to last, that rope business has seemed the
+work of a lunatic. This final move of lugging the thing
+into Olympe’s room, and leaving it there, unattached to
+anything, is the crowning lunacy.</p>
+
+<p>It doesn’t take a maniac, I suppose, to miss his aim.
+But firing as high as three feet above his mark, when
+Olympe was lying there unconscious and motionless,
+seems rather wild for sanity.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing being disturbed in either room appears to
+establish the fact that the fellow’s one motive is
+cold-blooded murder. As Aunt Gracia said at the inquest, we
+could grant that Father might have had an enemy.
+But unless we decide that this man has made up his
+mind to wipe out the entire Quilter family, which, of
+course, could be the decision of only a maniac, we
+cannot conceive of Olympe’s having the same enemy—or
+any enemy, for that matter.</p>
+
+<p>The mask is made of bright red satin. It is about
+twelve inches long and ten inches wide. It has two small
+holes cut for the eyes. It has strings, cut from the same
+satin, knotted into the sides. The strings were tied
+together in the back, as they had been when he was wearing
+it. He must then have pulled it off over his head and
+dropped it, by mistake we assume, just before he got out
+of the window.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of Chris, we all believe, I think,
+that he did get out of the window this time. It was a
+darn risky business, running along that sloping roof to
+the rain spout, and getting hold of the spout, under the
+eaves, on a night as dark as last night was. I shouldn’t
+care to try it in the daytime. But this guy must be
+something of a circus performer, because he not only
+had to get off the roof, but he had also to get on it by
+means of the rain spout. Chris and I have gone carefully
+over the porch possibilities. The spout seems to
+be the one thing he could have used to climb on. The
+old trellis, at the south end, has completely rotted and
+fallen to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps here I would better give another line or two
+about the search that Grandfather, Aunt Gracia, and
+Chris made of the house. They went about it
+systematically. They did not forget the roof this time. The
+three outside doors were all locked on the inside, as is
+usual now. Every window downstairs was locked on
+the inside. The cellar doors were locked. Chris and I
+made another thorough search of the place after I got
+home last night. No one could have been hiding in the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>This is what Chris thinks queers my maniac contention:
+He insists that it would take a keen mind to do
+exactly the same thing, twice, and outwit us each time.
+Of course, any fool who was willing to risk his neck
+could have made a clean getaway last night. After
+the snow melted, we had another freeze, and the ground
+is so hard that we can’t stamp our own footprints
+down into it. Escape, then, last night—discounting
+again the distance from the porch roof to the ground,
+and the dangers of the rain spout as a ladder—would
+have been simple enough. We know, though, that he
+did not get away across the roof that first night. We
+know that the snow was unmarked by any sort of print.
+Consequently, Chris thinks that the fellow worked
+again last night whatever foxy scheme he worked the
+first time. That is so reasonable that I am more than
+half ashamed of myself for not agreeing. The rope, the
+locked doors, and the red mask prove, surely, that it was
+the same man both times.</p>
+
+<p>The others are beginning to wonder, now, if we might
+have been mistaken about footprints that first night; if
+we might have overlooked a single line of them. Lucy,
+with her ingenious mind, has suggested that he might
+have got away on stilts! I know that there were no
+footprints. We have to stick to what we do know, or we shall
+never get anywhere. Since the man did not get out of
+the house that Monday night, he must have stayed in
+the house. Until last night, I have been certain that,
+since he did not stay in hiding in the house he stayed,
+as Aunt Gracia said, not in hiding. Or, to put it brashly,
+he was one of us.</p>
+
+<p>Last night every single one of us was in the dining
+room, sitting around the table. Dong Lee was serving
+us. That settles it. It could not have been one of us.
+Consequently, he did stay in hiding in the house.</p>
+
+<p>All this seems to grant him super-brains and sanity.
+But I believe it is quite as reasonable to grant him a
+madman’s cunning and a fool’s luck. When we find out
+what he did, where he went that first night, I’ll bet ten
+acres of Q 2 that we’ll not find any deep scheming, any
+genius job at the bottom of it. I’ll bet the same ten
+acres that we’ll find something so simple that a child
+might have devised it, so transparent that we’ve all
+looked straight through it without seeing it. I feel,
+somehow, certain that the entire thing is right before
+us for us to look at—if only we knew how to look.
+How to look seems to be the question now rather than
+where to look. You know what a wizard Aunt Gracia is
+when it comes to finding lost articles; and how she
+always says it is because she never hunts, but always
+thinks. It is thinking, now, and not peering under beds
+or into apple bins, that is going to land us where we
+need to be. In spite of my smartness, I have been trying
+to do some thinking that includes the trapdoor in the
+attic; but I haven’t had a sensible result, as yet.</p>
+
+<p>Both times we have given the fellow a good many
+minutes to use as he pleased. But, since we are more or
+less civilized beings, not entirely inured to tragedy, I
+suppose it is not wholly to our discredit that our first
+impulses, on occasions of this sort, should be for
+something other than an immediate pursuit of the criminal.</p>
+
+<p>Gus and his brothers do not subscribe to such
+sentimentality. They arrived, fully panoplied, about nine
+this morning and were at once overcome with disgust to
+think we had given attention to Olympe and Grandfather
+last night before we had started hue and cry.
+Nor did Chris’s contention that he had gone straight to
+the window in Olympe’s room, last night, and looked
+out of it, and seen nothing (the man could have got to
+the cover of the lower porch by that time), help much.</p>
+
+<p>“Sure, I know,” Gus said. “Looking out of windows
+is all right. But how long did you folks hang around
+and talk things over this time, before you men thought
+of going out after the —— —— who did the killing?”</p>
+
+<p>Later, he relented to the extent of admitting that,
+since he represented law and order in Quilter County,
+he supposed he’d try to do what he could. He added,
+however, that considering all the circumstances, and
+the time that had elapsed, he didn’t think we had a
+right to expect him to do much.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Gracia suggested that she thought he should
+depute at least two men to guard our house for a time.</p>
+
+<p>Gus said, “Would you want them deputies to stay
+inside the house or outside the house, Miss Quilter?”</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not he was trying to be funny, I don’t
+know. I don’t much care. It is relief, I guess. Now,
+since we all know that not one of us could have had a
+hand in this, it doesn’t seem to matter, greatly, what
+other people think.</p>
+
+<p>The Wildochs had a talk with all of us—Grandfather
+was the spokesman, of course—first thing. Then they
+milled about the place for an hour or two, and made a
+great show of examining Olympe’s room. She is still in
+bed, so we curbed their enthusiasms for detail as much
+as we could; postponing, for instance, the minutia of
+digging the bullet out of the wall. When they finally left,
+Gus said that he would see what he could do about sending
+a couple of the boys out for a few days. No one has
+come, as yet, so he must have seen that he could do
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Don’t, for the Lord’s sake, Judy, go worrying about
+our safety. Unlike Gus, we are able to do several things.
+Chris and I are both staying up to-night, for all night.
+The happy practice of feeding Whatof and Keeper in
+the kitchen shed has been discontinued. The house is
+locked from cellar to attic. We are getting our fresh air
+from the fireplace flues, and our strength is as—and so
+forth. No kidding, it makes a difference.</p>
+
+<p>I guess this tells it all for to-night. Except sorry, and
+so on, for that fool letter I wrote to you yesterday. And,
+Judy, don’t forget about sending for Lucy, pronto. If
+we do get the money from Father’s insurance, I am
+going to try to think of some scheme for getting
+Grandfather away for at least a few weeks. Lucy and
+Grandfather are the only ones here whom I am worried much
+about. The others seem to be coming through pretty
+well. Olympe, I am sure, will be all right as soon as Uncle
+Phineas gets home. Thank fortune, when he comes this
+time, he’ll be able to stay.</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch18">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Thursday, October 18, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+You are a good kid, all right, but
+someway or other your letters seem to rub me the
+wrong way. For gosh sakes, Jude, stop telling me that I
+didn’t murder Father. If you keep on with that line, I’ll
+think, as I thought for a while about Chris and Irene,
+that you are protesting too much. After all, you can’t
+<em>know</em> that I didn’t do it, as you keep declaring with
+underlines. Nobody here <em>knows</em>—anything. How can you
+know, away off there in Colorado?</p>
+
+<p>It serves me right enough, for beginning this crazy,
+underhanded business of writing to you. The nights
+were long, and I had to have something to do, I guess,
+and the letters gave me a good excuse for writing, as
+Olympe says, “at a time like this.” Funny, how we’ll
+find excuses for ourselves. Funnier, how we’ll believe
+what we desire to believe. I don’t know what right I
+have to the plural. No matter; don’t stop, too long, to
+laugh over the humour I have just presented. I have
+something much more amusing to give to you.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe had supposed that Uncle Phineas would
+come with Dr. Joe from Portland this afternoon.
+(Dr. Joe had been out of town and hadn’t got my
+telegram until late Wednesday.) When Uncle Phineas
+did not come, her fury propelled her from her bed and
+downstairs in her black gown—by this time fully
+denuded of its festive colour.</p>
+
+<p>At seven this evening, Lucy came to me and asked me
+to come upstairs with her. She led me directly to
+Olympe’s room. Lucy is so choice, that I am going to
+attempt to quote her, as nearly as I can.</p>
+
+<p>“Neal,” said she, “I have something to tell to someone,
+and I have decided that, just now, you are
+probably the best one of the family to tell.”</p>
+
+<p>Said I: “To tell what?”</p>
+
+<p>Said Lucy: “To tell that I am very sure no man with
+a red mask came to Olympe’s room on Tuesday night.
+Ever since I decided to be an author, Grandfather has
+been training me to observe closely. Now, Neal dear,
+will you please observe with me?”</p>
+
+<p>She asked me to lie down on Olympe’s bed, where
+Olympe had been lying on Tuesday night. She had the
+night lamp lighted and on the table as it had been that
+night. She crossed the room, stood in front of the
+window, and asked me whether I could see her white face.</p>
+
+<p>I could not. The night lamp, shaded as it is, lights a
+small circle on the bedside table, and lights nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>I heard her open the window. “I am sitting in the
+window now,” she said, “with the pane pulled down
+between you and me. Does the glass make a difference?
+Can you see my white face?”</p>
+
+<p>I could not.</p>
+
+<p>“Then how,” she asked, “could Olympe have seen a
+man, and the bright red mask, at this same time on
+Tuesday night? Now listen,” she went on. “When I
+bang the window up hard, like this, you can hear it?
+But can you hear it when I raise it slowly, like this, inch
+by inch?”</p>
+
+<p>Since it made no sound whatever, I could not.</p>
+
+<p>“You see,” Lucy stated, “Olympe said that the window
+being raised, slowly, inch by inch, was what she
+heard to make her look toward it. She kept on hearing
+it, raised inch by inch. I can’t hear it myself, when I’m
+raising it slowly. You can’t hear it, over there. Olympe
+is, really, a trifle deaf.”</p>
+
+<p>Neal shines. Neal is brilliant. “Just the same, Lucy,
+we all of us heard the shot. There is no arguing away
+from that.”</p>
+
+<p>Lucy grows maternal. “Yes, Neal darling, of course.
+But, you know, I think that Olympe fired the shot
+herself. You see, she always slept with Uncle Phineas’s
+gun under her pillow when he was away from home. She
+kept it unloaded—or meant to. But the cartridges for it
+are right here in the commode drawer, where you found
+them the other night. Olympe could have put just one
+of them into the gun, and got into bed, and shot it off
+up there into the wall, where she knew it would stick
+and not hurt anyone. Then she could have jabbed it
+back under her pillow, and plumped right down into bed
+again. If we had searched for a gun, this time, and we
+didn’t, none of us would have thought it odd if we’d
+found the unloaded one under her pillow where she
+always kept it.”</p>
+
+<p>“At least not as odd,” I said, “as I think it is for you
+to accuse Olympe of this. Why are you doing it, Lucy?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll tell you my purpose in a minute or two,” Lucy
+said. “First, I should like to get through with my
+thinking. I think that Olympe’s reason for planning to do
+this was that Uncle Phineas went away and left her
+alone, when she kept telling him she needed his protection.
+Uncle Phineas, of course, will be shocked and
+remorseful when he finds how nearly Olympe did come to
+being killed. And, too, you know, Neal, Olympe has
+been sort of left out of things since Father was killed.
+Being almost killed herself, gives her an entrée. We
+know that is the way Olympe is made, and that she
+can’t help it at all—not any more than she can help
+being rather dull.</p>
+
+<p>“The mask was cut from one of Olympe’s old ball
+gowns that I used to dress up in, in the attic. The
+trouble is, some little snips of it were here in her work
+basket, and some threads of it were still caught in her
+dull scissors. I thought it wise to look, because Sherlock
+Holmes was always making such important discoveries
+with bits of tweed, you know. Now, I think, I can tell
+you my purpose. I want you to explain to Olympe,
+Neal. She must be explained to, and I think it would be
+much better taste for you to do the explaining than
+for me, at my age, to attempt it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Explain—what, Lucy?” I was shocked at the way I
+croaked it.</p>
+
+<p>“But, Neal! You must explain to her that the man
+jumped quite heavily into the room from the window.
+That he came gliding across the floor, and stooped to
+glare, or peer, or some such thing, at her, beneath the
+lamp. That she took one horror-stricken glance at the
+frightful eyes, burning through the holes in the red
+mask, and, as he made a cruel, menacing sound, and
+seemed to reach for his gun, she fainted dead away. I
+have cleaned all the scraps out of her work basket, of
+course.</p>
+
+<p>“You must be very careful, darling. It will be difficult.
+But it is necessary, now that Olympe has left her room,
+that she should not tell that story of hers outside the
+family circle. She had planned it so nicely, she thought,
+to have it all exactly like the other time. She even stole
+out in the hall, after you had left her, and locked all the
+doors. I think she must have brought the rope from the
+attic in the afternoon, and hidden it in Father’s room.
+Then she had only to dash in there, and carry it into her
+room. She must have hurried to get things all arranged
+and play the whole scene in so short a time. Poor
+Olympe—it must be sad for anyone to have to be as
+important to herself as Olympe is. You do understand,
+don’t you, Neal, that being an actress is really an
+affliction of Olympe’s, like Panys Gummer’s short leg?”</p>
+
+<p>I told Lucy I understood that. What I did not understand,
+I went on to say, was how a little girl, who could
+think through a thing as intricate as this could possibly
+have been frightened by a silly story about Archie
+Biggil hiding in locked trunks.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy said: “I only pretended to believe in that story.
+I thought if you could possibly think that I was afraid of
+Archie Biggil it would be so much better than for you
+to know the truth. Neal, dear, you have seemed to need
+comfort of late.”</p>
+
+<p>I asked her if she would please consider that I had
+been comforted, and tell me, if she knew, what she had
+been afraid of.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Neal,” she said, “I was afraid of Olympe, of
+course.”</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>She left me wordless. I must have looked my need for
+comfort, however, for Lucy hastened with it.</p>
+
+<p>“Darling,” she said, “that was my mere physical
+fear. It wasn’t by any means as uncomfortable as my
+unphysical fear that outsiders might discover the truth;
+but it made me more of a baby. I was especially afraid
+after I had laughed at Olympe, that evening. But, of
+course, I have had to be a little afraid from the first.
+And the Archie Biggil story made it worse. When
+Olympe told me that, I knew. Even Olympe, you see,
+Neal, couldn’t have credited that Archie Biggil story.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lucy,” I managed to question, “are you saying
+that you believe Olympe murdered Father?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” she answered, in that direct way of hers,
+“that is what I believe. I am sure, of course, that
+Olympe didn’t mean to do it. I think she went into
+Father’s room with Uncle Phineas’s gun that night, and
+that she thought the gun was unloaded. When she got
+into Father’s room, she acted one of her scenes for him.
+I think she must have been trying to make him promise
+that he would not consent to Christopher’s selling the
+ranch. Christopher might not have sold if Father had
+opposed it strongly enough. Olympe was worried about
+the poorhouse, you know. So I think she went to Father
+to play like she was very, very brave—probably she had
+Charlotte Corday in mind, or some other fearless lady.
+Yes, Neal, I know it is very silly. But, you see, Olympe
+lives in this very silly world that she makes for
+herself—I mean, really lives in it all the time.</p>
+
+<p>“I fancy, when she took the revolver from her dress,
+that Father just lay there and laughed at her. You
+know what laughing does to Olympe. You saw her the
+other night, when I laughed. And so, quite carried away
+with her acting, as she does get, you know, she pulled
+the trigger of the gun. She never thought that it
+would—but it did—go off. She must have been dreadfully
+shocked and frightened. She ran straightway back to her
+room, and fainted.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course, she’d have had to be a little crazy ever to
+have begun any of that—or to think she could point a
+revolver at Father and get a promise. And I thought
+such a horrible accident might have made her a little
+more crazy. And I thought—I’m afraid this is not clear
+thinking, though—that suppose she’d suspect I had
+guessed the truth. And I know, Neal, this was silly of
+me; but I couldn’t keep from being afraid she might
+play another scene, and have another accident.”</p>
+
+<p>Why, I asked, if Olympe had had no idea of using her
+gun, if she had thought that it was unloaded, had she
+locked us all in our rooms before she had gone into
+Father’s room?</p>
+
+<p>“I think,” Lucy answered, “that she didn’t. I think
+that, when Irene came upstairs and found Christopher
+had locked her out, it vexed her so much that she slipped
+along the hall and locked all the doors—just to make
+trouble in the morning. You know, she told me herself
+that she locked the stairway doors to show Christopher
+that two could play at that lock-out game.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think, Lucy, that Irene could have opened
+all of our doors, removed the keys, and locked us in
+without our hearing her?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think she could have with all of us but Grandfather.
+If Grandfather had heard someone fumbling at
+his door, he would have supposed it was some one of the
+family, and, while he might have called a question, he
+might not have. If he had thought some one of us was
+trying to do something or other to his door without
+disturbing him, it would be just like Grandfather to be
+too courteous to let us know he had been disturbed.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you believe that Grandfather would lie about
+it, afterwards?”</p>
+
+<p>“That is wrong of you, Neal. But I do think that
+Grandfather might be generous rather than just. Since
+he didn’t know that it was Irene who took his key, he
+might think it more generous not to say that he
+suspected her. Since Grandfather would die, as you know,
+to save the Quilter honour, surely he would keep silent
+to save it.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right. How did the keys get into Father’s room?”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps Irene had them with her, in her wrapper
+pocket, when she came back upstairs after she heard the
+shot.”</p>
+
+<p>“And why did she, from the very start, lie about
+locking the doors?”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought,” Lucy said, “that she didn’t like to
+confess she had been the one to lock us all in. Everyone
+seemed to think that whoever had locked us in had
+committed the murder.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right. Can you answer this? When Irene locked
+us all in our rooms, wouldn’t she have locked Olympe in
+her room, too?”</p>
+
+<p>“She might have locked Olympe in Father’s room.”</p>
+
+<p>“Only,” I protested, “when Irene opened Father’s
+door to get his key, wouldn’t Olympe and Father both
+have seen her?”</p>
+
+<p>“If Father’s key had not been in the keyhole,” Lucy
+answered, “Irene might have heard voices in his room,
+and not have opened the door. She might have locked it
+with one of the keys she already had.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well. You have locked Father’s door. How did
+Olympe get out of it, after the shooting, and into her
+own locked room again?”</p>
+
+<p>“If Father’s key had been in some handy place, she
+might have used it to unlock the door, and to open her
+own door, and to lock her own door after her, again. Or,
+Olympe, when she went into Father’s room, might have
+turned the key in the lock. It would have made a
+gesture, and a speech. She might have held the key in her
+hand, and have shown it to Father, and told him that,
+until she had his promise, neither of them could leave
+that room. Irene’s locking was just naughtiness. If
+Father’s door had been locked on the inside, she
+wouldn’t have bothered about it. She’d have locked the
+others and gone on downstairs.”</p>
+
+<p>“And the rope, hanging out of the open window?”</p>
+
+<p>Judy, on the square, I fully expected the kid to have
+some logical, well-thought-out explanation of the rope.
+I have spared you a description of my own mental
+processes during this interview with our little
+twelve-year-old sister. I have assumed that your imagination
+would be more competent than my powers of description.
+Well, thank the Lord, the baby stuck at the
+rope.</p>
+
+<p>“Could it be,” she questioned, “that Olympe had
+threatened to hang herself out of the window with the
+rope?”</p>
+
+<p>“Or to hang Father?” I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>“I know,” she agreed, and blushed, “that is bad.
+That is allowing my literary imagination to run away
+with my logic. No, Neal, I can’t explain the rope.
+There is a chance that Father had wanted to get someone
+into the house that night, and had fixed it to help
+him in. Grandfather has told me about other incidents,
+that life allows such coincidences—I mean as
+Father having fixed the rope on the same night that he
+was shot by accident—but that literature does not.
+This is life—so that might be. Or it might be that
+Father had lowered something out of the window that
+night; something heavy that would have pulled the bed
+a bit. If he had done so before the snow was on the
+ground, whoever was below to receive it could have
+taken it and walked right away, or wheeled it in a
+barrow, and the snow would have covered any
+footprints or barrow tracks.”</p>
+
+<p>“And Father, who had gone to all that trouble for
+secrecy, would have lowered his treasure chest out of
+the window, and have gone back to bed, leaving the
+window wide open for the wind to blow over him, and
+the rope dangling to be seen?”</p>
+
+<p>Lucy argued: “The rope couldn’t have been seen
+until morning. Father might have had some reason for
+leaving it as it was for a few hours. Perhaps someone was
+going to send something up again—and couldn’t when
+he realized that the snow would show the footprints
+in the morning. Father would have closed the window.
+But Olympe might have opened it, at the last minute.
+She might have thought she’d throw the gun out of it.
+And then, when she saw the snow, and realized how a
+black gun would show in the white snow, changed her
+mind.”</p>
+
+<p>“By the way, Lucy, why did Father say ‘red mask’ to
+Irene?”</p>
+
+<p>“If he did say it, I think he said it to save Olympe.
+He’d wish to, you know. He’d have been sure that
+Olympe did not mean to shoot him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you decided what heavy thing it was that
+Father lowered out of the window, and to whom he
+lowered it?”</p>
+
+<p>“I had thought,” Lucy answered, “that you might
+know that. I had thought it might have something to do
+with the secret you and Uncle Phineas have been
+keeping together. I thought Uncle Phineas, since no one
+knew where he was the night Father was killed, might
+have been under Father’s window.”</p>
+
+<p>As it happens, Judy, that is utter idiocy. Ruled out.
+A good many persons know exactly where Uncle
+Phineas was that night. We shall all know it, before long
+now. I told Lucy this. She remarked that she was glad.</p>
+
+<p>I told her, next, that this mistake of hers should be a
+lesson to her concerning how easily mistakes could be
+made in matters of this sort. (That sounds like me and
+my heavy platitudinous, pedagogic style. Odd, the
+continuation of Lucy’s devotion.)</p>
+
+<p>She asked me what other mistakes she had made.</p>
+
+<p>I explained to her that, though she had worked her
+problem neatly, she had not got the right answer
+because she had left out an important equation—the
+human equation. I asked her, if Olympe had actually
+planned to go through with such a scene in Father’s
+room, what her first thought would have been.</p>
+
+<p>“To dress up for the part,” said Lucy. “But I decided
+that she had undressed, again, before we found
+her in her outing-flannel nightgown.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well,” I said. “But examine this. Would
+Olympe leave Father, mortally wounded, run to her
+room, get out of her costume, hang it in the closet—it
+was not strewn about her room—put on her nightgown,
+take the gun again into her hand, and fall in a dead faint
+on the floor? Not only would she have done all that, but
+also could she have done all that before she fainted?”</p>
+
+<p>“I should think,” said Lucy, “since she did miss
+meeting Irene in the hall, there’d have been plenty of
+time, after that.”</p>
+
+<p>“Narrow it down,” I insisted. “Would Olympe, if
+she had shot Father by mistake, have left him alone to
+suffer and die? Remember, Lucy, that in spite of her
+artificiality, Olympe is a good woman.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you mean,” Lucy gasped, “that Olympe shot
+Father on purpose?”</p>
+
+<p>“I mean,” I said, “you little nonny, you, that
+Olympe did not shoot Father at all. I mean, that it
+has been wrong of you to think these thoughts.”</p>
+
+<p>“Doubtless,” she sighed, in that seldom-used, grown-up
+manner of hers. “But I have decided that I must
+have a wicked personality. I have broken all the rules
+of conduct Grandfather gave to me. But at least,
+Neal, I am logical.”</p>
+
+<p>I told her that if deciding one of the family was a
+murderer, or, at best, a brutal beast of a coward, and
+that all the rest of the family were scamps and liars was
+an evidence of logic, she was logical right enough.</p>
+
+<p>“Whom have I accused of lying?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Begin with Chris. He said, under oath, that he did
+not lock Irene out of their room that night.”</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t hear him say it. But, even so, I’d call that a
+very light lie—a lie that any gentleman should be willing
+to use to get a lady out of serious trouble, especially
+since the lady was his wife.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what serious trouble was Irene in?”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Neal, she was the only one of the family who
+was locked out in the hall.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lucy,” I questioned, “whom have you been talking
+to?”</p>
+
+<p>“Really, only to myself,” she said. “But I’ve
+pretended to be talking to Sherlock Holmes. I have been
+Dr. Watson for days now—whenever I have felt at all
+up to it. It is an excellent way to clear one’s mind, Neal.
+Why don’t you try it, dear?”</p>
+
+<p>I told her that I didn’t care for the sort of clear brain
+that could clean out a good woman’s character in a
+swoop and leave a bad woman, a woman rotten to the
+core. I asked her if the second affair had not come up,
+how long she had planned to keep this mad belief of
+hers, that Olympe had done the murder, a secret?</p>
+
+<p>“I had meant,” she replied, “to keep it forever. It
+seemed best. You’d think, Neal, that keeping it would
+have been quite easy. No. It hasn’t been.”</p>
+
+<p>You’ll hate me for this, Judy, I suppose. It was
+beastly of me, I know. But I’d thought that Lucy
+needed a lesson. And—why not be honest?—I love the
+working of the kid’s mind. I am as proud as a parent
+when I get a peek at the way it goes. But that final
+little, “No. It hasn’t been,” of hers, got the best
+of me.</p>
+
+<p>I told her then what I should have told her in the
+beginning, and what she had had no opportunity to know
+without being told, since she was not at the inquest:
+That the bullet, which Dr. Joe had removed from
+Father’s body, had been fired from a .38 Colt’s of fairly
+recent make. That Uncle Phineas’s old Colt’s was a
+.32 calibre. That he left it at home, now, when he went
+on prospecting trips, because he had the new .38 that he
+bought a couple of years ago when Father and Grandfather
+bought theirs of that man who came around on a
+bicycle taking orders for them.</p>
+
+<p>“Was the kind he sold the kind that killed darling
+Father?” Lucy questioned.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. And every man who has a gun in three counties
+has one of them. We can’t get far with that; but far
+enough to prove that a .38 bullet cannot be fired from a
+.32 gun.”</p>
+
+<p>“I had thought,” Lucy said, “that Uncle Phineas
+went to the city. You and I telegraphed there.”</p>
+
+<p>I told her that before long now she’d know where
+Uncle Phineas had been; and, until she did know, it
+would be more polite to stop guessing about it.</p>
+
+<p>“I only meant,” she explained, “that, if Uncle
+Phineas had gone to Portland, and not prospecting, he
+probably wouldn’t have taken his new .38 Colt’s with
+him.”</p>
+
+<p>For a wonder, I understood what she meant. It
+proves again, plainly, my contention that guns, ropes,
+coal oil, and their ilk are worthless, worse than worthless,
+when it comes to finding the truth in a case of this
+sort.</p>
+
+<p>“Very well, Lucy,” I said. “If you can believe,
+after having known Olympe all your life, that she would
+run away from Father, whom she really loved, when he
+was lying there with blood streaming from his breast,
+dying—run away, hide a gun so that it could never be
+found, get out of her clothes, and the rest of it, with no
+thought of anything but saving herself—it wouldn’t
+help you much to tell you that Uncle Phineas did have
+his gun with him, his .38 Colt’s, on that trip. I took it
+out of his valise myself, when I helped him to unpack.”</p>
+
+<p>Lucy looked at me, drew in a long breath, and burst
+into tears. For a moment I thought they were tears of
+relief. Not so.</p>
+
+<p>“It was so much better,” she sobbed, “to think that
+Olympe did it by accident. None of the rest of us could
+have done it by accident. And, besides, nothing is real
+to Olympe. Neal—Neal—— See, now—the rest of us!”</p>
+
+<p>She said it, Judy. The rest of us. The more I think of
+it, the more I am certain that Lucy is right, absolutely
+right, about Olympe’s little drama of Tuesday evening.
+It is all perfectly evident. But I do not believe that
+Olympe staged it either to spite Uncle Phineas or to get
+the centre of the stage. I know that she is too good a
+woman to have yielded to the temptation for no better
+reasons than these. I think that she thought the act
+would do just what it did do, for me at least. That it
+would remove suspicion from every member of our
+household.</p>
+
+<p>Damn it all, Jude! Why didn’t I think of something of
+the sort? Why didn’t any other one of us? Do you get
+the irony of it? Olympe, the one person here on the
+ranch—I suppose we should have to except Irene,
+also—who would have bungled it hopelessly was the one
+person who thought of the scheme. If Chris, or Aunt
+Gracia, or I had possessed wits for the conception, we’d
+have had wits for carrying it through convincingly.</p>
+
+<p>I don’t know whether or not I have been the one fool
+of the household. If any of the others have doubted
+Olympe’s story, they have not betrayed their doubt by
+the flicker of an eyelash. Though, of course, Grandfather
+doubted it from the beginning. His first question,
+I am sure I told you, was whether Olympe had discharged
+a revolver by accident. That, too, explains his
+reluctance to having me ride immediately to Quilterville.
+Also, when the county bunch arrived, Grandfather
+had them come directly to his room. He said that
+Olympe was in no condition to be troubled with questions.
+You see, he wished to tell Olympe’s story for her.
+And when I heard him telling it, “Mrs. Quilter was
+aroused from her sleep, on Tuesday evening, by hearing
+a noise in her room. She opened her eyes and saw a
+man creeping toward her; a man whose face appeared
+to be covered with the red mask we have since found.
+She fainted from terror——” I merely thought that he
+had been too much fuddled at the time to get Olympe’s
+story entirely as to detail.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me, now, that Chris did flash an odd glance
+while Grandfather was telling Olympe’s story. If I am
+right about that, it might easily mean that Chris
+thought as I thought concerning Grandfather’s
+befuddlement. Because I have dreaded it, I suppose, I
+have imagined, once or twice, that Grandfather was
+getting less keen here of late. He is not. This proves it.
+Or, if he is, he could lose about half of his intelligence
+and still give us all cards and spades.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, Judy, so far as I am concerned, is the end
+of it. We are back where we began, the night of Father’s
+murder. I am through. I am not writing any more of
+these Mr. Micawber epistles. I don’t know who the
+murderer is. I don’t want to know. You don’t know. I
+don’t want you to know. So, no more brain storms, no
+more nervous palpitations, no more fake jubilations,
+and but one more apology—sorry, Jude, that I ever
+began any of this rot—from,</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch19">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Saturday, October 20, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+I have what two weeks ago would
+have been mighty good news for you and for
+us all. Uncle Phineas got home this afternoon with
+$45,000 marked in his bank book. That is, you
+understand, he had deposited a check for $45,000 in the
+Portland bank.</p>
+
+<p>When he went prospecting down into Malheur
+County last June, he went into the old placer-mining
+region. He located a quartz mine there. He came home
+in August, and went straight on to Portland to try to
+interest some Eastern capitalists, who were there at that
+time, in the mine. He succeeded. And, finally, in late
+September, he got two big bugs to go down to Malheur
+County with him to inspect the property.</p>
+
+<p>They were coming out, on their way back to Portland
+to draw up the papers and close the deal, when Uncle
+Phineas heard what had happened here on Monday
+night, October the eighth. He came straight home, as
+you know. But he made an engagement to meet the men
+in Portland, toward the end of the week. This is his reason
+for going back to the city this last time. Everything
+went through without a hitch. Uncle Phineas banked
+the $45,000.</p>
+
+<p>So, you see, all is smooth sailing from now on. With
+that amount, we can bring the ranch through with flying
+banners, or I am a fool. Yes, I know. But I am not a
+fool where ranching, and nothing else, is concerned.
+Though when I realize what Father could have done, if
+he’d had half such an opportunity as this, it makes me
+meek. Also, it makes me pretty sore at Uncle Phineas.
+If it hadn’t been for his darn foolishness, I’d have had a
+chance to know something, at least, about how Father
+would have planned to go ahead with such an amount of
+capital: how he would have expended it; saved it; what
+mortgages he would have paid. As it is, I am in the dark
+with a case of cold feet at the notion of so much money
+to be handled.</p>
+
+<p>On the square, Judy, I hated this doggone secrecy of
+Uncle Phineas’s from the beginning. When he came
+home last summer, he told me about the location of the
+mine, what the ore had assayed, the accessibility to the
+railroad and to water. It sounded so good that, in spite
+of myself, and in spite of past experiences and even—shall
+I say—in spite of Uncle Phineas, I had to believe
+in the future of the thing.</p>
+
+<p>I was strong for telling the rest of the family, or at
+least some of the rest of them, right then. He would not
+have it. He had used me as a safety valve, because he
+had to confide or explode; but he would not tell another
+soul. He insisted, rightly enough, on the difference
+between locating a gold mine and getting a red cent out of
+it. On the score of not building up the family’s hopes,
+only to dash them, he did have a fair excuse for keeping
+quiet and for requiring that I should. But I knew, and
+he knew, that at any other time in the history of Q 2
+Ranch, he would have come shouting in with the big
+news, and allowed us all to have what fun we could out
+of the hoping and planning—you know how it has always
+been. No, sir, it was not fear of disappointing the
+family that made Uncle Phineas swear me to secrecy.</p>
+
+<p>It is a crumby thing to say, but, from the night she
+came here, Uncle Phineas has hated Irene. He always
+liked Chris better than he liked any of us, you know; so
+a mixture of Mother, Beatrice, and Griselda would not
+have satisfied him for his precious boy. Admittedly,
+Irene possessed no such combination of perfections.
+He was—and is, I suppose—convinced that Irene had
+roped his cloyingly innocent nephew by foul means. He
+thought all he had to do was to free Chris from the lasso
+of propinquity, and then the infatuation would
+instantly end. He tried to toll him off to Nome. When he
+had to give over that plan, he decided that Irene, if she
+saw no chance of getting away from Q 2 with Chris,
+would pick up some day and leave without him. He
+never for a moment believed that Chris would sell the
+place. His point, all along, was to save Chris. Mine,
+when I got mixed up with some mucky ideas of the same
+sort, was to save the ranch.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Uncle Phineas has saved the ranch. So I guess
+it is rotten of me to start quibbling about his methods.
+If he did make rather a bad mistake, he was more than
+paid out for it by the fiddle-de-dee effect of his triumph
+this evening. His announcement, with his display of the
+bank book, was the forlornest victory I have ever
+witnessed.</p>
+
+<p>We are a sentimental herd, and there is no getting
+away from it. When Uncle Phineas flashed the $45,000
+on us, there wasn’t one of us, except Irene, I suppose,
+who thought of anything but what that money, or a
+tenth of it, would have meant to Father these last few
+years.</p>
+
+<p>He sprang it on us just after we’d sat down to supper.
+We received it as we might have received an announcement
+that he had had his photograph taken; and we
+passed the bank book from hand to hand as we might
+have passed the picture, though rather more quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I had been more or less expecting it.
+Though I was not prepared for any such sum as that.
+He had told me he was going to hold out for $45,000;
+but I had $15,000 fixed in my mind as the highest figure.
+One does, you know, always divide by at least three
+when it comes to Uncle Phineas and his affairs. Still,
+since I had been primed, I don’t know why I should
+have been so dumb. I might have sounded forth a glad
+cry or two, it would seem, but I did not.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy was the first to speak. She remarked: “Dear
+me! An enormous amount of money. Money was
+bothering all of us—wasn’t it—only a few weeks ago?”</p>
+
+<p>Chris replied by shoving back his chair, rising, and
+walking out of the room. Irene ran after him. Olympe
+burst into real tears. Aunt Gracia ran to Grandfather
+and put her arm around his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t you understand, Father,” she said, “Uncle
+Phineas has brought us a fortune? All our money worries
+are over now. You must be glad, dear. You must be
+glad!”</p>
+
+<p>So take the “good news,” Judy. In spite of the neat
+blue figures in the little leather book, I think none of us
+has quite got hold of the idea as yet. Except—funny,
+how often I have to make this exception—except, then,
+Irene. She has got Chris at their packing already—but
+a far from sunny, rather new Christopher, who snaps
+at one, and is surly, and who says that he will pack, if
+she likes her things put away in trunks, but that he is
+not leaving Q 2 for a while.</p>
+
+<p>Olympe is having a difficult time. She is torn between
+remorse for having accused Uncle Phineas of iniquities,
+widely assorted from neglect to infidelity, and anger at
+him for having kept the secret from her for so long a time.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Aunt Gracia seems to be in a trance. When you
+consider how hard it is to think up excuses and decent
+motives for mere mortals, you can imagine what a task
+it must be to have to find them for Omnipotence. You
+understand? If Father had to die, on the very night of
+October eighth, death would have been so much easier
+for him if he could have known that he was leaving us
+all, and Q 2, safe. So, until Aunt Gracia’s faith
+reconciles this seeming brutality with some obscure justice,
+she is bound, I fear, to have a bad few days.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather has received the glad tidings by going
+straight to his bed. Aunt Gracia seems seriously
+concerned about him. But I know Grandfather, by this
+time. After weathering the past twelve days, as he has,
+he won’t allow what, after all, is good fortune, to down
+him now.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Phineas put my name in the pot when he made
+this deposit. In the future, I am to write checks with
+the elders. I’ll celebrate by making my first one out to
+you, and enclosing it in this letter. Thank the Lord you
+can stop worrying about expenses. If you haven’t
+plenty of room for Lucy, where you and Greg are now,
+find a larger, more comfortable place. Or, if there is
+anything at all that will make you happier—get it.</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Tuesday, October 23, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+Bless your heart for the letter that came
+to-day. None of the folks see my hand in it. They are
+all a bit worried, in spite of your denials, for fear Greg
+may be not so well. But, to the last man, they are
+relieved beyond measure at the prospect of getting Lucy
+away from this damnable, suspicion-ridden hole that
+used to be Q 2 Ranch, and safely with you.</p>
+
+<p>It is being no end good for Lucy. The notion that
+Judy-pudy needs her has chirked her chin up almost
+to its erstwhile snobby slant. She drank milk at dinner
+for the first time in ages. I knew why—strength for
+efficiency. She is as busy as six bunnies getting her washing
+done, and her clothes in order, and preparing
+“presents” for you and Greg.</p>
+
+<p>We’ll get her off on Thursday, I think. I’ll send you
+full details about trains in a telegram on the day she
+leaves here. For gosh sakes, Judy, don’t let there be
+any slip up about meeting her. I hate like thunder to
+have to allow the kid to make the trip alone. If Grandfather
+were only in a little better shape, I’d bring her,
+or Aunt Gracia might. If Chris and Irene had any
+definite date for departure, we’d have her wait for them.
+But, since Chris—and quite rightly—doesn’t care to
+leave Q 2 until Grandfather is out of bed, I suppose
+we’d better send Lucy along.</p>
+
+<p>If, by Thursday, Grandfather should be up again as,
+in spite of Dr. Joe’s pessimism, I rather think he may
+be, I’ll hop the train and escort Lucy to Denver. Or,
+if he seems well out of the woods, by to-morrow or the
+next day, we may have Lucy wait and go with Chris
+and Irene. Don’t worry, if I have to wire that she is
+coming alone. I’ll make friends with the conductor,
+and endow the porter.</p>
+
+<p>Thank you, dear, for helping out.</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Wednesday, October 24, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+If I weren’t sure it would make things
+worse instead of better, I should devote the first page
+of this letter to an alphabetical classification of Neal
+Quilter, beginning with ass, bounder, cad, dunce—it
+is remarkably easy—and ending with wise-guy, yap,
+and zany.</p>
+
+<p>This, of course, as a direct result of your ten-page
+letter, which came to-day, in answer to my letter about
+the coroner’s inquest. The entire plan of writing to you,
+as I did write, could have been conceived only by an
+idiot—and the sound, fury, and significance have been
+fittingly evinced.</p>
+
+<p>Your attitude is the one reasonable attitude. I deserve
+every bit of the big-sisterly sweetness, sympathy,
+reassurance, and comfort that you are so determined to
+lavish upon me. I deserve it all; but I am afraid that
+I can’t endure much more of it. Jude, we have to cry
+quits.</p>
+
+<p>I do not, and I never did, suspect Aunt Gracia nor
+Chris. Whatever brain storm I had, has passed. I
+know, with no further need of reassurance, that I am
+an innocent little lad. For gosh sakes, then, Jude—stop
+it! I am not fool enough to ask you to forget what I
+have written; but, if you can, forgive it; and, because
+you must, ignore it.</p>
+
+<p>In answer to your question, do as you think best
+about telling Lucy that I have told you the truth. I
+have no right, and no particular desire, to burden you
+with keeping your knowledge a secret from Lucy. But
+I certainly do advise that you girls think of the affair
+as little as possible; that you two spend no time in
+putting your heads together and puzzling. It is a
+doggone unhealthy occupation, even for a man. The less
+you kids think about it and talk about it, the better.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Joe—he came out again on Sunday—got word
+to-day from Mr. Ward that the insurance people have
+decided to fight our claim on the grounds of suicide.
+They base their lying contention on the supposition
+that the Quilters, unwilling to have a suicide in their
+family, eager to collect, illegally, a large sum of money,
+would have banded together to dispose of the weapon,
+and to make the death seem to have been murder. Mr.
+Ward wishes to fight it through to a finish. He says that
+they are a rotten, one-horse, almost one-man, shyster
+outfit, with no standing, and they should be shown up
+and forced out of business. He says that the absence of
+powder burns proves, conclusively, that the gun had
+been fired from a distance of at least five or six feet.
+Again, bother ropes, and masks, and coal oil, and
+powder burns—or the lack of them. I know that
+Father would not kill himself. I do not know how they
+could tell whether or not there were powder burns,
+underneath all that blood—— There I go again. Sorry.</p>
+
+<p>What I began to say was, that this decision of the
+company’s puts us in a nasty position. The Scylla of
+allowing them to get away with their filthy claims,
+and the Charybdis of dragging the thing through the
+courts, and of seeming eager to make Father’s death a
+paying proposition.</p>
+
+<p>We’ll do nothing until Grandfather is able to give
+us his best advice. At present, Dr. Joe and Uncle
+Phineas are all for fighting the thing through. Chris is,
+or seems to be, on the fence with Olympe and Irene;
+Aunt Gracia and I are strong for dropping it, here and
+now.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather is not coming along as well as I wish
+he might. I think that it is mostly a general letting down
+and relaxation, after shock. The money sort of gave him
+an opportunity to rest. However, Grandfather is much
+hurt because Uncle Phineas had not told him about the
+mine, or asked his advice about any of the dealings.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Phineas tried to get square by explaining that
+he was afraid Irene and Chris might have the same
+ability he—Uncle Phineas—had for turning daydreams
+into realities. In that case, had they known that a gold
+mine was in the offing, they might have hied them to
+New York on the strength of their knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>This helped not at all. Grandfather inquired why
+Uncle Phineas thought that he would go directly to
+Irene and Christopher and inform them. He went on to
+say that, in all his life, he had never betrayed a secret.
+His voice fairly shook as he all but dared any one of
+us to mention one instance of his having repeated the
+most trivial thing that had been told him in confidence.
+He said that, at eighty years of age, the discovery that
+his own brother dared not trust him with a minor
+confidence was an immitigably painful revelation. Sound
+enough, sane enough, just enough; but from
+Grandfather, at this time, rather thoroughly appalling.</p>
+
+<p>Aside from Grandfather, the rest of us are doing fairly
+well. The money assuages a lot. And the thought of
+getting Lucy away from this hellish place is a comfort.
+According to present plans, she is to leave to-morrow.
+But you will have my telegram about that long before
+you have this letter.</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Thursday, October 25, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+I hope you won’t think that I am in the
+throes of another brain storm, when you get the two
+almost identical telegrams about Lucy’s departure and
+arrival. After I had sent the first, I remembered the
+time the telegram we sent to Chris had miscarried. So
+I thought I’d play safe, and send another.</p>
+
+<p>It was darn crumby business, starting Lucy off alone
+on the train to-day. Nothing but the thought of
+Grandfather, lying there in his darkened room at home, kept
+me from hopping the train at the last minute and
+going with her.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather is not pulling through as fast as I thought
+he would. He was able to talk to me for a while this
+morning, though Dr. Joe keeps time on us. Grandfather
+asked me, straight, about the insurance. I told him
+how things stood. He advised, strongly, that we drop
+the claim. He said that no one, now, including the
+insurance people themselves, believed for an instant that
+Father’s death was a suicide. But, he said, by the time
+we had aired the affair in court, and had allowed those
+scoundrels to present their dishonest evidence, there
+was no way of telling what some people might come to
+believe. He said that Father’s honour needed no
+defence, and that we would make none. He added that
+no retort we could offer would carry the dignity of
+non-retort.</p>
+
+<p>I can hardly say how thankful I am for this decision
+from Grandfather. To start yowling and yapping for
+insurance money would seem to be the final, filthy
+flourish. Thank the Lord that Uncle Phineas has made it
+possible for us to drop it. Or, I guess, I should say that
+Chris has made it possible for us to drop it.</p>
+
+<p>After Grandfather and I had talked this morning,
+he insisted upon seeing Chris this afternoon. Chris,
+strangely, or naïvely, told me all this himself.
+Grandfather put it up to him whether we should fight for
+the insurance money or not. He said that, unless Chris
+would give him his solemn promise that never again,
+under any conditions, would he consider selling the
+ranch, we should have to go to suit for the money.
+Grandfather’s position was, that though now we are
+in bonanza, if every few years we had to meet the same
+proposition we had to meet when Chris came home
+this spring, we’d need, and we should have to attempt
+to get, every red cent we could put our hands on. Chris
+promised like a shot. Judging from Chris’s account of
+the interview, Grandfather made a very impressive,
+almost but not quite Biblical ceremony of receiving
+the promise.</p>
+
+<p>So that is off our minds. Chris never would break a
+promise. He’d have smashed us to bits by selling us
+out; but he’d never so much as trifle with the pretty
+knickknack of his own punctiliousness. I am darn glad
+of it. Why I should be beefing about it, I don’t know.</p>
+
+<p>This small check I am enclosing is to be used,
+exclusively, for the funny little fleshpots you and Lucy
+delight in. I fear I have been remiss about sending
+messages to Greg; but I am certain that you have been
+delivering, promptly, all the pleasant things I should
+have said. I am better than that. I am certain that
+Greg would know that I meant them, whether I had
+sent them or not. I am a mucker with messages—but
+you know how I feel about Greg.</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Saturday, October 27, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy:</span>
+Thank you for the telegram that came
+this evening. I went to Quilterville about five and hung
+around over there for three hours waiting for it. If
+people’s bumps of sympathy were developed in proportion
+to their bumps of curiosity, living would be a more
+tolerable project. Not, Lord knows, that I bid for
+sympathy, or want it—that is, unless sympathy might be
+expressed by decent silence.</p>
+
+<p>No matter. It is great to know that Lucy is safe with
+you. That, with the news of Greg’s improving health, is
+the best bit I have had for many moons.</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather seems about the same. I know that he
+will come through all right; but Dr. Joe is worried. His
+staying right on here proves that he is, more than
+anything he says.</p>
+
+<p>Tell Lucy I’d like a lot of letters from her, and long
+ones, and that I shall not be critical. The place, with you
+girls gone, is like a day with the morning missing. How
+is that from your unpoetical, but most loving brother,</p>
+
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p class="dateline">Monday, November 12, 1900.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sal">Dear Judy and Lucy:</span>
+Aunt Gracia tells me that
+you two are worrying because I have not written to you
+since Grandfather’s death. I am sorry to have worried
+you. I should have written.</p>
+
+<p>We are all fairly well here. The weather is cold, but
+sunny. Chris and Irene are leaving for New York
+to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>If I can get Steve Roftus to take the job of running
+the ranch for a year or two, I am planning to enter
+Oregon Agricultural College in February. We know
+that Steve is looking for a job, since Justin sold; but
+whether we can get him for what we can pay, I don’t
+know. We’ll go fairly high, because he is the best man
+in the county, and, now, more than ever before, I feel
+that I must have more adequate knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Getting Steve was Grandfather’s suggestion. I had
+the last talk with him that anyone had. Two hours on
+the night of the thirtieth. As I suppose the others have
+told you, that was the night before he died. My best
+regards to Greg.</p>
+
+<p class="valediction">Your loving brother,</p>
+<p class="signature">Neal.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch20">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>Lynn MacDonald’s reaching fingertips touched
+smooth wood. She glanced at the page in her hand.
+After all, it was the ending; fiction could scarcely have
+improved upon it. What was it that Lucy had said in
+one of her letters—something about life permitting
+where literature refused? She returned the page in her
+hand to its fraying creases and its envelope. “Poor
+loving brother Neal,” she murmured, and shook her head,
+and for a relaxing second drooped with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>She straightened, stood, jerking impatiently at
+stiffness, walked across the room to her bookshelves, and
+stooped to the row of fat encyclopedias. “Har to Hur,”
+she pulled from the shelf, and added “Sai to Shu” to it.</p>
+
+<p>A knock, demand nicely moderated by deference,
+tapped on her door.</p>
+
+<p>“Shall I have your car brought around, Miss
+MacDonald, or shall I order your breakfast?”</p>
+
+<p>“Sai to Shu” sprawled on the floor. Miss MacDonald
+said: “Heavens on earth! What time is it?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is seven o’clock, Miss MacDonald. I came early
+this morning.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, but,” stuttered the crime analyst, “the charwoman
+hasn’t been in. She didn’t come in, last night.
+I was going home whenever she came. How stupid!”</p>
+
+<p>“I am sorry, Miss MacDonald. I met her as I was
+leaving last evening, and warned her not to disturb
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Kingsbury, surely an intentionally impudent
+fanfare of warm water, sudsy with soap and bath salts,
+of pinking cold showers, of vigorous Turkish towels, of
+stiff toothbrushes pungent with creamy paste, of tingling
+scalps, of the benison of eye cups, of the rewards of
+rest, sanity, and intelligent living, rescued “Sai to Shu”
+from the floor.</p>
+
+<p>“May I find something for you in this, Miss
+MacDonald?”</p>
+
+<p>“Put it in its place, if you will. I have finished with
+it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Har to Hur” stopped a gap in the shelves.</p>
+
+<p>“And now, please, do telephone to the garage for my
+car.”</p>
+
+<p>Fingers, brisk with weariness, folded letters and
+slipped them into tired old envelopes. Grapefruit,
+coffee, bacon and eggs. Naughty Uncle Phineas; Olympe
+with a lifted chin. A bath—first of all, a bath. Lovely
+Aunt Gracia. Handsome Gibson man, Chris. Coffee,
+and a crunching roll, and coffee. Your loving brother,
+Neal. Poor supersentimentalist, fighting mere homely
+sentiment—poor, loving brother Neal. Blue-eyed,
+blonde and fuzzy Stanlaws lady. Love, and Lucy.
+Pansy-faced children of Reginald Birch. A very warm
+bath, and green bath salts. Grandfather. Pan——</p>
+
+<p>“They are sending your car at once. May I help you
+with these, Miss MacDonald?”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you. And lock them in the safe, if you will.”</p>
+
+<p>A list of the notes she had begun to make in case,
+toward the end, things should go astray.</p>
+
+<ol>
+
+  <li>Accident
+  <p>Neal blamed.</p></li>
+
+  <li>Richard <em>offers</em> to exchange rooms with Irene.
+  <p>After accident.</p></li>
+
+  <li>Baptism.</li>
+
+  <li>Murder committed after missionaries and
+      Chinaman had left the ranch.</li>
+
+  <li>Dying words.
+  <p>Red mask.</p></li>
+
+  <li>Locked doors. Unlocked doors.
+  <p>Keys under lamp.</p></li>
+
+  <li>Rope.
+  <p>Bed moved.</p></li>
+
+  <li>Olympe’s revolver, .32 Colt’s.</li>
+
+  <li>Revolver used for murder, .38 Colt’s.</li>
+
+</ol>
+
+<p>Absurd, all of it. She tore the paper into bits and
+tossed them into her wastebasket.</p>
+
+<p>“And now, please, Miss Kingsbury, get this hotel
+on the telephone—here is the card—and make an
+appointment for me with a Dr. Joseph Elm who is staying
+there. This afternoon—let me see; yes, for three o’clock.”</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Dr. Joseph Elm failed, wretchedly, with his attempt
+to put a smile across the trouble of his face.</p>
+
+<p>Lynn MacDonald insisted, “But the lady, Olympe,
+is dead, Dr. Elm?”</p>
+
+<p>He nodded at some woebegone thing a mile or two
+away in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>“Then, why won’t that do? Lucy worked it out very
+cleverly. A .32 calibre Colt’s. A .38 calibre. You falsified
+about the size of the bullet to save Olympe? No one will
+remember. Yours was the only testimony concerning
+the size of the bullet. It does leave us with the rope,
+of course; but the rope may easily remain mysterious
+in the light of your confession. Surely caring about this
+thing as you care, you are not going to be thwarted
+because of one helpful lie?”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm’s broad chest rose high, fell deep. “Look;
+what do I care about a lie, one way or the other? I can
+do it all right. Easy. Trouble is, when it comes to lies,
+I’ve been kind of choosey about them. I can lie as well
+as my neighbour; but I like to like my lies. There is
+something about this one that—that kind of stirs my
+fur. I don’t know. Olympe was a nice lady, and a good
+friend of mine. Well, of course, if that’s the best we can
+do, we’ll do it—or try to.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am sorry, Dr. Elm, to disappoint you. That did
+seem the most usable theory. But, since you dislike it
+so much, let me think. A case against Irene——”</p>
+
+<p>“No! Look. Irene’s alive—she’s got babies.”</p>
+
+<p>“I meant, of course, merely that she should have got
+rid of the gun, after suicide. But you won’t have that,
+either—not suicide, of course. Olympe would do so
+well—— But it has to be an outsider, is that it? The
+snow is going to make it difficult, frightfully difficult,
+to be convincing.”</p>
+
+<p>“I was wondering, Miss MacDonald. Now suppose
+you could come up with me to Q 2. We’d work you in
+as a close, warm friend of Lucy’s. You said you’d like
+to know her. The folks would be right glad to have you
+as a guest. And money doesn’t matter to them; anything
+you’d care to ask, they’d care to double——”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Dr. Elm. There’d be no purpose in that. I can
+think as well here in my office as I could think there.
+I’ll do my best, I promise you. Perhaps I may have some
+inspiration, later, about the outsider. After all, when
+one tries, there is almost nothing that one can’t do
+with circumstantial evidence, except to prove any
+theory that is founded upon it.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought, maybe,” Dr. Elm persisted, “that the
+folks at the ranch could give you some bits of evidence
+that weren’t in the letters. Trouble is, I got another
+wire from Judy this morning. I ’phoned her last night—but
+she couldn’t talk. Neal isn’t getting any better.
+Jehoshaphat, what wouldn’t I give for the truth!”</p>
+
+<p>Lynn MacDonald’s pleasant features twisted. “The—truth!
+But, Dr. Elm, you of all people know the truth.
+You have read the letters.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm merely grasped more tightly the arms of his
+chair; but Lynn MacDonald drew back, and widened
+her eyes and dipped her chin to a question.</p>
+
+<p>“Look. We need a fresh start, my girl. A straight
+one, this time. Do you mean to say that you know the
+truth about who murdered Dick Quilter?”</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Elm, do you mean to sit there, glaring at me,
+and tell me that you—you of all people on earth—don’t
+know who killed Dick Quilter? Don’t know, and do need
+me to tell you?”</p>
+
+<p>“God bless my soul to glory! Are you trying to say
+that you think I did it?”</p>
+
+<p>Her laugh winged out, but its flight was short. “I am
+sorry, Dr. Elm. Forgive me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly. Certainly. Don’t mention it. But when
+you get all good and ready—— You see, I’m roasted
+nicely; I’m all ready to turn, and take up and eat.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am sorry. I——”</p>
+
+<p>“Look. Do you know who murdered Dick Quilter?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do, Dr. Elm. That is, I know it as well as anything
+can be known that has not been accurately proved.
+However, I think we can get the proof, the positive
+proof, later.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who did murder Dick Quilter?”</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Elm, since you really don’t know, and since I
+have to tell you, I believe I would better begin at the
+very start, if you don’t mind. For one thing, perhaps
+your ignorance has taken a bit from my surety. Will
+you answer a question or two for me, first?”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you mean that Olympe Quilter really did
+murder her nephew? By Gad, I don’t believe it!”</p>
+
+<p>“See here, Dr. Elm. I told you that I thought I knew
+the truth. I told you that I had no proofs. Now your
+ignorance has changed certain aspects of the case. If
+you will furnish me with the proofs I need—not all of
+them, the end must come later, with a confession, but
+with some of them—and if your proofs fit my theory,
+I’ll tell you what I have decided. If your proofs should
+happen to ruin my theory—I’ll not tell you. That is
+positive, Dr. Elm. And, though you will hate me, you
+should be grateful to me for it.</p>
+
+<p>“Now then: Has Neal Quilter recently fallen in love?”</p>
+
+<p>“Heavens, yes, if you want to know. And if three
+years can be called recent. Fine, good, strong woman.
+She loves him. He loves her. Plenty of money, plenty of
+interests in common, plenty of time for babies, plenty
+of everything, and nothing but this fool notion of
+Neal’s is keeping them apart.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good! Now, then: what was the nature of the
+disease from which Richard Quilter was suffering?”</p>
+
+<p>“You know, it said in the letters, chronic stomach
+trouble.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is that all you are willing to give me, Dr. Elm?”</p>
+
+<p>“Look. Isn’t that enough? You’d think so, if you’d
+ever had it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are asking for the truth from me, Dr. Elm.
+And yet you won’t give it to me. Was Richard Quilter’s
+trouble cancer? And did you promise him, because
+of—what was it—‘ten generations of clean-bodied men
+and women’ never to let any of his family know that
+this was, or would have been, the cause of his death?”</p>
+
+<p>“Adeno carcinoma of the liver. Lot of people thought
+it could be inherited in those days. We didn’t want to
+scare the children—that was it, chiefly: afraid of
+marrying; afraid of babies. It was better untold.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your autopsy, performed largely in the interest of
+science, completely verified your original diagnosis,
+Dr. Elm?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. I was cold-blooded. We didn’t have the
+X-rays in those days.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no. I understand. The medicine you gave him
+contained a strong opiate of some sort, of course. Had
+he taken any of it that night, or could you tell, from
+the autopsy?”</p>
+
+<p>“I could tell. He had not taken a drop of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good. Now, then: about the footprints——”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know one dang thing about any footprints.
+I thought there weren’t any.”</p>
+
+<p>“I shouldn’t have said that. You see, the letters
+made such a point of the absence of footprints that,
+while I was reading, last night, I thought rather
+fancifully to myself of the disclosures as footprints. Step
+by step, almost from the first one of Lucy’s letters, the
+whole thing was so absolutely evident, the intangible
+footprints were so sure and so straight, that an
+unimportant thing like actual footprints in the snow being
+necessary for a solution seemed—well, perfectly
+absurd.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm said, “ ‘Sands of time.’ McGuffey, I guess.
+All the poetry I ever knew I got from McGuffey, ‘Make
+our lives sublime, and departing, leave behind us
+footprints on the sands of time.’ ”</p>
+
+<p>“Precisely,” said Lynn MacDonald.</p>
+
+<p>“Now,” said Dr. Elm, “that’s over with. Who
+murdered Dick Quilter?”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch21">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>A gray kitten batted the tip end of a fern flowing
+green to the tiles of the sunroom’s floor, leaped
+three feet, killed an inch of fringe on the rug, toppled
+flat, waved coral set paws, and purred.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm snapped alluring fingers and said: “Puss?
+Puss? Puss? Look, Judy, I didn’t think you’d take it
+like this. I don’t think this is the right way for you
+to take it, my girl.”</p>
+
+<p>Judith loosed tightened lips to tremble words.
+“Only—— I can’t believe it, Dr. Joe. I mean—— How
+could Neal possibly have forgotten?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is easier to say, maybe, how could Neal, being
+Neal, possibly have remembered? Of course though,
+Judy, we aren’t dead certain and can’t be, for a while,
+that Neal did forget. That part of it was Miss
+MacDonald’s one and only piece of guesswork. Jehoshaphat,
+though, I hope she was right about it!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. If she is right about—the other, I suppose we
+have to hope for that, too.”</p>
+
+<p>“She is right, Judy. There is no getting away from
+what she called her footprints. They walk right through
+the letters, making a path so plain it looks to me, now,
+like nobody but a fool could have missed it. Lucy’s
+second letter to you makes the first track. Maybe it
+would take a crime analyst to discover it; but, in the
+third letter, the path starts off, good and deep, and
+follows straight along through Neal’s last letter to
+you—not a misstep, not a detour, not a doubt. Soon as we can
+find time, we’ll go through them, if you want to, and
+trace them along. I thought I could tell you all the
+points—but I must have missed some, if you aren’t
+convinced.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am. I have to be. Except—Neal’s forgetting.”</p>
+
+<p>“Look, Judy. I don’t need to tell you about the
+findings of modern psychology. You understand it better
+than I do. But would you like to kind of whittle through
+Neal’s case with me, the way Miss MacDonald explained
+it—smart as a whip, that girl is—to kind of
+refresh your memory and help you understand about
+Neal?”</p>
+
+<p>“I wish we might, Dr. Joe. You are wrong about my
+understanding the new psychology. I don’t understand
+it very well. I never have.”</p>
+
+<p>“No; and who does? I shouldn’t have said ‘understand’—I
+should have said ‘believe in,’ maybe, or some
+such thing. We don’t understand gravitation, or love,
+or sin, or electricity, or—much of anything. But we
+believe in them because we’ve been forced to.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, to begin with, Miss MacDonald says that
+Neal is a supersentimentalist. That’s why he has
+always fought sentimentality to the last ditch, and
+derided it. He knew how extra-sentimental he was,
+and he was ashamed of it; hated it like he’d have hated
+a club-foot; inferiority complex right there, to use the
+jargon, to begin with. What Neal should have done was
+to have married real young, as Dick did. Then he’d
+have had a nice conventional outlet for his floods of
+sentiment—love of his wife and babies. That’s a lot
+different from loving his aunties and uncles and sisters.
+He didn’t marry. And, along in mid-adolescence, a
+doggone unfortunate thing happened.</p>
+
+<p>“He got the idea of marriage muddled up in his mind
+with all the distress and fear and self-humiliation that
+had ever come to him. Never had a worry in his life—I
+mean a real, serious one—until Chris came home,
+and the woman Chris had married started all the distress
+about selling Q 2. Too sentimental, too loyal, to
+blame Chris—or even Chris’s wife—blame it on marriage.
+You know, Lucy quotes him as saying a blameless
+young man and a pleasant girl married will make a curse
+or a crime. Then, Chris and Irene were hugging and
+kissing and loving and being as sentimental, here, there,
+and everywhere, as they darned pleased. Neal was
+jealous—though he didn’t know it, of course—so that
+made him hate marriage (their liberty), and himself,
+worse than ever.</p>
+
+<p>“Look. Who let him out of his locked room that
+night and directed him to Dick’s room, where he found
+Dick killed? The woman Chris had married. Who made
+a fool of him with her fake murder business? The woman
+Phineas had married. Further back: What caused his
+father to kill a man? (That went awful hard with Neal,
+and I knew it, at the time.) The man your Aunt Gracia
+was going to marry. Blame any of the folks? Same as I
+said before—too loyal, too sentimental. Lots easier to
+blame marriage. Marriage, you see this, Judy, mixed
+up with the dark experiences of his life; mixed up with
+murder, grief, despair, fear, self-disgust. Look—a firm
+resolve never to have any truck with marriage. Or, if
+you like it better, a marriage complex. About as easy
+for a loving, sentimental lad like Neal to endure, as
+a boil on the end of his nose.</p>
+
+<p>“It didn’t look so pretty, and he knew it. He stopped
+talking about it, soon as he got a little older, and
+hoped folks wouldn’t notice it. Before long, he stopped
+looking cross-eyed, so’s he could see it himself. He
+began to look—well, crooked, out of the sides of his eyes
+so’s he couldn’t see it at all. Got the habit of looking
+crooked. Forgot the boil; and it was a relief, you can
+bet on that. Here I am, though—that’s what always
+happens to me when I try to do fancy work with my
+words—with a boil on Neal’s nose, when I want a
+complex against marriage stored away in his mind’s dark
+chambers and forgotten. Stowed right next on the shelf
+to the secret he had to keep; the secret that smashed his
+life to chips for a while—the secret he’d like to forget,
+but couldn’t. So far so good, Judy?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes——”</p>
+
+<p>“So far so bad would be more like it, I guess. Well,
+here on the ranch, giving his heart to it, giving his
+energy and his time to it, having you Quilter women
+to compare with the women he met, making them look
+pretty small, Neal didn’t have much of a fight with
+this marriage complex until Mrs. Ursula Thornton
+showed up. (Maybe I should have told you that Miss
+MacDonald went at all this a little differently from what
+I have. She began this analysis of Neal and his
+complexes about sixteen or seventeen years farther back
+than I have. Freud, you know. But that always seemed
+like drawing a pretty long bow, to me.) Anyway,
+Ursula wasn’t so much unlike your mother, Judy, nor so
+much unlike you girls. She came about as close to being
+a Quilter as she could come without having been born
+into the family: beautiful, smart, good—all the
+attributes. Neal loved her on the dot. She loved him. No
+use beating around the bush—that’s what happened.</p>
+
+<p>“Fine and dandy? Look; not so you could notice.
+Here comes the marriage complex. Let’s turn it into
+the boil again on the end of his nose. Neal can’t see it
+any longer. Eyes are set for looking crooked, the other
+way. Neal has plumb forgot he had it. What’s the trouble
+then? It’s still there—that’s the trouble. It’s been
+there, all these years, growing bigger and meaner all
+the time.</p>
+
+<p>“Marriage means to Neal, by this time, murder,
+disgrace, terror, humiliation. Will he accept it? He will
+not. Who would? Will he get around it? He will, if he
+can. Will he admit that he doesn’t want to marry the
+woman he loves? Lord bless us—he can’t. He doesn’t
+know it. You can’t admit something you don’t know.
+What’s he going to do, then?”</p>
+
+<p>Judith said: “Make a substitution. Put an unreal
+reason for his refusal to marry in the place of the real
+reason?”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s it. Next job for Neal is to find the substitute.
+Substitutes, in cases of this kind, aren’t always so
+doggone easy to find. Neal had his, right at hand. All
+he needed to do was to tinker it some, and it was in
+good shape for use. I mean the secret that had been
+burdening him, torturing the living soul out of him for
+years. He didn’t want that secret, Judy. He never had
+wanted it. Look, here’s what happened.</p>
+
+<p>“Up bobs Mr. Modern Devil, alias repressions, and
+just as sly and wicked as the old-fashioned red one with
+horns and a tail. Up he comes from modern hell, our
+subconscious minds—just as black and rotten a region
+as the old brimstone-and-fire affair—and he says,
+‘Leave it to me.’</p>
+
+<p>“ ‘That secret,’ says Mr. Modern Devil, ‘isn’t any use
+to us. Turn it into a reason for your not marrying,
+and make it of some account.’</p>
+
+<p>“Easy enough for Neal to do. He’d had the idea
+in his mind, anyway, since 1900. Look. Here we have
+it. ‘A man who murdered his own father is not fit to
+marry. I murdered my own father. I am not fit to
+marry.’ Slick? Good reason for avoiding marriage. And,
+Neal being Neal, the supersentimentalist, the secret
+revised into a form that seems, anyhow, a little easier
+to bear.</p>
+
+<p>“Just one thing is the matter now. It is a nasty,
+poisonous mess, this work of Neal’s personal devil.
+A sane mind can’t function with a mess of that kind in
+it, any more than a healthy stomach could function,
+properly, with a dish of poisonous toadstools in its
+middle. But, thank the Lord—or, maybe, Miss
+MacDonald—we’ve got the antidote to feed Neal: The
+truth.”</p>
+
+<p>“He won’t take it, Dr. Joe. He scorns, hates modern
+psychology.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sure he does. Why wouldn’t he? He’s afraid of
+it—scared to death of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I know. But, if he won’t take it, what are we
+going to do?”</p>
+
+<p>“Remember how the ads used to read in pre-prohibition
+days? ‘A few drops in his coffee. Taste not detectable.’
+Look, Judy. I mean we can tell Neal the truth
+without labelling it psychology, can’t we? The truth is
+all he needs. Truth, in these cases, is the catharsis—the
+cure. Miss MacDonald kind of held out for an absolute
+verbal acknowledgment. She says that will be by a long
+shot the best. But I know, darn well, that, even if we
+can’t get the acknowledgment from him in words, it
+will be all right if we can get him to make it to himself.
+Yes, and there’s a lot of stuff about reëducation after
+freeing the repression. But I’ll bet you that, if Neal
+has the truth, Ursula will do for the reëducation.</p>
+
+<p>“Look, though, Judy. We’ll have to be real delicate
+about feeding him the truth. I’d suggest sort of oozing
+it into him. We don’t want to gag him with it, and
+choke him to death. I told Miss MacDonald not to
+worry about that for a minute. Tact, I told her, was
+your middle name. I knew you could manage it fine.”</p>
+
+<p>“I?”—a mouse of a word, caught in a trap and
+squeaking.</p>
+
+<p>“How do you mean, Judy?”</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Joe, dear Dr. Joe—I can’t. Won’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, now, bless my soul to glory, Judy——”</p>
+
+<p>“Please, Dr. Joe? You’re a man, you’re——”</p>
+
+<p>“Hold on there, Judy! Yes? Look. Just about a
+minute you’d have been talking baby talk, or worse, if
+I hadn’t stopped you. I never trust a woman when
+she starts by telling me I’m a man. Flatterer. No, but,
+Judy, I’ll try this, if you want me to. Sure I will. I think
+you’d do it better than I would; but, if you don’t think
+so, I’ll try—— Hezekiah and the egg, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Joe— Dr. Joe, you’re—you’re——”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t say it, Judy. Don’t you do it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Divine.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right. Just for that, now, I’m going to send
+you a bill.”</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm gave a stiffening shake to the newspaper,
+and reread the recipe for hot-water pie crust. The clock
+on the mantel spun three cool, silver threads, and a
+black and red spark from the fire beneath them spit
+out on the polished floor. Dr. Elm rose, kicked the
+spark to the hearth, fumbled in his pocket for a cigar,
+bit the end of it, and returned it to his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>“ ’Lo, Neal.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hel‑lo, Dr. Joe! This is fine. I didn’t know you’d
+come. Judy just now ’phoned down to me, and I rode
+right up. Great to see you here again. Did you have a
+pleasant trip to San Francisco?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. Not so very. I went for my health, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t know! What’s the trouble, man?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m getting along, Neal. Getting pretty old. I’ve
+been thinking, here lately, that I’ll likely be shuffling
+along and out of here before many months.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rubbish, Dr. Joe! You’re fit as a fiddle. How come?”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm returned to the wing chair and sank heavily
+into it with a slow, showy sigh. Neal curved an arm
+on the mantel and frowned at the fire.</p>
+
+<p>“Sit down, boy. You’ll burn your clothes—that fire
+is popping like corn. Besides, if you can spare me a few
+minutes, I’d like to have a little talk with you. I’ve got
+to ask kind of a favour of you, Neal. I hate it worse
+than hell—but I can’t see any way out of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, you bet. But you couldn’t ask a favour of me,
+Dr. Joe—not to save your life. Anything I could do
+for you would be a favour to me, and you know it. So
+cut the favour stuff, and go ahead from there.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s nice of you, Neal. I certainly appreciate it
+a lot. But—— Well, no matter now. Anything I’ve got
+to say will hold over all right. Kind of a shame to
+bother you—— I expect you’d like to hear about my
+trip? We’ll let the other ride, for the present——”</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Joe! For the love of Pete, what did I say? See
+here, man—put it any way you care to put it. But, for
+God’s sake, if I can help you——”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s all right. That’s all right, boy. You didn’t
+say anything. No—just changed my old fool mind,
+that’s all.”</p>
+
+<p>“But you can’t do it, Dr. Joe. You can’t get away
+with it—not with me. What is it? Money? You’ve attended
+this entire family for half a century, and you’ve
+never seen the colour of Quilter money yet——”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no, Neal. Not money. No, it’s more serious than
+that. Funny, how precious our old, miserable, tag-end
+years get to us, when we feel the last of them
+approaching.”</p>
+
+<p>“See here, Dr. Joe. You’re the best friend I have on
+earth—the best friend any Quilter has. Now, a minute
+ago, you began to tell me what I could do—what you’d
+allow me to do. Then I made some cursed, damn-fool
+break and spoiled it all. I’m not going to sleep to-night
+until you and I get this thing straight.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Neal, you didn’t make any break. I just looked
+at you, and I thought you didn’t look so well yourself.
+And this—this request of mine wasn’t going to be pleasant
+for you, boy. I just thought I’d better let up on it,
+maybe, till you got a little more fit yourself. Look. It
+will keep——”</p>
+
+<p>“Not on your life it won’t keep. I was never sounder
+than I am right now. Of course, I’ve been a little
+worried here of late—one thing and another, you know how
+it goes—but physically I’m as tough and healthy as a
+Q 2 heifer.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what I meant, Neal. I thought you looked
+kind of worried, or something. No time to be
+bothering you with my troubles——”</p>
+
+<p>“Only that I suppose the knowledge that you are in
+trouble, and that you won’t give me a chance to help
+you—if I could—would be a more serious trouble,
+worry, than any other I could have.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, of course, if you put it that way, Neal. Look.
+What do you know about this new-fangled psychology
+stuff?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not a doggone thing. And I’d like to know less.
+Chris shoves it at me, now and then: conscious,
+subconscious, complexes, dreams. Dreams, if you please.
+Rot, all of it, from beginning to end!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes? Well, I expect you’re right. It always had a
+phoney sound to me. But what I was wondering about
+it, was this: Could worry, kind of linked up with a
+guilty conscience, just sort of get the best of a man of
+my age? That’s the way I feel, boy. Bless my soul to
+glory, I feel like if I couldn’t rid myself of this eternal
+load of worry, get things straightened out for myself,
+and get away from under it, I feel like it would pound
+me right down into my grave. I can’t sleep any more.
+I can’t eat. I can’t get anything out of a good cigar. I
+thought maybe a trip away would fix me up a little. Got
+worse. Just now, Neal, you said I couldn’t ask a favour
+of you to save my life. Well, that’s about what I’m
+doing. Look. I’m asking this favour, hoping that it will
+give me a new lease on life. I wouldn’t ask you, Neal, if
+I knew anyone else on God’s green footstool to ask——”</p>
+
+<p>“Wouldn’t? Well, if you say it, I guess I deserve it.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no. You got me wrong there. I’d sooner ask help
+of you than of any other living man, except—about this
+one thing. It is the most painful thing in your life, boy.
+That’s the damn trouble about bringing it up to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“You must mean, then, that it has something to
+do with—1900.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s about the size of it, Neal. I killed Dick.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s a damn lie! And you know it!”</p>
+
+<p>“Take it easy, boy, if you can. I’m sorry. I knew I
+shouldn’t unburden on you. We’ll drop it. Let well
+enough alone. Pull the bell there, will you? I’d like a glass
+of water. I get these kind of rushing, dizzy spells———”</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Joe, listen. I——”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s all right, boy. I knew better than to tell you,
+but——”</p>
+
+<p>“In the name of God, where did you get this mad
+idea? You weren’t here on the ranch. You were in
+Portland, more than two hundred miles away.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what I said at the time. I had to say it.
+Neal, listen a minute, if you can, before you jump down
+my throat. It wasn’t cold-blooded murder. It was——I
+did it for Dick. I did it because he begged and prayed
+me to. I did it because he threatened, a threat he meant
+to keep and I knew it, that if I wouldn’t do it for him,
+he’d ask—well, somebody else, who would.”</p>
+
+<p>Neal said, “A pitcher of water, please,” to two
+white-trousered legs, and they vanished.</p>
+
+<p>“You see, my boy, your father’s ailment was cancer.
+He knew it, and I knew it. He took my promise not to
+tell. When he was shot, he had maybe three months of
+life ahead of him—maybe not so long. Three months
+of slow agony. He wasn’t afraid of them. No. He was
+afraid of losing Q 2 for his family and his children and
+their children. He wouldn’t have been afraid of that,
+either—not the way he was afraid—if he had been
+going to live to see you all through. But he wasn’t
+going to live; and there were old people, and his sister,
+and his three children and an invalid boy all going to
+be left to shift for themselves, and nothing to shift with.
+He gave into Chris about selling, not because of any
+false pride—never knew a Quilter yet who had an
+ounce of it—but because he knew he wouldn’t be alive
+another six months to keep Chris from selling. Chris
+was a good boy, and he’s been getting better ever
+since; but, right then, anybody with a lick of sense knew
+that it was a question of now or later with Chris. Dick
+knew; but he had to be certain sure of it. You’re right,
+this weather is——”</p>
+
+<p>Neal said, “All right, Gee Sing. Thanks. Skip.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, as I was saying, Dick needed to know, and
+he found out—if Chris didn’t sell in October, he’d sell
+in December.</p>
+
+<p>“Now your father, Neal, was your grandfather’s
+own son. He’d been brought up on your grandfather’s
+philosophy. Schiller, you know, and his realistic
+pantheism; his insistence on sacrificing the individual to
+the species. (Seems to me that I remember your
+grandfather was making a new translation of Schiller, just
+about that time.) And Hume, with his insistence that
+no act that was useful could possibly be criminal. Dick
+believed these principles with all his soul. His death,
+by accident, would be useful—damn useful. It would
+give his folks money to hold on to Q 2, and to provide,
+not only for them, but for all future generations of
+Quilters. If Chris had sold Q 2 in 1900, he’d have sold a
+lot more than the ranch. Some of the folks here said
+that, at the time. Dick hated like thunder to think of
+the old people in poverty; he hated to think of you as a
+farm hand; of Greg and Judy having to surrender
+in Colorado; of Lucy’s genius winding up by ringing a
+school bell at nine every morning.</p>
+
+<p>“These, and other things—including whether or not
+the Quilter family was worth saving—were the things
+he had to balance against cheating an insurance
+company that had cheated him. (He didn’t balance his
+death. He was dying, and a quick, easy death was a
+mercy and a blessing.) Greatest good for the greatest
+number—that weighed heavily. It was a shyster company,
+cheating right and left, wherever it could. Dick
+decided to sacrifice the company’s exchequer—you know
+how impersonal companies seem—to the good of the
+species, Quilter.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course I know that some men would rather see
+their families sink into want, would rather die a
+lingering, suffering death and leave their old folks on the
+grater of poverty, and their children’s futures
+unprovided for, than to work a graft on a darn rotten
+insurance company. Some men would. I don’t honestly
+know whether or not I’m glad that Dick, Thaddeus
+Quilter’s son, wouldn’t. But it is true, anyway. He
+wouldn’t. And he believed, ‘No act that is useful can
+possibly be criminal.’</p>
+
+<p>“Thinking the thing over and over, as I have, sometimes
+I’ve wondered if the old gentleman could, maybe,
+have anyway guessed the truth. You know how fine
+and flip he kept up through it all. Olympe’s fake play
+bowled him over, for a few minutes, but he was up
+again and at it within the hour. Right at the head of
+things, managing, like he always had. Yes, fine and flip
+until your Uncle Phineas came home with the money
+for the mine. Took to his bed that night, and never got
+up again. It almost seemed as if that was what knocked
+him out—the uselessness of Dick’s and my planning; the
+uselessness of what we’d done. Like the uselessness of it,
+maybe, had turned it into a crime.</p>
+
+<p>“Planning? We certainly planned. Yes, but here I’m
+putting myself into it too soon. Before he ever said a
+word to me about it, Dick tried to arrange an accidental
+death for himself. You remember—when the wagon
+tongue broke while he was driving a skittish team over
+Quilter Mountain? Scared the living pie out of him
+when he got home and found that, if he had succeeded,
+you’d been blamed and would have blamed yourself
+to your dying day. He made up his mind, then and there,
+that he’d play safe with the next attempt. It wasn’t
+as easy to do as you might think. Drowning, for instance?
+Suicide for sure. No, he had to have it fixed so
+that the death could be proved, positively, to have been
+accidental. Neal? Neal, my boy, are you listening to
+me?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m listening.”</p>
+
+<p>“Excuse me. I kind of thought you’d dropped off
+to sleep, or something. Mind if I keep along with the
+story? Well, after the Quilter Mountain accident, Dick
+found, too, how your Aunt Gracia was going to feel
+about his dying in sin—or not in a state of grace, I
+guess she put it. He knew that a sudden shocking death
+was going to be pretty hard on the family for a while.
+If he could make it even a mite easier for any one of you,
+he was going to do it. He did. Went and got himself
+baptized as a Siloamite. You know, without my telling
+you, what that meant to your auntie, especially those
+last weeks before she died.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Dick planned alone, and we planned together.
+By Gad, Neal, but we tried. We thought that we had
+everything fixed slick from beginning to end. Every
+single member of the family locked tight in their rooms.
+Dick got the keys that afternoon, and did the locking
+himself that night. (Damn hard luck about Irene being
+locked out. Jehoshaphat, but that was a bad one!) He
+left all the other doors in the house unlocked to make
+getting in and out seem easy. But he thought that the
+rope was the best bet of all to prove an outsider. Dick
+fixed the rope himself, and moved the bed, so’s it would
+look for certain that the criminal had got out of the
+window, down the rope and clean away.</p>
+
+<p>“He thought that Chris would climb out of the
+window in his room, sooner or later, and come along the
+roof, and get into his room and see the keys—Dick had
+put them there in plain sight—and let the others out of
+their locked rooms.</p>
+
+<p>“When Irene, instead of Chris, came running into his
+room, Dick used his last breath to save me—and the
+family. He looked toward the open window and said, or
+tried to, that a man wearing a red mask had got away.
+I’ve wondered how he happened to say red. Maybe the
+colour on his nightshirt made him think of it. Maybe he
+thought some poor devil might be found with a black
+mask—but a red mask never would be found. I don’t
+know.</p>
+
+<p>“You see, boy, how it was? Planned and planned for,
+everything fixed. And then the damn snow came and
+ruined it all, ruined the whole works from beginning to
+end. First time in a quarter century that Quilter County
+had had snow in October. Snow isn’t noisy. Dick in his
+bed, I in my hiding place—we had no notion of the
+snow. We’d planned it all for earlier, too; but Dick
+would have it that we wait until the missionaries and
+Dong Lee were out of the house. Suspicion wouldn’t
+touch a Quilter. But a religious fanatic, or a Chinaman,
+they’d be something else again.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s the end of it, I guess, Neal. No matter,
+much, about things from then on. This is what is killing
+me, boy. That all these years I’ve been coming a
+coward and a hypocrite among you folks, taking your
+friendship, and all that, and never daring to own up.
+Of course, I’m bound to stick up for myself and say that,
+sometimes, it still seems to me that I didn’t do such an
+awful thing. It was hard, Neal—it was damn, damn hard;
+but Dick begged and prayed me to. And, of course, as
+the movies say, I’ve paid. Yes, I’ve paid—paid through
+the teeth. And now, when I’m getting old——”</p>
+
+<p>“Dr. Joe, would you mind a lot, just—keeping still
+for a minute or two? Sorry. I’ve got to think. I’ve got to
+think.”</p>
+
+<p>In the hall a door banged, and an oak log in the fire
+broke down into its coals. A rill of laughter came
+coursing through the room, pursued by a little girl with
+red cheeks and a green frock. She caught her step and
+dipped to a courtesy. “How-do-you-do, Dr. Joe? I
+didn’t know that you were here. I’m very glad to see
+you. I was looking for Mother, Uncle Neal.”</p>
+
+<p>Neal said, “I haven’t seen Lucy for two hours.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is rather important. Baby Thad keeps saying,
+‘Wee’ and it sounds as if he were speaking French.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm said, “Have you told your father?”</p>
+
+<p>“Father is engrossed, enraptured. It was he who sent
+me for Mother. Oh, there’s Christopher, home from
+Quilterville so soon. Coo‑ee—— Chris?”</p>
+
+<p>A sleek, yellow-haired boy parted the curtains.
+“What-ho, child? Why, how-do-you-do, Dr. Joe? Glad
+to see you. Did you drive over in your new Chaptler?
+Dad is going to give me a sport model Ford for my
+birthday. I’ve left off smoking. Makes me hungry all the
+time. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll raid the kitchen.
+You’re invited, Delidah. Coming?”</p>
+
+<p>“By Gad, Neal,” Dr. Elm said, when another door
+had trapped the chatter and the laughter, “I can’t
+even enjoy the kids, any more. It is killing me, and I
+wish it would—if it would make haste about it. I can’t
+eat. I can’t sleep——”</p>
+
+<p>“Wait a minute. Shall we go up to my room? Would
+you as soon? It’s more private there. I—— I’ve
+something to tell you, Dr. Joe. Explain. Shall we go up?”</p>
+
+<p>The hall was full of sunshine. Out from the living
+room, the first bars of Schumann’s <i>Abendlied</i> came
+softly, but with certainty.</p>
+
+<p>Neal paused for a moment on the stairway. “That’s
+Judy,” he said. “She plays Schumann well. Ursula
+plays him better.”</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm pressed his elbows into the table and rubbed
+his smooth pink baldness in the palms of his hands. He
+said: “That’s good of you, Neal. It’s mighty good of
+you, and I appreciate it. But, of course, you couldn’t
+expect me to believe that I’d up and—forget, or whatever
+you call it, about the most tragic experience of my
+life. No. Men lie to themselves; but they lie in their own
+favour. They don’t make mistakes, as you’ve been
+saying—not about whether or not they killed a friend.”</p>
+
+<p>“Listen, man! I’ve listened to you. You’ve got to
+listen to me. Yes, you’ve got to do a damn sight more
+than listen. You’ve got to believe me. I know. And I’ll
+tell you how I know.</p>
+
+<p>“In a way it makes it more incredible; but, get this,
+Dr. Joe, I’m under oath. I’m telling you God’s own
+truth. I am swearing to you that, for the past two years
+or more, until about half an hour ago—somewhere
+along in your talk to me—I have thought exactly the
+same thing about myself. I am swearing to you, Dr.
+Joe—swearing, remember—that I’ve done what you’ve
+done, and what you declare it is impossible for men to
+do. I have forgotten; that is, I’ve got things all twisted.
+I thought, and I believed—as you believe about yourself—that
+I killed Father; I myself. If it is necessary, to
+convince you, I’ll drag Judy into this. I’d rather not;
+but I will, to get you straightened out. I told Judy, here
+about two weeks ago, that I had killed Father.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now, now, Neal. You and Judy——”</p>
+
+<p>“Damn it! I’m not a liar. We won’t get any place if
+you keep this up. I’ve known for years that my mind
+and my senses played tricks on me. You must have had
+similar experiences? Try to remember. Haven’t you
+been fooled, by yourself, before this, on less important
+matters?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. Yes, I have. I imagine most men have. But
+that’s everyday, come-along business.”</p>
+
+<p>“Maybe. Maybe not. I know this. My case was a lot
+worse than yours is. I had had all the facts, the same as
+you had them, and from the same source—I’m positive
+of that. You remembered most of the facts. I had forgotten
+every last one of them. I’d forgotten that Father
+planned his own death. I was in a lot worse condition
+than yours, because I’d got so addled that I thought I
+stepped into Father’s room that night and shot
+him—just as any other brute of a murderer might have
+done—to gain something for myself. I’d forgotten that Father
+had cancer. I’d forgotten every damn thing, but that
+Monday night and Irene—with blood on her wrapper.</p>
+
+<p>“Do I know how to sympathize with you? Say! Do I?
+I’ve been living in hell here, for the last few years. I’ve
+been getting worse all the time. Lord, but it’s queer—the
+things men’s minds will do! Night after night I’ve
+walked this floor fighting suicide. You remembered the
+extenuations. I forgot every damn thing. If this hadn’t
+come up to-day—I don’t know. I was about as near
+crazy as a man could get, and stay sane.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Elm puffed out a long-drawn breath. “Hot,” he
+said, “up here. Too hot. Bless my soul to glory if I can
+understand you, Neal. You thought you’d done it, you
+say, until I told you that I had. Look. Now you seem
+to be saying that you know I didn’t. No. No, you’re too
+deep for me.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought I had done it—I’m a fool with words—I
+thought I had done it until you talked to me. Until I
+heard you explaining—much as I had had it explained
+to me twenty-eight years ago. I could hear the very
+words I had heard before; see the gestures; feel the—horror?
+shock? Well, whatever I felt, then, it was pretty
+bad. Word for word this afternoon, all of it over again:
+Father’s illness; his plan to save the ranch and the family;
+his accident; the change of rooms on account of distance;
+his baptism; the waiting for the missionaries to
+leave—— I’d heard it all before, Dr. Joe, as you’d heard
+it and at about the same time, twenty-eight years ago.
+The rope to mislead us. All of us locked in our rooms.
+The mistake about Irene. And then—I guess the real
+tragedy—the snow. Good God, what the sight of that
+impossible October snow must have meant! How, in
+the name of suffering, could I have forgotten? How
+could I have heard it all explained—and forgotten it!
+But I did. I had. That’s that. And so have you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Look, Neal. I’m wondering whether there could be
+something in this new psychology, after all? If we could
+dig the explanations of our tricky minds, as you say,
+out of it, maybe?”</p>
+
+<p>“Lord, no! Nothing like that. It is altogether
+different—sexy stuff, dreams, gosh knows what all; offensive
+and silly. No, this is plain common sense. All this
+amounts to, I guess, is a lapse of memory. The strangest
+part of it is that both of us, you and I, should have had
+the same lapse—brain storm used to be the word. But
+we have had it—that’s evident. And, again, that’s that.
+After all, it is another proof of how even the best friends
+can be strangers. Here we’ve been, living in hells of our
+own devising, when any time in the past years, if we’d
+got together and talked, we’d probably have set each
+other free—got the truth, as we have to-day.</p>
+
+<p>“You mean—— You think you have the truth,
+Neal?”</p>
+
+<p>“Think? I know I have. Gosh, I can’t get over it.
+Queerest experience I have ever heard of a man having.
+And then, on top of that, discovering that my best
+friend has had exactly the same experience.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you mean, when you say you have the truth,
+that you know who killed Dick? You say you know I
+didn’t do it. All right. If I didn’t do it, who did?”</p>
+
+<p>“Look at it this way. Father made his plan. He
+needed help. He had to have sure, competent help.
+He needed a cool head and a steady hand. He needed a
+pile of courage—before and after. He needed
+self-command and discretion. He needed someone who was
+willing to sacrifice his peace of mind for all his remaining
+years, and to sacrifice a problematical eternity, for the
+sake of the Quilter family He needed all the virtues, and
+one small saving grace of sin. Who, then, would he have
+told of his cancer, and have turned to for his help?”</p>
+
+<p>“Your Aunt Gracia?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. I hoped you’d see it. You haven’t? That puts
+it up to me. He’d want me to tell you. He wasn’t afraid
+to load his gun and carry it next door into Father’s
+room that night and—back again to his own room. He
+wasn’t afraid, at the end, to tell me. I mean, Dr.
+Joe—Grandfather.”</p>
+
+<p class="finis">The End</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section" id="transcriber">
+
+<h2>Transcriber’s Note</h2>
+
+<p>This transcription follows the text of 1929 edition published by
+Doubleday, Doran &amp; Co. However, the following are believed to be
+unambiguous errors in the text, and have been corrected:</p>
+
+<ul>
+  <li>“Four hundred” was changed to “Five hundred” to match the context
+      (Chapter I).</li>
+  <li>“Galvestion” was changed to “Galveston” (Chapter IX).</li>
+  <li>“with out little” was changed to “with our little” (Chapter XVIII).</li>
+  <li>“by hear-” was changed to “by hearing” (Chapter XVIII).</li>
+  <li>“realties” was changed to “realities” (Chapter XIX).</li>
+  <li>Four occurrences of mismatched quotation marks have been repaired.</li>
+</ul>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75577 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #75577 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75577)