XIX.
MR. FERRIS.
What have we here?—Tempest.
Mr. Ferris himself had never doubted this man's guilt. From Hildreth's first appearance at the inquest, the District Attorney had fixed upon him as the murderer of Mrs. Clemmens, and up to this time he had seen no good and substantial reason for altering his opinion.
Even the doubts expressed by Mr. Byrd had moved him but little. Mr. Byrd was an enthusiast, and, naturally enough, shrank from believing a gentleman capable of such a crime. But the other detective's judgment was unswayed, and he considered Hildreth guilty. It was not astonishing, then, that the opinion of Mr. Ferris should coincide with that of the older and more experienced man.
But the depth of despair or remorse which had led Mr. Hildreth to this desperate attempt upon his own life had struck the District Attorney with dismay. Though not over-sensitive by nature, he could not help feeling sympathy for the misery that had prompted such a deed, and while secretly regarding this unsuccessful attempt at suicide as an additional proof of guilt, he could not forbear satisfying himself by a review of the evidence elicited at the inquest, that the action of the authorities in arresting this man had been both warrantable and necessary.
The result was satisfactory in all but one point. When he came to the widow's written accusation against one by the name of Gouverneur Hildreth, he was impressed by a fact that had hitherto escaped his notice. This was the yellowness of the paper upon which the words were written. If they had been transcribed a dozen years before, they would not have looked older, nor would the ink have presented a more faded appearance. Now, as the suspected man was under twenty-five years of age, and must, therefore, have been a mere child when the paper was drawn up, the probability was that the Gouverneur intended was the prisoner's father, their names being identical.
But this discovery, while it robbed the affair of its most dramatic feature, could not affect in any serious way the extreme significance of the remaining real and compromising facts which told so heavily against this unfortunate man. Indeed, the well-known baseness of the father made it easier to distrust the son, and Mr. Ferris had just come to the conclusion that his duty compelled him to draw up an indictment of the would-be suicide, when the door opened, and Mr. Byrd and Mr. Hickory came in.
To see these two men in conjunction was a surprise to the District Attorney. He, however, had no time to express himself on the subject, for Mr. Byrd, stepping forward, immediately remarked:
"Mr. Hickory and I have been in consultation, sir; and we have a few facts to give you that we think will alter your opinion as to the person who murdered Mrs. Clemmens."
"Is this so?" cried Mr. Ferris, looking at Hickory with a glance indicative of doubt.
"Yes, sir," exclaimed that not easily abashed individual, with an emphasis decided enough to show the state of his feelings on the subject. "After I last saw you a woman came in my way and put into my hands so fresh and promising a clue, that I dropped the old scent at once and made instanter for the new game. But I soon found I was not the only sportsman on this trail. Before I had taken a dozen steps I ran upon this gentleman, and, finding him true grit, struck up a partnership with him that has led to our bringing down the quarry together."
"Humph!" quoth the District Attorney. "Some very remarkable discoveries must have come to light to influence the judgment of two such men as yourselves."
"You are right," rejoined Mr. Byrd. "In fact, I should not be surprised if this case proved to be one of the most remarkable on record. It is not often that equally convincing evidence of guilt is found against two men having no apparent connection."
"And have you collected such evidence?"
"We have."
"And who is the person you consider equally open to suspicion with Mr. Hildreth?"
"Craik Mansell, Mrs. Clemmens' nephew."
The surprise of the District-Attorney was, as Mr. Hickory in later days remarked, nuts to him. The solemn nature of the business he was engaged upon never disturbed this hardy detective's sense of the ludicrous, and he indulged in one of his deepest chuckles as he met the eye of Mr. Ferris.
"One never knows what they are going to run upon in a chase of this kind, do they, sir?" he remarked, with the greatest cheerfulness. "Mr. Mansell is no more of a gentleman than Mr. Hildreth; yet, because he is the second one of his caste who has attracted our attention, you are naturally very much surprised. But wait till you hear what we have to tell you. I am confident you will be satisfied with our reasons for suspecting this new party." And he glanced at Mr. Byrd, who, seeing no cause for delay, proceeded to unfold before the District Attorney the evidence they had collected against Mr. Mansell.
It was strong, telling, and seemingly conclusive, as we already know; and awoke in the mind of Mr. Ferris the greatest perplexity of his life. It was not simply that the facts urged against Mr. Mansell were of the same circumstantial character and of almost the same significance as those already urged against Mr. Hildreth, but that the association of Miss Dare's name with this new theory of suspicion presented difficulties, if it did not involve consequences, calculated to make any friend of Mr. Orcutt quail. And Mr. Ferris was such a friend, and knew very well the violent nature of the shock which this eminent lawyer would experience at discovering the relations held by this trusted woman toward a man suspected of crime.
Then Miss Dare herself! Was this beautiful and cherished woman, hitherto believed by all who knew her to be set high above the reach of reproach, to be dragged down from her pedestal and submitted to the curiosity of the rabble, if not to its insinuations and reproach? It seemed hard; even to this stern, dry searcher among dead men's bones, it seemed both hard and bitter. And yet, because he was an honest man, he had no thought of paltering with his duty. He could only take time to make sure what that duty was. He accordingly refrained from expressing any opinion in regard to Mr. Mansell's culpability to the two detectives, and finally dismissed them without any special orders.
But a day or two after this he sent for them again, and said:
"Since I have seen you I have considered, with due carefulness, the various facts presented me in support of your belief that Craik Mansell is the man who assailed the Widow Clemmens, and have weighed them against the equally significant facts pointing toward Mr. Hildreth as the guilty party, and find but one link lacking in the former chain of evidence which is not lacking in the latter; and that is this: Mrs. Clemmens, in the one or two lucid moments which returned to her after the assault, gave utterance to an exclamation which many think was meant to serve as a guide in determining the person of her murderer. She said, 'Ring,' as Mr. Byrd here will doubtless remember, and then 'Hand,' as if she wished to fix upon the minds of those about her that the hand uplifted against her wore a ring. At all events, such a conclusion is plausible enough, and led to my making an experiment yesterday, which has, for ever, set the matter at rest in my own mind. I took my stand at the huge clock in her house, just in the attitude she was supposed to occupy when struck, and, while in this position, ordered my clerk to advance upon me from behind with his hands clasped about a stick of wood, which he was to bring down within an inch of my head. This was done, and while his arm was in the act of descending, I looked to see if by a quick glance from the corner of my eye I could detect the broad seal ring I had previously pushed upon his little finger. I discovered that I could; that indeed it was all of the man which I could distinctly see without turning my head completely around. The ring, then, is an important feature in this case, a link without which any chain of evidence forged for the express purpose of connecting a man with this murder must necessarily remain incomplete and consequently useless. But amongst the suspicious circumstances brought to bear against Mr. Mansell, I discern no token of a connection between him and any such article, while we all know that Mr. Hildreth not only wore a ring on the day of the murder, but considered the circumstance so much in his own disfavor, that he slipped it off his finger when he began to see the shadow of suspicion falling upon him."
"You have, then, forgotten the diamond I picked up from the floor of Mrs. Clemmens' dining-room on the morning of the murder?" suggested Mr. Byrd with great reluctance.
"No," answered the District Attorney, shortly. "But Miss Dare distinctly avowed that ring to be hers, and you have brought me no evidence as yet to prove her statement false. If you can supply such proof, or if you can show that Mr. Mansell had that ring on his hand when he entered Mrs. Clemmens' house on the fatal morning—another fact, which, by-the-way, rests as yet upon inference only—I shall consider the case against him as strong as that against Mr. Hildreth; otherwise, not."
Mr. Byrd, with the vivid remembrance before him of Miss Dare's looks and actions in the scene he had witnessed between her and the supposed Mansell in the hut, smiled with secret bitterness over this attempt of the District Attorney to shut his eyes to the evident guiltiness of this man.
Mr. Ferris saw this smile and instantly became irritated.
"I do not doubt any more than yourself," he resumed, in a changed voice, "that this young man allowed his mind to dwell upon the possible advantages which might accrue to himself if his aunt should die. He may even have gone so far as to meditate the commission of a crime to insure these advantages. But whether the crime which did indeed take place the next day in his aunt's house was the result of his meditations, or whether he found his own purpose forestalled by an attack made by another person possessing no less interest than himself in seeing this woman dead, is not determined by the evidence you bring."
"Then you do not favor his arrest?" inquired Mr. Byrd.
"No. The vigorous measures which were taken in Mr. Hildreth's case, and the unfortunate event to which they have led, are terrible enough to satisfy the public craving after excitement for a week at least. I am not fond of driving men to madness myself, and unless I can be made to see that my duty demands a complete transferal of my suspicions from Hildreth to Mansell, I can advise nothing more than a close but secret surveillance of the latter's movements until the action of the Grand Jury determines whether the evidence against Mr. Hildreth is sufficient to hold him for trial."
Mr. Byrd, who had such solid, if private and uncommunicable, reasons for believing in the guilt of Craik Mansell, was somewhat taken aback at this unlooked-for decision of Mr. Ferris, and, remembering the temptation which a man like Hickory must feel to make his cause good at all hazards, cast a sharp look toward that blunt-spoken detective, in some doubt as to whether he could be relied upon to keep his promise in the face of this manifest disappointment.
But Hickory had given his word, and Hickory remained firm; and Mr. Byrd, somewhat relieved in his own mind, was about to utter his acquiescence in the District Attorney's views, when a momentary interruption occurred, which gave him an opportunity to exchange a few words aside with his colleague.
"Hickory," he whispered, "what do you think of this objection which Mr. Ferris makes?"
"I?" was the hurried reply. "Oh, I think there is something in it."
"Something in it?"
"Yes. Mr. Mansell is the last man to wear a ring, I must acknowledge. Indeed, I took some pains while in Buffalo to find out if he ever indulged in any such vanity, and was told decidedly No. As to the diamond you mentioned, that is certainly entirely too rich a jewel for a man like him to possess. I—I am a afraid the absence of this link in our chain of evidence is fatal. I shouldn't wonder if the old scent was the best, after all."
"But Miss Dare—her feelings and her convictions, as manifested by the words she made use of in the hut?" objected Mr. Byrd.
"Oh! she thinks he is guilty, of course!"
She thinks! Mr. Byrd stared at his companion for a minute in silence. She thinks! Then there was a possibility, it seems, that it was only her thought, and that Mr. Mansell was not really the culpable man he had been brought to consider him.
But here an exclamation, uttered by Mr. Ferris, called their attention back to that gentleman. He was reading a letter which had evidently been just brought in, and his expression was one of amazement, mixed with doubt. As they looked toward him they met his eye, that had a troubled and somewhat abashed expression, which convinced them that the communication he held in his hand was in some way connected with the matter under consideration.
Surprised themselves, they unconsciously started forward, when, in a dry and not altogether pleased tone, the District Attorney observed:
"This affair seems to be full of coincidences. You talk of a missing link, and it is immediately thrust under your nose. Read that!"
And he pushed toward them the following epistle, roughly scrawled on a sheet of common writing-paper:
If Mr. Ferris is anxious for justice, and can believe that suspicion does not always attach itself to the guilty, let him, or some one whose business it is, inquire of Miss Imogene Dare, of this town, how she came to claim as her own the ring that was picked up on the floor of Mrs. Clemmens' house.
"Well!" cried Mr. Byrd, glancing at Hickory, "what are we to think of this?"
"Looks like the work of old Sally Perkins," observed the other, pointing out the lack of date and signature.
"So it does," acquiesced Mr. Byrd, in a relieved tone. "The miserable old wretch is growing impatient."
But Mr. Ferris, with a gloomy frown, shortly said:
"The language is not that of an ignorant old creature like Sally Perkins, whatever the writing may be. Besides, how could she have known about the ring? The persons who were present at the time it was picked up are not of the gossiping order."
"Who, then, do you think wrote this?" inquired Mr. Byrd.
"That is what I wish you to find out," declared the District Attorney.
Mr. Hickory at once took it in his hand.
"Wait," said he, "I have an idea." And he carried the letter to one side, where he stood examining it for several minutes. When he came back he looked tolerably excited and somewhat pleased. "I believe I can tell you who wrote it," said he.
"Who?" inquired the District Attorney.
For reply the detective placed his finger upon a name that was written in the letter.
"Imogene Dare?" exclaimed Mr. Ferris, astonished.
"She herself," proclaimed the self-satisfied detective.
"What makes you think that?" the District Attorney slowly asked.
"Because I have seen her writing, and studied her signature, and, ably as she has disguised her hand in the rest of the letter, it betrays itself in her name. See here." And Hickory took from his pocket-book a small slip of paper containing her autograph, and submitted it to the test of comparison.
The similarity between the two signatures was evident, and both Mr. Byrd and Mr. Ferris were obliged to allow the detective might be right, though the admission opened up suggestions of the most formidable character.
"It is a turn for which I am not prepared," declared the District Attorney.
"It is a turn for which we are not prepared," repeated Mr. Byrd, with a controlling look at Hickory.
"Let us, then, defer further consideration of the matter till I have had an opportunity to see Miss Dare," suggested Mr. Ferris.
And the two detectives were very glad to acquiesce in this, for they were as much astonished as he at this action of Miss Dare, though, with their better knowledge of her feelings, they found it comparatively easy to understand how her remorse and the great anxiety she doubtless felt for Mr. Hildreth had sufficed to drive her to such an extreme and desperate measure.
XX.
A CRISIS.
| Queen. | Alas, how is it with you? That you do bend your eye on vacancy, And with the incorporeal air do hold discourse? * * * * * Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, Starts up and stands on end. * * * * * Whereon do you look? |
| Hamlet. | On him! On him! Look you how pale he glares! His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones, Would make them capable. Do not look upon me; Lest, with this piteous action, you convert My stern effects! then what I have to do Will want true color; tears, perchance, for blood.—Hamlet. |
Mr. Orcutt's mind had never been at rest concerning the peculiar attitude assumed by Imogene Dare at the time of Mrs. Clemmens' murder. Time and thought had not made it any more possible for him to believe now than then that she knew any thing of the matter beyond what appeared to the general eye: but he could not forget the ring. It haunted him. Fifty times a day he asked himself what she had meant by claiming as her own a jewel which had been picked up from the floor of a strange house at a time so dreadful, and which, in despite of her explanations to him, he found it impossible to believe was hers or ever could have been hers? He was even tempted to ask her; but he never did. The words would not come. Though they faltered again and again upon his lips, he could not give utterance to them; no, though with every passing day he felt that the bond uniting her to him was growing weaker and weaker, and that if something did not soon intervene to establish confidence between them, he would presently lose all hope of the treasure for the possession of which he was now ready to barter away half the remaining years of his life.
Her increasing reticence, and the almost stony look of misery that now confronted him without let or hindrance from her wide gray eyes, were not calculated to reassure him or make his future prospects look any brighter. Her pain, if pain it were, or remorse, if remorse it could be, was not of a kind to feel the influence of time; and, struck with dismay, alarmed in spite of himself, if not for her reason at least for his own, he watched her from day to day, feeling that now he would give his life not merely to possess her, but to understand her and the secret that was gnawing at her heart.
At last there came a day when he could no longer restrain himself. She had been seated in his presence, and had been handed a letter which for the moment seemed to thoroughly overwhelm her. We know what that letter was. It was the note which had been sent as a decoy by the detective Hickory, but which she had no reason to doubt was a real communication from Craik Mansell, despite the strange handwriting on the envelope. It prayed her for an interview. It set the time and mentioned the place of meeting, and created for the instant such a turmoil in her usually steady brain that she could not hide it from the searching eyes that watched her.
"What is it, Imogene?" inquired Mr. Orcutt, drawing near her with a gesture of such uncontrollable anxiety, it looked as if he were about to snatch the letter from her hand.
For reply she rose, walked to the grate, in which a low wood fire was burning, and plunged the paper in among the coals. When it was all consumed she turned and faced Mr. Orcutt.
"You must excuse me," she murmured; "but the letter was one which I absolutely desired no one to see."
But he did not seem to hear her apology. He stood with his gaze fixed on the fire, and his hand clenched against his heart, as if something in the fate of that wretched sheet of paper reminded him of the love and hope that were shrivelling up before his eyes.
She saw his look and drooped her head with a sudden low moan of mingled shame and suffering.
"Am I killing you?" she faintly cried. "Are my strange, wild ways driving you to despair? I had not thought of that. I am so selfish, I had not thought of that!"
This evidence of feeling, the first she had ever shown him, moved Mr. Orcutt deeply. Advancing toward her, with sudden passion, he took her by the hand.
"Killing me?" he repeated. "Yes, you are killing me. Don't you see how fast I am growing old? Don't you see how the dust lies thick upon the books that used to be my solace and delight? I do not understand you, Imogene. I love you and I do not understand your grief, or what it is that is affecting you in this terrible way. Tell me. Let me know the nature of the forces with which I have to contend, and I can bear all the rest."
This appeal, forced as it was from lips unused to prayer, seemed to strike her, absorbed though she was in her own suffering. Looking at him with real concern, she tried to speak, but the words faltered on her tongue. They came at last, however, and he heard her say:
"I wish I could weep, if only to show you I am not utterly devoid of womanly sympathy for an anguish I cannot cure. But the fountain of my tears is dried at its source. I do not think I can ever weep again. I am condemned to tread a path of misery and despair, and must traverse it to the end without weakness and without help. Do not ask me why, for I can never tell you. And do not detain me now, or try to make me talk, for I must go where I can be alone and silent."
She was slipping away, but he caught her by the wrist and drew her back. His pain and perplexity had reached their climax.
"You must speak," he cried. "I have paltered long enough with this matter. You must tell me what it is that is destroying your happiness and mine."
But her eyes, turning toward him, seemed to echo that must in a look of disdain eloquent enough to scorn all help from words, and in the indomitable determination of her whole aspect he saw that he might slay her, but that he could never make her speak.
Loosing her with a gesture of despair, he turned away. When he glanced back again she was gone.
The result of this interview was naturally an increased doubt and anxiety on his part. He could not attend to his duties with any degree of precision, he was so haunted by uneasy surmises as to what might have been the contents of the letter which he had thus seen her destroy before his eyes. As for her words, they were like her conduct, an insolvable mystery, for which he had no key.
His failure to find her at home when he returned that night added to his alarm, especially as he remembered the vivid thunderstorm that had deluged the town in the afternoon. Nor, though she came in very soon and offered both excuses and explanations for her absence, did he experience any appreciable relief, or feel at all satisfied that he was not threatened with some secret and terrible catastrophe. Indeed, the air of vivid and feverish excitement which pervaded every look of hers from this time, making each morning and evening distinctive in his memory as a season of fresh fear and renewed suspense, was enough of itself to arouse this sense of an unknown, but surely approaching, danger. He saw she was on the look out for some event, he knew not what, and studied the papers as sedulously as she, in the hope of coming upon some revelation that should lay bare the secret of this new condition of hers. At last he thought he had found it. Coming home one day from the court, he called her into his presence, and, without pause or preamble, exclaimed, with almost cruel abruptness:
"An event of possible interest to you has just taken place. The murderer of Mrs. Clemmens has just cut his throat."
He saw before he had finished the first clause that he had struck at the very citadel of her terrors and her woe. At the end of the second sentence he knew, beyond all doubt now, what it was she had been fearing, if not expecting. Yet she said not a word, and by no movement betrayed that the steel had gone through and through her heart.
A demon—the maddening demon of jealousy—gripped him for the first time with relentless force.
"Ah, you have been looking for it?" he cried in a choked voice. "You know this man, then—knew him, perhaps, before the murder of Mrs. Clemmens; knew him, and—and, perhaps, loved him?"
She did not reply.
He struck his forehead with his hand, as if the moment was perfectly intolerable to him.
"Answer," he cried. "Did you know Gouverneur Hildreth or not?"
"Gouverneur Hildreth?" Oh, the sharp surprise, the wailing anguish of her tone! Mr. Orcutt stood amazed. "It is not he who has made this attempt upon his life!—not he!" she shrieked like one appalled.
Perhaps because all other expression or emotion failed him, Mr. Orcutt broke forth into a loud and harrowing laugh. "And who else should it be?" he cried. "What other man stands accused of having murdered Widow Clemmens? You are mad, Imogene; you don't know what you say or what you do."
"Yes, I am mad," she repeated—"mad!" and leaned her forehead forward on the back of a high chair beside which she had been standing, and hid her face and struggled with herself for a moment, while the clock went on ticking, and the wretched surveyer of her sorrow stood looking at her bended head like a man who does not know whether it is he or she who is in the most danger of losing his reason.
At last a word struggled forth from between her clasped hands.
"When did it happen?" she gasped, without lifting her head. "Tell me all about it. I think I can understand."
The noted lawyer smiled a bitter smile, and spoke for the first time, without pity and without mercy.
"He has been trying for some days to effect his death. His arrest and the little prospect there is of his escaping trial seem to have maddened his gentlemanly brain. Fire-arms were not procurable, neither was poison nor a rope, but a pewter plate is enough in the hands of a desperate man. He broke one in two last night, and——"
He paused, sick and horror-stricken. Her face had risen upon him from the back of the chair, and was staring upon him like that of a Medusa. Before that gaze the flesh crept on his bones and the breath of life refused to pass his lips. Gazing at her with rising horror, he saw her stony lips slowly part.
"Don't go on," she whispered. "I can see it all without the help of words." Then, in a tone that seemed to come from some far-off world of nightmare, she painfully gasped, "Is he dead?"
Mr. Orcutt was a man who, up to the last year, had never known what it was to experience a real and controlling emotion. Life with him had meant success in public affairs, and a certain social pre-eminence that made his presence in any place the signal of admiring looks and respectful attentions. But let no man think that, because his doom delays, it will never come. Passions such as he had deprecated in others, and desires such as he had believed impossible to himself, had seized upon him with ungovernable power, and in this moment especially he felt himself yielding to their sway with no more power of resistance than a puppet experiences in the grasp of a whirlwind. Meeting that terrible eye of hers, burning with an anxiety for a man he despised, and hearing that agonized question from lips whose touch he had never known, he experienced a sudden wild and almost demoniac temptation to hurl back the implacable "Yes" that he felt certain would strike her like a dead woman to the ground. But the horrid impulse passed, and, with a quick remembrance of the claims of honor upon one bearing his name and owning his history, he controlled himself with a giant resolution, and merely dropping his eyes from an anguish he dared no longer confront, answered, quietly:
"No; he has hurt himself severely and has disfigured his good looks for life, but he will not die; or so the physicians think."
A long, deep, shuddering sigh swept through the room.
"Thank God!" came from her lips, and then all was quiet again.
He looked up in haste; he could not bear the silence.
"Imogene——" he began, but instantly paused in surprise at the change which had taken place in her expression. "What do you intend to do?" was his quick demand. "You look as I have never seen you look before."
"Do not ask me!" she returned. "I have no words for what I am going to do. What you must do is to see that Gouverneur Hildreth is released from prison. He is not guilty, mind you; he never committed this crime of which he is suspected, and in the shame of which suspicion he has this day attempted his life. If he is kept in the restraint which is so humiliating to him, and if he dies there, it will be murder—do you hear? murder! And he will die there if he is not released; I know his feelings only too well."
"But, Imogene——"
"Hush! don't argue. 'Tis a matter of life and death, I tell you. He must be released! I know," she went on, hurriedly, "what it is you want to say. You think you cannot do this; that the evidence is all against him; that he went to prison of his own free will and cannot hope for release till his guilt or innocence has been properly inquired into. But I know you can effect his enlargement if you will. You are a lawyer, and understand all the crooks and turns by which a man can sometimes be made to evade the grasp of justice. Use your knowledge. Avail yourself of your influence with the authorities, and I——" she paused and gave him a long, long look.
He was at her side in an instant.
"You would—what?" he cried, taking her hand in his and pressing it impulsively.
"I would grant you whatever you ask," she murmured, in a weariful tone.
"Would you be my wife?" he passionately inquired.
"Yes," was the choked reply; "if I did not die first."
He caught her to his breast in rapture. He knelt at her side and threw his arms about her waist.
"You shall not die," he cried. "You shall live and be happy. Only marry me to-day."
"Not till Gouverneur Hildreth be released," she interposed, gently.
He started as if touched by a galvanic battery, and slowly rose up and coldly looked at her.
"Do you love him so madly you would sell yourself for his sake?" he sternly demanded.
With a quick gesture she threw back her head as though the indignant "No" that sprang to her lips would flash out whether she would or not. But she restrained herself in time.
"I cannot answer," she returned.
But he was master now—master of this dominating spirit that had held him in check for so long a time, and he was not to be put off.
"You must answer," he sternly commanded. "I have the right to know the extent of your feeling for this man, and I will. Do you love him, Imogene Dare? Tell me, or I here swear that I will do nothing for him, either now or at a time when he may need my assistance more than you know."
This threat, uttered as he uttered it, could have but one effect. Turning aside, so that he should not see the shuddering revolt in her eyes, she mechanically whispered:
"And what if I did? Would it be so very strange? Youth admires youth, Mr. Orcutt, and Mr. Hildreth is very handsome and very unfortunate. Do not oblige me to say more."
Mr. Orcutt, across whose face a dozen different emotions had flitted during the utterance of these few words, drew back till half the distance of the room lay between them.
"Nor do I wish to hear any more," he rejoined, slowly. "You have said enough, quite enough. I understand now all the past—all your terrors and all your secret doubts and unaccountable behavior. The man you loved was in danger, and you did not know how to manage his release. Well, well, I am sorry for you, Imogene. I wish I could help you. I love you passionately, and would make you my wife in face of your affection for this man if I could do for you what you request. But it is impossible. Never during the whole course of my career has a blot rested upon my integrity as a lawyer. I am known as an honest man, and honest will I remain known to the last. Besides, I could do nothing to effect his enlargement if I tried. Nothing but the plainest proof that he is innocent, or that another man is guilty, would avail now to release him from the suspicion which his own admissions have aroused."
"Then there is no hope?" was her slow and despairing reply.
"None at present, Imogene," was his stern, almost as despairing, answer.
As Mr. Orcutt sat over his lonely hearth that evening, a servant brought to him the following letter:
Dear Friend,—It is not fit that I should remain any longer under your roof. I have a duty before me which separates me forever from the friendship and protection of honorable men and women. No home but such as I can provide for myself by the work of my own hands shall henceforth shelter the disgraced head of Imogene Dare. Her fate, whatever it may prove to be, she bears alone, and you, who have been so kind, shall never suffer from any association with one whose name must henceforth become the sport of the crowd, if not the execration of the virtuous. If your generous heart rebels at this, choke it relentlessly down. I shall be already gone when you read these lines, and nothing you could do or say would make me come back. Good-by, and may Heaven grant you forgetfulness of one whose only return to your benefactions has been to make you suffer almost as much as she suffers herself.
As Mr. Orcutt read these last lines, District Attorney Ferris was unsealing the anonymous missive which has already been laid before my readers.
XXI.
HEART'S MARTYRDOM.
The end of this day's business, ere it come;
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known!—Julius Cæsar.
It was not an agreeable task for him to undertake. Miss Dare was a young lady whom he had always held in the highest esteem. He had hoped to see her the wife of his friend, and would have given much from his own private stock of hope and happiness to have kept her name free from the contumely which any association with this dreadful crime must necessarily bring upon it. But his position as prosecuting attorney of the county would not allow him to consult his feelings any further in a case of such serious import. The condition of Mr. Hildreth was, to say the least, such as demanded the most impartial action on the part of the public officials, and if through any explanation of Miss Dare the one missing link in the chain of evidence against another could be supplied, it was certainly his duty to do all he could to insure it.
Accordingly at a favorable hour the next day, he made his appearance at Mr. Orcutt's house, and learning that Miss Dare had gone to Professor Darling's house for a few days, followed her to her new home and requested an interview.
She at once responded to his call. Little did he think as she came into the parlor where he sat, and with even more than her usual calm self-possession glided down the length of that elegant apartment to his side, that she had just come from a small room on the top floor, where, in the position of a hired seamstress, she had been engaged in cutting out the wedding garments of one of the daughters of the house.
Her greeting was that of a person attempting to feign a surprise she did not feel.
"Ah," said she, "Mr. Ferris! This is an unexpected pleasure."
But Mr. Ferris had no heart for courtesies.
"Miss Dare," he began, without any of the preliminaries which might be expected of him, "I have come upon a disagreeable errand. I have a favor to ask. You are in the possession of a piece of information which it is highly necessary for me to share."
"I?"
The surprise betrayed in this single word was no more than was to be expected from a lady thus addressed, neither did the face she turned so steadily toward him alter under his searching gaze.
"If I can tell you any thing that you wish to know," she quietly declared, "I am certainly ready to do so, sir."
Deceived by the steadiness of her tone and the straightforward look of her eyes, he proceeded, with a sudden releasement from his embarrassment, to say:
"I shall have to recall to your mind a most painful incident. You remember, on the morning when we met at Mrs. Clemmens' house, claiming as your own a diamond ring which was picked up from the floor at your feet?"
"I do."
"Miss Dare, was this ring really yours, or were you misled by its appearance into merely thinking it your property? My excuse for asking this is that the ring, if not yours, is likely to become an important factor in the case to which the murder of this unfortunate woman has led."
"Sir——" The pause which followed the utterance of this one word was but momentary, but in it what faint and final hope may have gone down into the depths of everlasting darkness God only knows. "Sir, since you ask me the question, I will say that in one sense of the term it was mine, and in another it was not. The ring was mine, because it had been offered to me as a gift the day before. The ring was not mine, because I had refused to take it when it was offered."
At these words, spoken with such quietness they seemed like the mechanical utterances of a woman in a trance, Mr. Ferris started to his feet. He could no longer doubt that evidence of an important nature lay before him.
"And may I ask," he inquired, without any idea of the martyrdom he caused, "what was the name of the person who offered you this ring, and from whom you refused to take it?"
"The name?" She quavered for a moment, and her eyes flashed up toward heaven with a look of wild appeal, as if the requirement of this moment was more than even she had strength to meet. Then a certain terrible calm settled upon her, blotting the last hint of feeling from her face, and, rising up in her turn, she met Mr. Ferris' inquiring eye, and slowly and distinctly replied:
"It was Craik Mansell, sir. He is a nephew of Mrs. Clemmens."
It was the name Mr. Ferris had come there to hear, yet it gave him a slight shock when it fell from her lips—perhaps because his mind was still running upon her supposed relations with Mr. Orcutt. But he did not show his feelings, however, and calmly asked:
"And was Mr. Mansell in this town the day before the assault upon his aunt?"
"He was."
"And you had a conversation with him?"
"I had."
For the first time she flushed; womanly shame had not yet vanished entirely from her stricken breast; but she responded as steadily as before:
"In the woods, sir, back of Mrs. Clemmens' house. There were reasons"—she paused—"there were good reasons, which I do not feel obliged to state, why a meeting in such a place was not discreditable to us."
Mr. Ferris, who had received from other sources a full version of the interview to which she thus alluded, experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling against one he could not but consider as a detected coquette; and, drawing quickly back, made a gesture such as was not often witnessed in those elegant apartments.
"You mean," said he, with a sharp edge to his tone that passed over her dreary soul unheeded, "that you were lovers?"
"I mean," said she, like the automaton she surely was at that moment, "that he had paid me honorable addresses, and that I had no reason to doubt his motives or my own in seeking such a meeting."
"Miss Dare,"—all the District Attorney spoke in the manner of Mr. Ferris now,—"if you refused Mr. Mansell his ring, you must have returned it to him?"
She looked at him with an anguish that bespoke her full appreciation of all this question implied, but unequivocally bowed her head.
"It was in his possession, then," he continued, "when you left him on that day and returned to your home?"
"Yes," her lips seemed to say, though no distinct utterance came from them.
"And you did not see it again till you found it on the floor of Mrs. Clemmens' dining-room the morning of the murder?"
"No."
"Miss Dare," said he, with greater mildness, after a short pause, "you have answered my somewhat painful inquiries with a straightforwardness I cannot sufficiently commend. If you will now add to my gratitude by telling me whether you have informed any one else of the important facts you have just given me, I will distress you by no further questions."
"Sir," said she, and her attitude showed that she could endure but little more, "I have taken no one else into my confidence. Such knowledge as I had to impart was not matter for idle gossip."
And Mr. Ferris, being thus assured that his own surmises and that of Hickory were correct, bowed with the respect her pale face and rigid attitude seemed to demand, and considerately left the house.