XVI
“DEAD?”
The word was spoken in such astonishment that it had almost the emphasis of unbelief.
From whose lips had it come?
I turned to see. We were all still grouped near or about the bed, but this voice was strange, or so it seemed to me at the moment.
But it was strange only from emotion. It was that of Dr. Cameron, who had come quietly in, in response to the summons sent him at the first sign of change seen in his patient.
“I did not anticipate this,” he was now saying. “Yesterday he had strength enough for a fortnight or more of life. What was his trouble? He must have excited himself.”
Looking round upon our faces as we failed to reply, he let his fingers rest on the bowl from which little whiffs of smoke were still going up. “This is an odd thing to have where disinfection is not necessary. Something of a most unusual nature has taken place here. What was it? Did I not tell you to keep him quiet?”
It was Edgar who answered.
“Doctor, you knew my uncle. Knew him in health and knew him in illness. Do you think that any one could have kept him quiet if he had the will to act even if it were to please simply a momentary whim? What then if he felt himself called upon to risk his life in the performance of a duty? Could you or I or even his well loved daughter have prevented him?” And looking very noble, Edgar met the doctor’s eye unflinchingly.
“Ah, a duty!” The doctor’s voice had grown milder. “No, I do not think that any of us could have stopped him in that case.”
Turning towards the bed, he stood a moment gazing at the rigid countenance which but a few minutes before had been so expressive of emotion. Then, raising his hand, he pointed directly at it, saying with a gravity which shook every heart:
“The performance of duty brings relief to both mind and body. Then why this look of alarm with which he met his end—”
“Because he felt it coming before that duty was fully accomplished. If you must know, doctor, I am willing to tell you what occasioned this sudden collapse. Shall I not, Orpha? Shall I not, Quenton? It is his right, as our physician. We shall save ourselves nothing by silence.”
“Tell.”
That was all Orpha seemed to have power to utter, and I attempted little more. I was willing the doctor should know—that all the world should know—my part in this grievous tragedy. Even if I had wished for silence, the sting of Edgar’s tone as he mentioned my name would have been enough to make me speak.
“I have no wish to keep anything from the doctor,” I affirmed as quickly and evenly as if the matter were of ordinary purport. “Only tell him all; keep nothing back.”
And Edgar did so with a simplicity and fairness which did him credit. If he had shown a tinge of sarcasm when he addressed me directly, it was not heard in the relation he now gave of the drawing up of the two wills and our uncle’s final act in destroying one. “He loved me—it was a life-long affection—and when Quenton came, he loved him.” This was said with a certain display of hardihood.—“Not wishing to divide his fortune but to leave it largely in favor of one, he wavered for a time between us, but finally, at the conscious approach of death, made up his mind and acted as you have seen. Only,” he finished with naïveté peculiar to his temperament and nature, “we do not know which of us he has chosen to bless or curse with his great fortune. You see the remains of one will. But of the other one or of its contents we have as yet no knowledge.”
The doctor, who had followed Edgar’s words with great intentness, opened his lips as though to address him, but failed to do so, turning his attention towards me instead. Then, still without speaking, he drew up the sheet over the face once so instinct with every generous emotion, and quietly left our presence. As the door closed upon him Orpha burst into sobs, and it was Edgar’s arm, not mine, which fell about her shoulders.
No attempt was made during those first few grief-stricken hours to settle the question alluded to above. Of course it would be an easy matter to find the will which he from sheer physical weakness could not have put very far away. But Edgar showed no anxiety to find it and I studiously refrained from showing any; while Orpha seemed to have forgotten everything but her loss.
But at nightfall Edgar came to where I was pacing the verandah and, halting in the open French window, said without preamble and quite brusquely for him:
“The will of which Uncle spoke as having been taken from the other envelope and concealed in some drawer or other, cannot be found. It is not in the cubby-hole at the back of his bed or in any of the drawers or subdivisions of his desk. You were with him later than I last night. Did he intimate to you in any way where he intended to put it?”
“I left him while the two wills, or at least the two envelopes, still remained in his hands. But Clarke ought to be able to tell you. He is the one most likely to have gone in immediately upon my departure.”
“Clarke says that he no sooner entered Uncle’s presence than he was ordered out, with an injunction not to come back or to allow any one else to approach the room for a full half hour. My uncle wished to be alone.”
“And was he obeyed?”
“Clarke says that he was. Wealthy was sitting in her usual place in the hall as he went by to his room; and answered with a quiet nod when he told her what Uncle’s wishes were. She is the last person to disobey them. Yet Uncle had been so emphatic that more than once he stole about the corner to see if she were still sitting where he had left her. And she was. Neither he nor she disturbed him until the time was up. Then Clarke went in. Uncle was sitting in his great chair looking very tired. The envelopes were in his hand but he allowed Clarke to add them to a pile of other documents lying on the stand by his bed where they still were when Wealthy came in. She says she was astonished to see so many valuable papers lying there, for he usually kept everything of the kind in the little cubby-hole let into the head of his bed. But when she offered to put them there he said ‘No,’ and was very peremptory indeed in his demand that she should go down to Orpha’s room on an errand, which while of no especial moment, would keep her from the room for fifteen minutes if not longer. She went and when she came back the envelopes as well as all the other papers were still lying on the stand. Later, at his request, she put them all back in the drawer.”
“Looking at them as she did so?”
“No.”
“Who got them out this morning? The two envelopes, I mean.”
“She, and it was not till then that she noticed that one of them was empty. She says, and the plausibility of her surmise you must acknowledge, that it was during the time she was below with Orpha, that Uncle took out the will now missing from its envelope and hid it away. Where, we cannot conceive.”
“What do you know of this woman?”
“Nothing but what is good. She has had the confidence of many people for years.”
“It is an extraordinary situation in which we find ourselves,” I commented, approaching him where he still stood in the open window. “But there cannot be any real difficulty ahead of us. The hiding-places which in his feeble state he could reach, are few. To-morrow will see this necessary document in hand. Meanwhile, you are the master.”
I said it to try him. Though my tone was a matter-of-fact one he could not but feel the sting of such a declaration from me.
And he did, and fully as much as I expected.
“You seem to think,” he said, with a dilation of the nostril and a sudden straightening of his lips which while it lasted made him look years older than his age, “that there is such a thing as the possibility of some other person taking that place upon the finding and probating of the remaining will.”
“I have reason to, Edgar.”
“How much reason, Quenton?”
“Only my uncle’s word.”
“Ah!” He was very still, but the shot went home. “And what did he say?” he asked after a moment of silent communion with himself.
“That I was the man.”
I repeated these words with as little offense as possible. I felt that no advantage should be taken of his ignorance if indeed he were as ignorant as he seemed. Nor did I feel like wounding his feelings. I simply wanted no misunderstandings to arise.
“You the man! He said that?”
“Those were his exact words.”
“The man to administer his wealth? To take his place in this community? To—” his voice sank lower, there was even an air of apology in his manner—“to wed his daughter?”
“Yes. And to my mind,”—I said it fervently—“this last honor out-weighs all the rest. I love Orpha deeply and devotedly. I have never told her so, but few women are loved as I love her.”
“You dare?” The word escaped him almost without his volition. “Didn’t you know that there at least I have the precedence? That she and I are engaged—”
“Truly, Edgar?”
He looked down at my hand which I had laid in honest appeal on his arm and as he did so he flushed ever so slightly.
“I regard myself as engaged to her.”
“Yet you do not love her. Not as I do,” I hastened to add. “She is my past, my present and my future; she is my whole life. Otherwise my conduct would be inexcusable. There is no reason why I should take precedence of you in other ways than that.”
He was taken aback. He had not expected any such an avowal from me. I had kept my secret well. It had not escaped the father’s eye but it had that of the lukewarm lover.
“You have some excuse for your presumption,” he admitted at last. “There has been no public recognition of our intentions, nor have we made any display of our affection. But you know it now, and must eliminate from your program that hope which you say is your whole life. As for the rest, I might as well tell you, now as later, that nothing but the sight of the lost will, made out as you have the hardihood to declare, will ever convince me that Uncle, even in the throes of approaching dissolution, would so far forget the affection of years as to give into the hands of my betrothed wife for public destruction the will he had made while under the stress of that affection. The one we all saw reduced to ashes was the one in which your name figured the largest. That I shall always believe and act upon till you can show me in black and white the absolute proof that I have made a mistake.”
He spoke with an air of dignity and yet with an air of detachment also, not looking me in the eye. The sympathy I had felt for him in his unfortunate position left me and I became boldly critical of everything he said. In every matter in which we, creatures of an hour, are concerned, there are depths which are never fully sounded. The present one was not likely to prove an exception. But the time had not come for me to show any positive distrust, so I let him go, with what I tried to make a dispassionate parting.
“Neither of us wish to take advantage of the other. That is why we are both disposed to be frank. I shall stand on my rights, too, Edgar, if events prove that I am legally entitled to them. You cannot expect me to do otherwise. I am a man like yourself and I love Orpha.”
Like a flash he wheeled at that and came hastily back.
“Do you mean that according to your ideas she goes absolutely with the fortune, in these days of woman’s independence? You will have to change your ideas. Uncle would never bind her to his wishes like that.”
He spoke with a conviction not observable in anything he had said before. He was not surmising now but speaking from what looked very much like knowledge.
“Then you saw those two wills—read them—became acquainted with their contents before I knew of their existence?”
“Fortunately, yes,” he allowed.
“There you have the advantage of me. I have only a general knowledge of the same. They were not unfolded before my eyes.”
He did not respond to this suggestion as I had some hope that he would, but stood in silence, drumming nervously with his fingers on the framework of the window standing open at his side. My heart, always sensitive to changes of emotion, began pounding in my breast. He was meditating some action or formulating some disclosure, the character of which I could not even guess at. I saw resolution climaxing in the expression of his eye.
“Quenton, there is something you don’t know.” These words came with slow intensity; he was looking fairly at me now. “There is another will, a former one, drawn up and attested to previous to those which made a nightmare of our uncle’s final days. That one I have also seen, and what is more to the point, I believe it to be still in existence, either in some drawer of my uncle’s desk or in the hands of Mr. Dunn, our legal adviser, and consequently producible at any time. I will tell you on my honor that by the terms of this first will—the only one which will stand—I am given everything, over and above certain legacies, which were alike in all three wills.”
“No mention of Orpha?”
“Yes. He leaves her a stated sum and with such expressions of confidence and affection that no one can doubt he did what he did from a conception, mistaken perhaps but sincere, that he was taking the best course to secure her happiness.”
“Was this will made previous to my coming or after?”
“Before.”
“How long before, Edgar? You cannot question my right to know.”
“I question nothing but the good taste of this conversation on the part of both of us, while Uncle lies cold in the house!”
“You are right; we will defer it. Take my hand, Edgar. I have not from the beginning to the end played you false in this matter. Nor have I made any effort beyond being at all times responsive to Uncle’s goodness, to influence him in any unfair way against you. We are cousins and should be friends.”
He took a long breath, smiled faintly and reached out his hand to mine. “You have the more solid virtues,” he laughed, “and I ought to envy you. But I don’t. The lighter ones will win and when they do—not if mind you, but when—then we will talk of friendship.”
Not the sort of harangue calculated to calm my spirits or to make this day of mourning lose any of its gloom.
That night I slept but little. I had much to grieve over; much to think about. I had lost my best friend. Of that I was sure. His place would never again be filled in my heart or in my imagination. Without him the house seemed a barren shell save for the dim unseen corner where my darling mourned in her own way the man we both loved.
Might we but have shared each other’s suffering!
But under the existing state of things, that could not be. Our relations, one to the other, were too unsettled. Which thought brought me at once face to face with the most hopeless of all my perplexities. How were Orpha and I to know—and when, if ever—what Uncle’s wishes were or what his final intentions? The will which would have made everything plain, as well as fixed the status of everybody in the house, had not been found; and among the disadvantages in which this placed me was the fact that he, as the present acknowledged head of the house, had rights which it would have been most unbecoming in me to infringe upon. If he wished a door to be closed against me, I could not, as a mere resident under his roof, ask to have it opened. For days—possibly for weeks,—at all events until he saw fit to pursue the search he had declared to be at present so hopeless, it was for me to remain quiescent—a man apart—anxious for my rights but unable as a gentleman and a guest to make a move towards obtaining them.
And unhappily for us, instantaneous action was what the conditions called for. An immediate and exhaustive inquiry, conducted by Edgar in the presence of every occupant of the house, offered the only hope of arriving speedily at the truth of what it was not to the interests of any of us to leave much longer in doubt.
For some one of the few persons admitted to Uncle’s presence after Edgar and I had left it, must have aided him in the disposal of this missing document. He was far too feeble to have taken it from the room himself, nor could he, without a helping hand, have made any extraordinary effort within it which would have necessitated the displacing of furniture or the opening of drawers or other receptacles not plainly in sight and within easy access.
If the will which his sudden death prevented him from definitely locating was not found within twenty-four hours, it would never be found. The one helping him will have suppressed it; and this is what I believed had already occurred. For every servant in the house from his man Clarke to a shy little sewing girl who from time to time scurried on timid feet through the halls, favored Edgar to the point of self-effacing devotion.
And Edgar knew it.
Recognizing this fact at its full value, but not as yet questioning his probity, I asked myself who was the first person to enter my uncle’s room immediately after my departure on the evening before.
I did not know.
Did Edgar? Had he taken any pains to find out?
Fruitless to conjecture. Impertinent to inquire.
I had left Uncle sitting by the fire. He had bidden me call Wealthy, and it was just possible that in the interim elapsing between my going out and the entrance of nurse or servant, he had found the nervous strength to hide the missing paper where no one as yet had thought to look for it.
It did not seem possible, and I gave but little credence to this theory; yet such is the activity of the mind when once thoroughly aroused, that all through the long night I was in fancy searching the dark corners of my uncle’s room and tabulating the secret spots and unsuspected crevices in which the document so important to myself might lie hidden.
Beginning with the bed, I asked myself if there could be anywhere in it an undiscovered hiding-place other than the drawer I have already mentioned as having been let into the head-board. I decided to the contrary since this piece of furniture upon which he had been found lying, would have received the closest attention of the searchers. If Edgar had called in the services of Wealthy, as it would be natural for him to do, she would never have left the mattresses and pillows unexamined; while he would have ransacked the little drawer and sounded the wood of the bedstead for hollow posts or convenient slits. I could safely trust that the bed could tell no tales beyond those associated with our uncle’s sufferings. Leaving it, then, in my imaginary circuit of the room, I followed the wall running parallel with the main hall, till I came to the door opening at the southern end of the room into a short passage-way communicating with that hall.
Here I paused a moment, for built into this passage-way was a cabinet which during his illness had been used for the safe-guarding of medicine bottles, etc. Could a folded paper of the size of the will find any place among the boxes and phials with which every one of its shelves were filled? I knew the place well enough to come to the quick decision that I should lose nothing by passing them quickly by.
Turning the corner which had nothing to show but another shelf—this time a hanging one—on which there was never anything kept but a jar or two and a small photograph of Edgar, I concentrated my attention on the south wall made beautiful by the full length portrait of Orpha concerning which I have said so much.
It had not always hung there. It had been brought from the den, as you will remember, when Uncle’s illness had become pronounced, taking the place of a painting which had been hung elsewhere. Flanked by windows on either side, it filled the wall-space up to where a table stood of size sufficient to answer for the serving of a meal. There were chairs here too and Orpha’s little basket standing on its three slender legs. The document might have been put under her work. But no, the woman would have found it there; or in the table drawer, or among the cushions of the couch filling the space between this corner and the fireplace. There were rugs all over the room but they must have been lifted; and as for the fireplace itself, not having had the sifting of the ashes, I must leave it unconsidered.
But not so the mantel or the winged chair dedicated solely to my Uncle’s use and always kept near the hearth. This was where I had last seen him, sitting in this chair close to the fire-dogs. The two wills were in his hands. Could one have fallen from its envelope and so into the flames,—the one he had meant to preserve,—the one which was not marked with a hastily scrawled cross? Mad questions to which there was no answer. Would that I might have been the man to sift those ashes! Or that I might yet be given the opportunity of looking behind the ancient painting which filled the large square above the mantel. I did not see how anything like a folded paper could have been lodged there; but not an inch from floor to ceiling would have escaped my inspection had I been fortunate enough or my claims been considered important enough to have entitled me to assist in the search.
Should I end this folly of a disturbed imagination? Forget the room for to-night and the whole gruesome tragedy? Could I, in reality, do this before I had only half circled the room? There was the desk,—the place of all others where he would naturally lock up a paper of value. But this was so obvious that probably not another article in the room had been more thoroughly overhauled or its contents more rigidly examined. If any of its drawers or compartments contained false backs or double bottoms, Edgar would be likely to know it. Up to the night of the ball, when in some way he forfeited a portion of our uncle’s regard, he had been, according to his own story, in his benefactor’s full confidence, even in matters connected with business and his most private transactions. The desk was negligible, if, as I sincerely believed, he had sought to conceal the will from Edgar, as temporarily from every one else.
But back of the desk there was a book-case, and books offer an excellent hiding-place. But that book-case was always locked, and the key to it, linked with that of the desk, kept safely to hand in the drawer inserted in his bed-head. The desk-key, of course, had come into use at the first moment of the search, but had that of the book-case? Possibly not.
I made a note of this doubt; and in my fancy moved on to the two rooms which completed my uncle’s suite towards the north. The study and a dressing closet! I say study and I say closet but both were large enough to merit the name of rooms. The dressing-closet was under the combined care of Wealthy and Clarke. They must be acquainted with every nook and corner of it. Wealthy had undoubtedly been consulted as to its contents, but had Clarke?
The study, since the time when Uncle’s condition became serious enough to have a nurse within call, had been occupied by Wealthy. Certainly he would have hidden nothing in her room which he wished kept from Edgar.
The fourth corner was negligible; so was the wall between it and a second passage-way which, like the one already described, led to a door opening into the main hall. Only, this one, necessitated like the other by the curious break between the old house and the new, held no cabinet or any place of concealment. It was the way of entrance most used by uncle when in health and by all the rest of us both then and later. Had he made use of it that night, for reaching the hall and some place beyond?
Hardly; but if he had, where would he have found a cubby-hole for the will, short of Edgar’s room or mine?
The closet indicated in the diagram of this room as offering another break in this eastern wall, was the next thing to engage my attention.
I had often seen it open and it held, according to my recollection, nothing but clothes. He had always been very methodical in his ways and each coat had its hook and every hat, not in constant use, its own box. The hooks ran along the back and along one of the sides; the other side was given up to shelves only wide enough to hold the boxes just alluded to and the long row of shoes, the number and similarity of which I found it hard to account for till I heard some one in speaking of petty economies and of how we all have them, mentioned this peculiar one of my uncle’s, which was to wear a different pair of shoes every day in the week.
Had Edgar, or whoever conducted the search, gone through all the pockets of the many suits lining these simple walls? Had they lifted the shoes?
The only object to be seen between the door of this closet and the alcove sunk in the wall for the accommodation of the bed-head, was the small stand holding his night-lamp and the various articles for use and ornament which one usually sees at an invalid’s bedside. I remembered the whole collection. There was not a box there nor a book, not even a tablet nor a dish large enough to hold the will folded as I had seen it. Had the stand a drawer? Yes, but this drawer had no lock. Its contents were open to all. Edgar must have handled them. I had come back to my starting-point. And what had I gained in knowledge or in hope by my foolish imaginary quest? Nothing. I had but proved to myself that I was no more exempt than the next man from an insatiable, if hitherto unrecognized desire for this world’s goods and this world’s honors. Nothing less could have kept my thoughts so long in this especial groove at a time of such loss and so much personal sorrow.
My shame was great and to its salutary effect upon my mind I attribute a certain lessening of interest in things material which I date from this day.
My hour of humiliation over, my thoughts reverted to Orpha. I had not seen her all day nor had I any hope of seeing her on the morrow. She had not shown herself at meals, nor were we to expect her to leave her room—or so I was told—until the day of the funeral.
Whether this isolation of hers was to be complete, shutting out Edgar as well as myself, I had no means of determining. Probably not, if what uncle had told me was true and they were secretly engaged.
When I fell asleep at dawn it was with the resolution fixed in my mind, that with the first opportunity which offered I would make a desperate endeavor to explain myself to her. As my pride was such that I could only do this in Edgar’s presence, the risk was great. So would be the test made of her feelings by the story I had to relate. If she listened, hope, shadowy but existent, might still be mine. If not, then I must bear her displeasure as best I could. Possibly I should suffer less under it than from the uncertainty which kept every nerve quivering.
The next day was without incident save such as were connected with the sad event which had thrown the house into mourning. Orpha did not appear and Edgar was visible only momentarily and that at long intervals.
When he did show himself it was with an air of quiet restraint which caused me some thought. The suspicion he had shown—or was it just a natural revulsion at my attitude and pretensions,—seemed to have left him. He was friendly in aspect and when he spoke, as he did now and then, there was apology in his tone, almost commiseration, which showed how assured he felt that nothing I could do or say would ever alter the position he was maintaining amongst us with so much grace and calm determination.
Had he found the will and had it proved to be the one favorable to his interests and not to mine? I doubted this and with cause, for the faces of those about him did not reflect his composure, but wore a look of anxious suspense quite distinct from that of sorrow, sincerely as my uncle was mourned by every member of his devoted household. I noticed this first in Clarke, who had taken his stand near his dead master’s door and could not be induced to leave it. No sentinel on watch ever showed a sadder or a more resolute countenance.
It was the same with Wealthy. Every time I passed through the hall I found her hovering near one door or the other of her former master’s room, the great tears rolling down her cheeks and her mouth set with a firmness which altered her whole appearance. Usually mild of countenance, she reminded me that day of some wild animal guarding her den, especially when her eye met mine. If the will favoring Edgar had been found, she would have faced me with a very different aspect and cared little what I did or where I stayed. But no such will had been found; and what was, perhaps, of almost equal importance, neither had the original one—the one made before I came to C——, and which Edgar had so confidently stated was still in the house. Both were gone and—Here a thought struck me which stopped me short as I was descending the stairs. If the original one had been destroyed—as would have been natural upon or immediately after the signing of the other two, and no other should ever come to light—in other words, if Uncle, so far as all practical purposes went, had died intestate, then in the course of time Orpha would inherit the whole estate (I knew enough of law to be sure of that) and if engaged to Edgar, he would have little in the end to complain of. Was this the source of his composure, so unnatural to one of his temperament and headlong impulses?
I would not have it so. With every downward step which I took after that I repeated to myself, “No! no!” and when I passed within sight of Orpha’s door somehow the feeling rose within me that she was repeating with me that same vigorous “No! no!”
A lover’s fancy founded on—well, on nothing. A dream, light as air, to be dispelled the next time I saw her. For struggle against it as I would, both reason and experience assured me only too plainly that women of her age choose for their heart’s mate, not the man whose love is the deepest and most sincere, but the one whose pleasing personality has fired their imagination and filled their minds with dreams.
And Edgar, in spite of his irregular features possessed this appeal to the imagination above and beyond any other man I have ever met.
I shall never forget this seemingly commonplace descent of mine down these two flights of stairs. In those few minutes I seemed to myself to run the whole gamut of human emotions; to exhaust the sorrows and perplexities of a life-time.
And it was nothing; mere child’s play. Before another twenty-four hours had passed how happy would I have been if this experience had expressed the full sum of grief and trial I should be called upon to endure.
I had other experiences that day confirmatory of the conclusion I had come to. Hostile glances everywhere except as I have said from Edgar. Attention to my wants, respectful replies to my questions, which I assure you were very limited, but no display of sympathy or kind feeling from any one indoors or out. To each and all I was an unwelcome stranger, with hand stretched out to steal the morsel from another man’s dish.
I bore it. I stood the day out bravely, as was becoming in one conscious of no evil intentions; and when evening came, retired to my room, in the hope that sleep would soon bring me the relief my exhausted condition demanded.
So little are we able to foresee one hour, nay, one minute into the future.
I read a little, or tried to, then I sank into a reverie which did not last long, for they had chosen this hour to carry down the casket into the court.
My room, of which you will hear more later, was in the rear of the house and consequently somewhat removed from the quarter where all this was taking place. But imagination came to the aid of my hearing, intensifying every sound. When I could stand no more I threw up my window and leaned out into the night. There was consolation in the darkness, and for a few fleeting minutes I felt a surcease of care and a lightening of the load weighing upon my spirits. The face of heaven was not unkind to me and I had one treasure of memory with which to meet whatever humiliation the future might bring. My uncle had been his full vigorous self at the moment he rose up before me and said, with an air of triumph, “You are the man!” For that one thrilling instant I was the man, however the people of his house chose to regard me.
Soothed by the remembrance, I drew in my head and softly closed the window. God! how still it was! Not a sound to be heard anywhere. My uncle’s body had been carried below and this whole upper floor was desolate. So was his room! The room which had witnessed such misery; the room from which I had felt myself excluded; where, if it still existed, the missing will lay hidden; the will which I must see—handle—show to the world—show to Orpha.
Was there any one there now,—watching as they had watched, at door or bedside while his body still lay in the great bed and the mystery of his last act was still a mystery unsolved?
A few steps and the question would be answered. But should I take those steps? Brain and heart said no. But man is not always governed by his brain or by his heart, or by both combined. Before I knew it and quite without conscious volition I had my hand on the knob of my door. I had no remembrance of having crossed the floor. I felt the knob of the door turning in my hand and that was the sum of my consciousness. Thus started on the way, I could not stop. The hall as I stepped into it lay bare and quiet before me. So did the main one when I had circled the bend and stood in sight of my uncle’s door. But nothing would have made me believe at that moment that there was no sentinel behind it. Yet I hurried on, listening and looking back like a guilty man, for brain and heart were yet crying out “No.”
There was no one to mark my quickly moving figure, for the doors, whichever way I looked, were all shut. Nor would any one near or far be likely to hear my footsteps, for I was softly shod. But when I reached his door, it was as impossible for me to touch it as if I had known that the spirit of my uncle would meet me on the threshold.
Sick at heart, I staggered backwards. There should be no attempt made by me to surprise, in any underhanded, way, the secrets of this room. What I might yet be called upon to do, should be done openly and with Orpha’s consent. She was the mistress of this home. However our fortunes turned, she was now, and always would be, its moral head. This was my one glad thought.
To waft her a good-night message I leaned over the balustrade and was so leaning, when suddenly, sharply, frightfully, a cry rang up from below rousing every echo in the wide, many-roomed house. It was from a woman’s lips, but not from Orpha’s, thank God; and after that first instant of dismay, I ran forward to the stair-head and was on the point of plunging recklessly below, when the door of Uncle’s room opened and the pale and alarmed face of Wealthy confronted me.
“What is it?” she cried. “What has happened?”
Before I could answer Clarke rushed by me, appearing from I never knew where. He flew pell-mell down the stairs and I followed, scarcely less heedless of my feet than he. As we reached the bottom, I almost on top of him, a hardly audible click came from the hall above. I recognized the sound, possibly because I was in a measure listening for it. Wealthy was about to follow us, but not until she had locked the door she was leaving without a watcher.
As we all crowded in line at the foot of the first flight, the door of Orpha’s room opened and she stepped out and faced us.
“What is it? Who is hurt?” were her first words. “Somebody cried out. The voice sounded like Martha’s.”
Martha was the name of one of the girls.
“We don’t know,” replied Clarke. “We are going to see.”
She made as if to follow us.
“Don’t,” I prayed, beseeching her with look and hand. “Let us find out first whether it is anything but a woman’s hysterical outcry.”
She paused for a moment then pressed hastily on.
“I must see for myself,” she declared; and I forebore to urge her further. Nor did I offer her my arm. For my heart was very sore. She had not looked my way once, no, not even when I spoke.
So she too doubted me. Oh, God! my lot was indeed a hard one.
The scene which met our view as we halted in one of the arches overlooking the court was one for which we sought in vain for full explanation.
The casket had been placed and a man stood near it, holding the lid which he had evidently just taken off, probably at some one’s request. But it was not upon the casket or the man that our glances became instantly focused. Grief has its call but terror dominates grief, and terror stood embodied before us in the figure of the girl Martha, who with staring eyes and pointing finger bade us “Look! look!” crouching as the words left her lips and edging fearfully away.
Look? look at what? She had appeared to indicate the silent form in the casket. But that could not be. The death of the old is sad but not terrible; she must have meant something else, something which we could not perceive from where we stood.
Leaning further forward, I forced my gaze to follow hers and speedily became aware that the others were doing the same and that it was inside the casket itself that they were all peering and with much the same appearance of consternation Martha herself had shown.
Something was wrong there; and alive to the effect which this scene must have upon Orpha, I turned her way just in time to catch her as she fell back from the marble balustrade she had been clutching in her terror.
“Oh, what is it? what is it?” she moaned, her eyes meeting mine for the first time in days.
“I will go and see, if you think you can stand alone.”
“Wealthy will take care of me,” she murmured, as another arm than mine drew her forcibly away.
But I did not go on the instant for just then Martha spoke again and we heard in tones which set every heart beating tumultuously:
“Spots! Black spots on his forehead and cheek! I have seen them before—seen them on my dead brother’s face and he died from poison!”
“Wretch!” I shouted down from the gallery where I stood, in irrepressible wrath and consternation, as Orpha, escaping from Wealthy’s grasp, fell insensible at my feet. “Would you kill your young mistress!” And I stooped to lift Orpha, but an arm thrust across her pushed me inexorably back.
“Would you blame the girl for what you yourself have brought upon us?” came in a hiss to my ear.
And staring into Wealthy’s face I saw with a chill as of the grave what awaited me at the hands of Hate if no succor came from Love.
In another moment I had left the gallery. Whether it was from pride or conscious innocence or just the daring of youth in the face of sudden danger, the hot blood within me drove me to add myself to the group of friends and relatives circling my uncle’s casket, where I belonged as certainly and truly as Edgar did. Not for me to hide my head or hold myself back at a crisis so momentous as this. Even the shudder which passed from man to man at my sudden appearance did not repel me; and, when after an instant of hesitation one person after another began to sidle away till I was left there alone with the man still holding the lid in his trembling fingers, I did not move from my position or lift the hand which I had laid in reverent love upon the edge of the casket.
That every tongue was stilled and many a breath held in check I need not say. It was a moment calling for a man’s utmost courage. For the snake of suspicion whose hiss I had heard above was rearing its crest against me here, and not a friendly eye did I meet.
But perhaps I should have, if Edgar’s face had been turned my way; but it was not. Miss Colfax was one of the group watching us from the other side of the fountain, and his eyes were on her and not on me. I stood in silent observation of him for a minute, then I spoke.
“Edgar, if there is anything in the appearance of our uncle’s body which suggests foul play though it be only to an ignorant servant, why do you not send for the doctor?”
He started and, turning very slowly, gave me look for look.
“Do you advise that?” he asked.
With a glance at the dear features which were hardly recognizable, I said:
“I not only advise it, but as one who believes himself entitled to full authority here, I demand it.”
A murmur from every lip varying in tone but all hostile was followed by a silence which bitterly tried my composure. It was broken by a movement of the undertaker’s man. Stepping forward, he silently replaced the lid he had been holding.
This forced a word from Edgar.
“We will not dispute authority in this presence or disagree as to the action you propose. Let some one call Dr. Cameron.”
“It is not necessary,” announced a voice from the staircase. “That has already been done.” And Orpha, erect, and showing none of the weakness which had so nearly laid her at my feet a few minutes before, stepped into our midst.
Such transformations are not common, and can only occur in strong natures under the stress of a sudden emergency. With what rejoicing I hailed this new Orpha, and marked the surprise on every face as she bent over the casket and imprinted a kiss upon the cold wood which shut in the heart which had so loved her. When she faced them again, not an eye but showed a tear; only her own were dry. But ah, how steady!
Edgar, who had started forward, stopped stock-still as she raised her hand. No statue of even-handed Justice could have shown a calmer front. I could have worshiped her, and did in my inmost heart; for I saw with a feeling of awe which I am sure was shared by many others there, that she whom we had seen blossom from girl to womanhood in a moment, was to be trusted, and that she would do what was right because it was right and not from any less elevated motive.
That she was beautiful thus, with a beauty which put her girlhood’s charms to blush, did not detract from her power.
Eagerly we waited for what she had to say. When it came it was very simple.
“I can understand,” said she, “the shock you have all sustained. But I ask you to wait before you accept the awful suggestion conveyed by my poor Martha’s words. She had a dreadful experience once and naturally was thrown off her balance by anything which brought it to mind. But the phenomenon which she once witnessed in her brother—under very different circumstances I am sure—is no proof that a like cause is answerable for what we see disfiguring the face we so much love. Let us hear what Dr. Cameron has to say before we associate evil with a death which in itself is hard enough to bear. Edgar, will you bring me a chair. I shall not leave my father’s side till Dr. Cameron bids me do so.”
He did not hear her; that is, not attentively enough to do her bidding. He was looking again at Miss Colfax, who was speaking in whispers to the man she was engaged to; and in the pride of my devotion it was I who brought a chair and saw my dear one seated.
Her “Thank you,” was even and not unkind but it held no warmth. Nor did the same words afterwards addressed to Edgar at some trifling service he showed her. She was holding the balance of her favor at rest between us; and so she would continue to hold it till her duty became clear and Providence itself tipped the scale.
Thus far it was given me to penetrate her mind. Was it through my love for her or because the rectitude of her nature was so apparent in that high hour?
Dr. Cameron not being able to come immediately upon call, the few outsiders who were present took their leave after a voluntary promise by each and all to preserve a rigid silence concerning the events of the evening until released by official authority.
The grace with which Edgar accepted this token of friendship showed him at his best. But when they were gone it was quite another Edgar who faced us in the great court. With hasty glance, he took in all our faces, then turned his attention upward to the gallery where Clarke and Wealthy still stood.
“No one is to stir from his place while I am gone,” said he. “If the doctor’s ring is heard, let him in. But I am in serious earnest when I say that I expect to see on my return every man and woman now present in the precise place in which I leave them.”
His voice was stern, his manner troubled. He was anything but his usual self. Nor was it with his usual suavity he suddenly turned upon me and said:
“Quenton, do you consent?”
“To remain here?” I asked. “Certainly.” Indeed, I had no other wish.
But Orpha was not of my mind. With a glance at Edgar as firm as it was considerate, she quietly said:
“You should allow yourself no privilege which you deny to Quenton. If for any reason you choose to leave us for purposes you do not wish to communicate, you must take him with you.”
The flush which this brought to his cheek was the first hint of color I had seen there since the evening began.
“This from you, Orpha?” he muttered. “You would place this stranger—”
“Where my father put him,—on a level with yourself. But why leave us, Edgar? Why not wait till the doctor comes?”
They were standing near each other but they now stepped closer.
Instinctively I turned my back. I even walked away from them. When I wheeled about again, I saw that they were both approaching me.
“I am going up with Edgar,” said she. “Will you sit in my place till I come back?”
“Gladly, Orpha.” But I wondered what took them above—something important I knew—and watched them with jealous eyes as in their ascent their bright heads came into view, now through one arch and now through another, till they finally emerged, he leading, she following, upon the gallery.
Here they paused to speak to Clarke and Wealthy. A word, and Clarke stepped back, allowing Wealthy to slip up ahead of them to the third floor.
They were going to Uncle’s room of which Wealthy had the key.
Deliberately I wheeled about; deliberately I forebore to follow their movements any further, even in fancy. Prudence forbade such waste of emotion. I would simply forget everything but my present duty, which was to hold every lesser inmate of the house in view, till these two had returned or the doctor arrived.
But when I heard them coming, no exercise of my own will was strong enough to prevent me from concentrating my attention on the gallery to which they must soon descend. They reached it as they had left it, Edgar to the fore and Orpha and Wealthy following slowly after. A momentary interchange of words and Wealthy rejoined Clarke, and Edgar and Orpha came steadily down. There was nothing to be learned from their countenances; but I had a feeling that their errand had brought them no relief; that the situation had not been bettered and that what we all needed was courage to meet the developments awaiting us.
I was agreeably disappointed therefore, when the doctor, having arrived, met the first hasty words uttered by Edgar with an incredulous shrug. Nor did he show alarm or even surprise when after lifting the lid from the casket he took a prolonged look at the august countenance thus exposed. It was not until he had replaced this lid and paused for a moment in thoughtful silence that I experienced a fresh thrill of doubt and alarm. This however passed when the doctor finally said:
“Discolorations such as you see here, however soon they appear, are in themselves no proof that poison has entered the stomach. There are other causes which might easily induce them. But, since the question has been raised—since, in the course of my treatment poison in careful doses has been administered to Mr. Bartholomew, of which poison there probably remained sufficient to have hastened death, if inadvertently given by an inexperienced hand, it might be well to look into the matter. It would certainly be a comfort to you all to know that no such accident has taken place.”
Here his eyes, which had been fixed upon the casket, suddenly rose. I knew—perhaps others did—where his glance would fall first. Though an excellent man and undoubtedly a just one, he could not fail to have been influenced by what he must have heard in town of the two wills and the part I had played in unsettling my uncle’s mind in regard to his testamentary intentions. If under the doctor’s casual manner there existed anything which might be called doubt, it would be—must be—centered upon the man who was a stranger, unloved and evidently distrusted by all in this house.
Convinced as I was of this, I could not prevent the cold perspiration from starting out on my forehead, nor Orpha from seeing it, or, seeing it, drawing a step or two further off. Fate and my temperament—the susceptibility of which I had never realized till now,—were playing me false. Physical weakness added to all the rest! I was in sorry case.
As I nerved myself to meet the strain awaiting me, it came. The doctor’s gaze met mine, his keen with questioning, mine firm to meet and defy his or any other man’s misjudgment.
No word was spoken nor was any attempt at greeting made by him or by myself. But when I saw those honest eyes shift their glance from my face to whomever it was who stood beside me, I breathed as a man breathes who, submerged to the point of exhaustion, suddenly finds himself tossed again into the light of day and God’s free air.
The relief I felt added to my self-scorn. Then I forgot my own sensations in wondering how others would hold up against this ordeal and what my thoughts would be—remembering how nearly I had come to losing my own self-possession—if I beheld another man’s lids droop under a soul search so earnest and so prolonged.
Shrinking from so stringent a test of my own generosity I turned aside, not wishing to see anything further, only to hear.
Had I looked—looked in the right place, this story might never have been written; but I only listened—held my breath and listened for a break—any break—in the too heavy silence.
It came just as my endurance had reached the breaking-point. Dr. Cameron spoke, addressing Edgar.
“The funeral I understand is to be held to-morrow. At what hour, may I ask?”
“At eleven in the morning.”
“It will have to be postponed. Though there is little probability of any change being necessary in the wording of the death-certificate; yet it is possible and I must have time to consider.”
It was just and proper. But only Orpha had the courage to speak—to seek to probe his mind—to sound the depths of this household’s misery. Orpha! whom to guard from the mere disagreeabilities of life were a man’s coveted delight! She our leader? The one to take her stand in the breach yawning between the old life and the new?
“You mean,” she forced herself to say, “that what had happened to Martha’s brother may have happened to my beloved father?”
“I doubt it, but we must make sure. A poison capable of producing death was in this house. You know that; others knew it. I had warned you all concerning it. I made it plain, I thought, that small doses taken according to prescription were helpful, but that increased beyond a certain point, they meant death. You remember, Orpha?”
She bowed her head.
“And you, Edgar and Quenton?”
We did, alas!
“And his nurses, and the man Clarke, all who were at liberty to enter his room?”
“They knew.” It was Orpha who spoke. “I called their attention to what you had said more than once.”
“Is the phial containing that poison still in the house? I have not ordered it lately.”
“It is. Edgar and I have just been up to see. We found it among the other bottles in the medicine cabinet.”
“When did he receive the last dose of it under my instructions?”
“Wealthy can tell you. She kept very close watch of that bottle.”
“Wealthy,” he called, with a glance towards the gallery, “come down. I have a question or two to put to you.”
She obeyed him quickly, almost eagerly.
The other servants, Clarke alone excepted, came creeping from their corner as they saw her enter amongst us and stand in her quiet respectful way before the doctor.
He greeted her kindly; she had always been a favorite of his; then spoke up quickly:
“Mr. Bartholomew died too soon, Wealthy. We should have had him with us for another fortnight. What was the cause of it, do you know? A wrong dose? A repeated dose? One bottle mistaken for another?”
Her eyes, filled with tears, rose slowly to his face.
“I cannot say. The last time I saw that bottle it was at the very back of the shelf where I had pushed it after you had said he was to have no more of it at present. It was in the same place when we went up just now to see if it had been taken from the cabinet. It did not look as though it had been moved.”
“Holding the same amount as when you saw it last?”
“To all appearance, yes, sir.”
What was there in her tone or in the little choke which followed these few words which made the doctor stare a moment, then open his lips to speak and then desist with a hasty glance at Edgar? I had myself felt the shiver of some new fear at her manner and the unconscious emphasis she had given to that word appearance. But was it the same fear which held him back from pursuing his inquiries, and led him to say instead:
“I should like to see that bottle. No,” he remonstrated, as Orpha started to accompany him. “You are a brave girl, but it is not for your physician to abuse that bravery. Wealthy will go up with me. Meantime, let Edgar take you away to some spot where you can rest till I come back.”
It was kindly meant but oh, how hard I felt it to see these two draw off like accepted lovers; and with what joy I beheld them stop, evidently at a word from her, and seat themselves on one of the leather-covered lounges drawn up against the wall well within the sight of every one there.
I could rest, with these two sitting thus in full view—rest in the present; the future must take care of itself.
The result of the doctor’s visit to the room above was evident in the increased gravity he showed on his return. He had little to say beyond enjoining upon Edgar and Orpha the necessity for a delay in the funeral services and a suggestion that we separate at once for the night and get what sleep we could. He would send a man to sit by the dead and if we would control ourselves sufficiently not to discuss this unhappy event all might yet be well.
The picture he made with Orpha as he took his leave of her at the door remains warm in my memory. She had begun to droop and he saw it. To comfort her he took her two hands in his and drew them to his breast while he talked to her, softly but firmly. As I saw the confidence with which she finally received his admonitions, I blessed him in my heart; though with a man’s knowledge of men I perceived that his endeavor to give comfort sprang from sympathy rather than conviction. Tragedy was in the house, veiled and partially hidden, but waiting—waiting for the full recognition which the morrow must bring. A shadow with a monstrous substance behind it we would be called upon to face!
For one wild instant I wished that I had never left my native land; never seen the great Bartholomew; never felt the welcoming touch of Orpha’s little hand on mine. As I knelt again in my open window a half hour later, the star which had shone in upon me two hours before had vanished in clouds.
Darkness was in the sky, darkness was in the house, darkness was in my own soul, and saddest of all, darkness was in that of our lovely and innocent Orpha.
The next day was one of almost unendurable apprehension. Edgar, Orpha and myself could not face each other. The servants could not face us. If we moved from our rooms and by chance met in any of the halls we gazed at each other like specters and like specters flitted by without a word.
Orpha had a friend with her or I could not have stood it. For a long time I did not know who this friend was; then from some whisper I heard echoing up my convenient little stairway I learned that it was Lucy Colfax, Edgar’s real love and Dr. Hunter’s fiancée.
I did not like it. Such companionship was incongruous and unnatural; an insult to Orpha, though the dear child did not know it; but if she found relief in the presence of the one woman who, next to herself, stood in the closest relation to him who was gone, why should I complain so long as I myself could do nothing to comfort her or assuage her intolerable grief and the suspense of this terrible day.
I did not fear that Edgar would make a third. Neither he nor Orpha were ready for talk. None of us were till the doctor’s report was known and the fearful question settled. I heard afterwards that Edgar had spent most of the time in the great room upstairs staring into the corners and seeming to ask from the walls the secret they refused to give.
I did the same in mine, only I paced the floor counting the slow hours as they went by. I am always restless under suspense and movement was my only solace.
What if the report should be one of which I dared not think—dared not mention to myself. What then? What if the roof of the house in which I stood should thunder in and the great stones of the walls fall to the ground and desolation ravish the spot where life, light and beauty reigned in such triumph. I would go down with it, that I knew; but would others? Would that one other whom to save—
Was it coming? The whole house had been so still that the least sound shook me. And it was a least sound. A low but persistent knocking at my door.
I was at the other end of the room and the distance from where I stood to the door looked interminable. I must know—know instantly; I could not wait another moment. Raising my voice, or endeavoring to, I called out:
“Come in.”
It was a mere whisper; ghostly hands were about my throat. But that whisper was heard. I saw the door open and a quiet appearing man,—a complete stranger to me—stepped softly in.
I knew him for what he was before he spoke a word.
The police were in the house. There was no need to ask what the doctor’s report had been.
It is not my intention, and I am sure it is not your wish, that I should give all the details leading up to the inevitable inquest which followed the discoveries of the physicians and the action of the police.
In the first place my pride, possibly my self-respect held me back from any open attempt to acquaint myself with them. My interview with the Inspector of which I have just made mention, added much to his knowledge but very little to mine. To his questions I gave replies as truthful as they were terse. When I could, I confined myself to facts and never obtruded sentiment unless pressed as it were to the wall. He was calm, reasonable and not without consideration; but he got everything from me that he really wanted and at times forced me to lay my soul bare. In return, I caught, as I thought, faint glimmers now and then of how the mind of the police was working, only to find myself very soon in a fog where I could see nothing distinctly. When he left, the strongest impression which remained with me was that in the terrible hours I saw before me my greatest need would be courage and my best weapon under attack the truth as I knew it. In this conclusion I rested.
But not without a feeling which was as new to me as it was disturbing. I could not leave my room without sensing that somewhere, unseen and unheard, there lingered a presence from whose watchfulness I could not hope to escape. If in passing towards the main hall, I paused at the little circular staircase outside my door for one look down at the marble-floored pavement beneath, it was with the consciousness that an ear was somewhere near which recognized the cessation of my steps and waited to hear them recommence.
So in the big halls. Every door was closed, so slight the movement, so unfrequent any passing to and fro in the great house during the two days which elapsed before the funeral. But to heave a sigh or show in any way the character or trend of my emotions was just as impossible to me as though the walls were lined with spectators and every blank panel I passed was a sounding-board to some listener beyond.
Once only did I allow myself the freedom natural to a mourner in the house of the dead. Undeterred by an imaginary or even an actual encounter with unsympathetic servant or interested police operative, I left my room on the second day and went below; my goal, the court, my purpose, to stand once more by the remains of all that was left to me of my great-hearted uncle.
If I met any one on the way I have no memory of it. Had Orpha flitted by, or Edgar stumbled upon me at the turn of a corner, I might have stayed my step for an instant in outward deference to a grief which I recognized though I was not supposed to share it. But of others I took no account nor do I think I so much as lifted my eyes or glanced to right or left, when having crossed the tessellated pavement of the court, I paused by the huge mound of flowers beneath which lay what I sought, and thrusting my hand among these tokens of love and respect till I touched the wood beneath, swore that whatever the future held for me of shame or its reverse, I would act according to what I believed to be the will of him now dead but who for me was still a living entity.
This done I returned as I had come, only with a lighter step, for some portion of the peace for which I longed had fallen upon me with the utterance of that solemn promise.
I shall give but one incident in connection with the funeral. To my amazement I was allotted a seat in the carriage with Edgar. Orpha rode with some relatives of her mother—people I had never seen.
Though there was every chance for Edgar and myself to talk, nothing more than a nod passed between us. It was better so; I was glad to be left to my own thoughts. In the church I noted no one; but at the grave I became aware of an influence which caused me to turn my head a trifle aside and meet the steady look of a middle-aged man who was contemplating me very gravely.
Taking in his lineaments with a steady look of my own, I waited till I had the opportunity to point him out to one of the undertaker’s men when I learned that he was a well-known lawyer by the name of Jackson, and instantly became assured that he was no other than the man who had drawn up the second will—the will which I had been led to believe was strongly in my favor.
As his interest in me was to all appearance of a kindly sort untinged by suspicion, I felt that perhaps the odds after all, were not so greatly against me. Here was a man ready to help me, and should I need a friend, Providence had certainly shown me in what direction to look.
That night I slept the best of any night since the shock which had unhinged the nerves of every one in the house. I had ascertained that the full name of the lawyer who had been instrumental in drawing up the second will was Frederick W. Jackson, and while uttering this name more than once to myself, I fell into a dreamless slumber.
You may recall that my first thought in contemplating the coil in which we had all been caught by the alleged disappearance of the will supposed to contain my uncle’s final instructions, was that an inquiry including every person then in the house, should be made by some one in authority—Edgar, for instance—for the purpose of determining who was responsible for the same by a close investigation into the circumstances which made this crime possible. Little did I foresee at the time that such an inquiry, though shirked when it might have resulted in good, lay before us backed by the law and presided over by a public official.
But this fact was the first one to strike me, as convened in one of the large rooms in the City Hall, we faced the Coroner, in ignorance, most of us, of what such an inquiry portended and how much or how little of the truth it would bring to light.
I knew what I had to fear from my own story. I had told it once before and witnessed its effect. But how about Orpha’s? And Edgar’s? and that of the long row of servants, uneasy in body and perplexed in mind, from whose unwitting, if not unwilling lips some statement might fall which would fix suspicion or so shift it as to lead us into new lines of thought.
I had never been in a court-room before and though I knew that the formality as well as the seriousness of a trial would be lacking in a coroner’s inquest, I shivered at the prospect, for some one of the witnesses soon to be heard had something to hide and whether the discovery of the same or its successful suppression was most to be desired who could tell.
The testimony of the doctors, as well as much of general interest in connection with the case, fell on deaf ears so far as I was concerned. Orpha, clad in her mourning garments and heavily veiled, held all my thoughts. Even the elaborate questioning of the two lawyers who drew up the wills, the similarity and dissimilarity of which undoubtedly lay at the bottom of the dreadful crime we were assembled to inquire into, left me cold. In a way I heard what had passed between each of these men and the testator on the day of the signing. How Mr. Dunn, who had attended to my uncle’s law business for years, had recognized the desirability of his client making a new will under the changed conditions brought about by the reception into his family of a second nephew of whose claims upon a certain portion of his property he must wish to make some acknowledgment, received the detailed instructions sent him, with no surprise and followed them out to the letter, bringing the document with him for signature on the day and at the hour designated in the notes he had received from his client. The result was so satisfactory that no delay was made in calling in the witnesses to his signature and the signing of all three. What delay there was was caused by a little controversy in regard to his former will whose provisions differed in many respects from this one. Mr. Bartholomew wished to retain it,—the lawyer advised its destruction, the lawyer finally gaining the day. It being in Mr. Bartholomew’s possession at the time, the witness expected it to be brought out and burned before his eyes; but it was not, Mr. Bartholomew merely promising that this should be done before the day ended. Whether or not he kept his word, the lawyer could not say from any personal knowledge.
Mr. Jackson had much the same story to tell. He too had received a letter from Mr. Bartholomew, asking his assistance in the making of a new will, together with instructions for the same, scrupulously written out in full detail by the testator’s own hand on bits of paper carefully numbered. Asked to show these instructions, they were handed over and laid side by side with those already passed up by Mr. Dunn. I think they were both read; I hardly noticed; I only know that they were found to be exactly similar, with the one notable exception I need not mention. Of course the names of the witnesses differed.
What did reach my ear was a sentence uttered by Mr. Jackson as coming from my uncle when the will brought for his signature was unfolded before him. “You may be surprised,” Uncle had said, “at the tenor of my bequests and the man I have chosen to bear the heavy burden of a complicated heritage. I know what I am doing and all I ask of you and the two witnesses you have been kind enough to bring here from your office is silence till the hour comes when it will be your business to speak.”
This created a small hubbub among the people assembled, to many of whom it was probably the first word they had ever heard in my favor. During it and the sounding of the gavel calling them to order, my attention naturally was drawn in the direction of these men and women to whom my affairs seemed to be of so much importance. Alas! egotist that I was! They were not interested in me but in the case; and especially in anything which suggested an undue influence on my part over an enfeebled old man. Their antagonism to me was very evident, being heightened rather than lessened by the words just heard.
But there was one face I encountered which told a different story. Mr. Jackson had his own ideas and they were favorable to me. With a sigh of relief I turned my attention back to the heavily veiled figure of Orpha.
What was she thinking? How was she feeling? What interpretation might I reasonably put upon her movements, seeing that I lacked the key to her inmost mind. Witnesses came and went; but only as she swayed forward in her interest, or sank back in disappointment, did I take heed of their testimony or weigh in the scales of my own judgment the value or non-value of what they said.
For truth to say, I had heard nothing so far that was really new to me; nothing to solve certain points raised in my own mind; nothing that vied in interest with the slightest gesture or the least turn of the head of her who bore so patiently this marshalling before her in heavy phalanx facts so hideous as to bar out all sweeter memories.
But when in the midst of a sudden silence I heard my own name called, I started in dismay, all unprepared as I was to face this hostile throng. But it was not I whom they wanted, but Edgar. No one had glanced my way. To the people of C—— there was but one Edgar Quenton Bartholomew now that their chief citizen was gone.
The moment was a bitter one to me and I fear I showed it. But my good sense soon reasserted itself. Edgar was answering questions and I as well as others was there to learn; and to learn, I must listen.
“Your father and mother?”
“Both dead before I was five years old. Uncle Edgar then took me into his home.”
“Adopted you?”
“Not legally. But in every other respect he was a father to me, and I hope I was a son to him. But no papers were ever drawn up.”
“Did he ever call you Son?”
“I have no remembrance of his ever having done so. His favorite way of addressing me was Boy.”
A slight tremulousness in speaking this endearing name added to its effect. I gripped at my heart beneath my coat. Our uncle had used the same word in speaking to me—once.
“Did he ever talk to you of his intentions in regard to his property, and if so when?”
“Often, before I became of age.”
“And not since?”
“Oh, yes, since. But not so often. It did not seem necessary, we understood each other.”
“Mr. Bartholomew, did it never strike you as peculiar that your uncle, having a daughter, should have chosen his brother’s son as his heir?”
“No, sir. You see, as I said before, we understood each other.”
“Understood? How?”
“We never meant, he nor I, that his daughter should lose anything by my inheritance of his money.”
It was modestly, almost delicately said and had he loved her I could not but have admired him at that moment. But he did not love her, and to save my soul I could not help sending a glance her way. Would her head rise in proud acknowledgment of his worth or would it fall in shame at his hypocrisy? It fell, but then, I was honest enough to realize that the shame this bespoke might be that of a loving woman troubled at hearing her soul’s most sacred secrets thus bared before the public.
Anxious for her as well as for myself, I turned my eyes upon the crowd confronting us, and wondered at the softened looks I saw there. He had touched a chord of fine emotion in the breasts of these curiosity-mongers. It was no new story to them. It had been common gossip for years that he was to marry Orpha and so make her and himself equal heirs of this great fortune. But his bearing as he spoke,—the magnetism which carried home his lightest word—gave to the well-known romance a present charm which melted every heart.
I felt how impotent any words of mine would be to stem the tide of sympathy that was bearing him on and soon would sweep me out of sight.
But as, overwhelmed by this prospect, I cowered low in my seat, the thought came that these men and women whose dictum I feared were not the arbiters of my destiny. And I took a look at the jury and straightened in my seat. Surely I saw more than one honest face among the twelve and two or three that were more than ordinarily intelligent. I should stand some chance with them.
Meanwhile another question had been put.
“Did your uncle at any time ever suggest to you that under a change of circumstances he might change his mind?”
“Never, till the day before he died.”
“There was no break between you? No quarrel?”
“We did not always agree. I am not perfect—” With a smile he said this—“and it was only natural that he should express himself as not always satisfied with my conduct. But break? No. He loved me better than I deserved.”
“You have a cousin, a gentleman of the same name, now a resident in your house. Did the difference of opinion between yourself and uncle to which you acknowledge occur since or prior to this cousin’s entrance into the family?”
“Oh, I have memories of childish escapades not always approved of by my uncle. Nor have I always pleased him since I became a man. But the differences of opinion to which you probably allude became more frequent after the introduction amongst us of this second nephew; why, I hardly know. I do not blame my cousin for them.”
The subtle inflection with which this last was said was worthy of a master of innuendo. It may have been unconscious; it likely was, for Edgar is naturally open in his attacks rather than subtle. But conscious or unconscious it caused heads to wag and sly looks to pass from one to another with many a knowing wink. The interloper was to blame of course though young Mr. Bartholomew was too good to say so!
The Coroner probably had his own private opinions on this subject, for taking no notice of these wordless suggestions he proceeded to ask:
“Was your cousin ever present when these not altogether agreeable discussions occurred between yourself and uncle?”
“He was not. Uncle was not the kind of man to upbraid me in the presence of a relative. He thought I showed a growing love of money without much recognition of what it was really good for.”
“Ah! I see. Then that was the topic of these unfortunate conversations between you, and not the virtues or vices of your cousin.”
“We had one, perhaps two conversations on that subject; but many, many others on matters far from personal in which there was nothing but what was agreeable and delightful to us both.”
“Doubtless; what I want to bring out is whether from anything your uncle ever said to you, you had any reason to fear that you had been or might be supplanted in your uncle’s regard by this other man of his and your name. In other words whether your uncle ever intimated that he and not you might be made the chief beneficiary in a new will.”
“He never said it previous to the time I have mentioned.” There was a fiery look in Edgar’s eye as he emphasized this statement by a sharpness of tone strangely in contrast to the one he had hitherto used. “What he may have thought, I have no means of knowing. It was for him to judge between us.”
“Then, there has always existed the possibility of such a change? You must have known this even if you failed to talk on the subject.”
“Yes, I sometimes thought my uncle was moved by a passing impulse to make such a change; but I never believed it to be more than a passing impulse. He showed me too much affection. He spoke too frequently of days when I studied under his eye and took my pleasure in his company.”
“You acknowledge, then, that lately you yourself began to doubt his constancy to the old idea. Will you say what first led you to think that what you had regarded as a momentary impulse was strengthening into a positive determination?”
“Mr. Coroner, if you will pardon me I must take exception to that word positive. He could never have been positive at any time as to what he would finally do. Else why two wills? It was what I heard the servants say on my return from one of my absences which first made me question whether I had given sufficient weight to the possibility of my cousin’s influence over Uncle being strong and persistent enough to drive him into active measures. I allude of course to the visit paid him by his lawyer and the witnessing on the part of his man Clarke and his nurse Wealthy to a document they felt sure was a will. As it was well known throughout the house that one had already been drawn up in full accordance with the promises so often made me, they showed considerable feeling, and it was only natural that this should arouse mine, especially as that whole day’s proceedings, the coming of a second lawyer with two men whom nobody knew, was never explained or even alluded to in any conversation I afterwards held with my uncle. I thought it all slightly alarming but still I held to my faith in him. He was a sick man and might have crotchets.”
“At what time and from whom did you definitely hear the truth about that day’s proceedings—that two wills had been drawn up, alike in all respects save that in one you were named as the chief beneficiary and in the other your cousin from England?”
At this question, which evidently had power to trouble him, Edgar lost for the first time his air of easy confidence. Did he fear that he was about to incur some diminution of the good feeling which had hitherto upheld him in any statement he chose to make? I watched him very closely to see. But his answer hardly enlightened me.
The question, if you will remember, was when and where he received definite confirmation of what had been told him concerning two wills.
“In my uncle’s room the night before he died,” was his reply, uttered with a gloom wholly unnatural to him even in a time of trouble. “He had wished to see me and we were talking pleasantly enough, when he suddenly changed his tone and I heard what he had done and how my future hung on the whim of a moment.”
“Can you repeat his words?”
“I cannot. The impression they made is all that is left me. I was too agitated—too much taken aback—for my brain to work clearly or my memory to take in more than the great fact. You see it was not only my position as heir to an immense fortune I saw threatened; but the dearer hope it involved and what was as precious as all the rest, the loss of my past as I had conceived it, for I had truly believed that I stood next to his daughter in my uncle’s affections; too close indeed for any such tampering with my future prospects.”
He was himself again; shaken with feeling but winsome in voice, manner and speech. And it was the sincerity of his feeling which made him so. He had truly loved his uncle. No one could doubt that, not even myself who had truly loved him also.
“On what terms did you leave him? Surely you can remember that?”
Edgar’s eye flashed. As I noted it and the resolution which was fast overcoming the sadness which had distinguished his features up till now, I held my breath in apprehension, for here was something to fear.
“When I left him it was with a mind much more at ease than when he first showed me these two wills. For my faith in him had come back. He would burn one of those wills before he died, but it would not be the one which would put to shame by its destruction, him who had been as a child to him from the day of his early orphanage.”
The Coroner himself was startled by the effect made by these words upon the crowd, and probably blamed his own leniency in allowing this engaging witness to express himself so fully.
In a tone which sounded sharp enough in contrast to the mellow one which had preceded it, he said:
“That is what you thought. We had rather listen to facts.”
Edgar bowed, still gracious, still the darling of the men and women ranged before him, many of whom remembered his boyhood; while I sat rigid, realizing how fully I was at the mercy of his attractions and would continue to be till I had an opportunity to speak, and possibly afterwards, for prejudice raises a wall which nothing but time can batter down.
And Orpha? What of her? How was she taking all this? In my anxiety, I cast one look in her direction. To my astonishment she sat unveiled and was gazing at Edgar with an intentness which slowly but surely forced his head to turn and his eye to seek hers. An instant thus, then she pulled down her veil, and the flush just rising to his cheek was lost again in pallor.
Unconsciously the muscles of my hands relaxed; for some reason life had lost some of the poignant terror it had held for me a moment before. A drowning man will catch at straws; so will a lover; and I was both.
In the absorption which followed this glimpse of Orpha’s face so many days denied me, I lost the trend of the next few questions, and only realized that we were approaching the crux of the situation when I heard:
“You did not visit him again?”
“No.”
“Where did you go?”
“To my room.”
“Will you state to the jury just where your room is located?”
“On the same floor as Uncle’s, only further front and on the opposite side of the hall.”
“We have here a chart of that floor. Will you be good enough to step to it and indicate the two rooms you mention?”
Here, at a gesture from the Coroner, an official drew a string attached to a roll suspended on one of the walls and a rudely drawn diagram, large enough to be seen from all parts of the court-room, fell into view.
Edgar was handed a stick with which he pointed out the two doors of his uncle’s room and those of his own.
What was coming?
“Mr. Bartholomew, will you now tell the jury what you did on returning to your room?”
“Nothing. I threw myself into a chair and just waited.”
“Waited for what?”
“To hear my cousin enter my uncle’s room.”
The bitterness with which he said this was so deftly hidden under an assumption of casual rejoinder, as only to be detected by one who was acquainted with every modulation of his fine voice.
“And did you hear this?”
“Very soon; as soon as he could come up from the lower hall where Clarke, my uncle’s man, had been sent to summon him.”
“If you heard this, you must also have heard when he left your uncle’s room.”
“I did.”
“Was the interview a long one?”
“I was sitting in front of the clock on my mantel-piece. He was in there just twenty minutes.”
I felt my breast heave, and straightening myself instinctively I met the concentrated gaze of a hundred pair of eyes leveled like one against me.
Did I smile? I felt like it; but if I did it must have expressed the irony with which I felt the meshes of the net in which I was caught tighten with every word which this man spoke.
The Coroner, who was the only person in the room who had not looked my way, went undeviatingly on.
“In what part of the house does this gentleman of whom we are speaking have his room?”
“On the same floor as mine; but further back at the end of a short hall.”
“Will you take the pointer from the officer and show the location of the second Mr. Bartholomew’s room?”
The witness did so.
“Did you hear in which direction your cousin went on leaving your uncle? Did he go immediately to his room?”
“He may have done so, but if he did, he did not stay long, for very soon I heard him return and proceed directly down stairs.”
“How long was he below?”
“A long time. I had moved from my seat and my eye was no longer on the clock so I cannot say how long.”
“Did you hear him when he came up for a second time?”
“Yes; he is not a light stepper.”
“Where did he go? Directly to his room?”
“No, he stopped on the way.”
“How, stopped on the way?”
“When he reached the top of the stairs he paused like one hesitating. But not for long. Soon I heard him coming in the direction of my room, pass it by and proceed to our uncle’s door—the one in front so little-used as to be negligible—where he lingered so long that I finally got up and peered from my own doorway to see what he was doing?”
“Was the hall dark?”
“Very.”
“Darker than usual?”
“Yes, much.”
“How was that? What had happened?”
“The electric light usually kept burning at my end of the hall had been switched off.”
“When? Before your cousin came up or after?”
“I do not know. It simply was not burning when I opened my door.”
“Will you say from which of the doors in your suite you were looking?”
“From the one marked C on the chart.”
“That, as the jury can see if they will look, is diagonally opposite the one at which the witness had heard his cousin pause. Will the witness now state if the hall was too dark at the time he looked out for him to see whether or not any one stood at his uncle’s door?”
“No, it was not too dark for that, owing to the light which shone in from the street through the large window you see there.”
“Enough, you say, to make your uncle’s door visible?”
“Quite enough.”
“And what did you see there? Your cousin standing?”
“No; he was gone.”
“How gone? Could he not have been in your uncle’s room?”
“Not then.”
“Why do you say ‘not then’?”
“Because while I looked I could hear his footsteps at the other end of the house rounding the corner where the main hall meets the little one in which his room is situated.”
My God! I had forgotten all this. I had been very anxious to know how Uncle had fared since I left him in such a state of excitement; whether he were sleeping or awake, and hoped by listening I should hear Wealthy’s step and so judge how matters were within. But a meaning sinister if not definite had been given to this natural impulse by the way Edgar’s voice fell as he uttered that word stopped; and from that moment I recognized him for my enemy, either believing in my guilt or wishing others to; in which latter case, it was for me to fight my battle with every weapon my need called for. But the conflict was not yet and “Patience” must still be my watch-word. But I held my breath as I waited for the next question.
“You say that you heard him moving down the hall. You did not see him at your uncle’s door?”
“No, I did not.”
“But you are confident he was there, previous to your looking out?”
“I am very sure that he was; my ear seldom deceives me.”
“Mr. Bartholomew, will you think carefully before you answer the following question. Was there any circumstance connected with this matter which will enable you to locate the hour at which you heard your cousin pass down the hall?”
He hesitated; he did not want to answer. Why? I would have given all that I possessed to know; but he only said:
“I did not look at my watch; I did not need to. The clock was striking three.”
“Three! The jury will note the hour.”
Why did he say that?—the jury will note the hour? My action was harmless. Everything I did that night was harmless. What did he mean then by the hour? The mystery of it troubled me—a mystery he was careful to leave for the present just where it was.
Returning to his direct investigation, the coroner led the witness back to the time preceding his entrance into the hall. “You were listening from your room; that room was dark, you were no longer watching the clock which had not yet struck; yet perhaps you can give us some idea of how long your cousin lingered at your uncle’s door before starting down the hall.”
“No, I should not like to do that.”
“Five minutes?”
“I cannot say.”
“Long enough to have entered that room and come out again?”
“You ask too much. I am not ready to swear to that.”
“Very good; I will not press you!” But the suggestion had been made. And for a purpose—a purpose linked with the mystery of which I have just spoken. Glancing at Mr. Jackson, I saw him writing in his little book. He had noted this too. I was not alone in my apprehension which, like a giant shadow thrown from some unknown quarter, was reaching slowly over to envelop me. When I was ready to listen again, it was to hear:
“What did you do then?”
“I went to bed.”
“Did you see or hear anything more of your cousin that night?”
“No, not till the early morning when we were all roused by the news which Wealthy brought to every door, that Uncle was very much worse and that the doctor should be sent for.”
“Tell us where it was you met him then.”
“In the hall near Uncle’s door—the one marked 2 on the chart.”
“How did he look? Was there anything peculiar in his appearance or manner?”
“He was fully dressed.”
“And you?”
“I had had no time to do more than wrap a dressing-gown about me.”
“At what time was this? You remember the hour no doubt?”
“Half past four in the morning; any one can tell you that.”
“And he was fully dressed. In morning clothes or evening?”
“In the ones he wore to dinner the night before.”
It was true; I had not gone to bed that night. There was too much on my mind. But to them it would look as if I had sat up ready for the expected alarm.
“Was he in these same clothes when you finally entered your uncle’s room?”
“Certainly; there was no time then for changing.”
These questions might have been addressed to me instead of to him. They would have been answered with as much truth; but the suggestiveness would have been lacking and in this I recognized my second enemy. I now knew that the Coroner was against me.
A few persons there may have recognized this fact also. But they were all too much in sympathy with Edgar to resent it. I made no show of doing so nor did I glance again at Orpha to see the effect on her of these attacks leveled at me with so much subtlety. I felt, in the humiliation of the moment, that unless I stood cleared of every suspicion, I could never look her again in the face.
Meanwhile the inquiry had reached the event for which all were waiting—the destruction of the one will and the acknowledgment by the dying man that the envelope which held the other was empty.
“Were you near enough to see the red mark on the one he had ordered burned?”
“Yes; I took note of it.”
“Had you seen it before?”
“Yes; when, in the interview of which I have spoken, my uncle showed me the two envelopes and informed me of their several contents.”
“Did he tell you or did you learn in any way which will was in the one marked with red?”
“No. I did not ask him and he did not say.”
“So when you saw it burning you did not know with certainty whether it was the will making you or your cousin his chief heir?”
“I did not.”
He said it firmly, but he said it with effort. Again, why?
The time to consider this was not now, for at this reply, expected though it was, a universal sigh swept through the house, carrying my thoughts with it. Emotion must have its outlet. The echo in my own breast was a silent one, springing from sources beyond the ken of the simple onlooker. We were approaching a critical part of the inquiry. The whereabouts of the missing document must soon come up. Should I be obliged to listen to further insinuations such as had just been made? Was it his plan to show that I was party to a fraud and knew where the missing will lay secreted,—where it would always lie secreted because it was in his favor and not in mine? It was possible; anything was possible. If I were really wise I would prepare myself for the unexpected; for the unexpected was what I probably should be called upon to face.
Yet it was not so, or I did not think it so, in the beginning.
Asked to describe his uncle’s last moments he did so shortly, simply, feelingly.
Then came the question for which I waited.
“Your uncle died, then, without a sign as to where the remaining will was to be found?”
“He did not have time. Death came instantly, leaving the words unsaid. It was a great misfortune.”
With a gesture of reproof, for he would not have it seem that he liked these comments, the Coroner pressed eagerly on:
“What of his looks? Did his features betray any emotion when he found that he could no longer speak?”
Edgar hesitated. It was the first time we had seen him do so and my heart beat in anticipation of a lie.
But again I did him an injustice. He did not want to answer—that we could all see—but when he did, he spoke the truth.
“He looked frightened, or so I interpreted his expression; and his head moved a little. Then all was over.”
In the silence which followed, a stifled sob was heard. We all knew from whom it came and every eye turned to the patient little figure in black who up till now had kept such strong control over her feelings.
“If Miss Bartholomew would like to retire into the adjoining room she is at liberty to do so,” came from the Coroner’s seat.
But she shook her head, murmuring quietly:
“Thank you, I will stay.”
I blessed her in my heart. Still neutral. Still resolute to hear and know all.
The inquiry went on.
“Mr. Bartholomew, did you search for that will?”
“Thoroughly. In a haphazard way at first, expecting to find it in some of the many drawers in his room. But when I did not, I went more carefully to work, I and my two faithful servants, who having been in personal attendance upon him all through his illness, knew his habits and knew the room. But even then we found nothing in any way suggestive of the document we were looking for.”
“And since?”
“The room has been in the hands of the police. I have not heard that they have been any more successful.”
There were more questions and more answers but I paid little attention to them. I was thinking of what had passed between the Inspector and myself at the time he visited me in my room. I have said little about it because a man is not proud of such an experience; but in the quiet way in which this especial official worked, he had made himself very sure before he left me that this document was neither on my person nor within the four walls of the room itself. This had been a part of the search. I tingled yet whenever I recalled the humiliation of that hour. I tingled at this moment; but rebuked myself as the mystery of the whole proceeding got a stronger hold upon my mind. Not with me, not with him, but somewhere! When would they reach the point where perhaps the solution lay? Five hours had elapsed between the time I left uncle and the rousing of the house at Wealthy’s hurried call. What had happened during those hours? Who could tell the tale—the whole tale, since manifestly that had never been fully related. Clarke? Wealthy? I knew what they had told the police, what they had confided to each other concerning their experience in the sick-room; but under oath, and with the shadow of crime falling across the lesser mystery what might not come to light under the probe of this prejudiced but undoubtedly honest Coroner?
My impatience grew with every passing moment, but fortunately it was not to be tried much longer, for I soon had the satisfaction of seeing Edgar leave the witness chair and Clarke, as we called him, take his seat there.
This old and tried servant of a man exacting as he was friendly and generous as he was just, had always inspired me with admiration, far as I was from being in his good books. Had he liked me I would have felt myself strong in what was now a doubtful position. But devoted as he was to Edgar, I could not hope for any help from him save of the most grudging kind. I therefore sat unmoved and unexpectant while he took his oath and answered the few opening questions. They pertained mostly to the signing of the first will to which he had added his signature as witness. As nothing new was elicited this matter was soon dropped.
Other points of interest shared the same fate. He could substantiate the testimony of others, but he had nothing of his own to impart. Would it be the same when we got to his final attendance on his master—the last words uttered between them—the final good-night?
The Coroner himself seemed to be awake to the full importance of what this witness might have to disclose, for he scrutinized him earnestly before saying:
“We will now hear, as nearly as you can recall, what passed between you and your sick master on the night which proved to be his last? Begin at the beginning—that is, when you were sent to summon one or other of his two nephews to Mr. Bartholomew’s room.”
“Pardon, sir, but that was not the beginning. The beginning was when Mr. Bartholomew, who to our astonishment had eaten his supper in his chair by the fireside, drew a small key from the pocket in his dressing-gown and, handing it to me, bade me unlock the drawer let into the back of his bedstead and bring him the two big envelopes I should find there.”
“You are right, that is the beginning. Go on with your story.”
“I had never been asked to unlock this drawer before; he had always managed to do it himself; but I had no difficulty in doing it or in bringing him the papers he had asked for. I just lifted out the whole batch, and laying them down in his lap, asked him to pick out the ones he wanted.”
“Did he do it?”
“Yes, immediately.”
“Before you moved away?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you caught a glimpse of the papers he selected?”
“I did, sir. I could not help it. I had to wait, for he wished me to relieve him of the ones he didn’t want.”
“And you did this?”
“Yes; I took them from his hand and laid them on the table to which he pointed.”
“Now for the ones he kept. Describe them.”
“Two large envelopes, sir, larger than the usual legal size, brown in color, I should say, and thick with the papers that were in them.”
“Had you ever seen any envelopes like these before?”
“Yes, on Mr. Bartholomew’s desk the day I was called in to witness his signature.”
“Very good. There were two of them, you say?”
“Yes, sir, two.”
“Were they alike?”
“Exactly, I should say.”
“Any mark on either one?”
“Not that I observed, sir. But I only saw the face of one of them and that was absolutely blank.”
“No red marks on either.”
“Not that I saw, sir.”
“Very good. Proceed, Mr. Clarke. What did Mr. Bartholomew say, after you had laid the other papers aside?”
“He bade me look for Mr. Edgar; said he was in a hurry and wanted to see him at once.”
“Was that all?”
“Yes, sir, he was not a man of many words. Besides, I left the room immediately and did not enter it again till Mr. Edgar left him.”
“Where were you when he did this?”
“At the end of the hall talking to Wealthy. There is a little cozy corner there where she sits and where I sometimes waited when I was expecting Mr. Bartholomew’s ring.”
“Did you see Mr. Edgar, as you call him, when he came out?”
“Yes, sir; crossing over to his room.”
“And what did you do after that?”
“Went immediately to Mr. Bartholomew to see if he was wishing to go to bed. But he was not. On the contrary, he had another errand for me. He wanted to see his other nephew. So I went below searching for him.”
“Was Mr. Bartholomew still sitting by the fire when you went in?”
“He was.”
“With the two big envelopes in his hands?”
“Not that I noted, sir; but he had pockets in his gown large enough to hold them and they might have been in one of these.”
“Never mind the might have beens; just the plain answer, Mr. Clarke.”
“Yes, sir. Excuse me, sir. Feeling afraid that he would get very tired sitting up so long, I hurried downstairs, found Mr. Quenton, as we call him, in the library and brought him straight up. Then I went back to Wealthy.”
“Is there a clock in the cozy corner?”
“There is, sir.”
“Did you look at it as you came and went?”
“I did this time.”
“Why this time?”
“First, because I was anxious for Mr. Bartholomew not to tire himself too much and—and—”
“Go on; we want the whole truth, Mr. Clarke.”
“I was curious to see whether Mr. Bartholomew would keep Mr. Quenton any longer than he did Mr. Edgar.”
“And did he?”
“A little, sir.”
“Did you and the woman Wealthy exchange remarks upon this?”
“We—we did, sir.”
At this admission, I took a quick look at Mr. Jackson and was relieved to see him make another entry in his little book. He had detected, here, as well as I, an opening for future investigation. I heard him, as it were in advance, putting this suggestive query to the present witness:
“What had you and Wealthy been saying on this subject?” I know very little of courts or the usages of court procedure, but I know that I should have put this question if I had been conducting this examination.
The Coroner evidently was not of my mind, which certainly was not strange, seeing where his sympathies were.
“What do you mean by little?”
“Ten minutes.”
“By the clock?”
“Yes, sir,” said rather sheepishly.
“Proceed; what happened next?”
“I went immediately to Mr. Bartholomew’s room, thinking that of course he would be ready for me now. But he was not. Instead, he bade me leave him and not come back for a full half hour, and not to allow any one else to disturb him. I was to give the same order to Wealthy.”
“And did you?”
“Yes, sir; and left her on the watch.”
“And where did you go?”
“To my room for a smoke.”
“Were you concerned at leaving Mr. Bartholomew alone for so long a time?”
“Yes, sir; we never liked to do that. He had grown to be too feeble. But he was not a man you could disobey even for his own good.”
“Did you spend the whole half hour in smoking?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not leaving your room at all?”
“Oh, I left my room several times, going no further, though, than the end of my small hall.”
“Why did you do this?”
“Because Mr. Bartholomew had been so very peremptory about anybody coming to his room. I had every confidence in Wealthy, but I could not help going now and then to see if she was still on the watch.”
“With what result?”
“She was always there. I did not speak to her, not wishing her to know that I was keeping tabs on her. But each time I went I could see the hem of her dress protruding from behind the screen and knew that she, like myself, was waiting for the half hour to be up. As soon as it was, I stepped boldly down the hall, telling Wealthy as I passed that I should make short work of putting the old gentleman to bed and for her to be ready to follow me in a very few minutes. And I kept my word. Mr. Bartholomew was still sitting in his chair when I went in. He had the two documents in his hand and asked me to place them, together with the other papers, on the small stand at the side of the bed. And there they stayed up to the time I gave place to Wealthy. This is all I have to tell about that night. I went from his room to mine and slept till we were all wakened by the ill news that Mr. Bartholomew had been taken worse and was rapidly sinking.”
There was an instant’s lull during which I realized my own disappointment. I had heard nothing that I had not known before. Then the Coroner said:
“Did your duties in Mr. Bartholomew’s room during these months of illness include at any time the handling of his medicines?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you ever visit his medicine cabinet, or take anything from its shelves?”
“No, sir.”
“You must often have poured him out a glass of water?”
“Oh, yes, I have done that.”
“Did you do so on that night? Think carefully before you answer.”
“I do not need to, for I am very sure that I handed him nothing. I do not even remember seeing the usual pitcher and glass anywhere in the room.”
“Not on the stand at his side?”
“No, sir.”
“Nothing of the kind near him?”
“Not that I saw, sir.”
“Very good; you may step down.”
Wealthy was the next witness summoned, and her appearance on the stand caused a flutter of excitement to pass from end to end of the well packed room. All knew that from her, if from anybody, enlightenment must come as to what had taken place in the few fatal hours which had elapsed after Clarke’s departure from the room. Would she respond to our hopes? Would she respond to mine? Or would she leave the veil half raised from sheer inability to lift it higher?
Conscious that the blood was leaving my cheeks and fearful that she could not hold the attention of the crowd from myself, I sought for relief in the face of Edgar. He must know her whole story. Also whom it threatened. Would I be able to read in his lip and eye, ordinarily so expressive, what we had to expect?
No. He was giving nothing away. He was not even looking with anything like attention at anybody; not even my way as I had half expected. The mobile lip was straight; the eye, usually sparkling with intelligence, fixed to the point of glassiness.
I took in that look well; the time might come when I should find it wise to recall it.
Wealthy is a good-looking woman, with that kind of comeliness which speaks of a warm heart and motherly instincts. Seen in the home, whether at work or at rest, she was the embodiment of all that insured comfort and ease to those under her care. She was more than a servant, more than nurse, and as such was regarded with favor by every one in the house, even by my poor unappreciated self.
In public and before the eyes of this mixed assemblage she showed the same pleasing characteristics. I began to breathe more easily. Surely she might be trusted not to be swayed sufficiently by malice, either to evade or color the truth. For all her love for Edgar, she will be true to herself. She cannot help it with that face and demeanor.
The Coroner showed her every consideration. This was but due to the grief she so resolutely endeavored to keep under. All through the opening questions and answers which were mainly corroborative of much that had gone before, he let her sometimes garrulous replies pass without comment, though the spectators frequently evinced impatience in their anxiety to reach the point upon which the real mystery hung.
It came at last and was welcomed by a long drawn breath from many an overburdened breast.
“Mr. Clarke has said that on leaving Mr. Bartholomew’s room for the last time that night, he saw the two envelopes about which so much has been said still lying on the little stand drawn up by the bedside. Were they there when you went into the room?”
“Yes, sir; I noticed them immediately. The stand is very near the door by which I usually enter, and it was a matter of habit with me to take a look at my patient before busying myself with making my final preparations for the night. As I did this, I observed some documents lying there and as it was never his custom to leave business papers lying about I asked him if he would not like to have me put them away for him. But he answered no, not to bother, for there was something he wanted me to get for him which would take me down into Miss Orpha’s room, and as it was growing late I had better go at once. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘she is but a girl and may not remember where she has put it; but, if so, she must look for it and you are not to come back until she has found it, if you have to stay an hour.’
“As the thing he wanted was a little white silk shawl which had been her mother’s, and as the dear child did not know exactly in which of two or three chests she had hidden it, it did take time to find it, and it was with a heart panting with anxiety that I finally started to go back, knowing what a hard evening he had had and how often the doctor had told us that he was to be kept quiet and above all never to be left very long alone. But I was more frightened yet when I got about halfway upstairs, for, for the first time since I have lived in the house, though I have been up and down that flight hundreds of times, I felt the Presence—”
“You may cut that out,” came kindly but peremptorily from the Coroner, probably to the immense disappointment of half the people there.
The Presence on that night!
I myself felt a superstitious thrill at the thought, though I had laughed a dozen times at this old wives’ tale.
“Tell your story straight,” admonished the Coroner.
“I will, sir. I mean to, sir. I only wanted to explain how I came to stumble in rushing up those stairs and yet how quick I was to stop when I heard something on reaching the top which frightened me more than any foolish fancy. This was the sound of a click in the hall towards the front. Some one was turning the key in Mr. Bartholomew’s door—the one nearest the street. As this door is only used on occasion it startled me. Besides, who would do such a thing? There was no one in the hall, for I ran quickly the length of it to see. So it must have been done from the inside and by whom then but by Mr. Bartholomew himself. But I had left him in bed! Here was a coil; and strong as I am I found myself catching at the banisters for support, for I did not understand his locking the door when he was in the room alone. However, he may have had his reasons, and rather ashamed of my agitation I was hurrying back to the other door when I heard a click there, and realized that the doors were being unlocked and not locked;—that he was expecting me and was making the way open for me to come in. Had I arrived a few minutes sooner I should not have been able to enter. It gave me a turn. My sick master shut up there alone! Locked in by himself! I had never known him to do such a thing all the time he was ill, and I had to quiet myself a bit before I dared go in. When I did, he was lying in bed looking very white but peaceful enough; more peaceful indeed than he had at any time that day. ‘Is that you, Wealthy?’ he asked. ‘Where is the little shawl? Give it to me.’ I handed it to him and he laid it, folded as it was, against his cheek. I felt troubled, I hardly knew why and stood looking at him. He smiled and glancing at the little pile of documents lying on the stand told me that I could put them away now. ‘Here is the key,’ he said; I took it from his hand after seeing him draw it from under the pillow. I had often used it for him. Unlocking the drawer which was set into the head-board of his bed where it jutted into the alcove, I reached for the papers and locked them up in the drawer and handed him back the key. ‘Thank you,’ he said and turned his face from the light. It was the signal for me to drop the curtain hanging at that side of the bed. This I did—”
“One moment. In handling the papers you speak of did you notice them particularly?”
“Not very, sir. I remember that the top one was in a dark brown envelope and bulky.”
“Which side was up?”
“The flap side.”
“Sealed?”
“No, open; that is loose, not fastened down.”
“You noticed that?”
“I couldn’t help it. It was right under my eyes.”
“Did you notice anything else? That there was a second envelope in the pile similar to the one on top.”
“I cannot say that I did. The papers were all bunched, you see, and I just lifted them quickly and put them in the drawer.”
“Why quickly?”
“Mr. Bartholomew was looking at me, sir.”
“Then you did not note that there was another envelope in that pile, just like the top one, only empty?”
“I did not, sir.”
“Very good. You may go on now. You dropped the curtain. What did you do next?”
“I prepared his soothing medicine.” Her voice fell and an expression of great trouble crossed her countenance. “I always had this ready in case he should grow restless in the night.”
“A soothing medicine! Where was that kept?”
“With the rest of the medicines in the cabinet built into the small passage-way leading to the upper door.”
“And you went there for the soothing medicine. At about what time?”
“Not far from eleven o’clock, sir: I remember thinking as I passed by the mantel-clock how displeased Dr. Cameron would be if he knew that Mr. Bartholomew’s light was not yet out.”
“Go on; what about the medicine? Did you give it to him every night?”
“Not every night, but frequently. I always had it ready.”
“Will you step down a minute? I want to ask Dr. Cameron a few questions about this soothing medicine.”
The interruption was welcome; we all needed a moment’s respite. Dr. Cameron was again sworn. He had given his testimony at length earlier in the day but it had been mainly in reference to a very different sort of medicine, and it was of this simpler and supposedly very innocent mixture that the Coroner wished to learn a few facts.
Dr. Cameron was very frank with his replies. Told just what it was; what the dose consisted of and how harmless it was when given according to directions. “I have never known,” he added, “of Mrs. Starr ever making any mistake in preparing or administering it. The other medicine of which I have already given a detailed account I have always prepared myself.”
“It is of that other medicine taken in connection with this one of which I wish to ask. Say the two were mixed what would be the result?”
“The powerful one would act, whatever it was mixed with.”
“How about the color? Would one affect the other?”
“If plenty of water were used, the change in color would hardly be perceptible.”
“Thank you, doctor; we can release you now.”
The doctor stepped down, whereupon a recess was called, to the disappointment and evident chagrin of a great many.
The mood of the Coroner changed with the afternoon session. He was curter in speech and less patient with the garrulity of his witnesses. Perhaps he dreaded the struggle which he foresaw awaited him.
He plunged at once into the topic he had left unfinished and at the precise point where he had left off. Wealthy had resumed her place on the stand.
“And where did you put this soothing mixture after you had prepared it?”
“Where I always did—on the shelf hanging in the corner on the further side of the bed—the side towards the windows. I did this so that it would not be picked up by mistake for a glass of water left on his stand.”
“Tell that to the jury again, Mrs. Starr. That the soothing medicine of which you speak was in a glass on the shelf we all can see indicated on the chart above your head, and plain water in a glass standing on the table on the near side of the bed.”
“Excuse me, Doctor Jones, I did not mean to say that there was any glass of water on the small stand that night. There was not. He did not seem to want it, so I left the water in a pitcher on the table by the hearth. I only meant that it being my usual custom to have it there I got in the habit of putting anything in the way of medicine as far removed from it as possible.”
“Mrs. Starr, when did you prepare this soothing medicine as you call it?”
“Soon after I entered the room.”
“Before Mr. Bartholomew slept?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Tell how you did it, where you did it and what Mr. Bartholomew said while you were doing it—that is, if he said anything at all.”
“The bottle holding this medicine was kept, as I have already said, with all the other medicines, in the cabinet hanging in the upper passageway.” Every eye rose to the chart. “The water in a pitcher on the large table to the left of the fire-place. Filling a glass with this water which I had drawn myself, I went to the medicine cabinet and got the bottle containing the drops the doctor had ordered for this purpose, and carrying it over to the table, together with the medicine-dropper, added the customary ten drops to the water and put the bottle back in the cabinet and the glass with the medicine in it on the shelf. Mr. Bartholomew’s face was turned my way and he naturally followed my movements as I passed to and fro; but he showed no especial interest in them, nor did he speak.”
“Was this before or after you dropped the curtain on the other side of the bed.”
“After.”
“The bed, I have been given to understand, is surrounded on all sides by heavy curtains which can be pulled to at will. Was the one you speak of the only one to be dropped or pulled at night?”
“Usually. You see Miss Orpha’s picture hangs between the windows and was company for him if he chanced to wake in the night.”
Again that sob, but fainter than before and to me very far off. Or was it that I felt so far removed myself—pushed aside and back from the grief and sufferings of this family?
The heads which turned at this low but pathetic sound were soon turned back again as the steady questioning went on:
“You speak of going to the medicine cabinet. It was your business, no doubt, to go there often.”
“Very often; I was his nurse, you see.”
“There was another bottle of medicine kept there—the one labeled ‘Dangerous’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you see that bottle when you went for the soothing mixture you speak of?”
“No, sir.” This was very firmly said. “I wasn’t thinking of it, and the bottle I wanted being in front I just pulled it out and never looked at any other.”
“This other bottle—the dangerous one—where was that kept?”
“Way back behind several others. I had put it there when the doctor told us that we were not to give him any more of that especial medicine without his orders.”
“If you went to this cabinet so often you must have a very good idea of just how it looked inside.”
“I have, sir,” her voice falling a trifle—at least, I thought I detected a slight change in it as if the emotion she had so bravely kept under up to this moment was beginning to make itself felt.
“Then tell us if everything looked natural to you when you went to it this time; everything in order,—nothing displaced.”
“I did not notice. I was too intent on what I was after. Besides, if I had—”
“Well, go on.”
Her brows puckered in distress; and I thought I saw her hand tremble where it showed amid the folds of her dress. If no other man held his breath at that short interim in which not a sound was heard, I did. Something was about to fall from her lips—
But she was speaking.
“If I had observed any disorder such as you mention I should not have thought it at all strange. I am not the only one who had access to that cabinet. His daughter often went to it, and—and the young gentlemen, too.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What should take them there?”
Her head lifted, her voice steadied, she looked the capable, kindly person of a few moments ago. That thrill of emotion was gone; perhaps I have overemphasized it.
“We all worked together, sir. The young gentlemen, that is one or the other of them, often took my place in the room, especially at night, and Mr. Bartholomew, used to being waited on and having many wants, they had learned how to take care of him and give him what he called for.”
“And this took them to the cabinet?”
“Undoubtedly; it held a great variety of things besides his medicines.”
The Coroner paused. During the most trying moment of my life every eye in the room turned on me, not one on Edgar.
I bore it stoically; a feeling I endeavored to crush making havoc in my heart.
Then the command came:
“Continue with your story. You have given us the incidents of the night such as you observed them before Mr. Bartholomew slept; you will now relate what happened after.”
Again I watched her hand. It had clenched itself tightly and then loosened as these words rang out from the seat of authority. The preparation for what she had to tell had been made; the time had now come for its relation. She began quietly, but who could tell how she would end.
“For an hour I kept my watch on the curtained side of the bed. It was very still in the room, so deathly still that after awhile I fell asleep in my chair. When I woke it was suddenly and with a start of fear. I was too confused at first to move and as I sat listening, I heard a slight sound on the other side of the bed, followed by the unmistakable one of a softly closing door. My first thought, of course, was for my patient and throwing the curtains aside, I looked through. The room was light enough, for one of the logs on the hearth had just broken apart, and the glow it made lit up Mr. Bartholomew’s face and showed me that he was sleeping. Relieved at the sight, I next asked myself who could have been in the room at an hour so late, and what this person wanted. I was not frightened, now that I was fully awake, and being curious, nothing more, I drew the portière from before the passage-way at my back and, stepping to the door beyond, opened it and looked out.”
Here she became suddenly silent, and so intent were we all in anticipation of what her next words would reveal, that the shock caused by this unexpected break in her story, vented itself in a sort of gasp from the parched lips and throats of the more excitable persons present. It was a sound not often heard save on the theatrical stage at a moment of great suspense, and the effect upon the witness was so strange that I forgot my own emotion in watching her as she opened her lips to continue and then closed them again, with a pitiful glance at the Coroner.
He seemed to understand her and made a kindly effort to help her in this sudden crisis of feeling.
“Take your time, Mrs. Starr,” he said. “We are well aware that testimony of this nature must be painful to you, but it is necessary and must be given. You opened the door and looked out. What did you see?”
“A man—or, rather, the shadow of a man outlined very dimly on the further wall of the hall.”
“What man?”
“I do not know, sir.”
She did; the woman was lying. No one ever looked as she did who was in doubt as to what she saw. But the Coroner intentionally or unintentionally blind to this very decided betrayal of her secret, still showed a disposition to help her.
“Was it so dark?”
“Yes, sir. The electrolier at the stair-head had been put out probably by him as he passed, for—”
It was a slip. I saw it in the way her face changed and her voice faltered as with one accord every eye in the assemblage before her turned quickly towards the chart.
I did not need to look. I know that hall by heart. The electrolier she spoke of was nearer the back than the front; to put it out in passing, meant that the person stopping to extinguish it was heading towards the rear end of the hall. In other words, Clarke or myself. As it was not myself—
But she must have thought it was, for when the Coroner, drawing the same conclusion, pressed her to describe the shadow and, annoyed at her vague replies, asked her point blank if it could be that of Clarke, she shook her head and finally acknowledged that it was much too slim.
“A man’s, though?”
“Certainly, a man’s.”
“And what became of this shadow?”
“It was gone in a minute; disappeared at the turn of the wall.”
She had the grace to droop her head, as if she realized what she was doing and took but little pleasure in it. My estimation of her rose on the instant; for she did not like me, was jealous of every kindness my uncle had shown me, and yet felt compunction over what she was thus forced into saying.
“If she knew! Ah, if she knew!” passed in tumult through my brain; and I bore the stare of an hundred eyes as I could not have borne the stare of one if that one had been Orpha’s. Thank God, her veil was so thick.
Further questions brought out little more concerning this incident. She had not followed the shadow, she had not looked at the clock, she had not even gone around the bed to see what had occasioned the peculiar noise she had heard. She had not thought it of sufficient importance. Indeed, she had not attached any importance to the incident at the time, since her patient had not been wakened and late visits were not uncommon in that sick-room where the interest of everybody in the house centered, night as well as day.
But, when Mr. Bartholomew at last grew restless and she went for the medicine she had prepared, she saw with some astonishment that it was not in the exact place on the shelf where she had placed it,—or, at least, in the exact place where she felt sure that she had placed it. But even this did not alarm her or arouse her suspicion. How could it when everybody in the house was devoted to its master—or at all events gave every evidence of being so. Besides, she might have been mistaken as to where she had set down the glass. Her memory was not what it was,—and so on and so on till the Coroner stopped her with the query:
“And what did you do? Did you give him the dose his condition seemed to call for?”
“I did; and my heart is broken at the thought.” She showed it. Tears were welling from her eyes and her whole body shook with the sob she strove to suppress. “I can never forgive myself that I did not suspect—mix a fresh draught—do anything but put that spoon filled with doubtful liquor between his lips. But how could I imagine that any one would tamper with the medicines in that cabinet. That any one would—”
Here she was stopped again, peremptorily this time, and her testimony switched to the moment when she saw the first signs of anything in Mr. Bartholomew’s condition approaching collapse and how long it was after she gave him the medicine.
“Some little time. I was not watching the clock. Perhaps I slept again—I shall never know, but if I did, it was the sound of a sudden gasp from behind the curtains which started me to my feet. It was like a knife going through me, for I had a long experience with the sick before I came to C—— and knew that it foretold the end.
“I was still surer of this when I bent over to look at him. He was awake, but I shall never forgot his eye. ‘Wealthy,’ he whispered, exerting himself to speak plainly, ‘call the children—call all of them—bid them come without delay—all is over with me—I shall not live out the coming day. But first, the bowl—the one in the bathroom—bring it here—put it on the stand—and two candles—lighted—don’t look; act!’ It was the master ordering a slave. There was nothing to do but to obey. I went to the bathroom, found the bowl he wanted, brought it, brought the candles, lighted them, turned on the electricity, for the candles were mere specks in that great room and then started for the door. But he called me back. ‘I want the two envelopes,’ he cried. ‘Open the drawer and get them. Now put them in my hands, one in my right, the other in my left, and hasten, for I fear to—to lose my speech.’
“I rushed—I was terrified to leave him alone even for an instant but to cross him in his least wish might mean his death, so I fled like a wild woman through the halls, first to Mr. Edgar’s room, then downstairs to Miss Orpha and later—not till after I had seen these two on their way to Mr. Bartholomew’s room, to the rear hall and Mr. Quenton’s door.”
“What did you do there?”
“I both knocked and called.”
“What did you say?”
“That his uncle was worse, and for him to come immediately. That Mr. Bartholomew found difficulty in speaking and wanted to see them all before his power to do so failed.”
“Did he answer?”
“Instantly; opening the door and coming out. He was in Mr. Bartholomew’s room almost as soon as the others.”
“How could that be? Did he not stop to dress?”
“He was already dressed, just as he rose from dinner.”
What followed has already been told; I will not enlarge upon it. The burning of the one will in the presence of Orpha, Edgar and myself, with Wealthy Starr standing in the background. Uncle’s sudden death before he could tell us where the will containing his last wishes could be found, and the shock we had all received at the astonishment shown by the doctor at his patient having succumbed so suddenly when he had fully expected him to live another fortnight.
The excitement which had been worked up to fever-point gradually subsided after this and, the hour being late, the inquiry was adjourned, to be continued the next day.
In my haste to be through with the record of a testimony which so unmistakably gave the impression that I was the man who had tampered with the medicine which prematurely ended my uncle’s fast failing life, I omitted to state Wealthy’s eager admission that notwithstanding the doctor’s surprise at the sudden passing of his patient and her own knowledge that the room contained a previously used medicine which had been pronounced dangerous to him at this stage of his illness, she did not connect these two facts in her mind even then as cause and effect. Not till the dreadful night in which she heard the word poison uttered over Mr. Bartholomew’s casket, did she realize what the peculiar sound which had roused her from her nap beside the sick-bed really was. It was the setting down of the glass on the shelf from which it had been previously lifted.
This was where the proceedings had ended; and it was at this point they were taken up the next day.
I say nothing of the night between; I have tried to forget it. God grant the day will come when I may. Nor shall I enter into any description of the people who filled the room on this occasion or of the change in Orpha’s appearance or in that of such persons towards whom my eyes, hot with the lack of sleep, wandered during the first half hour. I am eager to go on; eager to tell the worst and have done with this part of my story.
To return then to Wealthy’s testimony as continued from the day before. The casket in which Mr. Bartholomew’s body had been laid on the morning of the second day had been taken in the early evening down into the court. She had not accompanied it. When asked why, she said that Mr. Edgar had asked her to remain in the room, and on no account to leave it without locking both doors. So she had stayed until she heard a scream ringing up through the house, and convinced from its hysterical sound that it came from one of the maids, she hastened to lock the one door which had been left unfastened, and go below. As in company with Mr. Quenton and Clarke she reached the balcony on the second floor, she could see that there were several persons in the court, so she stopped where she was, and simply looked down at what was going on. It was then she got the shock of her life. The girl who had uttered the scream was pointing at her dead master’s face and shouting the word poison. One can imagine what passed through her mind as the clouds cleared away from it and she realized to what in her ignorance she had been made a party to.
She certainly made the jury feel it, though she was less garrulous and simpler in her manners than on the previous day; and hardly knowing what to expect from her peculiar sense of duty, I was in dread anticipation of hearing her relate the few words which had passed between us as Orpha fell into my arms,—words in which she accused me of being the cause of all this trouble.
But she spared me that, either because she did not know how to obtrude it without help from the Coroner, or because she had enough right feeling not to emphasize the suspicion already roused against me by her previous testimony.
Grateful for this much grace, I restrained my own anxieties and listened intently for what else she had to say, in the old hope that some word would yet fall from her lips or some glance escape from her eye which would give me the clew to the hand which had really lifted that glass and set it down a little further along the shelf.
I thought I was on its track when she came to the visit she had paid to the room above in the company of Edgar and Orpha. But I heard little new. The facts elicited were well-known ones. They had approached the cabinet together, looked into it together, and, pushing the bottles about, brought out the one for which they were seeking from the very place in the rear of the shelf where she had put it herself when told that it would not be required any longer.
“Yes, that is the bottle,” she declared, as the Coroner lifted a small phial from the table before him and held it up in her sight and in that of the jury. As he did this, I could scarcely hide the sickening thrill which for a moment caused everything to turn black around me. For the label was written large and the word Poison had a ghastly look to one who had loved Edgar Quenton Bartholomew. When I could see and hear again, Wealthy was saying:
“A few drops wouldn’t be missed. My memory isn’t good enough for me to be sure of a fact like that.”
Evidently she had been asked if on taking the phial from the shelf she had noticed any diminution of its contents since she had last handled it.
“You say that you pushed the bottles aside in order to get at this one. Was that necessary? Could you not have reached in over them and lifted it out?”
“I never thought of doing that; none of us did. We were all anxious to satisfy ourselves as to whether or not the bottle was there and just took the quickest way we knew of finding out.”
“But you could have got hold of it in the way I suggested? Reached in, I mean, and pulled it out without disarranging the other bottles?”
She stopped to think; contracting her brows and stealing what I felt sure was a look at Edgar.
“It would have been difficult,” she finally conceded: “but a person with long fingers might have got hold of it all right. The bottles in front and around it were not very large. Much of the same size as the one you just showed us.”
“Then in your opinion this could have been done?”
(I heard afterwards that it had been done by one of the police operatives.)
“It could have been done.”
Almost doggedly she said it.
“Without making much noise?”
“Without making any if the person doing it knew exactly where the phial was to be found.”
Not doggedly now, but incisively.
“And how many of the household, to your definite knowledge, did?”
“Three, besides myself. Miss Orpha, Mr. Edgar and Mr. Quenton, all of whom shared my nursing.”
The warmth with which she uttered the first two names, the coldness with which she uttered mine! Was it intentional, or just the natural expression of her feelings? Whatever prompted this distinction in tone, the effect was to signal me out as definitely as though a brand had left its scorching mark upon my forehead.
And I innocent!
Why I did not leap to my feet I do not know. I thought I did, shouting a wild disclaimer. If men stared and women shrieked that was nothing to me. All that I cared for was Orpha sitting there listening to this hellish accusation. So maddened was I, so dead to all human conditions that I doubt if I should have been surprised had the ghostly figure of my uncle evolved itself from air and taken its place on the witness-stand in revolt against this horror. Anything was possible, but to let the world—by which I meant Orpha—believe this thing for a moment.
All this tumult in brain and heart, and my body quiet, fixed, with not a muscle so much as quivering. By what force was I thus withheld? Possibly by some hypnotic influence exerted by Mr. Jackson, for when I looked in his direction I found him gazing very earnestly in mine. I smiled. It must have been a very dreary smile and ironic in the extreme; for my heart was filled with bitterness and could express itself in no other way.
The decided shake of the head which he gave me in return had its effect, however, and digging my nails into my palm, I listened to what followed with all the stoicism the situation called for.
I was still in a state of rigid self-control when I heard my name spoken loudly and with command and woke to the fact that Wealthy had been dismissed from the stand and that I was to be the next witness.
Was I ready for it? I must be; and to test my strength, I cast one straight look at Orpha. She had lifted her veil and met my gaze fairly. Had there been guilt in my heart—
But I could pass her without shame; and sustained by this fact, I took my place on the stand with a calmness I had hardly expected to show in the face of this prejudiced throng.
As my story, sometimes elicited by questions and sometimes allowed to take the form of an uninterrupted narrative, differed in no essential from the one already given in these pages, I see no reason for recapitulating it here any more than I did the one I told days before to the Inspector. Fixed in my determination to be honest in all I said but not to say any more than was required, I was able to hear unmoved the low murmurs which now and then rose from the center of the room as I made some unexpected reply or revealed, as I could not help doing, the strength of the tie which united me to my deceased uncle. No one believed in that and consequently attributed any assertion of the kind to hypocrisy; and with this I had to contend from the beginning to the end, softened perhaps a little towards the last, but still active enough to make my position a very trying one.
The result of my examination must be given, however, even if I have to indulge in some repetition.
My testimony, if accepted as truth, established certain facts.
They were these:
That Mr. Bartholomew had changed his mind more than once as to which of us two nephews he would leave the bulk of his fortune:
That he had shown positive decision only on the night preceding his death, declaring to me that I was his final choice:
That, notwithstanding this, he had not then and there destroyed the will antagonistic to this decision, as would seem natural if his mind had been really settled in its resolve; but had kept them both in hand up to the time of my departure from the room:
That late in the night after a long séance with myself in the library on the lower floor, I had come upstairs, and in my anxiety to know whether my uncle were awake or resting quietly after so disturbing an evening, had stopped to listen first at one of his doors and then at the other; but had refrained from going in, or even seeing my uncle again until summoned with the rest of the family to hear his dying wishes:
That when he handed one of the wills to his daughter and bade her burn it in the large bowl he had ordered placed at his bedside, I believed it to be the one I had expected to see him burn the night before, and that I just as confidently believed that the one which had been taken from the other envelope and put away in some spot not yet discovered was the one designating me as his chief heir according to his promise, and should so believe until it was found and I was shown to the contrary. (This in justification of my confidence in him and also to refute the idea in so far as I was able, that I had been so fearful of his changing his mind again that I was willing to cut his life short rather than run the risk of losing my inheritance.)
For I was sensible enough to see that to minds so prejudiced, the fact that the will favoring myself having been the last one drawn, afforded them sufficient excuse for a supposition which seemed the only explanation possible for the mystery they were facing.
A few were undoubtedly influenced either by my earnestness or the dignity which innocence gives to the suspected man, but the many, not; and when at the conclusion of my testimony I was forced to repass Orpha on my way back to my seat, I found that I no longer had the courage to meet her eye, lest I should see pity there or, what was worse, an attempt to accept what I had to say against reason and possibly against her own judgment.
But when her name was called and with a quick unveiling of her face she took her place upon the stand, I could not keep my glances back, for I was thinking now, not of myself but of her and the suffering which she must undergo if her examination was to be of any help in disentangling the threads of this involved inquiry.
That I was justified in my fears was at once apparent, for the first question which attracted attention and drew every head forward in breathless interest and undisguised curiosity was this:
“Miss Bartholomew, I regret that I must trespass upon matters which in my respect for yourself and family I should be glad to leave untouched. But conditions force me to ask if the rumor is correct that you are engaged to marry your cousin, Edgar, with whom you have been brought up.”
“No,” she answered at once, with that clear ring to her voice which carried it without effort to the remotest corners of the room. “I am engaged to no one. But am under an obligation, gladly entered into because it was my father’s wish, to marry the man—if the gentleman so pleases—to whom my father has willed the greater portion of his money.”
The Coroner raised his gavel, but laid it down again, for the excitement called forth by the calm dignity of this answer, was of that deep and absorbing kind which shrinks from noisy demonstration.
“Miss Bartholomew, do you know or have you any suspicion as to where your father concealed the will which will settle this question?”
“None whatever.”
And now, the sweet voice wavered.
“You know your father’s room well?”
“Every inch of it.”
“And can imagine no place in it where he might have thrust this document on taking it out of the envelope?”
“None.”
“Miss Bartholomew, you have heard the last witness state that your father distinctly told him on the night before his death that he had decided to make him his chief inheritor. Did your father ever make the same declaration to you?”
“He has said that he found my foreign cousin admirable.”
“That hardly answers my question, Miss Bartholomew.”
The pink came out on her cheeks. Ah; how lovely she was! But in what trouble also.
“He once asked me if I could rely on his judgment in the choice of my future husband?” came reluctantly from her lips. “Up till then I had not been aware that there was to be any choice.”
“You mean—”
“That I had never been given reason to think that there was any man living whom he could prefer for a real son to the nephew who lived like a son in the family.”
“Can you remember just when this occurred? Was it before or after the ball held in your house?”
“It was after; some weeks after.”
“After he had been ill for some little time, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Coroner glanced at the jury; and the jurymen at each other. She must have observed this, for a subtle change passed over her face which revealed the steadfast woman without taking from the winsomeness of her girlishness so well known to all.
She was yet in the glow of whatever sentiment had been aroused within her, when she was called upon to reply to a series of questions concerning this ball, leading up, as I knew they must, to one which had been in my own mind ever since that event. What had passed between her and her father when, on hearing he was ill, she went up to see him in his own room.
“I found him ailing but indisposed to say much about it. What he wanted was to tell me that on account of not feeling quite himself, he had decided not to have any public announcement made of his plans for Edgar and myself. That would keep. But lest our friends who had expected something of the kind might feel aggrieved, he proposed that as a substitute for it, another announcement should be made which would give them almost equal pleasure,—that of the engagement of his ward, Miss Colfax, to Dr. Hunter. And this was done.”
“And was this all which passed between you at this time? No hint of a quarrel between himself and the nephew for whom he had contemplated such honor?”
“He said nothing that would either alarm or sadden me. He was very cheerful, almost gay, all the time I was in the room. Alas! how little we knew!”
It was the spontaneous outburst of a bereaved child and the Coroner let it pass. Would he could have spared her the next question. But his fixed idea of my guilt would not allow this and I had to sit there and hear him say:
“In the days which followed, during which you doubtless had many opportunities of seeing both of your cousins, did the attentions of the one you call Quenton savor at all of those of courtship?”
“No, sir. We were all too absorbed in caring for my sick father to think of anything of that kind.”
It was firmly but sweetly said, and such was the impression she made on the crowd before her, that I saw a man who was lounging against the rear wall, unconsciously bow his head in token of his respect for her womanliness.
The Coroner, a little impressed himself perhaps, sat in momentary silence and when he was ready to proceed, chose a less embarrassing subject. What it was I do not remember now, nor is it of importance that I should enlarge any further on an examination which left things very much as they were and had been from the beginning. By the masses convened there I was considered guilty, but by a few, not; and as the few had more than one representative in the jury, the verdict which was finally given was the usual one where certainty is not attained.
Murder by poison administered by a person unknown.