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Agatha Webb

by Anna Katharine Green · English · Gutenberg #5162 · 505,756 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Agatha Webb

Author: Anna Katharine Green


        
Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #5162]
                Most recently updated: February 8, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5162

Credits: Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AGATHA WEBB ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.








AGATHA WEBB

BY ANNA KATHARINE GREEN (MRS. CHARLES ROHLFS)

AUTHOR OF "THE LEAVENWORTH CASE," "THAT AFFAIR NEXT DOOR" "LOST MAN'S
LANE," ETC.




THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED TO MY FRIEND

PROFESSOR A. V. DICEY

OF OXFORD, ENGLAND



CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE PURPLE ORCHID

     I--A Cry on the Hill
    II--One Night's Work
   III--The Empty Drawer
    IV--The Full Drawer
     V--A Spot on the Lawn
    VI--"Breakfast is Served, Gentlemen!"
   VII--"Marry Me"
  VIII--"A Devil That Understands Men"
    IX--A Grand Woman
     X--Detective Knapp Arrives
    XI--The Man with a Beard
   XII--Wattles Comes
  XIII--Wattles Goes
   XIV--A Final Temptation
    XV--The Zabels Visited
   XVI--Local Talent at Work
  XVII--The Slippers, the Flower, and What Sweetwater Made of Them
 XVIII--Some Leading Questions
   XIX--Poor Philemon
    XX--A Surprise for Mr. Sutherland


BOOK II

THE MAN OF NO REPUTATION

   XXI--Sweetwater Reasons
  XXII--Sweetwater Acts
 XXIII--A Sinister Pair
  XXIV--In the Shadow of the Mast
   XXV--In Extremity
  XXVI--The Adventure of the Parcel
 XXVII--The Adventure of the Scrap of Paper and the Three Words
XXVIII--"Who Are You?" 
  XXIX--Home Again


BOOK III

HAD BATSY LIVED!

   XXX--What Followed the Striking of the Clock
  XXXI--A Witness Lost
 XXXII--Why Agatha Webb will Never be Forgotten in Sutherlandtown
XXXIII--Father and Son
 XXXIV--"Not When They Are Young Girls"
  XXXV--Sweetwater Pays His Debt at Last to Mr. Sutherland





BOOK I

THE PURPLE ORCHID


I

A CRY ON THE HILL


The dance was over. From the great house on the hill the guests had all
departed and only the musicians remained. As they filed out through the
ample doorway, on their way home, the first faint streak of early dawn
became visible in the east. One of them, a lank, plain-featured young
man of ungainly aspect but penetrating eye, called the attention of the
others to it.

"Look!" said he; "there is the daylight! This has been a gay night for
Sutherlandtown."

"Too gay," muttered another, starting aside as the slight figure of a
young man coming from the house behind them rushed hastily by. "Why,
who's that?"

As they one and all had recognised the person thus alluded to, no one
answered till he had dashed out of the gate and disappeared in the woods
on the other side of the road. Then they all spoke at once.

"It's Mr. Frederick!"

"He seems in a desperate hurry."

"He trod on my toes."

"Did you hear the words he was muttering as he went by?"

As only the last question was calculated to rouse any interest, it alone
received attention.

"No; what were they? I heard him say something, but I failed to catch
the words."

"He wasn't talking to you, or to me either, for that matter; but I have
ears that can hear an eye wink. He said: 'Thank God, this night of
horror is over!' Think of that! After such a dance and such a spread, he
calls the night horrible and thanks God that it is over. I thought he
was the very man to enjoy this kind of thing."

"So did I."

"And so did I."

The five musicians exchanged looks, then huddled in a group at the gate.

"He has quarrelled with his sweetheart," suggested one.

"I'm not surprised at that," declared another. "I never thought it would
be a match."

"Shame if it were!" muttered the ungainly youth who had spoken first.

As the subject of this comment was the son of the gentleman whose house
they were just leaving, they necessarily spoke low; but their tones were
rife with curiosity, and it was evident that the topic deeply interested
them. One of the five who had not previously spoken now put in a word:

"I saw him when he first led out Miss Page to dance, and I saw him again
when he stood up opposite her in the last quadrille, and I tell you,
boys, there was a mighty deal of difference in the way he conducted
himself toward her in the beginning of the evening and the last. You
wouldn't have thought him the same man. Reckless young fellows like him
are not to be caught by dimples only. They want cash."

"Or family, at least; and she hasn't either. But what a pretty girl she
is! Many a fellow as rich as he and as well connected would be satisfied
with her good looks alone."

"Good looks!" High scorn was observable in this exclamation, which was
made by the young man whom I have before characterised as ungainly. "I
refuse to acknowledge that she has any good looks. On the contrary, I
consider her plain."

"Oh! Oh!" burst in protest from more than one mouth. "And why does she
have every fellow in the room dangling after her, then?" asked the
player on the flageolet.

"She hasn't a regular feature."

"What difference does that make when it isn't her features you notice,
but herself?"

"I don't like her."

A laugh followed this.

"That won't trouble her, Sweetwater. Sutherland does, if you don't, and
that's much more to the point. And he'll marry her yet; he can't help
it. Why, she'd witch the devil into leading her to the altar if she took
a notion to have him for her bridegroom."

"There would be consistency in that," muttered the fellow just
addressed. "But Mr. Frederick--"

"Hush! There's some one on the doorstep. Why, it's she!"

They all glanced back. The graceful figure of a young girl dressed in
white was to be seen leaning toward them from the open doorway. Behind
her shone a blaze of light--the candles not having been yet extinguished
in the hall--and against this brilliant background her slight form, with
all its bewitching outlines, stood out in plain relief.

"Who was that?" she began in a high, almost strident voice, totally out
of keeping with the sensuous curves of her strange, sweet face. But the
question remained unanswered, for at that moment her attention, as well
as that of the men lingering at the gate, was attracted by the sound of
hurrying feet and confused cries coming up the hill.

"Murder! Murder!" was the word panted out by more than one harsh voice;
and in another instant a dozen men and boys came rushing into sight in a
state of such excitement that the five musicians recoiled from the gate,
and one of them went so far as to start back toward the house. As he did
so he noticed a curious thing. The young woman whom they had all
perceived standing in the door a moment before had vanished, yet she was
known to possess the keenest curiosity of any one in town.

"Murder! Murder!" A terrible and unprecedented cry in this old,
God-fearing town. Then came in hoarse explanation from the jostling
group as they stopped at the gate: "Mrs. Webb has been killed! Stabbed
with a knife! Tell Mr. Sutherland!"

Mrs. Webb!

As the musicians heard this name, so honoured and so universally
beloved, they to a man uttered a cry. Mrs. Webb! Why, it was impossible.
Shouting in their turn for Mr. Sutherland, they all crowded forward.

"Not Mrs. Webb!" they protested. "Who could have the daring or the heart
to kill HER?"

"God knows," answered a voice from the highway. "But she's dead--we've
just seen her!"

"Then it's the old man's work," quavered a piping voice. "I've always
said he would turn on his best friend some day. 'Sylum's the best place
for folks as has lost their wits. I--"

But here a hand was put over his mouth, and the rest of the words was
lost in an inarticulate gurgle. Mr. Sutherland had just appeared on the
porch.

He was a superb-looking man, with an expression of mingled kindness and
dignity that invariably awakened both awe and admiration in the
spectator. No man in the country--I was going to say no woman was more
beloved, or held in higher esteem. Yet he could not control his only
son, as everyone within ten miles of the hill well knew.

At this moment his face showed both pain and shock.

"What name are you shouting out there?" he brokenly demanded. "Agatha
Webb? Is Agatha Webb hurt?"

"Yes, sir; killed," repeated a half-dozen voices at once. "We've just
come from the house. All the town is up. Some say her husband did it."

"No, no!" was Mr. Sutherland's decisive though half-inaudible response.
"Philemon Webb might end his own life, but not Agatha's. It was the
money--"

Here he caught himself up, and, raising his voice, addressed the crowd
of villagers more directly.

"Wait," said he, "and I will go back with you. Where is Frederick?" he
demanded of such members of his own household as stood about him.

No one knew.

"I wish some one would find my son. I want him to go into town with me."

"He's over in the woods there," volunteered a voice from without.

"In the woods!" repeated the father, in a surprised tone.

"Yes, sir; we all saw him go. Shall we sing out to him?"

"No, no; I will manage very well without him." And taking up his hat Mr.
Sutherland stepped out again upon the porch.

Suddenly he stopped. A hand had been laid on his arm and an insinuating
voice was murmuring in his ear:

"Do you mind if I go with you? I will not make any trouble."

It was the same young lady we have seen before.

The old gentleman frowned--he who never frowned and remarked shortly:

"A scene of murder is no place for women."

The face upturned to his remained unmoved.

"I think I will go," she quietly persisted. "I can easily mingle with
the crowd."

He said not another word against it. Miss Page was under pay in his
house, but for the last few weeks no one had undertaken to contradict
her. In the interval since her first appearance on the porch, she had
exchanged the light dress in which she had danced at the ball, for a
darker and more serviceable one, and perhaps this token of her
determination may have had its influence in silencing him. He joined the
crowd, and together they moved down-hill. This was too much for the
servants of the house. One by one they too left the house till it stood
absolutely empty. Jerry snuffed out the candles and shut the front door,
but the side entrance stood wide open, and into this entrance, as the
last footstep died out on the hillside, passed a slight and resolute
figure. It was that of the musician who had questioned Miss Page's
attractions.




II

ONE NIGHT'S WORK


Sutherlandtown was a seaport. The village, which was a small one,
consisted of one long street and numerous cross streets running down
from the hillside and ending on the wharves. On one of the corners thus
made, stood the Webb house, with its front door on the main street and
its side door on one of the hillside lanes. As the group of men and boys
who had been in search of Mr. Sutherland entered this last-mentioned
lane, they could pick out this house from all the others, as it was the
only one in which a light was still burning. Mr. Sutherland lost no time
in entering upon the scene of tragedy. As his imposing figure emerged
from the darkness and paused on the outskirts of the crowd that was
blocking up every entrance to the house, a murmur of welcome went up,
after which a way was made for him to the front door.

But before he could enter, some one plucked him by the sleeve.

"Look up!" whispered a voice into his ear.

He did so, and saw a woman's body hanging half out of an upper window.
It hung limp, and the sight made him sick, notwithstanding his
threescore years of experience.

"Who's that?" he cried. "That's not Agatha Webb."

"No, that's Batsy, the cook. She's dead as well as her mistress. We left
her where we found her for the coroner to see."

"But this is horrible," murmured Mr. Sutherland. "Has there been a
butcher here?"

As he uttered these words, he felt another quick pressure on his arm.
Looking down, he saw leaning against him the form of a young woman, but
before he could address her she had started upright again and was moving
on with the throng. It was Miss Page.

"It was the sight of this woman hanging from the window which first drew
attention to the house," volunteered a man who was standing as a sort of
guardian at the main gateway. "Some of the sailors' wives who had been
to the wharves to see their husbands off on the ship that sailed at
daybreak, saw it as they came up the lane on their way home, and gave
the alarm. Without that we might not have known to this hour what had
happened."

"But Mrs. Webb?"

"Come in and see."

There was a board fence about the simple yard within which stood the
humble house forever after to be pointed out as the scene of
Sutherlandtown's most heart-rending tragedy. In this fence was a gate,
and through this gate now passed Mr. Sutherland, followed by his
would-be companion, Miss Page. A path bordered by lilac bushes led up to
the house, the door of which stood wide open. As soon as Mr. Sutherland
entered upon this path a man approached him from the doorway. It was
Amos Fenton, the constable.

"Ah, Mr. Sutherland," said he, "sad business, a very sad business! But
what little girl have you there?"

"This is Miss Page, my housekeeper's niece. She would come.
Inquisitiveness the cause. I do not approve of it."

"Miss Page must remain on the doorstep. We allow no one inside excepting
yourself," he said respectfully, in recognition of the fact that nothing
of importance was ever undertaken in Sutherlandtown without the
presence of Mr. Sutherland.

Miss Page curtsied, looking so bewitching in the fresh morning light
that the tough old constable scratched his chin in grudging admiration.
But he did not reconsider his determination. Seeing this, she accepted
her defeat gracefully, and moved aside to where the bushes offered her
more or less protection from the curiosity of those about her. Meanwhile
Mr. Sutherland had stepped into the house.

He found himself in a small hall with a staircase in front and an open
door at the left. On the threshold of this open door a man stood, who at
sight of him doffed his hat. Passing by this man, Mr. Sutherland entered
the room beyond. A table spread with eatables met his view, beside
which, in an attitude which struck him at the moment as peculiar, sat
Philemon Webb, the well-known master of the house.

Astonished at seeing his old friend in this room and in such a position,
he was about to address him, when Mr. Fenton stopped him.

"Wait!" said he. "Take a look at poor Philemon before you disturb him.
When we broke into the house a half-hour ago he was sitting just as you
see him now, and we have let him be for reasons you can easily
appreciate. Examine him closely, Mr. Sutherland; he won't notice it."

"But what ails him? Why does he sit crouched against the table? Is he
hurt too?"

"No; look at his eyes."

Mr. Sutherland stooped and pushed aside the long grey locks that half
concealed the countenance of his aged friend.

"Why," he cried, startled, "they are closed! He isn't dead?"

"No, he is asleep."

"Asleep?"

"Yes. He was asleep when we came in and he is asleep yet. Some of the
neighbours wanted to wake him, but I would not let them. His wits are
not strong enough to bear a sudden shock."

"No, no, poor Philemon! But that he should sit sleeping here while
she--But what do these bottles mean and this parade of supper in a room
they were not accustomed to eat in?"

"We don't know. It has not been eaten, you see. He has swallowed a glass
of port, but that is all. The other glasses have had no wine in them,
nor have the victuals been touched."

"Seats set for three and only one occupied," murmured Mr. Sutherland.
"Strange! Could he have expected guests?"

"It looks like it. I didn't know that his wife allowed him such
privileges; but she was always too good to him, and I fear has paid for
it with her life."

"Nonsense! he never killed her. Had his love been anything short of the
worship it was, he stood in too much awe of her to lift his hand against
her, even in his most demented moments."

"I don't trust men of uncertain wits," returned the other. "You have not
noticed everything that is to be seen in this room."

Mr. Sutherland, recalled to himself by these words, looked quickly about
him. With the exception of the table and what was on and by it there was
nothing else in the room. Naturally his glance returned to Philemon
Webb.

"I don't see anything but this poor sleeping man," he began.

"Look at his sleeve."

Mr. Sutherland, with a start, again bent down. The arm of his old friend
lay crooked upon the table, and on its blue cotton sleeve there was a
smear which might have been wine, but which was--blood.

As Mr. Sutherland became assured of this, he turned slightly pale and
looked inquiringly at the two men who were intently watching him.

"This is bad," said he. "Any other marks of blood below stairs?"

"No; that one smear is all."

"Oh, Philemon!" burst from Mr. Sutherland, in deep emotion. Then, as he
looked long and shudderingly at his friend, he added slowly:

"He has been in the room where she was killed; so much is evident. But
that he understood what was done there I cannot believe, or he would not
be sleeping here like a log. Come, let us go up-stairs."

Fenton, with an admonitory gesture toward his subordinate, turned
directly toward the staircase. Mr. Sutherland followed him, and they at
once proceeded to the upper hall and into the large front room which had
been the scene of the tragedy.

It was the parlour or sitting-room of this small and unpretentious
house. A rag carpet covered the floor and the furniture was of the
plainest kind, but the woman who lay outstretched on the stiff,
old-fashioned lounge opposite the door was far from being in accord with
the homely type of her surroundings. Though the victim of a violent
death, her face and form, both of a beauty seldom to be found among
women of any station, were so majestic in their calm repose, that Mr.
Sutherland, accustomed as he was to her noble appearance, experienced a
shock of surprise that found vent in these words:

"Murdered! she? You have made some mistake, my friends. Look at her
face!"

But even in the act of saying this his eyes fell on the blood which had
dyed her cotton dress and he cried:

"Where was she struck and where is the weapon which has made this
ghastly wound?"

"She was struck while standing or sitting at this table," returned the
constable, pointing to two or three drops of blood on its smooth
surface. "The weapon we have not found, but the wound shows that it was
inflicted by a three-sided dagger."

"A three-sided dagger?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know there was such a thing in town. Philemon could have had
no dagger."

"It does not seem so, but one can never tell. Simple cottages like these
often contain the most unlooked-for articles."

"I cannot imagine a dagger being among its effects," declared Mr.
Sutherland. "Where was the body of Mrs. Webb lying when you came in?"

"Where you see it now. Nothing has been moved or changed."

"She was found here, on this lounge, in the same position in which we
see her now?"

"Yes, sir."

"But that is incredible. Look at the way she lies! Hands crossed, eyes
closed, as though made ready for her burial. Only loving hands could
have done this. What does it mean?"

"It means Philemon; that is what it means Philemon."

Mr. Sutherland shuddered, but said nothing. He was dumbfounded by these
evidences of a crazy man's work. Philemon Webb always seemed so
harmless, though he had been failing in mind for the last ten years.

"But" cried Mr. Sutherland, suddenly rousing, "there is another victim.
I saw old woman Batsy hanging from a window ledge, dead."

"Yes, she is in this other room; but there is no wound on Batsy."

"How was she killed, then?"

"That the doctors must tell us."

Mr. Sutherland, guided by Mr. Fenton's gesture, entered a small room
opening into the one in which they stood. His attention was at once
attracted by the body of the woman he had seen from below, lying half in
and half out of the open window. That she was dead was evident; but, as
Mr. Fenton had said, no wound was to be seen upon her, nor were there
any marks of blood on or about the place where she lay.

"This is a dreadful business," groaned Mr. Sutherland, "the worst I have
ever had anything to do with. Help me to lift the woman in; she has been
long enough a show for the people outside."

There was a bed in this room (indeed, it was Mrs. Webb's bedroom), and
upon this poor Batsy was laid. As the face came uppermost both gentlemen
started and looked at each other in amazement. The expression of terror
and alarm which it showed was in striking contrast to the look of
exaltation to be seen on the face of her dead mistress.




III

THE EMPTY DRAWER


As they re-entered the larger room, they were astonished to come upon
Miss Page standing in the doorway. She was gazing at the recumbent
figure of the dead woman, and for a moment seemed unconscious of their
presence.

"How did you get in? Which of my men was weak enough to let you pass,
against my express instructions?" asked the constable, who was of an
irritable and suspicious nature.

She let the hood drop from her head, and, turning, surveyed him with a
slow smile. There was witchery in that smile sufficient to affect a much
more cultivated and callous nature than his, and though he had been
proof against it once he could not quite resist the effect of its
repetition.

"I insisted upon entering," said she. "Do not blame the men; they did
not want to use force against a woman." She had not a good voice and she
knew it; but she covered up this defect by a choice of intonations that
carried her lightest speech to the heart. Hard-visaged Amos Fenton gave
a grunt, which was as near an expression of approval as he ever gave to
anyone.

"Well! well!" he growled, but not ill-naturedly, "it's a morbid
curiosity that brings you here. Better drop it, girl; it won't do you
any good in the eyes of sensible people."

"Thank you," was her demure reply, her lips dimpling at the corners in a
way to shock the sensitive Mr. Sutherland.

Glancing from her to the still outlines of the noble figure on the
couch, he remarked with an air of mild reproof:

"I do not understand you, Miss Page. If this solemn sight has no power
to stop your coquetries, nothing can. As for your curiosity, it is both
ill-timed and unwomanly. Let me see you leave this house at once, Miss
Page; and if in the few hours which must elapse before breakfast you can
find time to pack your trunks, you will still farther oblige me."

"Oh, don't send me away, I entreat you."

It was a cry from her inner heart, which she probably regretted, for she
instantly sought to cover up her inadvertent self-betrayal by a
submissive bend of the head and a step backward. Neither Mr. Fenton nor
Mr. Sutherland seemed to hear the one or see the other, their attention
having returned to the more serious matter in hand.

"The dress which our poor friend wears shows her to have been struck
before retiring," commented Mr. Sutherland, after another short survey
of Mrs. Webb's figure. "If Philemon--"

"Excuse me, sir," interrupted the voice of the young man who had been
left in the hall, "the lady is listening to what you say. She is still
at the head of the stairs."

"She is, is she!" cried Fenton, sharply, his admiration for the
fascinating stranger having oozed out at his companion's rebuff. "I will
soon show her--" But the words melted into thin air as he reached the
door. The young girl had disappeared, and only a faint perfume remained
in the place where she had stood.

"A most extraordinary person," grumbled the constable, turning back, but
stopping again as a faint murmur came up from below.

"The gentleman is waking," called up a voice whose lack of music was
quite perceptible at a distance.

With a bound Mr. Fenton descended the stairs, followed by Mr.
Sutherland.

Miss Page stood before the door of the room in which sat Philemon Webb.
As they reached her side, she made a little bow that was half mocking,
half deprecatory, and slipped from the house. An almost unbearable
sensation of incongruity vanished with her, and Mr. Sutherland, for one,
breathed like a man relieved.

"I wish the doctor would come," Fenton said, as they watched the slow
lifting of Philemon Webb's head. "Our fastest rider has gone for him,
but he's out Portchester way, and it may be an hour yet before he can
get here."

"Philemon!"

Mr. Sutherland had advanced and was standing by his old friend's side.

"Philemon, what has become of your guests? You've waited for them here
until morning."

The old man with a dazed look surveyed the two plates set on either side
of him and shook his head.

"James and John are getting proud," said he, "or they forget, they
forget."

James and John. He must mean the Zabels, yet there were many others
answering to these names in town. Mr. Sutherland made another effort.

"Philemon, where is your wife? I do not see any place set here for her!"

"Agatha's sick, Agatha's cross; she don't care for a poor old man like
me."

"Agatha's dead and you know it," thundered back the constable, with
ill-judged severity. "Who killed her? tell me that. Who killed her?"

A sudden quenching of the last spark of intelligence in the old man's
eye was the dreadful effect of these words. Laughing with that strange
gurgle which proclaims an utterly irresponsible mind, he cried:

"The pussy cat! It was the pussy cat. Who's killed? I'm not killed.
Let's go to Jericho."

Mr. Sutherland took him by the arm and led him up-stairs. Perhaps the
sight of his dead wife would restore him. But he looked at her with the
same indifference he showed to everything else.

"I don't like her calico dresses," said he. "She might have worn silk,
but she wouldn't. Agatha, will you wear silk to my funeral?"

The experiment was too painful, and they drew him away. But the
constable's curiosity had been roused, and after they had found some one
to take care of him, he drew Mr. Sutherland aside and said:

"What did the old man mean by saying she might have worn silk? Are they
better off than they seem?" Mr. Sutherland closed the door before
replying.

"They are rich," he declared, to the utter amazement of the other. "That
is, they were; but they may have been robbed; if so, Philemon was not
the wretch who killed her. I have been told that she kept her money in
an old-fashioned cupboard. Do you suppose they alluded to that one?"

He pointed to a door set in the wall over the fireplace, and Mr. Fenton,
perceiving a key sticking in the lock, stepped quickly across the floor
and opened it. A row of books met his eyes, but on taking them down a
couple of drawers were seen at the back.

"Are they locked?" asked Mr. Sutherland.

"One is and one is not."

"Open the one that is unlocked."

Mr. Fenton did so.

"It is empty," said he.

Mr. Sutherland cast a look toward the dead woman, and again the perfect
serenity of her countenance struck him.

"I do not know whether to regard her as the victim of her husband's
imbecility or of some vile robber's cupidity. Can you find the key to
the other drawer?"

"I will try."

"Suppose you begin, then, by looking on her person. It should be in her
pocket, if no marauder has been here."

"It is not in her pocket."

"Hanging to her neck, then, by a string?"

"No; there is a locket here, but no key. A very handsome locket, Mr.
Sutherland, with a child's lock of golden hair--"

"Never mind, we will see that later; it is the key we want just now."

"Good heavens!"

"What is it?"

"It is in her hand; the one that lies underneath."

"Ah! A point, Fenton."

"A great point."

"Stand by her, Fenton. Don't let anyone rob her of that key till the
coroner comes, and we are at liberty to take it."

"I will not leave her for an instant."

"Meanwhile, I will put back these books."

He had scarcely done so when a fresh arrival occurred. This time it was
one of the village clergymen.




IV

THE FULL DRAWER


This gentleman had some information to give. It seems that at an early
hour of this same night he had gone by this house on his way home from
the bedside of a sick parishioner. As he was passing the gate he was run
into by a man who came rushing out of the yard, in a state of violent
agitation. In this man's hand was something that glittered, and though
the encounter nearly upset them both, he had not stopped to utter an
apology, but stumbled away out of sight with a hasty but infirm step,
which showed he was neither young nor active. The minister had failed to
see his face, but noticed the ends of a long beard blowing over his
shoulder as he hurried away.

Philemon was a clean-shaven man.

Asked if he could give the time of this encounter, he replied that it
was not far from midnight, as he was in his own house by half-past
twelve.

"Did you glance up at these windows in passing?" asked Mr. Fenton.

"I must have; for I now remember they were both lighted."

"Were the shades up?"

"I think not. I would have noticed it if they had been."

"How were the shades when you broke into the house this morning?"
inquired Mr. Sutherland of the constable.

"Just as they are now; we have moved nothing. The shades were both
down--one of them over an open window."

"Well, we may find this encounter of yours with this unknown man a
matter of vital importance, Mr. Crane."

"I wish I had seen his face."

"What do you think the object was you saw glittering in his hand?"

"I should not like to say; I saw it but an instant."

"Could it have been a knife or an old-fashioned dagger?"

"It might have been."

"Alas! poor Agatha! That she, who so despised money, should fall a
victim to man's cupidity! Unhappy life, unhappy death! Fenton, I shall
always mourn for Agatha Webb."

"Yet she seems to have found peace at last," observed the minister. "I
have never seen her look so contented." And leading Mr. Sutherland
aside, he whispered: "What is this you say about money? Had she, in
spite of appearances, any considerable amount? I ask, because in spite
of her humble home and simple manner of living, she always put more on
the plate than any of her neighbours. Besides which, I have from time to
time during my pastorate received anonymously certain contributions,
which, as they were always for sick or suffering children--"

"Yes, yes; they came from her, I have no doubt of it. She was by no
means poor, though I myself never knew the extent of her means till
lately. Philemon was a good business man once; but they evidently
preferred to live simply, having no children living--"

"They have lost six, I have been told."

"So the Portchester folks say. They probably had no heart for display or
for even the simplest luxuries. At all events, they did not indulge in
them."

"Philemon has long been past indulging in anything."

"Oh, he likes his comfort, and he has had it too. Agatha never stinted
him."

"But why do you think her death was due to her having money?"

"She had a large sum in the house, and there are those in town who knew
this."

"And is it gone?"

"That we shall know later."

As the coroner arrived at this moment, the minister's curiosity had to
wait. Fortunately for his equanimity, no one had the presumption to ask
him to leave the room.

The coroner was a man of but few words, and but little given to emotion.
Yet they were surprised at his first question:

"Who is the young woman standing outside there, the only one in the
yard?"

Mr. Sutherland, moving rapidly to the window, drew aside the shade.

"It is Miss Page, my housekeeper's niece," he explained. "I do not
understand her interest in this affair. She followed me here from the
house and could hardly be got to leave this room, into which she
intruded herself against my express command."

"But look at her attitude!" It was Mr. Fenton who spoke. "She's crazier
than Philemon, it seems to me."

There was some reason for this remark. Guarded by the high fence from
the gaze of the pushing crowd without, she stood upright and immovable
in the middle of the yard, like one on watch. The hood, which she had
dropped from her head when she thought her eyes and smile might be of
use to her in the furtherance of her plans, had been drawn over it
again, so that she looked more like a statue in grey than a living,
breathing woman. Yet there was menace in her attitude and a purpose in
the solitary stand she took in that circle of board-girded grass, which
caused a thrill in the breasts of those who looked at her from that
chamber of death.

"A mysterious young woman," muttered the minister.

"And one that I neither countenance nor understand," interpolated Mr.
Sutherland. "I have just shown my displeasure at her actions by
dismissing her from my house."

The coroner gave him a quick look, seemed about to speak, but changed
his mind and turned toward the dead woman.

"We have a sad duty before us," said he.

The investigations which followed elicited one or two new facts. First,
that all the doors of the house were found unlocked; and, secondly, that
the constable had been among the first to enter, so that he could vouch
that no disarrangement had been made in the rooms, with the exception of
Batsy's removal to the bed.

Then, his attention being drawn to the dead woman, he discovered the key
in her tightly closed hand.

"Where does this key belong?" he asked.

They showed him the drawers in the cupboard.

"One is empty," remarked Mi. Sutherland. "If the other is found to be in
the same condition, then her money has been taken. That key she holds
should open both these drawers."

"Then let it be made use of at once. It is important that we should know
whether theft has been committed here as well as murder." And drawing
the key out, he handed it to Mr. Fenton.

The constable immediately unlocked the drawer and brought it and its
contents to the table.

"No money here," said he.

"But papers as good as money," announced the doctor. "See! here are
deeds and more than one valuable bond. I judge she was a richer woman
than any of us knew."

Mr. Sutherland, meantime, was looking with an air of disappointment into
the now empty drawer.

"Just as I feared," said he. "She has been robbed of her ready money. It
was doubtless in the other drawer."

"How came she by the key, then?"

"That is one of the mysteries of the affair; this murder is by no means
a simple one. I begin to think we shall find it full of mysteries."

"Batsy's death, for instance?"

"O yes, Batsy! I forgot that she was found dead too."

"Without a wound, doctor."

"She had heart disease. I doctored her for it. The fright has killed
her."

"The look of her face confirms that."

"Let me see! So it does; but we must have an autopsy to prove it."

"I would like to explain before any further measures are taken, how I
came to know that Agatha Webb had money in her house," said Mr.
Sutherland, as they stepped back into the other room. "Two days ago, as
I was sitting with my family at table, old gossip Judy came in. Had Mrs.
Sutherland been living, this old crone would not have presumed to
intrude upon us at mealtime, but as we have no one now to uphold our
dignity, this woman rushed into our presence panting with news, and told
us all in one breath how she had just come from Mrs. Webb; that Mrs.
Webb had money; that she had seen it, she herself; that, going into the
house as usual without knocking, she had heard Agatha stepping overhead
and had gone up; and finding the door of the sitting-room ajar, had
looked in, and seen Agatha crossing the room with her hands full of
bills; that these bills were big bills, for she heard Agatha cry, as she
locked them up in the cupboard behind the book-shelves, 'A thousand
dollars! That is too much money to have in one's house'; that she, Judy,
thought so too, and being frightened at what she had seen, had crept
away as silently as she had entered and run away to tell the neighbours.
Happily, I was the first she found up that morning, but I have no doubt
that, in spite of my express injunctions, she has since related the news
to half the people in town."

"Was the young woman down yonder present when Judy told this story?"
asked the coroner, pointing towards the yard.

Mr. Sutherland pondered. "Possibly; I do not remember. Frederick was
seated at the table with me, and my housekeeper was pouring out the
coffee, but it was early for Miss Page. She has been putting on great
airs of late."

"Can it be possible he is trying to blind himself to the fact that his
son Frederick wishes to marry this girl?" muttered the clergyman into
the constable's ear.

The constable shook his head. Mr. Sutherland was one of those debonair
men, whose very mildness makes them impenetrable.




V

A SPOT ON THE LAWN


The coroner, on leaving the house, was followed by Mr. Sutherland. As
the fine figures of the two men appeared on the doorstep, a faint cheer
was heard from the two or three favoured persons who were allowed to
look through the gate. But to this token of welcome neither gentleman
responded by so much as a look, all their attention being engrossed by
the sight of the solitary figure of Miss Page, who still held her stand
upon the lawn. Motionless as a statue, but with her eyes fixed upon
their faces, she awaited their approach. When they were near her she
thrust one hand from under her cloak, and pointing to the grass at her
feet, said quietly:

"See this?"

They hastened towards her and bent down to examine the spot she
indicated.

"What do you find there?" cried Mr. Sutherland, whose eyesight was not
good.

"Blood," responded the coroner, plucking up a blade of grass and
surveying it closely.

"Blood," echoed Miss Page, with so suggestive a glance that Mr.
Sutherland stared at her in amazement, not understanding his own
emotion.

"How were you able to discern a stain so nearly imperceptible?" asked
the coroner.

"Imperceptible? It is the only thing I see in the whole yard," she
retorted, and with a slight bow, which was not without its element of
mockery, she turned toward the gate.

"A most unaccountable girl," commented the doctor. "But she is right
about these stains. Abel," he called to the man at the gate, "bring a
box or barrel here and cover up this spot. I don't want it disturbed by
trampling feet."

Abel started to obey, just as the young girl laid her hand on the gate
to open it.

"Won't you help me?" she asked. "The crowd is so great they won't let me
through."

"Won't they?" The words came from without. "Just slip out as I slip in,
and you'll find a place made for you."

Not recognising the voice, she hesitated for a moment, but seeing the
gate swaying, she pushed against it just as a young man stepped through
the gap. Necessarily they came face to face.

"Ah, it's you," he muttered, giving her a sharp glance.

"I do not know you," she haughtily declared, and slipped by him with
such dexterity she was out of the gate before he could respond.

But he only snapped his finger and thumb mockingly at her, and smiled
knowingly at Abel, who had lingered to watch the end of this encounter.

"Supple as a willow twig, eh?" he laughed. "Well, I have made whistles
out of willows before now, and hallo! where did you get that?"

He was pointing to a rare flower that hung limp and faded from Abel's
buttonhole.

"This? Oh, I found it in the house yonder. It was lying on the floor of
the inner room, almost under Batsy's skirts. Curious sort of flower. I
wonder where she got it?"

The intruder betrayed at once an unaccountable emotion. There was a
strange glitter in his light green eyes that made Abel shift rather
uneasily on his feet. "Was that before this pretty minx you have just
let out came in here with Mr. Sutherland?"

"O yes; before anyone had started for the hill at all. Why, what has
this young lady got to do with a flower dropped by Batsy?"

"She? Nothing. Only--and I have never given you bad advice, Abel--don't
let that thing hang any longer from your buttonhole. Put it into an
envelope and keep it, and if you don't hear from me again in regard to
it, write me out a fool and forget we were ever chums when little
shavers."

The man called Abel smiled, took out the flower, and went to cover up
the grass as Dr. Talbot had requested. The stranger took his place at
the gate, toward which the coroner and Mr. Sutherland were now
advancing, with an air that showed his great anxiety to speak with them.
He was the musician whom we saw secretly entering the last-mentioned
gentleman's house after the departure of the servants.

As the coroner paused before him he spoke. "Dr. Talbot," said he,
dropping his eyes, which were apt to betray his thoughts too plainly,
"you have often promised that you would give me a job if any matter came
up where any nice detective work was wanted. Don't you think the time
has come to remember me?"

"You, Sweetwater? I'm afraid the affair is too deep for an inexperienced
man's first effort. I shall have to send to Boston for an expert.
Another time, Sweetwater, when the complications are less serious."

The young fellow, with a face white as milk, was turning away.

"But you'll let me stay around here?" he pleaded, pausing and giving the
other an imploring look.

"O yes," answered the good-natured coroner. "Fenton will have work
enough for you and half a dozen others. Go and tell him I sent you."

"Thank you," returned the other, his face suddenly losing its aspect of
acute disappointment. "Now I shall see where that flower fell," he
murmured.




VI

"BREAKFAST IS SERVED, GENTLEMEN!"


Mr. Sutherland returned home. As he entered the broad hall he met his
son, Frederick. There was a look on the young man's face such as he had
not seen there in years.

"Father," faltered the youth, "may I have a few words with you?"

The father nodded kindly, though it is likely he would have much
preferred his breakfast; and the young man led him into a little
sitting-room littered with the faded garlands and other tokens of the
preceding night's festivities.

"I have an apology to make," Frederick began, "or rather, I have your
forgiveness to ask. For years" he went on, stumbling over his words,
though he gave no evidence of a wish to restrain them--"for years I have
gone contrariwise to your wishes and caused my mother's heart to ache
and you to wish I had never been born to be a curse to you and her."

He had emphasised the word mother, and spoke altogether with force and
deep intensity. Mr. Sutherland stood petrified; he had long ago given up
this lad as lost.

"I--I wish to change. I wish to be as great a pride to you as I have
been a shame and a dishonour. I may not succeed at once; but I am in
earnest, and if you will give me your hand--"

The old man's arms were round the young man's shoulders at once.

"Frederick!" he cried, "my Frederick!"

"Do not make me too much ashamed," murmured the youth, very pale and
strangely discomposed. "With no excuse for my past, I suffer intolerable
apprehension in regard to my future, lest my good intentions should fail
or my self-control not hold out. But the knowledge that you are
acquainted with my resolve, and regard it with an undeserved sympathy,
may suffice to sustain me, and I should certainly be a base poltroon if
I should disappoint you or her twice."

He paused, drew himself from his father's arms, and glanced almost
solemnly out of the window. "I swear that I will henceforth act as if
she were still alive and watching me."

There was strange intensity in his manner. Mr. Sutherland regarded him
with amazement. He had seen him in every mood natural to a reckless man,
but never in so serious a one, never with a look of awe or purpose in
his face. It gave him quite a new idea of Frederick.

"Yes," the young man went on, raising his right hand, but not removing
his eyes from the distant prospect on which they were fixed, "I swear
that I will henceforth do nothing to discredit her memory. Outwardly and
inwardly, I will act as though her eye were still upon me and she could
again suffer grief at my failures or thrill with pleasure at my
success."

A portrait of Mrs. Sutherland, painted when Frederick was a lad of ten,
hung within a few feet of him as he spoke. He did not glance at it, but
Mr. Sutherland did, and with a look as if he expected to behold a
responsive light beam from those pathetic features.

"She loved you very dearly," was his slow and earnest comment. "We have
both loved you much more deeply than you have ever seemed to realise,
Frederick."

"I believe it," responded the young man, turning with an expression of
calm resolve to meet his father's eye. "As proof that I am no longer
insensible to your affection, I have made up my mind to forego for your
sake one of the dearest wishes of my heart. Father" he hesitated before
he spoke the word, but he spoke it firmly at last,--"am I right in
thinking you would not like Miss Page for a daughter?"

"Like my housekeeper's niece to take the place in this house once
occupied by Marietta Sutherland? Frederick, I have always thought too
well of you to believe you would carry your forgetfulness of me so far
as that, even when I saw that you were influenced by her attractions."

"You did not do justice to my selfishness, father. I did mean to marry
her, but I have given up living solely for myself, and she could never
help me to live for others. Father, Amabel Page must not remain in this
house to cause division between you and me."

"I have already intimated to her the desirability of her quitting a home
where she is no longer respected," the old gentleman declared. "She
leaves on the 10.45 train. Her conduct this morning at the house of Mrs.
Webb--who perhaps you do not know was most cruelly and foully murdered
last night--was such as to cause comment and make her an undesirable
adjunct to any gentleman's family."

Frederick paled. Something in these words had caused him a great shock.
Mr. Sutherland was fond enough to believe that it was the news of this
extraordinary woman's death. But his son's words, as soon as he could
find any, showed that his mind was running on Amabel, whom he perhaps
had found it difficult to connect even in the remotest way with crime.

"She at this place of death? How could that be? Who would take a young
girl there?"

The father, experiencing, perhaps, more compassion for this
soon-to-be-disillusioned lover than he thought it incumbent upon him to
show, answered shortly, but without any compromise of the unhappy truth:

"She went; she was not taken. No one, not even myself, could keep her
back after she had heard that a murder had been committed in the town.
She even intruded into the house; and when ordered out of the room of
death took up her stand in the yard in front, where she remained until
she had the opportunity of pointing out to us a stain of blood on the
grass, which might otherwise have escaped our attention."

"Impossible!" Frederick's eye was staring; he looked like a man struck
dumb by surprise or fear. "Amabel do this? You are mocking me, sir, or I
may be dreaming, which may the good God grant."

His father, who had not looked for so much emotion, eyed his son in
surprise, which rapidly changed to alarm as the young man faltered and
fell back against the wall.

"You are ill, Frederick; you are really ill. Let me call down Mrs.
Harcourt. But no, I cannot summon her. She is this girl's aunt."

Frederick made an effort and stood up.

"Do not call anybody," he entreated. "I expect to suffer some in casting
this fascinating girl out of my heart. Ultimately I will conquer the
weakness; indeed I will. As for her interest in Mrs. Webb's death"--how
low his voice sank and how he trembled!" she may have been better
friends with her than we had any reason to suppose. I can think of no
other motive for her conduct. Admiration for Mrs. Webb and horror---"

"Breakfast is served, gentlemen!" cried a thrilling voice behind them.
Amabel Page stood smiling in the doorway.




VII

"MARRY ME"


"Wait a moment, I must speak to you." It was Amabel who was holding
Frederick back. She had caught him by the arm as he was about leaving
the room with his father, and he felt himself obliged to stop and
listen.

"I start for Springfield to-day," she announced. "I have another
relative there living at the house. When shall I have the pleasure of
seeing you in my new home?"

"Never." It was said regretfully, and yet with a certain brusqueness,
occasioned perhaps by over-excited feeling. "Hard as it is for me to say
it, Amabel, it is but just for me to tell you that after our parting
here to-day we will meet only as strangers. Friendship between us would
be mockery, and any closer relationship has become impossible."

It had cost him an immense effort to say these words, and he expected,
fondly expected, I must admit, to see her colour change and her head
droop. But instead of this she looked at him steadily for a moment, then
slipped her hand down his arm till she reached his palm, which she
pressed with sudden warmth, drawing him into the room as she did so, and
shutting the door behind them. He was speechless, for she never had
looked so handsome or so glowing. Instead of showing depression or
humiliation even, she confronted him with a smile more dangerous than
any display of grief, for it contained what it had hitherto lacked,
positive and irresistible admiration. Her words were equally dangerous.

"I kiss your hand, as the Spaniards say." And she almost did so, with a
bend of her head, which just allowed him to catch a glimpse of two
startling dimples.

He was astounded. He thought he knew this woman well, but at this moment
she was as incomprehensible to him as if he had never made a study of
her caprices and sought an explanation for her ever-shifting
expressions.

"I am sensible of the honour," said he, "but hardly understand how I
have earned it."

Still that incomprehensible look of admiration continued to illumine her
face.

"I did not know I could ever think so well of you," she declared. "If
you do not take care, I shall end by loving you some day."

"Ah!" he ejaculated, his face contracting with sudden pain; "your love,
then, is but a potentiality. Very well, Amabel, keep it so and you will
be spared much misery. As for me, who have not been as wise as you---"

"Frederick!" She had come so near he did not have the strength to
finish. Her face, with its indefinable charm, was raised to his, as she
dropped these words one by one from her lips in lingering cadence:
"Frederick--do you love me, then, so very much?"

He was angry; possibly because he felt his resolution failing him. "You
know!" he hotly began, stepping back. Then with a sudden burst of
feeling, that was almost like prayer, he resumed: "Do not tempt me,
Amabel. I have trouble enough, without lamenting the failure of my first
steadfast purpose."

"Ah!" she said, stopping where she was, but drawing him toward her by
every witchery of which her mobile features were capable; "your generous
impulse has strengthened into a purpose, has it? Well, I'm not worth it,
Frederick."

More and more astounded, understanding her less than ever, but charmed
by looks that would have moved an anchorite, he turned his head away in
a vain attempt to escape an influence that was so rapidly undermining
his determination.

She saw the movement, recognised the weakness it bespoke, and in the
triumph of her heart allowed a low laugh to escape her.

Her voice, as I have before said, was unmusical though effective; but
her laugh was deliciously sweet, especially when it was restrained to a
mere ripple, as now.

"You will come to Springfield soon," she avowed, slipping from before
him so as to leave the way to the door open.

"Amabel!" His voice was strangely husky, and the involuntary opening and
shutting of his hands revealed the emotion under which he was labouring.
"Do you love me? You have acknowledged it now and then, but always as if
you did not mean it. Now you acknowledge that you may some day, and this
time as if you did mean it. What is the truth? Tell me, without coquetry
or dissembling, for I am in dead earnest, and---" He paused, choked, and
turned toward the window where but a few minutes before he had taken
that solemn oath. The remembrance of it seemed to come back with the
movement. Flushing with a new agitation, he wheeled upon her sharply.
"No, no," he prayed, "say nothing. If you swore you did not love me I
should not believe it, and if you swore that you did I should only find
it harder to repeat what must again be said, that a union between us can
never take place. I have given my solemn promise to---"

"Well, well. Why do you stop? Am I so hard to talk to that the words
will not leave your lips?"

"I have promised my father I will never marry you. He feels that he has
grounds of complaint against you, and as I owe him everything---"

He stopped amazed. She was looking at him intently, that same low laugh
still on her lips.

"Tell the truth," she whispered. "I know to what extent you consider
your father's wishes. You think you ought not to marry me after what
took place last night. Frederick, I like you for this evidence of
consideration on your part, but do not struggle too relentlessly with
your conscience. I can forgive much more in you than you think, and if
you really love me---"

"Stop! Let us understand each other." He had turned mortally pale, and
met her eyes with something akin to alarm. "What do you allude to in
speaking of last night? I did not know there was anything said by us in
our talk together---"

"I do not allude to our talk."

"Or--or in the one dance we had---"

"Frederick, a dance is innocent."

The word seemed to strike him with the force of a blow.

"Innocent," he repeated, "innocent?" becoming paler still as the full
weight of her meaning broke gradually upon him.

"I followed you into town," she whispered, coming closer, and breathing
the words into his ear. "But what I saw you do there will not prevent me
from obeying you if you say: 'Follow me wherever I go, Amabel;
henceforth our lives are one.'"

"My God!"

It was all he said, but it seemed to create a gulf between them. In the
silence that followed, the evil spirit latent beneath her beauty began
to make itself evident even in the smile which no longer called into
view the dimples which belong to guileless mirth, while upon his face,
after the first paralysing effect of her words had passed, there
appeared an expression of manly resistance that betrayed a virtue which
as yet had never appeared in his selfish and altogether reckless life.

That this was more than a passing impulse he presently made evident by
lifting his hand and pushing her slowly back.

"I do not know what you saw me do," said he; "but whatever it was, it
can make no difference in our relations."

Her whisper, which had been but a breath before, became scarcely
audible.

"I did not pause at the gate you entered," said she. "I went in after
you."

A gasp of irresistible feeling escaped him, but he did not take his eyes
from her face.

"It was a long time before you came out," she went on, "but previous to
that time the shade of a certain window was thrust aside, and---"

"Hush!" he commanded, in uncontrollable passion, pressing his hand with
impulsive energy against her mouth. "Not another word of that, or I
shall forget you are a woman or that I have ever loved you."

Her eyes, which were all she had remaining to plead with, took on a
peculiar look of quiet satisfaction, and power. Seeing it, he let his
hand fall and for the first time began to regard her with anything but a
lover's eyes.

"I was the only person in sight at that time," she continued. "You have
nothing to fear from the world at large."

"Fear?"

The word made its own echo; she had no need to emphasise it even by a
smile. But she watched him as it sunk into his consciousness with an
intentness it took all his strength to sustain. Suddenly her bearing and
expression changed. The few remains of sweetness in her face vanished,
and even the allurement which often lasts when the sweetness is gone,
disappeared in the energy which now took possession of her whole
threatening and inflexible personality.

"Marry me," she cried, "or I will proclaim you to be the murderer of
Agatha Webb."

She had seen the death of love in his eyes.




VIII

"A DEVIL THAT UNDERSTANDS MEN"


Frederick Sutherland was a man of finer mental balance than he himself,
perhaps, had ever realised. After the first few moments of stupefaction
following the astounding alternative which had been given him, he broke
out with the last sentence she probably expected to hear:

"What do you hope from a marriage with me, that to attain your wishes
you thus sacrifice every womanly instinct?"

She met him on his own ground.

"What do I hope?" She actually glowed with the force of her secret
desire. "Can you ask a poor girl like me, born in a tenement house, but
with tastes and ambitions such as are usually only given to those who
can gratify them? I want to be the rich Mr. Sutherland's daughter;
acknowledged or unacknowledged, the wife of one who can enter any house
in Boston as an equal. With a position like that I can rise to anything.
I feel that I have the natural power and aptitude. I have felt it since
I was a small child."

"And for that---" he began.

"And for that," she broke in, "I am quite willing to overlook a blot on
your record. Confident that you will never repeat the risk of last
night, I am ready to share the burden of your secret through life. If
you treat me well, I am sure I can make that burden light for you."

With a quick flush and an increase of self-assertion, probably not
anticipated by her, he faced the daring girl with a desperate resolution
that showed how handsome he could be if his soul once got control of his
body.

"Woman," he cried, "they were right; you are little less than a devil."

Did she regard it as a compliment? Her smile would seem to say so.

"A devil that understands men," she answered, with that slow dip of her
dimples that made her smile so dangerous. "You will not hesitate long
over this matter; a week, perhaps."

"I shall not hesitate at all. Seeing you as you are, makes my course
easy. You will never share any burden with me as my wife."

Still she was not abashed.

"It is a pity," she whispered; "it would have saved you such unnecessary
struggle. But a week is not long to wait. I am certain of you then. This
day week at twelve o'clock, Frederick."

He seized her by the arm, and lost to everything but his rage, shook her
with a desperate hand.

"Do you mean it?" he cried, a sudden horror showing itself in his face,
notwithstanding his efforts to conceal it.

"I mean it so much," she assured him, "that before I came home just now
I paid a visit to the copse over the way. A certain hollow tree, where
you and I have held more than one tryst, conceals within its depths a
package containing over one thousand dollars. Frederick, I hold your
life in my hands."

The grasp with which he held her relaxed; a mortal despair settled upon
his features, and recognising the impossibility of further concealing
the effect of her words upon him, he sank into a chair and covered his
face with his hands. She viewed him with an air of triumph, which
brought back some of her beauty. When she spoke it was to say:

"If you wish to join me in Springfield before the time I have set, well
and good. I am willing that the time of our separation should be
shortened, but it must not be lengthened by so much as a day. Now, if
you will excuse me, I will go and pack my trunks."

He shuddered; her voice penetrated him to the quick.

Drawing herself up, she looked down on him with a strange mixture of
passion and elation.

"You need fear no indiscretion on my part, so long as our armistice
lasts," said she. "No one can drag the truth from me while any hope
remains of your doing your duty by me in the way I have suggested."

And still he did not move.

"Frederick?"

Was it her voice that was thus murmuring his name? Can the tiger snarl
one moment and fawn the next?

"Frederick, I have a final word to say--a last farewell. Up to this hour
I have endured your attentions, or, let us say, accepted them, for I
always found you handsome and agreeable, if not the master of my heart.
But now it is love that I feel, love; and love with me is no fancy, but
a passion--do you hear?--a passion which will make life a heaven or hell
for the man who has inspired it. You should have thought of this when
you opposed me."

And with a look in which love and hatred contended for mastery, she bent
and imprinted a kiss upon his forehead. Next moment she was gone.

Or so he thought. But when, after an interval of nameless recoil, he
rose and attempted to stagger from the place, he discovered that she had
been detained in the hall by two or three men who had just come in by
the front door.

"Is this Miss Page?" they were asking.

"Yes, I am Miss Page--Amabel Page" she replied with suave politeness.
"If you have any business with me, state it quickly, for I am about to
leave town."

"That is what we wish to prevent," declared a tall, thin young man who
seemed to take the lead. "Till the inquest has been held over the
remains of Mrs. Webb, Coroner Talbot wishes you to regard yourself as a
possible witness."

"Me?" she cried, with an admirable gesture of surprise and a wide
opening of her brown eyes that made her look like an astonished child.
"What have I got to do with it?"

"You pointed out a certain spot of blood on the grass, and--well, the
coroner's orders have to be obeyed, miss. You cannot leave the town
without running the risk of arrest"

"Then I will stay in it," she smiled. "I have no liking for arrests,"
and the glint of her eye rested for a moment on Frederick. "Mr.
Sutherland," she continued, as that gentleman appeared at the
dining-room door, "I shall have to impose upon your hospitality for a
few days longer. These men here inform me that my innocent interest in
pointing out to you that spot of blood on Mrs. Webb's lawn has awakened
some curiosity, and that I am wanted as a witness by the coroner."

Mr. Sutherland, with a quick stride, lessened the distance between
himself and these unwelcome intruders. "The coroner's wishes are
paramount just now," said he, but the look he gave his son was not soon
forgotten by the spectators.




IX

A GRAND WOMAN


There was but one topic discussed in the country-side that day, and that
was the life and character of Agatha Webb.

Her history had not been a happy one. She and Philemon had come from
Portchester some twenty or more years before to escape the sorrows
associated with their native town. They had left behind them six small
graves in Portchester churchyard; but though evidences of their
affliction were always to be seen in the countenances of either, they
had entered with so much purpose into the life of their adopted town
that they had become persons of note there till Philemon's health began
to fail, when Agatha quit all outside work and devoted herself
exclusively to him. Of her character and winsome personality we can
gather some idea from the various conversations carried on that day from
Portchester Green to the shipyards in Sutherlandtown.

In Deacon Brainerd's cottage, the discussion was concerning Agatha's
lack of vanity; a virtue not very common at that time among the women of
this busy seaport.

"For a woman so handsome," the good deacon was saying "(and I think I
can safely call her the finest-featured woman who ever trod these
streets), she showed as little interest in dress as anyone I ever knew.
Calico at home and calico at church, yet she looked as much of a lady in
her dark-sprigged gowns as Mrs. Webster in her silks or Mrs. Parsons in
her thousand-dollar sealskin."

As this was a topic within the scope of his eldest daughter's
intelligence she at once spoke up: "I never thought she needed to dress
so plainly. I don't believe in such a show of poverty myself. If one is
too poor to go decent, all right; but they say she had more money than
most anyone in town. I wonder who is going to get the benefit of it?"

"Why, Philemon, of course; that is, as long as he lives. He doubtless
had the making of it."

"Is it true that he's gone clean out of his head since her death?"
interposed a neighbour who had happened in.

"So they say. I believe widow Jones has taken him into her house."

"Do you think," asked a second daughter with becoming hesitation, "that
he had anything to do with her death? Some of the neighbours say he
struck her while in one of his crazy fits, while others declare she was
killed by some stranger, equally old and almost as infirm."

"We won't discuss the subject," objected the deacon. "Time will show who
robbed us of the greatest-hearted and most capable woman in these
parts."

"And will time show who killed Batsy?" It was a morsel of a girl who
spoke; the least one of the family, but the brightest. "I'm sorry for
Batsy; she always gave me cookies when I went to see Mrs. Webb."

"Batsy was a good girl for a Swede," allowed the deacon's wife, who had
not spoken till now. "When she first came into town on the spars of that
wrecked ship we all remember, there was some struggle between Agatha and
me as to which of us should have her. But I didn't like the task of
teaching her the name of every pot and pan she had to use in the
kitchen, so I gave her up to Agatha; and it was fortunate I did, for
I've never been able to understand her talk to this day."

"I could talk with her right well," lisped the little one. "She never
called things by their Swedish names unless she was worried; and I never
worried her."

"I wonder if she would have worshipped the ground under your feet, as
she did that under Agatha's?" asked the deacon, eying his wife with just
the suspicion of a malicious twinkle in his eye.

"I am not the greatest-hearted and most capable woman in town," retorted
his wife, clicking her needles as she went on knitting.

In Mr. Sprague's house on the opposite side of the road, Squire Fisher
was relating some old tales of bygone Portchester days. "I knew Agatha
when she was a girl," he avowed. "She had the grandest manners and the
most enchanting smile of any rich or poor man's daughter between the
coast and Springfield. She did not dress in calico then. She wore the
gayest clothes her father could buy. her, and old Jacob was not without
means to make his daughter the leading figure in town. How we young
fellows did adore her, and what lengths we went to win one of her
glorious smiles! Two of us, John and James Zabel, have lived bachelors
for her sake to this very day; but I hadn't courage enough for that; I
married and"--something between a sigh and a chuckle filled out the
sentence.

"What made Philemon carry off the prize? His good looks?"

"Yes, or his good luck. It wasn't his snap; of that you may be sure.
James Zabel had the snap, and he was her first choice, too, but he got
into some difficulty--I never knew just what it was, but it was regarded
as serious at the time--and that match was broken off. Afterwards she
married Philemon. You see, I was out of it altogether; had never been in
it, perhaps; but there were three good years of my life in which I
thought of little else than Agatha. I admired her spirit, you see. There
was something more taking in her ways than in her beauty, wonderful as
that was. She ruled us with a rod of iron, and yet we worshipped her. I
have wondered to see her so meek of late. I never thought she would be
satisfied with a brick-floored cottage and a husband of failing wits.
But no one, to my knowledge, has ever heard a complaint from her lips;
and the dignity of her afflicted wife-hood has far transcended the
haughtiness of those days when she had but to smile to have all the
youth of Portchester at her feet."

"I suppose it was the loss of so many children that reconciled her to a
quiet life. A woman cannot close the eyes of six children, one after the
other, without some modification taking place in her character."

"Yes, she and Philemon have been unfortunate; but she was a splendid
looking girl, boys. I never see such grand-looking women now."

In a little one-storied cottage on the hillside a woman was nursing a
baby and talking at the same time of Agatha Webb.

"I shall never forget the night my first baby fell sick," she faltered;
"I was just out of bed myself, and having no nearer neighbours then than
now, I was all alone on the hillside, Alec being away at sea. I was too
young to know much about sickness, but something told me that I must
have help before morning or my baby would die. Though I could just walk
across the floor, I threw a shawl around me, took my baby in my arms,
and opened the door. A blinding gust of rain blew in. A terrible storm
was raging and I had not noticed it, I was so taken up with the child.

"I could not face that gale. Indeed, I was so weak I fell on my knees as
it struck me and became dripping wet before I could drag myself inside.
The baby began to moan and everything was turning dark before me, when I
heard a strong, sweet voice cry out in the roadway:

"'Is there room in this house for me till the storm has blown by? I
cannot see my way down the hillside.'

"With a bursting heart I looked up. A woman was standing in the doorway,
with the look of an angel in her eyes. I did not know her, but her face
was one to bring comfort to the saddest heart. Holding up my baby, I
cried:

"'My baby is dying; I tried to go for the doctor, but my knees bent
under me. Help me, as you are a mother--I--- '

"I must have fallen again, for the next thing I remember I was lying by
the hearth, looking up into her face, which was bending over me. She was
white as the rag I had tied about my baby's throat, and by the way her
breast heaved she was either very much frightened or very sorry.

"'I wish you had the help of anyone else,' said she. 'Babies perish in
my arms and wither at my breast. I cannot touch it, much as I yearn to.
But let me see its face; perhaps I can tell you what is the matter with
it.'

"I showed her the baby's face, and she bent over it, trembling very
much, almost as much indeed as myself.

"'It is very sick,' she said, 'but if you will use the remedies I
advise, I think you can save it.' And she told me what to do, and helped
me all she could; but she did not lay a finger on the little darling,
though from the way she watched it I saw that her heart was set on his
getting better. And he did; in an hour he was sleeping peacefully, and
the terrible weight was gone from my heart and from hers. When the storm
stopped, and she could leave the house, she gave me a kiss; but the look
she gave him meant more than kisses. God must have forgotten her
goodness to me that night when He let her die so pitiable a death."

At the minister's house they were commenting upon the look of serenity
observable in her dead face.

"I have known her for thirty years," her pastor declared, "and never
before have I seen her wear a look of real peace. It is wonderful,
considering the circumstances. Do you think she was so weary of her
life's long struggle that she hailed any release from it, even that of
violence?"

A young man, a lawyer, visiting them from New York, was the only one to
answer.

"I never saw the woman you are talking about," said he, "and know
nothing of the circumstances of her death beyond what you have told me.
But from the very incongruity between her expression and the violent
nature of her death, I argue that there are depths to this crime which
have not yet been sounded."

"What depths? It is a simple case of murder followed by theft. To be
sure we do not yet know the criminal, but money was his motive; that is
clear enough."

"Are you ready to wager that that is all there is to it?"

This was a startling proposition to the minister.

"You forget my cloth," said he.

The young man smiled. "That is true. Pardon me. I was only anxious to
show how strong my conviction was against any such easy explanation of a
crime marked by such contradictory features."

Two children on the Portchester road were exchanging boyish confidences.

"Do you know what I think about it?" asked one.

"Naw! How should I?"

"Wall, I think old Mrs. Webb got the likes of what she sent. Don't you
know she had six children once, and that she killed every one of them?"

"Killed'em--she?"

"Yes, I heard her tell granny once all about it. She said there was a
blight on her house--I don't know what that is; but I guess it's
something big and heavy--and that it fell on every one of her children,
as fast as they came, and killed 'em."

"Then I'm glad I ben't her child."

Very different were the recollections interchanged between two
middle-aged Portchester women.

"She was drinking tea at my house when her sister Sairey came running in
with the news that the baby she had left at home wasn't quite right.
That was her first child, you know."

"Yes, yes, for I was with her when that baby came," broke in the other,
"and such joy as she showed when they told her it was alive and well I
never saw. I do not know why she didn't expect it to be alive, but she
didn't, and her happiness was just wonderful to see."

"Well, she didn't enjoy it long. The poor little fellow died young. But
I was telling you of the night when she first heard he was ailing.
Philemon had been telling a good story, and we were all laughing, when
Sairey came in. I can see Agatha now. She always had the most brilliant
eyes in the county, but that day they were superbly dazzling. They
changed, though, at the sight of Sairey's face, and she jumped to meet
her just as if she knew what Sairey was going to say before ever a word
left her lips. 'My baby!' (I can hear her yet.) 'Something is the matter
with the baby!' And though Sairey made haste to tell her that he was
only ailing and not at all ill, she turned upon Philemon with a look
none of us ever quite understood; he changed so completely under it,
just as she had under Sairey's; and to neither did the old happiness
ever return, for the child died within a week, and when the next came it
died also, and the next, till six small innocents lay buried in yonder
old graveyard."

"I know; and sad enough it was too, especially as she and Philemon were
both fond of children. Well, well, the ways of Providence are past
rinding out! And now she is gone and Philemon---"

"Ah, he'll follow her soon; he can't live without Agatha."

Nearer home, the old sexton was chattering about the six gravestones
raised in Portchester churchyard to these six dead infants. He had been
sent there to choose a spot in which to lay the mother, and was full of
the shock it gave him to see that line of little stones, telling of a
past with which the good people of Sutherlandtown found it hard to
associate Philemon and Agatha Webb.

"I'm a digger of graves," he mused, half to himself and half to his old
wife watching him from the other side of the hearthstone. "I spend a
good quarter of my time in the churchyard; but when I saw those six
little mounds, and read the inscriptions over them, I couldn't help
feeling queer. Think of this! On the first tiny headstone I read these
words:"

  STEPHEN,

  Son of Philemon and Agatha Webb,

  Died, Aged Six Weeks.

  God be merciful to me a sinner!

"Now what does that mean? Did you ever hear anyone say?"

"No," was his old wife's answer. "Perhaps she was one of those Calvinist
folks who believe babies go to hell if they are not baptised."

"But her children were all baptised. I've been told so; some of them
before she was well out of her bed. 'God be merciful to me a sinner!'
And the chick not six weeks old! Something queer about that, dame, if it
did happen more than thirty years ago."

"What did you see over the grave of the child who was killed in her arms
by lightning?"

"This:

"'And he was not, for God took him.'"

Farmer Waite had but one word to say:

"She came to me when my Sissy had the smallpox; the only person in town
who would enter my doors. More than that; when Sissy was up and I went
to pay the doctor's bill I found it had been settled. I did not know
then who had enough money and compassion to do this for me; now I do."

Many an act of kindness which had been secretly performed in that town
during the last twenty years came to light on that day, the most notable
of which was the sending of a certain young lad to school and his
subsequent education as a minister.

But other memories of a sweeter and more secret nature still came up
likewise, among them the following:

A young girl, who was of a very timid but deeply sensitive nature, had
been urged into an engagement with a man she did not like. Though the
conflict this occasioned her and the misery which accompanied it were
apparent to everybody, nobody stirred in her behalf but Agatha. She went
to see her, and, though it was within a fortnight of the wedding, she
did not hesitate to advise the girl to give him up, and when the poor
child said she lacked the courage, Agatha herself went to the man and
urged him into a display of generosity which saved the poor, timid thing
from a life of misery. They say this was no easy task for Agatha, and
that the man was sullen for a year. But the girl's gratitude was
boundless.

Of her daring, which was always on the side of right and justice, the
stories were numerous; so were the accounts, mostly among the women, of
her rare tenderness and sympathy for the weak and the erring. Never was
a man talked to as she talked to Jake Cobleigh the evening after he
struck his mother, and if she had been in town on the day when Clarissa
Mayhew ran away with that Philadelphia adventurer many said it would
never have happened, for no girl could stand the admonition, or resist
the pleading, of this childless mother.

It was reserved for Mr. Halliday and Mr. Sutherland to talk of her
mental qualities. Her character was so marked and her manner so simple
that few gave attention to the intellect that was the real basis of her
power. The two mentioned gentlemen, however, appreciated her to the
full, and it was while listening to their remarks that Frederick was
suddenly startled by some one saying to him:

"You are the only person in town who have nothing to say about Agatha
Webb. Didn't you ever exchange any words with her?--for I can hardly
believe you could have met her eye to eye without having some remark to
make about her beauty or her influence."

The speaker was Agnes Halliday, who had come in with her father for a
social chat. She was one of Frederick's earliest playmates, but one with
whom he had never assimilated and who did not like him. He knew this, as
did everyone else in town, and it was with some hesitation he turned to
answer her.

"I have but one recollection," he began, and for the moment got no
farther, for in turning his head to address his young guest he had
allowed his gaze to wander through the open window by which she sat,
into the garden beyond, where Amabel could be seen picking flowers. As
he spoke, Amabel lifted her face with one of her suggestive looks. She
had doubtless heard Miss Halliday's remark.

Recovering himself with an effort, he repeated his words: "I have but
one recollection of Mrs. Webb that I can give you. Years ago when I was
a lad I was playing on the green with several other boys. We had had
some dispute about a lost ball, and I was swearing angrily and loud when
I suddenly perceived before me the tall form and compassionate face of
Mrs. Webb. She was dressed in her usual simple way, and had a basket on
her arm, but she looked so superior to any other woman I had ever met
that I did not know whether to hide my face in her skirts or to follow
my first impulse and run away. She saw the emotion she had aroused, and
lifting up my face by the chin, she said: 'Little boy, I have buried six
children, all of them younger than you, and now my husband and myself
live alone. Often and often have I wished that one at least of these
darling infants might have been spared us. But had God given me the
choice of having them die young and innocent, or of growing up to swear
as I have heard you to-day, I should have prayed God to take them, as He
did. You have a mother. Do not break her heart by taking in vain the
name of the God she reveres.' And with that she kissed me, and, strange
as it may seem to you, in whatever folly or wickedness I have indulged,
I have never made use of an oath from that day to this--and I thank God
for it."

There was such unusual feeling in his voice, a feeling that none had
ever suspected him capable of before, that Miss Halliday regarded him
with astonishment and quite forgot to indulge in her usual banter. Even
the gentlemen sat still, and there was a momentary silence, through
which there presently broke the incongruous sound of a shrill and
mocking laugh.

It came from Amabel, who had just finished gathering her bouquet in the
garden outside.




X

DETECTIVE KNAPP ARRIVES


Meanwhile, in a small room at the court-house, a still more serious
conversation was in progress. Dr. Talbot, Mr. Fenton, and a certain able
lawyer in town by the name of Harvey, were in close discussion. The last
had broken the silence of years, and was telling what he knew of Mrs.
Webb's affairs.

He was a shrewd man, of unblemished reputation. When called upon to
talk, he talked well, but he much preferred listening, and was, as now
appeared, the safest repository of secrets to be found in all that
region. He had been married three times, and could still count thirteen
children around his board, one reason, perhaps, why he had learned to
cultivate silence to such a degree. Happily, the time had come for him
to talk, and he talked. This is what he said:

"Some fifteen years ago Philemon Webb came to me with a small sum of
money, which he said he wished to have me invest for his wife. It was
the fruit of a small speculation of his and he wanted it given
unconditionally to her without her knowledge or that of the neighbours.
I accordingly made out a deed of gift, which he signed with joyful
alacrity, and then after due thought and careful investigation, I put
the money into a new enterprise then being started in Boston. It was the
best stroke of business I ever did in my life. At the end of a year it
paid double, and after five had rolled away the accumulated interest had
reached such a sum that both Philemon and myself thought it wisest to
let her know what she was worth and what was being done with the money.
I was in hopes it would lead her to make some change in her mode of
living, which seemed to me out of keeping with her appearance and mental
qualifications; while he, I imagine, looked for something more important
still--a smile on the face which had somehow lost the trick of
merriment, though it had never acquired that of ill nature. But we did
not know Agatha; at least I did not. When she learned that she was rich,
she looked at first awestruck and then heart-pierced. Forgetting me, or
ignoring me, it makes no matter which, she threw herself into Philemon's
arms and wept, while he, poor faithful fellow, looked as distressed as
if he had brought news of failure instead of triumphant success. I
suppose she thought of her buried children, and what the money would
have been to her if they had lived; but she did not speak of them, nor
am I quite sure they were in her thoughts when, after the first
excitement was over, she drew back and said quietly, but in a tone of
strong feeling, to Philemon: 'You meant me a happy surprise, and you
must not be disappointed. This is heart money; we will use it to make
our townsfolk happy.' I saw him glance at her dress, which was a purple
calico. I remember it because of that look and because of the sad smile
with which she followed his glance. 'Can we not afford now,' he
ventured, 'a little show of luxury, or at least a ribbon or so for this
beautiful throat of yours?' She did not answer him; but her look had a
rare compassion in it, a compassion, strange to say, that seemed to be
expended upon him rather than upon herself. Philemon swallowed his
disappointment. 'Agatha is right,' he said to me. 'We do not need
luxury. I do not know how I so far forgot myself as to mention it.' That
was ten years ago, and every day since then her property has increased.
I did not know then, and I do not know now, why they were both so
anxious that all knowledge of their good fortune should be kept from
those about them; but that it was to be so kept was made very evident to
me; and, notwithstanding all temptations to the contrary, I have
refrained from uttering a word likely to give away their secret. The
money, which to all appearance was the cause of her tragic and untimely
death, was interest money which I was delegated to deliver her. I took
it to her day before yesterday, and it was all in crisp new notes, some
of them twenties, but most of them tens and fives. I am free to say
there was not such another roll of fresh money in town."

"Warn all shopkeepers to keep a sharp lookout for new bills in the money
they receive," was Dr. Talbot's comment to the constable. "Fresh ten-and
twenty-dollar bills are none too common in this town. And now about her
will. Did you draw that up, Harvey?"

"No. I did not know she had made one. I often spoke to her about the
advisability of her doing so, but she always put me off. And now it
seems that she had it drawn up in Boston. Could not trust her old friend
with too many secrets, I suppose."

"So you don't know how her money has been left?"

"No more than you do."

Here an interruption occurred. The door opened and a slim young man,
wearing spectacles, came in. At sight of him they all rose.

"Well?" eagerly inquired Dr. Talbot.

"Nothing new," answered the young man, with a consequential air. "The
elder woman died from loss of blood consequent upon a blow given by a
small, three-sided, slender blade; the younger from a stroke of
apoplexy, induced by fright."

"Good! I am glad to hear my instincts were not at fault. Loss of blood,
eh? Death, then, was not instantaneous?"

"No."

"Strange!" fell from the lips of his two listeners. "She lived, yet gave
no alarm."

"None that was heard," suggested the young doctor, who was from another
town.

"Or, if heard, reached no ears but Philemon's," observed the constable.
"Something must have taken him up-stairs."

"I am not so sure," said the coroner, "that Philemon is not answerable
for the whole crime, notwithstanding our failure to find the missing
money anywhere in the house. How else account for the resignation with
which she evidently met her death? Had a stranger struck her, Agatha
Webb would have struggled. There is no sign of struggle in the room."

"She would have struggled against Philemon had she had strength to
struggle. I think she was asleep when she was struck."

"Ah! And was not standing by the table? How about the blood there,
then?"

"Shaken from the murderer's fingers in fright or disgust."

"There was no blood on Philemon's fingers."

"No; he wiped them on his sleeve."

"If he was the one to use the dagger against her, where is the dagger?
Should we not be able to find it somewhere about the premises?"

"He may have buried it outside. Crazy men are supernaturally cunning."

"When you can produce it from any place inside that board fence, I will
consider your theory. At present I limit my suspicions of Philemon to
the half-unconscious attentions which a man of disordered intellect
might give a wife bleeding and dying under his eyes. My idea on the
subject is---"

"Would you be so kind as not to give utterance to your ideas until I
have been able to form some for myself?" interrupted a voice from the
doorway.

As this voice was unexpected, they all turned. A small man with sleek
dark hair and expressionless features stood before them. Behind him was
Abel, carrying a hand-bag and umbrella.

"The detective from Boston," announced the latter. Coroner Talbot rose.

"You are in good time," he remarked. "We have work of no ordinary nature
for you."

The man failed to look interested. But then his countenance was not one
to show emotion.

"My name is Knapp," said he. "I have had my supper, and am ready to go
to work. I have read the newspapers; all I want now is any additional
facts that have come to light since the telegraphic dispatches were sent
to Boston. Facts, mind you; not theories. I never allow myself to be
hampered by other persons' theories."

Not liking his manner, which was brusque and too self-important for a
man of such insignificant appearance, Coroner Talbot referred him to Mr.
Fenton, who immediately proceeded to give him the result of such
investigations as he and his men had been able to make; which done, Mr.
Knapp put on his hat and turned toward the door.

"I will go to the house and see for myself what is to be learned there,"
said he. "May I ask the privilege of going alone?" he added, as Mr.
Fenton moved. "Abel will see that I am given admittance."

"Show me your credentials," said the coroner. He did so. "They seem all
right, and you should be a man who understands his business. Go alone,
if you prefer, but bring your conclusions here. They may need some
correcting."

"Oh, I will return," Knapp nonchalantly remarked, and went out, having
made anything but a favourable impression upon the assembled gentlemen.

"I wish we had shown more grit and tried to handle this thing
ourselves," observed Mr. Fenton. "I cannot bear to think of that cold,
bloodless creature hovering over our beloved Agatha."

"I wonder at Carson. Why should he send us such a man? Could he not see
the matter demanded extraordinary skill and judgment?"

"Oh, this fellow may have skill. But he is so unpleasant. I hate to deal
with folks of such fish-like characteristics. But who is this?" he asked
as a gentle tap was heard at the door. "Why, it's Loton. What can he
want here?"

The man whose presence in the doorway had called out this exclamation
started at the sound of the doctor's heavy voice, and came very
hesitatingly forward. He was of a weak, irritable type, and seemed to be
in a state of great excitement.

"I beg pardon," said he, "for showing myself. I don't like to intrude
into such company, but I have something to tell you which may be of use,
sirs, though it isn't any great thing, either."

"Something about the murder which has taken place?" asked the coroner,
in a milder tone. He knew Loton well, and realised the advisability of
encouragement in his case.

"The murder! Oh, I wouldn't presume to say anything about the murder.
I'm not the man to stir up any such subject as that. It's about the
money--or some money--more money than usually falls into my till. It--it
was rather queer, sirs, and I have felt the flutter of it all day. Shall
I tell you about it? It happened last night, late last night, sirs, so
late that I was in bed with my wife, and had been snoring, she said,
four hours."

"What money? New money? Crisp, fresh bills, Loton?" eagerly questioned
Mr. Fenton.

Loton, who was the keeper of a small confectionery and bakery store on
one of the side streets leading up the hill, shifted uneasily between
his two interrogators, and finally addressed himself to the coroner:

"It was new money. I thought it felt so at night, but I was sure of it
in the morning. A brand-new bill, sir, a--But that isn't the queerest
thing about it. I was asleep, sir, sound asleep, and dreaming of my
courting days (for I asked Sally at the circus, sirs, and the band
playing on the hill made me think of it), when I was suddenly shook
awake by Sally herself, who says she hadn't slept a wink for listening
to the music and wishing she was a girl again. 'There's a man at the
shop door,' cries she. 'He's a-calling of you; go and see what he
wants.' I was mad at being wakened. Dreaming is pleasant, specially when
clowns and kissing get mixed up in it, but duty is duty, and so into the
shop I stumbled, swearing a bit perhaps, for I hadn't stopped for a
light and it was as dark as double shutters could make it. The hammering
had become deafening. No let up till I reached the door, when it
suddenly ceased.

"'What is it?' I cried. 'Who's there and what do you want?'

"A trembling voice answered me. 'Let me in,' it said. 'I want to buy
something to eat. For God's sake, open the door!'

"I don't know why I obeyed, for it was late, and I did not know the
voice, but something in the impatient rattling of the door which
accompanied the words affected me in spite of myself, and I slowly
opened my shop to this midnight customer.

"'You must be hungry,' I began. But the person who had crowded in as
soon as the opening was large enough wouldn't let me finish.

"'Bread! I want bread, or crackers, or anything that you can find
easiest,' he gasped, like a man who had been running. 'Here's money';
and he poked into my hand a bill so stiff that it rattled. 'It's more
than enough,' he hastened to say, as I hesitated over it, 'but never
mind that; I'll come for the change in the morning.'

"'Who are you? I cried. 'You are not Blind Willy, I'm sure.'

"But his only answer was 'Bread!' while he leaned so hard against the
counter I felt it shake.

"I could not stand that cry of 'Bread!' so I groped about in the dark,
and found him a stale loaf, which I put into his arms, with a short,
'There! Now tell me what your name is.'

"But at this he seemed to shrink into himself; and muttering something
that might pass for thanks, he stumbled towards the door and rushed
hastily out. Running after him, I listened eagerly to his steps. They
went up the hill."

"And the money? What about the money?" asked the coroner. "Didn't he
come back for the change?"

"No. I put it in the till, thinking it was a dollar bill. But when I
came to look at it in the morning, it was a twenty; yes, sirs, a
twenty!"

This was startling. The coroner and the constable looked at each other
before looking again at him.

"And where is that bill now?" asked the former. "Have you brought it
with you?"

"I have, sir. It's been in and out of the till twenty times to-day. I
haven't known what to do with it. I don't like to think wrong of
anybody, but when I heard that Mrs. Webb (God bless her!) was murdered
last night for money, I couldn't rest for the weight of this thing on my
conscience. Here's the bill, sir. I wish I had let the old man rap on my
door till morning before I had taken it from him."

They did not share this feeling. A distinct and valuable clew seemed to
be afforded them by the fresh, crisp bill they saw in his hand. Silently
Dr. Talbot took it, while Mr. Fenton, with a shrewd look, asked:

"What reasons have you for calling this mysterious customer old? I
thought it was so dark you could not see him."

The man, who looked relieved since he had rid himself of the bill, eyed
the constable in some perplexity.

"I didn't see a feature of his face," said he, "and yet I'm sure he was
old. I never thought of him as being anything else."

"Well, we will see. And is that all you have to tell us?"

His nod was expressive, and they let him go.

An hour or so later Detective Knapp made his reappearance.

"Well," asked the coroner, as he came quietly in and closed the door
behind him, "what's your opinion?"

"Simple case, sir. Murdered for money. Find the man with a flowing
beard."




XI

THE MAN WITH A BEARD


There were but few men in town who wore long beards. A list was made of
these and handed to the coroner, who regarded it with a grim smile.

"Not a man whose name is here would be guilty of a misdemeanour, let
alone a crime. You must look outside of our village population for the
murderer of Agatha Webb."

"Very likely, but tell me something first about these persons," urged
Knapp. "Who is Edward Hope?"

"A watch repairer; a man of estimable character."

"And Sylvester Chubb?"

"A farmer who, to support his mother, wife, and seven children, works
from morning till sundown on his farm, and from sundown till 11 o'clock
at night on little fancy articles he cuts out from wood and sells in
Boston."

"John Barker, Thomas Elder, Timothy Sinn?"

"All good men; I can vouch for every one of them."

"And John Zabel, James Zabel?"

"Irreproachable, both of them. Famous ship--builders once, but the change
to iron ship-building has thrown them out of business. Pity, too, for
they were remarkable builders. By the by, Fenton, we don't see them at
church or on the docks any more."

"No, they keep very much to themselves; getting old, like ourselves,
Talbot."

"Lively boys once. We must hunt them up, Fenton. Can't bear to see old
friends drop away from good company. But this isn't business. You need
not pause over their names, Knapp."

But Knapp had slipped out.

We will follow him.

Walking briskly down the street, he went up the steps of a certain house
and rang the bell. A gentleman with a face not entirely unknown to us
came to the door.

The detective did not pause for preliminaries.

"Are you Mr. Crane?" he asked,--"the gentleman who ran against a man
coming out of Mrs. Webb's house last night?"

"I am Mr. Crane," was the slightly surprised rejoinder, "and I was run
against by a man there, yes."

"Very well," remarked the detective, quietly, "my name is Knapp. I have
been sent from Boston to look into this matter, and I have an idea that
you can help me more than any other man here in Sutherlandtown. Who was
this person who came in contact with you so violently? You know, even if
you have been careful not to mention any names."

"You are mistaken. I don't know; I can't know. He wore a sweeping beard,
and walked and acted like a man no longer young, but beyond that---"

"Mr. Crane, excuse me, but I know men. If you had no suspicion as to
whom that person was you would not look so embarrassed. You suspect, or,
at least, associate in your own mind a name with the man you met. Was it
either of these you see written here?"

Mr. Crane glanced at the card on which the other had scribbled a couple
of names, and started perceptibly.

"You have me," said he; "you must be a man of remarkable perspicacity."

The detective smiled and pocketed his card. The names he thus concealed
were John Zabel, James Zabel.

"You have not said which of the two it was," Knapp quietly suggested.

"No," returned the minister, "and I have not even thought. Indeed, I am
not sure that I have not made a dreadful mistake in thinking it was
either. A glimpse such as I had is far from satisfactory; and they are
both such excellent men---"

"Eight! You did make a mistake, of course, I have not the least doubt of
it. So don't think of the matter again. I will find out who the real man
was; rest easy."

And with the lightest of bows, Knapp drew off and passed as quickly as
he could, without attracting attention, round the corner to the
confectioner's.

Here his attack was warier. Sally Loton was behind the counter with her
husband, and they had evidently been talking the matter over very
confidentially. But Knapp was not to be awed by her small, keen eye or
strident voice, and presently succeeded in surprising a knowing look on
the lady's face, which convinced him that in the confidences between
husband and wife a name had been used which she appeared to be less
unwilling to impart than he. Knapp, consequently, turned his full
attention towards her, using in his attack that oldest and subtlest
weapon against the sex--flattery.

"My dear madam," said he, "your good heart is apparent; your husband has
confided to you a name which you, out of fear of some mistake, hesitate
to repeat. A neighbourly spirit, ma'am, a very neighbourly spirit; but
you should not allow your goodness to defeat the ends of justice. If you
simply told us whom this man resembled we would be able to get some idea
of his appearance."

"He didn't resemble anyone I know," growled Loton. "It was too dark for
me to see how he looked."

"His voice, then? People are traced by their voices."

"I didn't recognise his voice."

Knapp smiled, his eye still on the woman.

"Yet you have thought of someone he reminded you of?"

The man was silent, but the wife tossed her head ever so lightly.

"Now, you must have had your reasons for that. No one thinks of a good
and respectable neighbour in connection with the buying of a loaf of
bread at midnight with a twenty-dollar bill, without some positive
reason."

"The man wore a beard. I felt it brush my hand as he took the loaf."

"Good! That is a point."

"Which made me think of other men who wore beards."

"As, for instance---"

The detective had taken from his pocket the card which he had used with
such effect at the minister's, and as he said these words twirled it so
that the two names written upon it fell under Sally Loton's inquisitive
eyes. The look with which she read them was enough. John Zabel, James
Zabel.

"Who told you it was either of these men?" she asked.

"You did," he retorted, pocketing the card with a smile.

"La, now! Samuel, I never spoke a word," she insisted, in anxious
protest to her husband, as the detective slid quietly from the store.




XII

WATTLES COMES


The Hallidays lived but a few rods from the Sutherlands. Yet as it was
dusk when Miss Halliday rose to depart, Frederick naturally offered his
services as her escort.

She accepted them with a slight blush, the first he had ever seen on her
face, or at least had ever noted there. It caused him such surprise that
he forgot Amabel's presence in the garden till they came upon her at the
gate.

"A pleasant evening," observed that young girl in her high, unmusical
voice.

"Very," was Miss Halliday's short reply; and for a moment the two faces
were in line as he held open the gate before his departing guest.

They were very different faces in feature and expression, and till that
night he had never thought of comparing them. Indeed, the fascination
which beamed from Amabel Page's far from regular features had put all
others out of his mind, but now, as he surveyed the two girls, the
candour and purity which marked Agnes's countenance came out so strongly
under his glance that Amabel lost all attraction for him, and he drew
his young neighbour hastily away.

Amabel noted the movement and smiled. Her contempt for Agnes Halliday's
charms amounted to disdain.

She might have felt less confidence in her own had she been in a
position to note the frequent glances Frederick cast at his old playmate
as they proceeded slowly up the road. Not that there was any passion in
them--he was too full of care for that; but the curiosity which could
prompt him to turn his head a dozen times in the course of so short a
walk, to see why Agnes Halliday held her face so persistently away from
him, had an element of feeling in it that was more or less significant.
As for Agnes, she was so unlike her accustomed self as to astonish even
herself. Whereas she had never before walked a dozen steps with him
without indulging in some sharp saying, she found herself disinclined to
speak at all, much less to speak lightly. In mutual silence, then, they
reached the gateway leading into the Halliday grounds. But Agnes having
passed in, they both stopped and for the first time looked squarely at
each other. Her eyes fell first, perhaps because his had changed in his
contemplation of her. He smiled as he saw this, and in a half-careless,
half-wistful tone, said quietly:

"Agnes, what would you think of a man who, after having committed little
else but folly all his life, suddenly made up his mind to turn
absolutely toward the right and to pursue it in face of every obstacle
and every discouragement?"

"I should think," she slowly replied, with one quick lift of her eyes
toward his face, "that he had entered upon the noblest effort of which
man is capable, and the hardest. I should have great sympathy for that
man, Frederick."

"Would you?" he said, recalling Amabel's face with bitter aversion as he
gazed into the womanly countenance he had hitherto slighted as
uninteresting. "It is the first kind word you have ever given me, Agnes.
Possibly it is the first I have ever deserved."

And without another word he doffed his hat, saluted her, and vanished
down the hillside.

She remained; remained so long that it was nearly nine when she entered
the family parlour. As she came in her mother looked up and was startled
at her unaccustomed pallor.

"Why, Agnes," cried her mother, "what is the matter?"

Her answer was inaudible. What was the matter? She dreaded, even feared,
to ask herself.

Meantime a strange scene was taking place in the woods toward which she
had seen Frederick go. The moon, which was particularly bright that
night, shone upon a certain hollow where a huge tree lay. Around it the
underbrush was thick and the shadow dark, but in this especial place the
opening was large enough for the rays to enter freely. Into this circlet
of light Frederick Sutherland had come. Alone and without the restraint
imposed upon him by watching eyes, he showed a countenance so wan and
full of trouble that it was well it could not be seen by either of the
two women whose thoughts were at that moment fixed upon him. To Amabel
it would have given a throb of selfish hope, while to Agnes it would
have brought a pang of despair which might have somewhat too suddenly
interpreted to her the mystery of her own sensations.

He had bent at once to the hollow space made by the outspreading roots
just mentioned, and was feeling with an air of confidence along the
ground for something he had every reason to expect to find, when the
shock of a sudden distrust seized him, and he flung himself down in
terror, feeling and feeling again among the fallen leaves and broken
twigs, till a full realisation of his misfortune reached him, and he was
obliged to acknowledge that the place was empty.

Overwhelmed at his loss, aghast at the consequences it must entail upon
him, he rose in a trembling sweat, crying out in his anger and dismay:

"She has been here! She has taken it!" And realising for the first time
the subtlety and strength of the antagonist pitted against him, he
forgot his new resolutions and even that old promise made in his
childhood to Agatha Webb, and uttered oath after oath, cursing himself,
the woman, and what she had done, till a casual glance at the heavens
overhead, in which the liquid moon hung calm and beautiful, recalled him
to himself. With a sense of shame, the keener that it was a new
sensation in his breast, he ceased his vain repinings, and turning from
the unhallowed spot, made his way with deeper and deeper misgivings
toward a home made hateful to him now by the presence of the woman who
was thus bent upon his ruin.

He understood her now. He rated at its full value both her determination
and her power, and had she been so unfortunate as to have carried her
imprudence to the point of surprising him by her presence, it would have
taken more than the memory of that day's solemn resolves to have kept
him from using his strength against her. But she was wise, and did not
intrude upon him in his hour of anger, though who could say she was not
near enough to hear the sigh which broke irresistibly from his lips as
he emerged from the wood and approached his father's house?

A lamp was still burning in Mr. Sutherland's study over the front door,
and the sight of it seemed to change for a moment the current of
Frederick's thoughts. Pausing at the gate, he considered with himself,
and then with a freer countenance and a lighter step was about to
proceed inward, when he heard the sound of a heavy breather coming up
the hill, and hesitated--why he hardly knew, except that every advancing
step occasioned him more or less apprehension.

The person, whoever it was, stopped before reaching the brow of the
hill, and, panting heavily, muttered an oath which Frederick heard.
Though it was no more profane than those which had just escaped his own
lips in the forest, it produced an effect upon him which was only second
in intensity to the terror of the discovery that the money he had so
safely hidden was gone.

Trembling in every limb, he dashed down the hill and confronted the
person standing there.

"You!" he cried, "you!" And for a moment he looked as if he would like
to fell to the ground the man before him.

But this man was a heavyweight of no ordinary physical strength and
adroitness, and only smiled at Frederick's heat and threatening
attitude.

"I thought I would be made welcome," he smiled, with just the hint of
sinister meaning in his tone. Then, before Frederick could speak: "I
have merely saved you a trip to Boston; why so much anger, friend? You
have the money; of that I am positive."

"Hush! We can't talk here," whispered Frederick. "Come into the grounds,
or, what would be better, into the woods over there."

"I don't go into any woods with you," laughed the other; "not after last
night, my friend. But I will talk low; that's no more than fair; I don't
want to put you into any other man's power, especially if you have the
money."

"Wattles,"--Frederick's tone was broken, almost unintelligible,--"what
do you mean by your allusion to last night? Have you dared to connect
me---"

"Pooh! Pooh!" interrupted the other, good-humouredly. "Don't let us
waste words over a chance expression I may have dropped. I don't care
anything about last night's work, or who was concerned in it. That's
nothing to me. All I want, my boy, is the money, and that I want
devilish bad, or I would not have run up here from Boston, when I might
have made half a hundred off a countryman Lewis brought in from the
Canada wilds this morning."

"Wattles, I swear---"

But the hand he had raised was quickly drawn down by the other.

"Don't," said the older man, shortly. "It won't pay, Sutherland.
Stage-talk never passed for anything with me. Besides, your white face
tells a truer story than your lips, and time is precious. I want to take
the 11 o'clock train back. So down with the cash. Nine hundred and
fifty-five it is, but, being friends, we will let the odd five go."

"Wattles, I was to bring it to you to-morrow, or was it the next day? I
do not want to give it to you to-night; indeed, I cannot, but--Wattles,
wait, stop! Where are you going?"

"To see your father. I want to tell him that his son owes me a debt;
that this debt was incurred in a way that lays him liable to arrest for
forgery; that, bad as he thinks you, there are facts which can be picked
up in Boston which would render Frederick Sutherland's continued
residence under the parental roof impossible; that, in fact, you are a
scamp of the first water, and that only my friendship for you has kept
you out of prison so long. Won't that make a nice story for the old
gentleman's ears!"

"Wattles--I--oh, my God! Wattles, stop a minute and listen to me. I have
not got the money. I had enough this morning to pay you, had it
legitimately, Wattles, but it has been stolen from me and---"

"I will also tell him," the other broke in, as quietly as if Frederick
had not uttered a word, "that in a certain visit to Boston you lost five
hundred dollars on one hand; that you lost it unfairly, not having a
dollar to pay with; that to prevent scandal I became your security,
with the understanding that I was to be paid at the end of ten days from
that night; that you thereupon played again and lost four hundred and
odd more, so that your debt amounted to nine hundred and fifty-five
dollars; that the ten days passed without payment; that, wanting money,
I pressed you and even resorted to a threat or two; and that, seeing me
in earnest, you swore that the dollars should be mine within five days;
that instead of remaining in Boston to get them, you came here; and that
this morning at a very early hour you telegraphed that the funds were to
hand and that you would bring them down to me to-morrow. The old
gentleman may draw conclusions from this, Sutherland, which may make his
position as your father anything but grateful to him. He may even--Ah,
you would try that game, would you?"

The young man had flung himself at the older man's throat as if he would
choke off the words he saw trembling on his lips. But the struggle thus
begun was short. In a moment both stood panting, and Frederick, with
lowered head, was saying humbly:

"I beg pardon, Wattles, but you drive me mad with your suggestions and
conclusions. I have not got the money, but I will try and get it. Wait
here."

"For ten minutes, Sutherland; no longer! The moon is bright, and I can
see the hands of my watch distinctly. At a quarter to ten, you will
return here with the amount I have mentioned, or I will seek it at your
father's hands in his own study."

Frederick made a hurried gesture and vanished up the walk. Next moment
he was at his father's study door.




XIII

WATTLES GOES


Mr. Sutherland was busily engaged with a law paper when his son entered
his presence, but at sight of that son's face, he dropped the paper with
an alacrity which Frederick was too much engaged with his own thoughts
to notice.

"Father," he began without preamble or excuse, "I am in serious and
immediate need of nine hundred and fifty dollars. I want it so much that
I ask you to make me a check for that amount to-night, conscious though
I am that you have every right to deny me this request, and that my debt
to you already passes the bound of presumption on my part and indulgence
on yours. I cannot tell you why I want it or for what. That belongs to
my past life, the consequences of which I have not yet escaped, but I
feel bound to state that you will not be the loser by this material
proof of confidence in me, as I shall soon be in a position to repay all
my debts, among which this will necessarily stand foremost."

The old gentleman looked startled and nervously fingered the paper he
had let fall. "Why do you say you will soon be in a position to repay
me? What do you mean by that?"

The flash, which had not yet subsided from the young man's face, ebbed
slowly away as he encountered his father's eye.

"I mean to work," he murmured. "I mean to make a man of myself as soon
as possible."

The look which Mr. Sutherland gave him was more inquiring than
sympathetic.

"And you need this money for a start?" said he.

Frederick bowed; he seemed to be losing the faculty of speech. The clock
over the mantel had told off five of the precious moments.

"I will give it to you," said his father, and drew out his check-book.
But he did not hasten to open it; his eyes still rested on his son.

"Now," murmured the young man. "There is a train leaving soon. I wish to
get it away on that train."

His father frowned with natural distrust.

"I wish you would confide in me," said he.

Frederick did not answer. The hands of the clock were moving on.

"I will give it to you; but I should like to know what for."

"It is impossible for me to tell you," groaned the young man, starting
as he heard a step on the walk without.

"Your need has become strangely imperative," proceeded the other. "Has
Miss Page---"

Frederick took a step forward and laid his hand on his father's arm.

"It is not for her," he whispered. "It goes into other hands."

Mr. Sutherland, who had turned over the document as his son approached,
breathed more easily. Taking up his pen, he dipped it in the ink.
Frederick watched him with constantly whitening cheek. The step on the
walk had mounted to the front door.

"Nine hundred and fifty?" inquired the father.

"Nine hundred and fifty," answered the son.

The judge, with a last look, stooped over the book. The hands of the
clock pointed to a quarter to ten.

"Father, I have my whole future in which to thank you," cried Frederick,
seizing the check his father held out to him and making rapidly for the
door. "I will be back before midnight." And he flung himself down-stairs
just as the front door opened and Wattles stepped in.

"Ah," exclaimed the latter, as his eye fell on the paper fluttering in
the other's hand, "I expected money, not paper."

"The paper is good," answered Frederick, drawing him swiftly out of the
house. "It has my father's signature upon it."

"Your father's signature?"

"Yes."

Wattles gave it a look, then slowly shook his head at Frederick.

"Is it as well done as the one you tried to pass off on Brady?"

Frederick cringed, and for a moment looked as if the struggle was too
much for him. Then he rallied and eying Wattles firmly, said:

"You have a right to distrust me, but you are on the wrong track,
Wattles. What I did once, I can never do again; and I hope I may live to
prove myself a changed man. As for that check, I will soon prove its
value in your eyes. Follow me up-stairs to my father."

His energy--the energy of despair, no doubt seemed to make an impression
on the other.

"You might as well proclaim yourself a forger outright, as to force your
father to declare this to be his signature," he observed.

"I know it," said Frederick.

"Yet you will run that risk?"

"If you oblige me."

Wattles shrugged his shoulders. He was a magnificent-looking man and
towered in that old colonial hall like a youthful giant.

"I bear you no ill will," said he. "If this represents money, I am
satisfied, and I begin to think it does. But listen, Sutherland.
Something has happened to you. A week ago you would have put a bullet
through my head before you would have been willing to have so
compromised yourself. I think I know what that something is. To save
yourself from being thought guilty of a big crime you are willing to
incur suspicion of a small one. It's a wise move, my boy, but look out!
No tricks with me or my friendship may not hold. Meantime, I cash this
check to-morrow." And he swung away through the night with a grand-opera
selection on his lips.




XIV

A FINAL TEMPTATION


Frederick looked like a man thoroughly exhausted when the final echo of
this hateful voice died away on the hillside. For the last twenty hours
he had been the prey of one harrowing emotion after another, and human
nature could endure no more without rest.

But rest would not come. The position in which he found himself, between
Amabel and the man who had just left, was of too threatening a nature
for him to ignore. But one means of escape presented itself. It was a
cowardly one; but anything was better than to make an attempt to stand
his ground against two such merciless antagonists; so he resolved upon
flight.

Packing up a few necessaries and leaving a letter behind him for his
father, he made his way down the stairs of the now darkened house to a
door opening upon the garden. To his astonishment he found it unlocked,
but, giving little heed to this in his excitement, he opened it with
caution, and, with a parting sigh for the sheltering home he was about
to leave forever, stepped from the house he no longer felt worthy to
inhabit.

His intention was to take the train at Portchester, and that he might
reach that place without inconvenient encounters, he decided to proceed
by a short cut through the fields. This led him north along the ridge
that overlooks the road running around the base of the hill. He did not
think of this road, however, or of anything, in fact, but the necessity
of taking the very earliest train out of Portchester. As this left at
3.30 A.M., he realised that he must hasten in order to reach it. But he
was not destined to take it or any other train out of Portchester that
night, for when he reached the fence dividing Mr. Sutherland's grounds
from those of his adjoining neighbour, he saw, drawn up in the moonlight
just at the point where he had intended to leap the fence, the form of a
woman with one hand held out to stop him.

It was Amabel.

Confounded by this check and filled with an anger that was nigh to
dangerous, he fell back and then immediately sprang forward.

"What are you doing here?" he cried. "Don't you know that it is eleven
o'clock and that my father requires the house to be closed at that
hour?"

"And you?" was her sole retort; "what are you doing here? Are you
searching for flowers in the woods, and is that valise you carry the
receptacle in which you hope to put your botanical specimens?"

With a savage gesture he dropped the valise and took her fiercely by the
shoulders.

"Where have you hidden my money?" he hissed. "Tell me, or---"

"Or what?" she asked, smiling into his face in a way that made him lose
his grip.

"Or--or I cannot answer for myself," he proceeded, stammering. "Do you.
think I can endure everything from you because you are a woman? No; I
will have those bills, every one of them, or show myself your master.
Where are they, you incarnate fiend?"

It was an unwise word to use, but she did not seem to heed it.

"Ah," she said softly, and with a lingering accent, as if his grasp of
her had been a caress to which she was not entirely averse. "I did not
think you would discover its loss so soon. When did you go to the woods,
Frederick? And was Miss Halliday with you?"

He had a disposition to strike her, but controlled himself. Blows would
not avail against the softness of this suave, yet merciless, being. Only
a will as strong as her own could hope to cope with this smiling fury;
and this he was determined to show, though, alas! he had everything to
lose in a struggle that robbed her of nothing but a hope which was but a
baseless fabric at best; for he was more than ever determined never to
marry her.

"A man does not need to wait long to miss his own," said he. "And if you
have taken this money, which, you do not deny, you have shown yourself
very short-sighted, for danger lies closer to the person holding this
money than to the one you vilify by your threats. This you will find,
Amabel, when you come to make use of the weapon with which you have
thought to arm yourself."

"Tut, tut!" was her contemptuous reply. "Do you consider me a child? Do
I look like a babbling infant, Frederick?"

Her face, which had been lifted to his in saying this, was so illumined,
both by her smile, which was strangely enchanting for one so evil, and
by the moonlight, which so etherialises all that it touches, that he
found himself forced to recall that other purer, truer face he had left
at the honeysuckle porch to keep down a last wild impulse toward her,
which would have been his undoing, both in this world and the next, as
he knew.

"Or do I look simply like a woman?" she went on, seeing the impression
she had made, and playing upon it. "A woman who understands herself and
you and all the secret perils of the game we are both playing? If I am a
child, treat me as a child; but if I am a woman---"

"Stand out of my way!" he cried, catching up his valise and striding
furiously by her. "Woman or child, know that I will not be your
plaything to be damned in this world and in the next."

"Are you bound for the city of destruction?" she laughed, not moving,
but showing such confidence in her power to hold him back that he
stopped in spite of himself. "If so, you are taking the direct road
there and have only to hasten. But you had better remain in your
father's house; even if you are something of a prisoner there, like my
very insignificant self. The outcome will be more satisfactory, even if
you have to share your future with me."

"And what course will you take," he asked, pausing with his hand on the
fence, "if I decide to choose destruction without you, rather than
perdition with you?"

"What course? Why, I shall tell Dr. Talbot just enough to show you to be
as desirable a witness in the impending inquest as myself. The result I
leave to your judgment. But you will not drive me to this extremity. You
will come back and--"

"Woman, I will never come back. I shall have to dare your worst in a
week and will begin by daring you now. I--"

But he did not leap the fence, though he made a move to do so, for at
that moment a party of men came hurrying by on the lower road, one of
whom was heard to say:

"I will bet my head that we will put our hand on Agatha Webb's murderer
to-night. The man who shoves twenty-dollar bills around so heedlessly
should not wear a beard so long it leads to detection."

It was the coroner, the constable, Knapp, and Abel on their way to the
forest road on which lived John and James Zabel.

Frederick and Amabel confronted each other, and after a moment's silence
returned as if by a common impulse towards the house.

"What have they got in their heads?" queried she. "Whatever it is, it
may serve to occupy them till the week of your probation is over."

He did not answer. A new and overwhelming complication had been added to
the difficulties of his situation.




XV

THE ZABELS VISITED


Let us follow the party now winding up the hillside.

In a deeply wooded spot on a side road stood the little house to which
John and James Zabel had removed when their business on the docks had
terminated. There was no other dwelling of greater or lesser pretension
on the road, which may account for the fact that none of the persons now
approaching it had been in that neighbourhood for years, though it was
by no means a long walk from the village in which they all led such busy
lives.

The heavy shadows cast by the woods through which the road meandered
were not without their effect upon the spirits of the four men passing
through them, so that long before they reached the opening in which the
Zabel cottage stood, silence had fallen upon the whole party. Dr. Talbot
especially looked as if he little relished this late visit to his old
friends, and not till they caught a glimpse of the long sloping roof and
heavy chimney of the Zabel cottage did he shake off the gloom incident
to the nature of his errand.

"Gentlemen," said he, coming to a sudden halt, "let us understand each
other. We are about to make a call on two of our oldest and most
respectable townsfolk. If in the course of that call I choose to make
mention of the twenty-dollar bill left with Loton, well and good, but if
not, you are to take my reticence as proof of my own belief that they
had nothing to do with it."

Two of the party bowed; Knapp, only, made no sign.

"There is no light in the window," observed Abel. "What if we find them
gone to bed?"

"We will wake them," said the constable. "I cannot go back without being
myself assured that no more money like that given to Loton remains in
the house."

"Very well," remarked Knapp, and going up to the door before him, he
struck a resounding knock sufficiently startling in that place of
silence.

But loud as the summons was it brought no answer. Not only the
moon-lighted door, but the little windows on each side of it remained
shut, and there was no evidence that the knock had been heard.

"Zabel! John Zabel!" shouted the constable, stepping around the side of
the house. "Get up, my good friends, and let an old crony in. James!
John! Late as it is, we have business with you. Open the door; don't
stop to dress."

But this appeal received no more recognition than the first, and after
rapping on the window against which he had flung the words, he came back
and looked up and down the front of the house.

It had a solitary aspect and was much less comfortable-looking than he
had expected. Indeed, there were signs of poverty, or at least of
neglect, about the place that astonished him. Not only had the weeds
been allowed to grow over the doorstep, but from the unpainted front
itself bits of boards had rotted away, leaving great gaps about the
window-ledges and at the base of the sunken and well-nigh toppling
chimney. The moon flooding the roof showed up all these imperfections
with pitiless insistence, and the torn edges of the green paper shades
that half concealed the rooms within were plainly to be seen, as well as
the dismantled knocker which hung by one nail to the old cracked door.
The vision of Knapp with his ear laid against this door added to the
forlorn and sinister aspect of the scene, and gave to the constable, who
remembered the brothers in their palmy days when they were the life and
pride of the town, a by no means agreeable sensation, as he advanced
toward the detective and asked him what they should do now.

"Break down the door!" was the uncompromising reply. "Or, wait! The
windows of country houses are seldom fastened; let me see if I cannot
enter by some one of them."

"Better not," said the coroner, with considerable feeling. "Let us
exhaust all other means first." And he took hold of the knob of the door
to shake it, when to his surprise it turned and the door opened. It had
not been locked.

Rather taken aback by this, he hesitated. But Knapp showed less scruple.
Without waiting for any man's permission, he glided in and stepped
cautiously, but without any delay, into a room the door of which stood
wide open before him. The constable was about to follow when he saw
Knapp come stumbling back.

"Devilish work," he muttered, and drew the others in to see.

Never will any of these men forget the sight that there met their eyes.

On the floor near the entrance lay one brother, in a streak of
moonlight, which showed every feature of his worn and lifeless face, and
at a table drawn up in the centre of the room sat the other, rigid in
death, with a book clutched in his hand.

Both, had been dead some time, and on the faces and in the aspects of
both was visible a misery that added its own gloom to the pitiable and
gruesome scene, and made the shining of the great white moon, which
filled every corner of the bare room, seem a mockery well-nigh
unendurable to those who contemplated it. John, dead in his chair!
James, dead on the floor!

Knapp, who of all present was least likely to feel the awesome nature of
the tragedy, was naturally the first to speak.

"Both wear long beards," said he, "but the one lying on the floor was
doubtless Loton's customer. Ah!" he cried, pointing at the table, as he
carefully crossed the floor. "Here is the bread, and--" Even he had his
moments of feeling. The appearance of that loaf had stunned him; one
corner of it had been gnawed off.

"A light! let us have a light!" cried Mr. Fenton, speaking for the first
time since his entrance. "These moonbeams are horrible; see how they
cling to the bodies as if they delighted in lighting up these wasted and
shrunken forms."

"Could it have been hunger?" began Abel, tremblingly following Knapp's
every movement as he struck a match and lit a lantern which he had
brought in his pocket.

"God help us all if it was!" said Fenton, in a secret remorse no one but
Dr. Talbot understood. "But who could have believed it of men who were
once so prosperous? Are you sure that one of them has gnawed this bread?
Could it not have been--"

"These are the marks of human teeth," observed Knapp, who was examining
the loaf carefully. "I declare, it makes me very uncomfortable,
notwithstanding it's in the line of regular experiences." And he laid
the bread down hurriedly.

Meantime, Mr. Fenton, who had been bending over another portion of the
table, turned and walked away to the window.

"I am glad they are dead," he muttered. "They have at least shared the
fate of their victims. Take a look under that old handkerchief lying
beside the newspaper, Knapp."

The detective did so. A three-edged dagger, with a curiously wrought
handle, met his eye. It had blood dried on its point, and was, as all
could see, the weapon with which Agatha Webb had been killed.




XYI

LOCAL TALENT AT WORK


"Gentlemen, we have reached the conclusion of this business sooner than
I expected," announced Knapp. "If you will give me just ten minutes I
will endeavour to find that large remainder of money we have every
reason to think is hidden away in this house."

"Stop a minute," said the coroner. "Let me see what book John is holding
so tightly. Why," he exclaimed, drawing it out and giving it one glance,
"it is a Bible."

Laying it reverently down he met the detective's astonished glance and
seriously remarked:

"There is some incongruity between the presence of this book and the
deed we believe to have been performed down yonder."

"None at all," quoth the detective. "It was not the man in the chair,
but the one on the floor, who made use of that dagger. But I wish you
had left it to me to remove that book, sir."

"You? and why? What difference would it have made?"

"I would have noticed between what pages his finger was inserted.
Nothing like making yourself acquainted with every detail in a case like
this."

Dr. Talbot gazed wistfully at the book. He would have liked to know
himself on what especial passage his friend's eyes had last rested.

"I will stand aside," said he, "and hear your report when you are done."

The detective had already begun his investigations.

"Here is a spot of blood," said he. "See! on the right trouser leg of
the one you call James. This connects him indisputably with the crime in
which this dagger was used. No signs of violence on his body. She was
the only one to receive a blow. His death is the result of God's
providence."

"Or man's neglect," muttered the constable.

"There is no money in any of their pockets, or on either wasted figure,"
the detective continued, after a few minutes of silent search. "It must
be hidden in the room, or--look through that Bible, sirs."

The coroner, glad of an opportunity to do something, took up the book,
and ran hurriedly through its leaves, then turned it and shook it out
over the table. Nothing fell out; the bills must be looked for
elsewhere.

"The furniture is scanty," Abel observed, with an inquiring look about
him.

"Very, very scanty," assented the constable, still with that biting
remorse at his heart.

"There is nothing in this cupboard," pursued the detective, swinging
open a door in the wall, "but a set of old china more or less nicked."

Abel started. An old recollection had come up. Some weeks before, he had
been present when James had made an effort to sell this set. They were
all in Warner's store, and James Zabel (he could see his easy attitude
yet, and hear the off-hand tones with which he tried to carry the affair
off) had said, quite as if he had never thought of it before: "By the
by, I have a set of china at the house which came over in the Mayflower.
John likes it, but it has grown to be an eyesore to me, and if you hear
of anybody who has a fancy for such things, send him up to the cottage.
I will let it go for a song." Nobody answered, and James disappeared. It
was the last time, Abel remembered, that he had been seen about town.

"I can't stand it," cried the lad. "I can't stand it. If they died of
hunger I must know it. I am going to take a look at their larder." And
before anyone could stop him he dashed to the rear of the house.

The constable would have liked to follow him, but he looked about the
walls of the room instead. John and James had been fond of pictures and
had once indulged their fancy to the verge of extravagance, but there
were no pictures on the walls now, nor was there so much as a
candlestick on the empty and dust-covered mantel. Only on a bracket in
one corner there was a worthless trinket made out of cloves and beads
which had doubtless been given them by some country damsel in their
young bachelor days. But nothing of any value anywhere, and Mr. Fenton
felt that he now knew why they had made so many visits to Boston at one
time, and why they always returned with a thinner valise than they took
away. He was still dwelling on the thought of the depths of misery to
which highly respectable folks can sink without the knowledge of the
nearest neighbours, when Abel came back looking greatly troubled.

"It is the saddest thing I ever heard of," said he. "These men must have
been driven wild by misery. This room is sumptuous in comparison to the
ones at the back; and as for the pantry, there is not even a scrap there
a mouse could eat. I struck a match and glanced into the flour barrel.
It looked as if it had been licked. I declare, it makes a fellow feel
sick."

The constable, with a shudder, withdrew towards the door.

"The atmosphere here is stifling," said he. "I must have a breath of
out-door air."

But he was not destined to any such immediate relief. As he moved down
the hall the form of a man darkened the doorway and he heard an anxious
voice exclaim:

"Ah, Mr. Fenton, is that you? I have been looking for you everywhere."

It was Sweetwater, the young man who had previously shown so much
anxiety to be of service to the coroner.

Mr. Fenton looked displeased.

"And how came you to find me here?" he asked.

"Oh, some men saw you take this road, and I guessed the rest."

"Oh, ah, very good. And what do you want, Sweetwater?"

The young man, who was glowing with pride and all alive with an
enthusiasm which he had kept suppressed for hours, slipped up to the
constable and whispered in his ear: "I have made a discovery, sir. I
know you will excuse the presumption, but I couldn't bring myself to
keep quiet and follow in that other fellow's wake. I had to make
investigations on my own account, and--and"--stammering in his eagerness
"they have been successful, sir. I have found out who was the murderer
of Agatha Webb."

The constable, compassionating the disappointment in store for him,
shook his head, with a solemn look toward the room from which he had
just emerged. "You are late, Sweetwater," said he. "We have found him
out ourselves, and he lies there, dead."

It was dark where they stood and Sweetwater's back was to the moonlight,
so that the blank look which must have crossed his face at this
announcement was lost upon the constable. But his consternation was
evident from the way he thrust out either hand to steady himself against
the walls of the narrow passageway, and Mr. Fenton was not at all
surprised to hear him stammer out:

"Dead! He! Whom do you mean by he, Mr. Fenton?"

"The man in whose house we now are," returned the other. "Is there
anyone else who can be suspected of this crime?"

Sweetwater gave a gulp that seemed to restore him to himself.

"There are two men living here, both very good men, I have heard. Which
of them do you mean, and why do you think that either John or James
Zabel killed Agatha Webb?"

For reply Mr. Fenton drew him toward the room in which such a great
heart-tragedy had taken place.

"Look," said he, "and see what can happen in a Christian land, in the
midst of Christian people living not fifty rods away. These men are
dead, Sweetwater, dead from hunger. The loaf of bread you see there came
too late. It was bought with a twenty-dollar bill, taken from Agatha
Webb's cupboard drawer."

Sweetwater, to whom the whole scene seemed like some horrible nightmare,
stared at the figure of James lying on the floor, and then at the figure
of John seated at the table, as if his mind had failed to take in the
constable's words.

"Dead!" he murmured. "Dead! John and James Zabel. What will happen next?
Is the town under a curse?" And he fell on his knees before the
prostrate form of James, only to start up again as he saw the eyes of
Knapp resting on him.

"Ah," he muttered, "the detective!" And after giving the man from Boston
a close look he turned toward Mr. Fenton.

"You said something about this good old man having killed Agatha Webb.
What was it? I was too dazed to take it in."

Mr. Fenton, not understanding the young man's eagerness, but willing
enough to enlighten him as to the situation, told him what reasons there
were for ascribing the crime in the Webb cottage to the mad need of
these starving men. Sweetwater listened with open eyes and confused
bearing, only controlling himself when his eyes by chance fell upon the
quiet figure of the detective, now moving softly to and fro through the
room.

"But why murder when he could have had his loaf for the asking?"
remonstrated Sweetwater. "Agatha Webb would have gone without a meal any
time to feed a wandering tramp; how much more to supply the necessities
of two of her oldest and dearest friends!"

"Yes," remarked Fenton, "but you forget or perhaps never knew that the
master passion of these men was pride. James Zabel ask for bread! I can
much sooner imagine him stealing it; yes, or striking a blow for it, so
that the blow shut forever the eyes that saw him do it."

"You don't believe your own words, Mr. Fenton. How can you?"
Sweetwater's hand was on the breast of the accused man as he spoke, and
his manner was almost solemn. "You must not take it for granted," he
went on, his green eyes twinkling with a curious light, "that all wisdom
comes from Boston. We in Sutherlandtown have some sparks of it, if they
have not yet been recognised. You are satisfied"--here he addressed
himself to Knapp--"that the blow which killed Agatha Webb was struck by
this respectable old man?"

Knapp smiled as if a child had asked him this question; but he answered
him good-humouredly enough.

"You see the dagger lying here with which the deed was done, and you see
the bread that was bought from Loton with a twenty-dollar bill of Agatha
Webb's money. In these you can read my answer."

"Good evidence," acknowledged Sweetwater--"very good evidence,
especially when we remember that Mr. Crane met an old man rushing from
her gateway with something glittering in his hand. I never was so beat
in my life, and yet--and yet--if I could have a few minutes of quiet
thought all by myself I am certain I could show you that there is more
to this matter than you think. Indeed, I know that there is, but I do
not like to give my reasons till I have conquered the difficulties
presented by these men having had the twenty-dollar bill."

"What fellow is this?" suddenly broke in Knapp.

"A fiddler, a nobody," quietly whispered Mr. Fenton in his ear.

Sweetwater heard him and changed in a twinkling from the uncertain,
half-baffled, wholly humble person they had just seen, to a man with a
purpose strong enough to make him hold up his head with the best.

"I am a musician," he admitted, "and I play on the violin for money
whenever the occasion offers, something which you will yet congratulate
yourselves upon if you wish to reach the root of this mysterious and
dastardly crime. But that I am a nobody I deny, and I even dare to hope
that you will agree with me in this estimate of myself before this very
night is over. Only give me an opportunity for considering this subject,
and the permission to walk for a few minutes about this house."

"That is my prerogative," protested the detective firmly, but without
any display of feeling. "I am the man employed to pick up whatever clews
the place may present."

"Have you picked up all that are to be found in this room?" asked
Sweetwater calmly.

Knapp shrugged his shoulders. He was very well satisfied with himself.

"Then give me a chance," prayed Sweetwater. "Mr. Fenton," he urged more
earnestly, "I am not the fool you take me for. I feel, I know, I have a
genius for this kind of thing, and though I am not prepossessing to look
at, and though I do play the fiddle, I swear there are depths to this
affair which none of you have as yet sounded. Sirs, where are the nine
hundred and eighty dollars in bills which go to make up the clean
thousand that was taken from the small drawer at the back of Agatha
Webb's cupboard?"

"They are in some secret hiding-place, no doubt, which we will presently
come upon as we go through the house," answered Knapp.

"Umph! Then I advise you to put your hand on them as soon as possible,"
retorted Sweetwater. "I will confine myself to going over the ground you
have already investigated." And with a sudden ignoring of the others'
presence, which could only have sprung from an intense egotism or from
an overwhelming belief in his own theory, he began an investigation of
the room that threw the other's more commonplace efforts entirely in the
shade.

Knapp, with a slight compression of his lips, which was the sole
expression of anger he ever allowed himself, took up his hat and made
his bow to Mr. Fenton.

"I see," said he, "that the sympathy of those present is with local
talent. Let local talent work, then, sir, and when you feel the need of
a man of training and experience, send to the tavern on the docks, where
I will be found till I am notified that my services are no longer
required."

"No, no!" protested Mr. Fenton. "This boy's enthusiasm will soon
evaporate. Let him fuss away if he will. His petty business need not
interrupt us."

"But he understands himself," whispered Knapp. "I should think he had
been on our own force for years."

"All the more reason to see what he's up to. Wait, if only to satisfy
your curiosity. I shan't let many minutes go by before I pull him up."

Knapp, who was really of a cold and unimpressionable temperament,
refrained from further argument, and confined himself to watching the
young man, whose movements seemed to fascinate him.

"Astonishing!" Mr. Fenton heard him mutter to himself. "He's more like
an eel than a man." And indeed the way Sweetwater wound himself out and
in through that room, seeing everything that came under his eye, was a
sight well worth any professional's attention. Pausing before the dead
man on the floor, he held the lantern close to the white, worn face.
"Ha!" said he, picking something from the long beard, "here's a crumb of
that same bread. Did you see that, Mr. Knapp?"

The question was so sudden and so sharp that the detective came near
replying to it; but he bethought himself, and said nothing.

"That settles which of the two gnawed the loaf," continued Sweetwater.

The next minute he was hovering over the still more pathetic figure of
John, sitting in the chair.

"Sad! Sad!" he murmured.

Suddenly he laid his finger on a small rent in the old man's faded vest.
"You saw this, of course," said he, with a quick glance over his
shoulder at the silent detective.

No answer, as before.

"It's a new slit," declared the officious youth, looking closer,
"and--yes--there's blood on its edges. Here, take the lantern, Mr.
Fenton, I must see how the skin looks underneath. Oh, gentlemen, no
shirt! The poorest dockhand has a shirt! Brocaded vest and no shirt; but
he's past our pity now. Ah, only a bruise over the heart. Sirs, what did
you make out of this?"

As none of them had even seen it, Knapp was not the only one to remain
silent.

"Shall I tell you what I make out of it?" said the lad, rising hurriedly
from the floor, which he had as hurriedly examined. "This old man has
tried to take his life with the dagger already wet with the blood of
Agatha Webb. But his arm was too feeble. The point only pierced the
vest, wiping off a little blood in its passage, then the weapon fell
from his hand and struck the floor, as you will see by the fresh dent in
the old board I am standing on. Have you anything to say against these
simple deductions?"

Again the detective opened his lips and might have spoken, but
Sweetwater gave him no chance.

"Where is the letter he was writing?" he demanded. "Have any of you seen
any paper lying about here?"

"He was not writing," objected Knapp; "he was reading; reading in that
old Bible you see there."

Sweetwater caught up the book, looked it over, and laid it down, with
that same curious twinkle of his eye they had noted in him before.

"He was writing," he insisted. "See, here is his pencil." And he showed
them the battered end of a small lead-pencil lying on the edge of his
chair.

"Writing at some time," admitted Knapp.

"Writing just before the deed," insisted Sweetwater. "Look at the
fingers of his right hand. They have not moved since the pencil fell out
of them."

"The letter, or whatever it was, shall be looked for," declared the
constable.

Sweetwater bowed, his eyes roving restlessly into every nook and corner
of the room.

"James was the stronger of the two," he remarked; "yet there is no
evidence that he made any attempt at suicide."

"How do you know that it was suicide John attempted?" asked someone.
"Why might not the dagger have fallen from James's hand in an effort to
kill his brother?"

"Because the dent in the floor would have been to the right of the chair
instead of to the left," he returned. "Besides, James's hand would not
have failed so utterly, since he had strength to pick up the weapon
afterward and lay it where you found it."

"True, we found it lying on the table," observed Abel, scratching his
head in forced admiration of his old schoolmate.

"All easy, very easy," Sweetwater remarked, seeing the wonder in every
eye. "Matters like those are for a child's reading, but what is
difficult, and what I find hard to come by, is how the twenty-dollar
bill got into the old man's hand. He found it here, but how--"

"Found it here? How do you know that?"

"Gentlemen, that is a point I will make clear to you later, when I have
laid my hand on a certain clew I am anxiously seeking. You know this is
new work for me and I have to advance warily. Did any of you gentlemen,
when you came into this room, detect the faintest odour of any kind of
perfume?"

"Perfume?" echoed Abel, with a glance about the musty apartment. "Rats,
rather."

Sweetwater shook his head with a discouraged air, but suddenly
brightened, and stepping quickly across the floor, paused at one of the
windows. It was that one in which the shade had been drawn.

Peering at this shade he gave a grunt.

"You must excuse me for a minute," said he; "I have not found what I
wanted in this room and now must look outside for it. Will someone bring
the lantern?"

"I will," volunteered Knapp, with grim good humour. Indeed, the
situation was almost ludicrous to him.

"Bring it round the house, then, to the ground under this window,"
ordered Sweetwater, without giving any sign that he noticed or even
recognised the other's air of condescension. "And, gentlemen, please
don't follow. It's footsteps I am after, and the fewer we make
ourselves, the easier will it be for me to establish the clew I am
after."

Mr. Fenton stared. What had got into the fellow?

The lantern gone, the room resumed its former appearance.

Abel, who had been much struck by Sweetwater's mysterious manoeuvres,
drew near Dr. Talbot and whispered in his ear: "We might have done
without that fellow from Boston."

To which the coroner replied:

"Perhaps so, and perhaps not. Sweetwater has not yet proved his case;
let us wait till he explains himself." Then, turning to the constable,
he showed him an old-fashioned miniature, which he had found lying on
James's breast, when he made his first examination. It was set with
pearls and backed with gold and was worth many meals, for the lack of
which its devoted owner had perished.

"Agatha Webb's portrait," explained Talbot, "or rather Agatha
Gilchrist's; for I presume this was painted when she and James were
lovers."

"She was certainly a beauty," commented Fenton, as he bent over the
miniature in the moonlight. "I do not wonder she queened it over the
whole country."

"He must have worn it where I found it for the last forty years," mused
the doctor. "And yet men say that love is a fleeting passion. Well,
after coming upon this proof of devotion, I find it impossible to
believe James Zabel accountable for the death of one so fondly
remembered. Sweetwater's instinct was truer than Knapp's."

"Or ours," muttered Fenton.

"Gentlemen," interposed Abel, pointing to a bright spot that just then
made its appearance in the dark outline of the shade before alluded to,
"do you see that hole? It was the sight of that prick in the shade which
sent Sweetwater outside looking for footprints. See! Now his eye is to
it" (as the bright spot became suddenly eclipsed). "We are under
examination, sirs, and the next thing we will hear is that he's not the
only person who's been peering into this room through that hole."

He was so far right that the first words of Sweetwater on his
re-entrance were: "It's all O. K., sirs. I have found my missing clew.
James Zabel was not the only person who came up here from the Webb
cottage last night." And turning to Knapp, who was losing some of his
supercilious manner, he asked, with significant emphasis: "If, of the
full amount stolen from Agatha Webb, you found twenty dollars in the
possession of one man and nine hundred and eighty dollars in the
possession of another, upon which of the two would you fix as the
probable murderer of the good woman?"

"Upon him who held the lion's share, of course."

"Very good; then it is not in this cottage you will find the person most
wanted. You must look--But there! first let me give you a glimpse of the
money. Is there anyone here ready to accompany me in search of it? I
shall have to take him a quarter of a mile farther up-hill."

"You have seen the money? You know where it is?" asked Dr. Talbot and
Mr. Fenton in one breath.

"Gentlemen, I can put my hand on it in ten minutes."

At this unexpected and somewhat startling statement Knapp looked at Dr.
Talbot and Dr. Talbot looked at the constable, but only the last spoke.

"That is saying a good deal. But no matter. I am willing to credit the
assertion. Lead on, Sweetwater; I'll go with you."

Sweetwater seemed to grow an inch taller in his satisfied vanity. "And
Dr. Talbot?" he suggested.

But the coroner's duty held him to the house and he decided not to
accompany them. Knapp and Abel, however, yielded to the curiosity which
had been aroused by these extraordinary promises, and presently the four
men mentioned started on their small expedition up the hill.

Sweetwater headed the procession. He had admonished silence, and his
wish in this regard was so well carried out that they looked more like a
group of spectres moving up the moon-lighted road, than a party of eager
and impatient men. Not till they turned into the main thoroughfare did
anyone speak. Then Abel could no longer restrain himself and he cried
out:

"We are going to Mr. Sutherland's."

But Sweetwater quickly undeceived him.

"No," said he, "only into the woods opposite his house."

But at this Mr. Fenton drew him back.

"Are you sure of yourself?" he said. "Have you really seen this money
and is it concealed in this forest?"

"I have seen the money," Sweetwater solemnly declared, "and it is hidden
in these woods."

Mr. Fenton dropped his arm, and they moved on till their way was blocked
by the huge trunk of a fallen tree.

"It is here we are to look," cried Sweetwater, pausing and motioning
Knapp to turn his lantern on the spot where the shadows lay thickest.
"Now, what do you see?" he asked.

"The upturned roots of a great tree," said Mr. Fenton.

"And under them?"

"A hole, or, rather, the entrance to one."

"Very good; the money is in that hole. Pull it out, Mr. Fenton."

The assurance with which Sweetwater spoke was such that Mr. Fenton at
once stooped and plunged his hand into the hole. But when, after a
hurried search, he drew it out again, there was nothing in it; the place
was empty. Sweetwater stared at Mr. Fenton amazed.

"Don't you find anything?" he asked. "Isn't there a roll of bills in
that hole?"

"No," was the gloomy answer, after a renewed attempt and a second
disappointment. "There is nothing to be found here. You are labouring
under some misapprehension, Sweetwater."

"But I can't be. I saw the money; saw it in the hand of the person who
hid it there. Let me look for it, constable. I will not give up the
search till I have turned the place topsy-turvy."

Kneeling down in Mr. Fenton's place, he thrust his hand into the hole.
On either side of him peered the faces of Mr. Fenton and Knapp. (Abel
had slipped away at a whisper from Sweetwater.) They were lit with a
similar expression of anxious interest and growing doubt. His own
countenance was a study of conflicting and by no means cheerful
emotions. Suddenly his aspect changed. With a quick twist of his lithe,
if awkward, body, he threw himself lengthwise on the ground, and began
tearing at the earth inside the hole, like a burrowing animal.

"I cannot be mistaken. Nothing will make me believe it is not here. It
has simply been buried deeper than I thought. Ah! What did I tell you?
See here! And see here!"

Bringing his hands into the full blaze of the light, he showed two rolls
of new, crisp bills.

"They were lying under half a foot of earth," said he, "but if they had
been buried as deep as Grannie Fuller's well, I'd have unearthed them."

Meantime Mr. Fenton was rapidly counting one roll and Knapp the other.
The result was an aggregate sum of nine hundred and eighty dollars, just
the amount Sweetwater had promised to show them.

"A good stroke of business," cried Mr. Fenton. "And now, Sweetwater,
whose is the hand that buried this treasure? Nothing is to be gained by
preserving silence on this point any longer."

Instantly the young man became very grave. With a quick glance around
which seemed to embrace the secret recesses of the forest rather than
the eager faces bending towards him, he lowered his voice and quietly
said:

"The hand that buried this money under the roots of this old tree is the
same which you saw pointing downward at the spot of blood in Agatha
Webb's front yard."

"You do not mean Amabel Page!" cried Mr. Fenton, with natural surprise.

"Yes, I do; and I am glad it is you who have named her."




XVII

THE SLIPPERS, THE FLOWER, AND WHAT SWEETWATER MADE OF THEM


A half-hour later these men were all closeted with Dr. Talbot in the
Zabel kitchen. Abel had rejoined them, and Sweetwater was telling his
story with great earnestness and no little show of pride.

"Gentlemen, when I charge a young woman of respectable appearance and
connections with such a revolting crime as murder, I do so with good
reason, as I hope presently to make plain to you all.

"Gentlemen, on the night and at the hour Agatha Webb was killed, I was
playing with four other musicians in Mr. Sutherland's hallway. From the
place where I sat I could see what went on in the parlour and also have
a clear view of the passageway leading down to the garden door. As the
dancing was going on in the parlour I naturally looked that way most,
and this is how I came to note the eagerness with which, during the
first part of the evening, Frederick Sutherland and Amabel Page came
together in the quadrilles and country dances. Sometimes she spoke as
she passed him, and sometimes he answered, but not always, although he
never failed to show he was pleased with her or would have been if
something--perhaps it was his lack of confidence in her, sirs--had not
stood in the way of a perfect understanding. She seemed to notice that
he did not always respond, and after a while showed less inclination to
speak herself, though she did not fail to watch him, and that intently.
But she did not watch him any more closely than I did her, though I
little thought at the time what would come of my espionage. She wore a
white dress and white shoes, and was as coquettish and seductive as the
evil one makes them. Suddenly I missed her. She was in the middle of the
dance one minute and entirely out of it the next. Naturally I supposed
her to have slipped aside with Frederick Sutherland, but he was still in
sight, looking so pale and so abstracted, however, I was sure the young
miss was up to some sort of mischief. But what mischief? Watching and
waiting, but no longer confining my attention to the parlour, I
presently espied her stealing along the passageway I have mentioned,
carrying a long cloak which she rolled up and hid behind the open door.
Then she came back humming a gay little song which didn't deceive me for
a moment. 'Good!' thought I, 'she and that cloak will soon join
company.' And they did. As we were playing the Harebell mazurka I again
caught sight of her stealthy white figure in that distant doorway.
Seizing the cloak, she wrapped it round her, and with just one furtive
look backwards, seen, I warrant, by no one but myself, she vanished in
the outside dark. 'Now to note who follows her!' But nobody followed
her. This struck me as strange, and having a natural love for detective
work, in spite of my devotion to the arts, I consulted the clock at the
foot of the stairs, and noting that it was half-past eleven, scribbled
the hour on the margin of my music, with the intention of seeing how
long my lady would linger outside alone. Gentlemen, it was two hours
before I saw her face again. How she got back into the house I do not
know. It was not by the garden door, for my eye seldom left it; yet at
or near half-past one I heard her voice on the stair above me and saw
her descend and melt into the crowd as if she had not been absent from
it for more than five minutes. A half-hour later I saw her with
Frederick again. They were dancing, but not with the same spirit as
before, and even while I watched them they separated. Now where was Miss
Page during those two long hours? I think I know, and it is time I
unburdened myself to the police.

"But first I must inform you of a small discovery I made while the dance
was still in progress. Miss Page had descended the stairs, as I have
said, from what I now know to have been her own room. Her dress was, in
all respects, the same as before, with one exception--her white slippers
had been exchanged for blue ones. This seemed to show that they had been
rendered unserviceable, or at least unsightly, by the walk she had
taken. This in itself was not remarkable nor would her peculiar escapade
have made more than a temporary impression upon my curiosity if she had
not afterward shown in my presence such an unaccountable and
extraordinary interest in the murder which had taken place in the town
below during the very hours of her absence from Mr. Sutherland's ball.
This, in consideration of her sex, and her being a stranger to the
person attacked, was remarkable, and, though perhaps I had no business
to do what I did, I no sooner saw the house emptied of master and
servants than I stole softly back, and climbed the stairs to her room.
Had no good followed this intrusion, which, I am quite ready to
acknowledge, was a trifle presumptuous, I would have held my peace in
regard to it; but as I did make a discovery there, which has, as I
believe, an important bearing on this affair, I have forced myself to
mention it. The lights in the house having been left burning, I had no
difficulty in finding her apartment. I knew it by the folderols
scattered about. But I did not stop to look at them. I was on a search
for her slippers, and presently came upon them, thrust behind an old
picture in the dimmest corner of the room. Taking them down, I examined
them closely. They were not only soiled, gentlemen, but dreadfully cut
and rubbed. In short, they were ruined, and, thinking that the young
lady herself would be glad to be rid of them, I quietly put them into my
pocket, and carried them to my own home. Abel has just been for them, so
you can see them for yourselves, and if your judgment coincides with
mine, you will discover something more on them than mud."

Dr. Talbot, though he stared a little at the young man's confessed
theft, took the slippers Abel was holding out and carefully turned them
over. They were, as Sweetwater had said, grievously torn and soiled, and
showed, beside several deep earth-stains, a mark or two of a bright red
colour, quite unmistakable in its character.

"Blood," declared the coroner. "There is no doubt about it. Miss Page
was where blood was spilled last night."

"I have another proof against her," Sweetwater went on, in full
enjoyment of his prominence amongst these men, who, up to now, had
barely recognised his existence. "When, full of the suspicion that Miss
Page had had a hand in the theft which had taken place at Mrs. Webb's
house, if not in the murder that accompanied it, I hastened down to the
scene of the tragedy, I met this young woman issuing from the front
gate. She had just been making herself conspicuous by pointing out a
trail of blood on the grass plot. Dr. Talbot, who was there, will
remember how she looked on that occasion; but I doubt if he noticed how
Abel here looked, or so much as remarked the faded flower the silly boy
had stuck in his buttonhole."

"--me if I did!" ejaculated the coroner.

"Yet that flower has a very important bearing on this case. He had found
it, as he will tell you, on the floor near Batsy's skirts, and as soon
as I saw it in his coat, I bade him take it out and keep it, for,
gentlemen, it was a very uncommon flower, the like of which can only be
found in this town in Mr. Sutherland's conservatory. I remember seeing
such a one in Miss Page's hair, early in the evening. Have you that
flower about you, Abel?"

Abel had, and being filled with importance too, showed it to the doctor
and to Mr. Fenton. It was withered and faded in hue, but it was
unmistakably an orchid of the rarest description.

"It was lying near Batsy," explained Abel. "I drew Mr. Fenton's
attention to it at the time, but he scarcely noticed it."

"I will make up for my indifference now," said that gentleman.

"I should have been shown that flower," put in Knapp.

"So you should," acknowledged Sweetwater, "but when the detective
instinct is aroused it is hard for a man to be just to his rivals;
besides, I was otherwise occupied. I had Miss Page to watch. Happily for
me, you had decided that she should not be allowed to leave town till
after the inquest, and so my task became easy. This whole day I have
spent in sight of Mr. Sutherland's house, and at nightfall I was
rewarded by detecting her end a prolonged walk in the garden by a
hurried dash into the woods opposite. I followed her and noted carefully
all that she did. As she had just seen Frederick Sutherland and Miss
Halliday disappear up the road together, she probably felt free to do as
she liked, for she walked very directly to the old tree we have just
come from, and kneeling down beside it pulled from the hole underneath
something which rattled in her hand with that peculiar sound we
associate with fresh bank-notes. I had approached her as near as I
dared, and was peering around a tree trunk, when she stooped down again
and plunged both hands into the hole. She remained in this position so
long that I did not know what to make of it. But she rose at last and
turned toward home, laughing to herself in a wicked but pleased way that
did not tend to make me think any more of her. The moon was shining very
brightly by this time and I could readily perceive every detail of her
person. She held her hands out before her and shook them more than once
as she trod by me, so I was sure there was nothing in them, and this is
why I was so confident we should find the money still in the hole.

"When I saw her enter the house, I set out to find you, but the
court-house room was empty, and it was a long time before I learned
where to look for you. But at last a fellow at Brighton's corner said he
saw four men go by on their way to Zabel's cottage, and on the chance of
finding you amongst them, I turned down here. The shock you gave me in
announcing that you had discovered the murderer of Agatha Webb knocked
me over for a moment, but now I hope you realise, as I do, that this
wretched man could never have had an active hand in her death,
notwithstanding the fact that one of the stolen bills has been found in
his possession. For, and here is my great point, the proof is not
wanting that Miss Page visited this house as well as Mrs. Webb's during
her famous escapade; or at least stood under the window beneath which I
have just been searching. A footprint can be seen there, sirs, a very
plain footprint, and if Dr. Talbot will take the trouble to compare it
with the slipper he holds in his hand, he will find it to have been made
by the foot that wore that slipper."

The coroner, with a quick glance from the slipper in his hand up to
Sweetwater's eager face, showed a decided disposition to make the
experiment thus suggested. But Mr. Fenton, whose mind was full of the
Zabel tragedy, interrupted them with the question:

"But how do you explain by this hypothesis the fact of James Zabel
trying to pass one of the twenty-dollar bills stolen from Mrs. Webb's
cupboard? Do you consider Miss Page generous enough to give him that
money?"

"You ask ME that, Mr. Fenton. Do you wish to know what _I_ think of the
connection between these two great tragedies?"

"Yes; you have earned a voice in this matter; speak, Sweetwater."

"Well, then, I think Miss Page has made an effort to throw the blame of
her own misdoing on one or both of these unfortunate old men. She is
sufficiently cold-blooded and calculating to do so; and circumstances
certainly favoured her. Shall I show how?"

Mr. Fenton consulted Knapp, who nodded his head. The Boston detective
was not without curiosity as to how Sweetwater would prove the case.

"Old James Zabel had seen his brother sinking rapidly from inanition;
this their condition amply shows. He was weak himself, but John was
weaker, and in a moment of desperation he rushed out to ask a crumb of
bread from Agatha Webb, or possibly--for I have heard some whispers of
an old custom of theirs to join Philemon at his yearly merry-making and
so obtain in a natural way the bite for himself and brother he perhaps
had not the courage to ask for outright. But death had been in the Webb
cottage before him, which awful circumstance, acting on his already
weakened nerves, drove him half insane from the house and sent him
wandering blindly about the streets for a good half-hour before he
reappeared in his own house. How do I know this? From a very simple
fact. Abel here has been to inquire, among other things, if Mr. Crane
remembers the tune we were playing at the great house when he came down
the main street from visiting old widow Walker. Fortunately he does, for
the trip, trip, trip in it struck his fancy, and he has found himself
humming it over more than once since. Well, that waltz was played by us
at a quarter after midnight, which fixes the time of the encounter at
Mrs. Webb's gateway pretty accurately. But, as you will soon see, it was
ten minutes to one before James Zabel knocked at Loton's door. How do I
know this? By the same method of reasoning by which I determined the
time of Mr. Crane's encounter. Mrs. Loton was greatly pleased with the
music played that night, and had all her windows open in order to hear
it, and she says we were playing 'Money Musk' when that knocking came to
disturb her. Now, gentlemen, we played 'Money Musk' just before we were
called out to supper, and as we went to supper promptly at one, you can
see just how my calculation was made. Thirty-five minutes, then, passed
between the moment James Zabel was seen rushing from Mrs. Webb's gateway
and that in which he appeared at Loton's bakery, demanding a loaf of
bread, and offering in exchange one of the bills which had been stolen
from the murdered woman's drawer. Thirty-five minutes! And he and his
brother were starving. Does it look, then, as if that money was in his
possession when he left Mrs. Webb's house? Would any man who felt the
pangs of hunger as he did, or who saw a brother perishing for food
before his eyes, allow thirty-five minutes to elapse before he made use
of the money that rightfully or wrongfully had come into his hand? No;
and so I say that he did not have it when Mr. Crane met him. That,
instead of committing crime to obtain it, he found it in his own home,
lying on his table, when, after his frenzied absence, he returned to
tell his dreadful news to the brother he had left behind him. But how
did it come there? you ask. Gentlemen, remember the footprints under the
window. Amabel Page brought it. Having seen or perhaps met this old man
roaming in or near the Webb cottage during the time she was there
herself, she conceived the plan of throwing upon him the onus of the
crime she had herself committed, and with a slyness to be expected from
one so crafty, stole up to his home, made a hole in the shade hanging
over an open window, looked into the room where John sat, saw that he
was there alone and asleep, and, creeping in by the front door, laid on
the table beside him the twenty-dollar bill and the bloody dagger with
which she had just slain Agatha Webb. Then she stole out again, and in
twenty minutes more was leading the dance in Mr. Sutherland's parlour."

"Well reasoned!" murmured Abel, expecting the others to echo him. But,
though Mr. Fenton and Dr. Talbot looked almost convinced, they said
nothing, while Knapp, of course, was quiet as an oyster.

Sweetwater, with an easy smile calculated to hide his disappointment,
went on as if perfectly satisfied.

"Meanwhile John awakes, sees the dagger, and thinks to end his misery
with it, but finds himself too feeble. The cut in his vest, the dent in
the floor, prove this, but if you call for further proof, a little fact,
which some, if not all, of you seem to have overlooked, will amply
satisfy you that this one at least of my conclusions is correct. Open
the Bible, Abel; open it, not to shake it for what will never fall from
between its leaves, but to find in the Bible itself the lines I have
declared to you he wrote as a dying legacy with that tightly clutched
pencil. Have you found them?"

"No," was Abel's perplexed retort; "I cannot see any sign of writing on
flyleaf or margin."

"Are those the only blank places in the sacred book? Search the leaves
devoted to the family record. Now! what do you find there?"

Knapp, who was losing some of his indifference, drew nearer and read for
himself the scrawl which now appeared to every eye on the discoloured
page which Abel here turned uppermost.

"Almost illegible," he said; "one can just make out these words:
'Forgive me, James--tried to use dagger--found lying--but hand
wouldn't--dying without--don't grieve--true men--haven't disgraced
ourselves--God bless--' That is all."

"The effort must have overcome him," resumed Sweetwater in a voice from
which he carefully excluded all signs of secret triumph, "and when James
returned, as he did a few minutes later, he was evidently unable to ask
questions, even if John was in a condition to answer them. But the
fallen dagger told its own story, for James picked it up and put it back
on the table, and it was at this minute he saw, what John had not, the
twenty-dollar bill lying there with its promise of life and comfort.
Hope revives; he catches up the bill, flies down to Loton's, procures a
loaf of bread, and comes frantically back, gnawing it as he runs; for
his own hunger is more than he can endure. Re-entering his brother's
presence, he rushes forward with the bread. But the relief has come too
late; John has died in his absence; and James, dizzy with the shock,
reels back and succumbs to his own misery. Gentlemen, have you anything
to say in contradiction to these various suppositions?"

For a moment Dr. Talbot, Mr. Fenton, and even Knapp stood silent; then
the last remarked, with pardonable dryness:

"All this is ingenious, but, unfortunately, it is up set by a little
fact which you yourself have overlooked. Have you examined attentively
the dagger of which you have so often spoken, Mr. Sweetwater?"

"Not as I would like to, but I noticed it had blood on its edge, and was
of the shape and size necessary to inflict the wound from which Mrs.
Webb died."

"Very good, but there is something else of interest to be observed on
it. Fetch it, Abel."

Abel, hurrying from the room, soon brought back the weapon in question.
Sweetwater, with a vague sense of disappointment disturbing him, took it
eagerly and studied it very closely. But he only shook his head.

"Bring it nearer to the light," suggested Knapp, "and examine the little
scroll near the top of the handle."

Sweetwater did so, and at once changed colour. In the midst of the
scroll were two very small but yet perfectly distinct letters; they were
J. Z.

"How did Amabel Page come by a dagger marked with the Zabel initials?"
questioned Knapp. "Do you think her foresight went so far as to provide
herself with a dagger ostensibly belonging to one of these brothers? And
then, have you forgotten that when Mr. Crane met the old man at Mrs.
Webb's gateway he saw in his hand something that glistened? Now what was
that, if not this dagger?"

Sweetwater was more disturbed than he cared to acknowledge.

"That just shows my lack of experience," he grumbled. "I thought I had
turned this subject so thoroughly over in my mind that no one could
bring an objection against it."

Knapp shook his head and smiled. "Young enthusiasts like yourself are
great at forming theories which well-seasoned men like myself must
regard as fantastical. However," he went on, "there is no doubt that
Miss Page was a witness to, even if she has not profited by, the murder
we have been considering. But, with this palpable proof of the Zabels'
direct connection with the affair, I would not recommend her arrest as
yet."

"She should be under surveillance, though," intimated the coroner.

"Most certainly," acquiesced Knapp.

As for Sweetwater, he remained silent till the opportunity came for him
to whisper apart to Dr. Talbot, when he said:

"For all the palpable proof of which Mr. Knapp speaks--the J. Z. on the
dagger, and the possibility of this being the object he was seen
carrying out of Philemon Webb's gate--I maintain that this old man in
his moribund condition never struck the blow that killed Agatha Webb. He
hadn't strength enough, even if his lifelong love for her had not been
sufficient to prevent him."

The coroner looked thoughtful.

"You are right," said he; "he hadn't strength enough. But don't expend
too much energy in talk. Wait and see what a few direct questions will
elicit from Miss Page."




XVIII

SOME LEADING QUESTIONS


Frederick rose early. He had slept but little. The words he had
overheard at the end of the lot the night before were still ringing in
his ears. Going down the back stairs, in his anxiety to avoid Amabel, he
came upon one of the stablemen.

"Been to the village this morning?" he asked.

"No, sir, but Lem has. There's great news there. I wonder if anyone has
told Mr. Sutherland."

"What news, Jake? I don't think my father is up yet."

"Why, sir, there were two more deaths in town last night--the brothers
Zabel; and folks do say (Lem heard it a dozen times between the grocery
and the fish market) that it was one of these old men who killed Mrs.
Webb. The dagger has been found in their house, and most of the money.
Why, sir, what's the matter? Are you sick?"

Frederick made an effort and stood upright. He had nearly fallen.

"No; that is, I am not quite myself. So many horrors, Jake. What did
they die of? You say they are both dead--both?"

"Yes, sir, and it's dreadful to think of, but it was hunger, sir. Bread
came too late. Both men are mere skeletons to look at. They have kept
themselves close for weeks now, and nobody knew how bad off they were. I
don't wonder it upset you, sir. We all feel it a bit, and I just dread
to tell Mr. Sutherland."

Frederick staggered away. He had never in his life been so near mental
and physical collapse. At the threshold of the sitting-room door he met
his father. Mr. Sutherland was looking both troubled and anxious; more
so, Frederick thought, than when he signed the check for him on the
previous night. As their eyes met, both showed embarrassment, but
Frederick, whose nerves had been highly strung by what he had just
heard, soon controlled himself, and surveying his father with forced
calmness, began:

"This is dreadful news, sir."

But his father, intent on his own thought, hurriedly interrupted him.

"You told me yesterday that everything was broken off between you and
Miss Page. Yet I saw you reenter the house together last night a little
while after I gave you the money you asked for."

"I know, and it must have had a bad appearance. I entreat you, however,
to believe that this meeting between Miss Page and myself was against my
wish, and that the relations between us have not been affected by
anything that passed between us."

"I am glad to hear it, my son. You could not do worse by yourself than
to return to your old devotion."

"I agree with you, sir." And then, because he could not help it,
Frederick inquired if he had heard the news.

Mr. Sutherland, evidently startled, asked what news; to which Frederick
replied:

"The news about the Zabels. They are both dead, sir,--dead from hunger.
Can you imagine it!"

This was something so different from what his father had expected to
hear, that he did not take it in at first. When he did, his surprise and
grief were even greater than Frederick had anticipated. Seeing him so
affected, Frederick, who thought that the whole truth would be no harder
to bear than the half, added the suspicion which had been attached to
the younger one's name, and then stood back, scarcely daring to be a
witness to the outraged feelings which such a communication could not
fail to awaken in one of his father's temperament.

But though he thus escaped the shocked look which crossed his father's
countenance, he could not fail to hear the indignant exclamation which
burst from his lips, nor help perceiving that it would take more than
the most complete circumstantial evidence to convince his father of the
guilt of men he had known and respected for so many years.

For some reason Frederick experienced great relief at this, and was
bracing himself to meet the fire of questions which his statement must
necessarily call forth, when the sound of approaching steps drew the
attention of both towards a party of men coming up the hillside.

Among them was Mr. Courtney, Prosecuting Attorney for the district, and
as Mr. Sutherland recognised him he sprang forward, saying, "There's
Courtney; he will explain this."

Frederick followed, anxious and bewildered, and soon had the doubtful
pleasure of seeing his father enter his study in company with the four
men considered to be most interested in the elucidation of the Webb
mystery.

As he was lingering in an undecided mood in the small passageway leading
up-stairs he felt the pressure of a finger on his shoulder. Looking up,
he met the eyes of Amabel, who was leaning toward him over the
banisters. She was smiling, and, though her face was not without
evidences of physical languor, there was a charm about her person which
would have been sufficiently enthralling to him twenty-four hours
before, but which now caused him such a physical repulsion that he
started back in the effort to rid his shoulder from her disturbing
touch.

She frowned. It was an instantaneous expression of displeasure which was
soon lost in one of her gurgling laughs.

"Is my touch so burdensome?" she demanded. "If the pressure of one
finger is so unbearable to your sensitive nerves, how will you relish
the weight of my whole hand?"

There was a fierceness in her tone, a purpose in her look, that for the
first time in his struggle with her revealed the full depth of her dark
nature. Shrinking from her appalled, he put up his hand in protest, at
which she changed again in a twinkling, and with a cautious gesture
toward the room into which Mr. Sutherland and his friends had
disappeared, she whispered significantly:

"We may not have another chance to confer together. Understand, then,
that it will not be necessary for you to tell me, in so many words, that
you are ready to link your fortunes to mine; the taking off of the ring
you wear and your slow putting of it on again, in my presence, will be
understood by me as a token that you have reconsidered your present
attitude and desire my silence and--myself."

Frederick could not repress a shudder.

For an instant he was tempted to succumb on the spot and have the long
agony over. Then his horror of the woman rose to such a pitch that he
uttered an execration, and, turning away from her face, which was
rapidly growing loathsome to him, he ran out of the passageway into the
garden, seeing as he ran a persistent vision of himself pulling off the
ring and putting it back again, under the spell of a look he rebelled
against even while he yielded to its influence.

"I will not wear a ring, I will not subject myself to the possibility of
obeying her behest under a sudden stress of fear or fascination," he
exclaimed, pausing by the well-curb and looking over it at his
reflection in the water beneath. "If I drop it here I at least lose the
horror of doing what she suggests, under some involuntary impulse." But
the thought that the mere absence of the ring from his finger would not
stand in the way of his going through the motions to which she had just
given such significance, deterred him from the sacrifice of a valuable
family jewel, and he left the spot with an air of frenzy such as a man
displays when he feels himself on the verge of a doom he can neither
meet nor avert.

As he re-entered the house, he felt himself enveloped in the atmosphere
of a coming crisis. He could hear voices in the upper hall, and amongst
them he caught the accents of her he had learned so lately to fear.
Impelled by something deeper than curiosity and more potent even than
dread, he hastened toward the stairs. When half-way up, he caught sight
of Amabel. She was leaning back against the balustrade that ran across
the upper hall, with her hands gripping the rail on either side of her
and her face turned toward the five men who had evidently issued from
Mr. Sutherland's study to interview her.

As her back was to Frederick he could not judge of the expression of
that face save by the effect it had upon the different men confronting
her. But to see them was enough. From their looks he could perceive that
this young girl was in one of her baffling moods, and that from his
father down, not one of the men present knew what to make of her.

At the sound his feet made, a relaxation took place in her body and she
lost something of the defiant attitude she had before maintained.
Presently he heard her voice:

"I am willing to answer any questions you may choose to put to me here;
but I cannot consent to shut myself in with you in that small study; I
should suffocate."

Frederick could perceive the looks which passed between the five men
assembled before her, and was astonished to note that the insignificant
fellow they called Sweetwater was the first to answer.

"Very well," said he; "if you enjoy the publicity of the open hall, no
one here will object. Is not that so, gentlemen?"

Her two little fingers, which were turned towards Frederick, ran up and
down the rail, making a peculiar rasping noise, which for a moment was
the only sound to be heard. Then Mr. Courtney said:

"How came you to have the handling of the money taken from Agatha Webb's
private drawer?"

It was a startling question, but it seemed to affect Amabel less than it
did Frederick. It made him start, but she only turned her head a trifle
aside, so that the peculiar smile with which she prepared to answer
could be seen by anyone standing below.

"Suppose you ask something less leading than that, to begin with," she
suggested, in her high, unmusical voice. "From the searching nature of
this inquiry, you evidently believe I have information of an important
character to give you concerning Mrs. Webb's unhappy death. Ask me about
that; the other question I will answer later."

The aplomb with which this was said, mixed as it was with a feminine
allurement of more than ordinary subtlety, made Mr. Sutherland frown and
Dr. Talbot look perplexed, but it did not embarrass Mr. Courtney, who
made haste to respond in his dryest accents:

"Very well, I am not particular as to what you answer first. A flower
worn by you at the dance was found near Batsy's skirts, before she was
lifted up that morning. Can you explain this, or, rather, will you?"

"You are not obliged to, you know," put in Mr. Sutherland, with his
inexorable sense of justice. "Still, if you would, it might rob these
gentlemen of suspicions you certainly cannot wish them to entertain."

"What I say," she remarked slowly, "will be as true to the facts as if I
stood here on my oath. I can explain how a flower from my hair came to
be in Mrs. Webb's house, but not how it came to be found under Batsy's
feet. That someone else must clear up." Her little finger, lifted from
the rail, pointed toward Frederick, but no one saw this, unless it was
that gentleman himself. "I wore a purple orchid in my hair that night,
and there would be nothing strange in its being afterward picked up in
Mrs. Webb's house, because I was in that house at or near the time she
was murdered."

"You in that house?"

"Yes, as far as the ground floor; no farther." Here the little finger
stopped pointing. "I am ready to tell you about it, sirs, and only
regret I have delayed doing so so long, but I wished to be sure it was
necessary. Your presence here and your first question show that it is."

There was suavity in her tone now, not unmixed with candour. Sweetwater
did not seem to relish this, for he moved uneasily and lost a shade of
his self-satisfied attitude. He had still to be made acquainted with all
the ins and outs of this woman's remarkable nature.

"We are waiting," suggested Dr. Talbot.

She turned to face this new speaker, and Frederick was relieved from the
sight of her tantalising smile.

"I will tell my story simply," said she, "with the simple suggestion
that you believe me; otherwise you will make a mistake. While I was
resting from a dance the other night, I heard two of the young people
talking about the Zabels. One of them was laughing at the old men, and
the other was trying to relate some half-forgotten story of early love
which had been the cause, she thought, of their strange and melancholy
lives. I was listening to them, but I did not take in much of what they
were saying till I heard behind me an irascible voice exclaiming: 'You
laugh, do you? I wonder if you would laugh so easily if you knew that
these two poor old men haven't had a decent meal in a fortnight?' I
didn't know the speaker, but I was thrilled by his words. Not had a good
meal, these men, for a fortnight! I felt as if personally guilty of
their suffering, and, happening to raise my eyes at this minute and
seeing through an open door the bountiful refreshments prepared for us
in the supper room, I felt guiltier than ever. Suddenly I took a
resolution. It was a queer one, and may serve to show you some of the
oddities of my nature. Though I was engaged for the next dance, and
though I was dressed in the flimsy garments suitable to the occasion, I
decided to leave the ball and carry some sandwiches down to these old
men. Procuring a bit of paper, I made up a bundle and stole out of the
house without having said a word to anybody of my intention. Not wishing
to be seen, I went out by the garden door, which is at the end of the
dark hall--"

"Just as the band was playing the Harebell mazurka," interpolated
Sweetwater.

Startled for the first time from her careless composure by an
interruption of which it was impossible for her at that time to measure
either the motive or the meaning, she ceased to play with her fingers on
the baluster rail and let her eyes rest for a moment on the man who had
thus spoken, as if she hesitated between her desire to annihilate him
for his impertinence and a fear of the cold hate she saw actuating his
every word and look. Then she went on, as if no one had spoken:

"I ran down the hill recklessly. I was bent on my errand and not at all
afraid of the dark. When I reached that part of the road where the
streets branch off, I heard footsteps in front of me. I had overtaken
someone. Slackening my pace, so that I should not pass this person, whom
I instinctively knew to be a man, I followed him till I came to a high
board fence. It was that surrounding Agatha Webb's house, and when I saw
it I could not help connecting the rather stealthy gait of the man in
front of me with a story I had lately heard of the large sum of money
she was known to keep in her house. Whether this was before or after
this person disappeared round the corner I cannot say, but no sooner had
I become certain that he was bent upon entering this house than my
impulse to follow him became greater than my precaution, and turning
aside from the direct path to the Zabels', I hurried down High Street
just in time to see the man enter Mrs. Webb's front gateway.

"It was a late hour for visiting, but as the house had lights in both
its lower and upper stories, I should by good rights have taken it for
granted that he was an expected guest and gone on my way to the Zabels'.
But I did not. The softness with which this person stepped and the
skulking way in which he hesitated at the front gate aroused my worst
fears, and after he had opened that gate and slid in, I was so pursued
by the idea that he was there for no good that I stepped inside the gate
myself and took my stand in the deep shadow cast by the old pear tree on
the right-hand side of the walk. Did anyone speak?"

There was a unanimous denial from the five gentlemen before her, yet she
did not look satisfied.

"I thought I heard someone make a remark," she repeated, and paused
again for a half-minute, during which her smile was a study, it was so
cold and in such startling contrast to the vivid glances she threw
everywhere except behind her on the landing where Frederick stood
listening to her every word.

"We are very much interested," remarked Mr. Courtney. "Pray, go on."

Drawing her left hand from the balustrade where it had rested, she
looked at one of her fingers with an odd backward gesture.

"I will," she said, and her tone was hard and threatening. "Five
minutes, no longer, passed, when I was startled by a loud and terrible
cry from the house, and looking up at the second-story window from which
the sound proceeded, I saw a woman's figure hanging out in a seemingly
pulseless condition. Too terrified to move, I clung trembling to the
tree, hearing and not hearing the shouts and laughter of a dozen or more
men, who at that minute passed by the corner on their way to the
wharves. I was dazed, I was choking, and only came to myself when,
sooner or later, I do not know how soon or how late, a fresh horror
happened. The woman whom I had just seen fall almost from the window was
a serving woman, but when I heard another scream I knew that the
mistress of the house was being attacked, and rivetting my eyes on those
windows, I beheld the shade of one of them thrown back and a hand
appear, flinging out something which fell in the grass on the opposite
side of the lawn. Then the shade fell again, and hearing nothing
further, I ran to where the object flung out had fallen, and feeling for
it, found and picked up an old-fashioned dagger, dripping with blood.
Horrified beyond all expression, I dropped the weapon and retreated into
my former place of concealment.

"But I was not satisfied to remain there. A curiosity, a determination
even, to see the man who had committed this dastardly deed, attacked me
with such force that I was induced to leave my hiding-place and even to
enter the house where in all probability he was counting the gains he
had just obtained at the price of so much precious blood. The door,
which he had not perfectly closed behind him, seemed to invite me in,
and before I had realised my own temerity, I was standing in the hall of
this ill-fated house."

The interest, which up to this moment had been breathless, now expressed
itself in hurried ejaculations and broken words; and Mr. Sutherland, who
had listened like one in a dream, exclaimed eagerly, and in a tone which
proved that he, for the moment at least, believed this more than
improbable tale:

"Then you can tell us if Philemon was in the little room at the moment
when you entered the house?"

As everyone there present realised the importance of this question, a
general movement took place and each and all drew nearer as she met
their eyes and answered placidly:

"Yes; Mr. Webb was sitting in a chair asleep. He was the only person I
saw."

"Oh, I know he never committed this crime," gasped his old friend, in a
relief so great that one and all seemed to share it.

"Now I have courage for the rest. Go on, Miss Page."

But Miss Page paused again to look at her finger, and give that sideways
toss to her head that seemed so uncalled for by the situation to any who
did not know of the compact between herself and the listening man below.

"I hate to go back to that moment," said she; "for when I saw the
candles burning on the table, and the husband of the woman who at that
very instant was possibly breathing her last breath in the room
overhead, sitting there in unconscious apathy, I felt something rise in
my throat that made me deathly sick for a moment. Then I went right in
where he was, and was about to shake his arm and wake him, when I
detected a spot of blood on my finger from the dagger I had handled.
That gave me another turn, and led me to wipe off my finger on his
sleeve."

"It's a pity you did not wipe off your slippers too," murmured
Sweetwater.

Again she looked at him, again her eyes opened in terror upon the face
of this man, once so plain and insignificant in her eyes, but now so
filled with menace she inwardly quaked before it, for all her apparent
scorn.

"Slippers," she murmured.

"Did not your feet as well as your hands pass through the blood on the
grass?"

She disdained to answer him.

"I have accounted for the blood on my hand," she said, not looking at
him, but at Mr. Courtney. "If there is any on my slippers it can be
accounted for in the same way." And she rapidly resumed her narrative.
"I had no sooner made my little finger clean I never thought of anyone
suspecting the old gentleman when I heard steps on the stairs and knew
that the murderer was coming down, and in another instant would pass the
open door before which I stood.

"Though I had been courageous enough up to that minute, I was seized by
a sudden panic at the prospect of meeting face to face one whose hands
were perhaps dripping with the blood of his victim. To confront him
there and then might mean death to me, and I did not want to die, but to
live, for I am young, sirs, and not without a prospect of happiness
before me. So I sprang back, and seeing no other place of concealment in
the whole bare room, crouched down in the shadow of the man you call
Philemon. For one, two minutes, I knelt there in a state of mortal
terror, while the feet descended, paused, started to enter the room
where I was, hesitated, turned, and finally left the house."

"Miss Page, wait, wait," put in the coroner. "You saw him; you can tell
who this man was?"

The eagerness of this appeal seemed to excite her. A slight colour
appeared in her cheeks and she took a step forward, but before the words
for which they so anxiously waited could leave her lips, she gave a
start and drew back with, an ejaculation which left a more or less
sinister echo in the ears of all who heard it.

Frederick had just shown himself at the top of the staircase.

"Good-morning, gentlemen," said he, advancing into their midst with an
air whose unexpected manliness dis

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