The cold logic with which I looked on life was in some way shaken and uncertain. The fanciful side of myself crept in and influenced all my thought-processes. It was no longer possible to accept, with implicit faith, that last night’s crime was merely the expression of ordinary, familiar moods and human passions, that it would all work out according to the accepted scheme of things. Indeed the crime seemed no longer human at all. Rather it seemed just some deadly outgrowth of these weird sands beside the mysterious lagoon.

The crime had seemed a thing of human origin before, to be judged by human standards, but now it had become associated, in my mind, with inanimate sand and water. It was as if we had beheld the sinister expression of some inherent quality in the place itself rather than the men who had gathered there. It was hard to believe, now, that Florey had been a mere actor in some human drama that in the end had led to murder. He had been little and gray and obscure, seemingly apart from human drama as the mountains are apart from the sea, and it was easier to believe that he had been merely the unsuspecting victim of some outer peril that none of us knew. Slain, with a ragged, downward cut through the breast—and his body dragged into the lagoon!

What was to prevent the same thing from happening again? Before the week was done other of the occupants of that house might find themselves walking in the gardens at night, down by the craggy shore of the lagoon! Nealman, others of the servants, any one of the guests—Edith herself—wouldn’t circumstance, sooner or later, take them into the shadow of that curse? Who could tell but that the whole thing might be reënacted before this dreadful, sweltering night was done!

The occupants of the house wouldn’t be able to sleep to-night. Some of them would go walking in the gardens, rambling further down the beguiling garden paths that would take them at last to that craggy margin of the inlet. Some of them might want a cool glimpse of the lagoon itself. Would we hear that sharp, agonized, fearful scream again streaming through the windows, gripping the heart and freezing the blood in the veins? Any hour—any moment—such a thing might occur.

But at that point I managed a barren and mirthless laugh. I was letting childlike fancies carry me away—and I had simply tried to laugh them to scorn. Surely I need not yield to such a mood as this, to let the sweltering heat and the silence change me into a superstitious savage. The thing to do was to move away from the window and direct my thought in other channels. Yet I knew, as I argued with myself, that I was curiously breathless and inwardly shaken. But these were nothing in comparison with the fact that I was some way expectant, too, with a dreadful expectancy beyond the power of naming.

Then my laugh was cut short. And I don’t know what half-strangled utterance, what gagging expression of horror or regret or fulfilled dread took its place on my lips as a distinct scream for help, agonized and fearful, came suddenly, ripped through the darkness from the direction of the lagoon.

CHAPTER XV

I heard the sound die away. The silence dropped down again to find me standing wholly motionless before the window, one hand resting on the sill, seemingly with all power of action gone. It was a shattering blow to spirit and hope that there was no further sound from that deathly still lagoon. Further calls would indicate that the outcome of the affair was still in doubt, that there was still use to hope and struggle. But there was a sense of dreadful finality in that unbroken silence. The drama that had raged on that craggy shore was already closed and done.

The sound had not been only a cry for help. It had been charged full of the knowledge of impending death.

Motion came back to my body; and I sprang to the door. The interlude of inactivity couldn’t have been more than a second in duration. That still, upper corridor was coming to life. Some one flashed on a light at the end of the hall, and the door of the room just opposite mine flew open. Van Hope, also in dressing-gown and slippers, stood on the threshold.

He saw me, and pushed through into the hall. His face had an almost incredible pallor in the soft light. In a moment his strong hand had seized my arm.

“Good God, I didn’t dream that, did I?” he cried. “I was dozing—you heard it, didn’t you——”

“Of course I heard——”

“Some one screamed for help! I heard the word plain. Good Lord, it’s last night’s work done over——”

What he said thereafter I didn’t hear. I was running down the hall toward the stairway, and at the head of the stairs I almost collided with Major Dell, just emerging from his room. He had evidently gone to bed, and he had just had time to jerk on his trousers over his pajamas and slip on a pair of romeos. The light was brighter here, and I got a clear picture of his face.

It is a curious thing what details imprint themselves ineffaceably on the memory in a moment of crisis. Perhaps—as in the world of beasts—all the senses are incalculably sharpened, the thought processes are clean-cut and infallible, and images have a clarity unequalled at any other time. I got the idea that Dell had been terribly moved by that scream in the darkness. His emotion had seemingly been so violent that it gave the impression of no emotion. His face looked blank as a sheet of white paper.

I rushed by him, and I heard him and Van Hope descending the stairs just behind me. The hall was still lighted, but long shadows lay across the broad veranda. Fargo, his book still in his hand, stood just outside the door.

“What was it, Killdare?” he asked me. “I couldn’t tell from where it was——”

“The lagoon!” I answered. In the instant Van Hope and Dell caught up with me, and the four of us raced down the driveway.

Instinctively we went first to the place on the shore where Florey had been slain the night before. The action was a clear indication of what was in our minds—that this matter was in some way darkly related to the crime of the night before. But the sand was bare, and the grass unshadowed in the moonlight.

For a moment we stood, aghast and shaken, gazing out over the lagoon. It was still as glass. The tide was running out, and not a wave stirred in all its darkened expanse. We saw the image of the moon far out, scarcely wavering, and the long, bright trail that it made across the water to our eyes. The night was still stifling hot, and the lagoon conveyed an image of coolness.

“Don’t stand here!” Fargo cried. “We’ve got to make a search. Some poor devil is likely lying somewhere in these gardens——”

The house was lighted now, and in an uproar, and some of the other guests were racing down the driveway to us. In this regard it might have been last night’s tragedy reënacted. There was, however, one significant change.

The iron self-control, the coolness, the perfect discipline of mind and muscle that had marked the finding of the dead body on the shore the preceding night was no longer entirely manifest. These northern men, cold as flint ordinarily, were no longer wholly self-mastered. One glance at their faces, loose and pale in the moonlight, and the first sound of their voices told this fact only too plainly. It was not, however, that they were completely broken. Their training and their manhood was too good for that.

We didn’t stop to answer their queries. We began to search through the gardens, examining every shadow, peering into every covert. We tried to direct each other according to our several ideas as to the source of the sound. We all agreed, however, that the sound had seemed to come from the immediate vicinity of the natural rock wall that formed the lagoon.

The next few moments were not very coherent. We called back and forth, encountered one another in the shadows, knew moments of apprehension when the brush walls cut us off from our fellows, but we found nothing that might have explained that desperate cry of a few moments before. At last some one called out commandingly from the shores of the lagoon.

“Come here, every one,” he said. The voice rose above our confused utterances, and all of us, recognizing a leader, hurried to him. Pescini was standing beside the craggy shore, a strange and imposing figure in the wealth of moonlight, at the edge of that tranquil water.

Pescini, after all, was showing himself one of the most self-mastered men among us. Any one could read the fact in his voice. How white his skin looked in the moonlight, how raven-black his mustache and beard! He was still in the garb he had worn at dinner, immaculate and unruffled.

“We’re not getting anywhere,” he said. “Is every one here?”

“Here!” It was Joe Nopp’s voice, and he immediately joined us. We waited an instant, seeing if any further searchers were yet to come in. But the thickets were as hushed as the lagoon itself.

“Let’s take another tack,” Pescini said. “There’s nothing in these gardens. If there is we’ll find it in an organized search. Remember—our search got us nowhere last night. Let’s count up, and see if we’re all all right.”

We waited for him to continue. All of us breathed deeply and hard.

“Then let’s go up to the house to do it,” Nopp suggested. “We know we’re not all here now—there’s no use getting alarmed before we’re sure. Go up to the living-room.”

His voice was oddly penetrative, wakening a whole flood of unwelcome thoughts.... We were not all here, he said—seemingly not even all the white occupants of Kastle Krags had obeyed the common instinct to answer and investigate that cry! Yet it all might come to nothing, after all. A close tabulation might account for every one—and that the remainder of our party had merely not yet wakened. Stranger things have happened. We told ourselves, in silent ways, that we had heard of men sleeping through more fearful sounds than that! I agreed with Nopp that the thing to do was to go to the living-room, make a careful count, and then see where we stood.

In a moment we had started back. We were not afraid we had left some of our party still searching through the gardens. No man cared to be alone out there to-night, and all of us kept close track of our fellows. Edith was standing just before the veranda, on the driveway, as we came up. The coroner, who had taken time fully to dress, met us half-way down the lawns.

We walked almost in silence; and quietly, rather grimly, Joe Nopp flashed on all the lights of the big living-room.

“Go ahead, Slatterly,” he said to the sheriff, “See that we’re all here.”

“Let Killdare do it. I don’t know you all, you know——”

So I made the count, just as sometimes we did after raids over No Man’s Land. The sheriff and the constable were both present, Mrs. Gentry, the housekeeper, was standing, pale but remarkably self-possessed, at the inner door of the room. Of course I couldn’t count up the blacks. Most of them were evidently hiding in their rooms. And every one of the six guests answered his name.

“There’s just one more name to give,” Nopp said at last.

“But there’s no use naming it,” some one answered in a queer, flat voice. “He’s not here.”

Nopp turned, and bounded like a deer up the stairs. All of us knew what he had gone to do: to see if the missing man was in his room. And there was nothing for us but to wait for his report.

But in a moment we heard his step on the stairs. He sprang down among us, and evidently his fine self-mastery was breaking within him. His fine eyes held vivid points of light.

“My God, he’s gone,” he said. “Not a sign of him.”

“It can’t be true,” Pescini answered.

“It is. His bed is rumpled—but not thrown back or slept in.”

Von Hope, the missing man’s closest friend, suddenly gasped aloud. “But I won’t believe it—not until we make a search!” he cried. “It can’t be true.”

“Believe it or not. Search through the grounds or call through the house. Nealman’s gone just as Florey’s body went last night.”

CHAPTER XVI

The second read:

The sheriff halted in his search and took the messages from my hand. “I’m not much up on the stock market,” he said. “Do you know what these mean——”

“Not exactly. I know that I. S. and H. stock has taken a fearful drop—if he had bought heavily on margin his whole fortune might have been wiped out. Blair is a prominent speculator on the exchange. Industrials refer, of course, to industrial stocks. Fletcher Nealman was Mr. Nealman’s uncle, supposed to be a man of great wealth——”

“Then you think—Nealman was ruined financially?” He paused, seemingly studying his hands. “I wonder if it could be true.”

“You mean of course—the same thing that you guessed about Florey. Suicide?”

“Yes. I’ll admit there’s plenty against it.”

“If suicide—why did he cry for help?”

“Many a man cries for help after he’s started to do himself in. The darkness scares ’em, when it’s too late to turn back. That wouldn’t puzzle me at all. Killdare, do you know the importance of example?”

“I know that what one man does, another’s likely to do.”

“I’m not saying that Nealman killed himself, but listen how much there is to say for such a theory. You’re right—what one man does, another’s likely to do. A curious thing about suicides, Weldon tells me, is that they usually come in droves. One man sets an example for another. Say you’re worrying to death about something, sick perhaps, or financially ruined, and you hear of some fellow—some chap you know, perhaps, a man you respect almost as much as you respect yourself—suddenly getting out of all his difficulties all nice and quiet—with one little click to the head? Isn’t it likely you’d begin thinking about the same thing for yourself? Call it mob psychology—I only know it happens in fact.

“I’m more confident than ever that Florey did himself in, on account of his sickness. Here was Nealman, worried to death over money matters, holding a lot of options on a falling market. It’s true that we didn’t find Florey’s knife, but who can say but maybe Nealman himself threw it into the lagoon, and dragged the body afterward, so that no one would guess it was suicide. He liked Florey—he didn’t want any one to know he had done himself in. Maybe he was thinking already about doing the same thing to himself, and in such a case he’d been glad enough to have some one hide the evidence of suicide. To-day he gets word of a final smash, and he stays all day in his room, brooding about it. To-night comes this heat—enough to drive a man crazy. Maybe he just called out to make us think it was murder. Proud men don’t usually want the world to know that they’ve killed themselves.

“Then there’s one other thing—more important still. What’s that book, open, on the table?”

I glanced at its leathern cover. “The Bible,” I told him.

“The Holy Book. And how often do you find a worldly man like this Nealman getting out the Bible and reading it? Doesn’t it show that he was planning something mighty serious—that he wanted to give his soul every chance before he took the last step? It’s a common thing for suicides to read the Bible the last thing. And what are these?”

He showed me a rumpled sheet of paper, procured from the waste-basket, on which had been written a number of unrelated figures.

“I can’t say,” I told him. “Probably he was doing some figuring about his losses.”

“Looks to me like he was out of his head—was just writin’ any old figures down. But maybe you’re right.”

It was true that the bed had not been slept in. Nealman had lain down on it, however, and disarranged the spread. Many cigarette and cigar stubs filled the smoking stand, and a half-filled whiskey-and-soda glass stood on the window sill.

No other clews were revealed, so we went down to the study. The guests of Kastle Krags had not gone back to their beds. They sat in a little white-faced group beside the window, talking quietly. Marten beckoned the sheriff to his side.

“What have you found out, Slatterly?” he asked.

He spoke like a man used to having his questions answered. There was a note of impatience in his voice, too, perhaps of distrust. Slatterly straightened.

“Nothing definite. Nealman has unquestionably vanished. His bed hasn’t been slept in, but is ruffled. Undoubtedly it was his voice we heard. I think I’ll be able to give you something definite in a little while.”

“I’d like something definite now, if you could possibly give it. That’s two men that have disappeared in two nights—and we seem to be no nearer an explanation than we were at first. This isn’t a business that can be delayed, Mr. Slatterly.”

“If you must know—I think both men committed suicide.”

“You do!”

“It certainly is the most reasonable theory, in spite of all there is against it.” Then he told of Nealman’s financial disaster, of the Bible open on his desk, and all the other points he had to back his theory.

“And I suppose Florey swallowed his knife, and threw his own body into the lagoon!” Fargo commented grimly.

Slatterly turned to him, his eyes hard and bright. “We’ll have your jokes to-morrow,” he reproved him sternly. “Of course some one else did that. I’ve got a theory—not yet proven—to explain it, but I can’t give it out yet.”

“How do you account for Florey’s body not being found in the lagoon?” Marten asked quietly.

“I can’t account for it. We might have missed it—I don’t see how we could, but we might have done so. I’m going to have men dragging the lagoon all day, over and over again—until we find both bodies.”

“You are convinced that Nealman, too, lies dead in the lagoon?”

“Where else could he be? Did you hear that cry a few hours ago?”

“Good Heavens! Could I ever forget it? My old friend——”

“Was it faked? Could any man have faked a cry like that?”

“Heavens, no! It had the fear and the agony of death right in it. There can’t be any hope of that, Slatterly.”

The sheriff gazed about the little circle of white faces. No one dissented. That cry was real, and there had been tragic need and extremity behind it: we knew that fact if we knew that we lived. Evidently the sheriff had completely given over the theory that he had suggested, half-heartedly, to me—that Nealman might have cried out to hide the fact of his own suicide.

“No man could have cried out like that to deceive, and then disappear. No, Mr. Marten, the man that gave that cry is dead, in all probability in the lagoon, and there seems no doubt but that Nealman was the man.”

“Yet you think he was a suicide.”

“A suicide often cries out for help when it is too late to back out. But of course—I can’t say for sure.”

“You’re mistaken in that, Slatterly.” Van Hope drew himself together with a perceptible effort. “I’ve known this man for years—and in the end, you’ll see it isn’t suicide. He wasn’t the type that commits suicide. He’s young, he’d be getting himself together to meet that Blair gang that ruined him and chase ’em into their holes. The suicide theory is far-fetched, at best.”

“It may be,” the sheriff agreed. “I only wish there could be some light thrown on this affair——”

“There will be, Slatterly.” Marten’s voice dropped almost to a monotone. “This is too big a deal for one man—or two men either. We’ve been talking, and we’ve decided to send for some one to help you out.”

“You have, eh?” Slatterly stiffened. “If I need help I can send through my own channels—get some state or national detectives——”

“That’s all right. Get ’em if you want to. The more the better. But you haven’t got any help yet—even the district attorney has failed to come and won’t come for at least a day or two more. We’ve got a private detective in mind—one of the biggest in America. His name’s Lacone—you’ve heard of him. It won’t be an official matter at all. Van Hope is hiring him—a wholly private enterprise. I know you’ll all be glad to have his co-operation.”

“If it’s a private venture, I have nothing further to say,” Slatterly told him stiffly. “When do you expect him?”

“He’s operating in the Middle West. He can’t possibly make it until day after to-morrow——”

“Twenty-four hours, eh?”

“It’s after midnight now. Probably not for forty-eight hours.”

“By that time, I hope to have the matter solved.” Then his business took him elsewhere, and he strode away.

There was one thing more I could do. It was an obligation, and yet, because it was in the way of service, it was a happiness too. I climbed the broad stairs and stopped at last before Edith’s door.

She called softly in answer to my knock. And in a moment she had opened the door.

She was fully dressed, waiting ready for any call that might be made upon her. And the picture that she made, framed in the doorway, went straight to my heart.

Her eyes were still lustrous with tears, and the high girlish color and the light of happiness was gone from her face. It was wistful, like that of a grief-stricken child. Her voice was changed too, in spite of all her struggle to make it sound the same. And at first I stood helpless, not knowing what to say or do.

“I came—just to see if I could be of any aid—in any way.”

“I don’t think you can,” she answered. “It’s so good of you, though, to remember——”

“There’s no one to notify—no telegrams to send——”

“I don’t think so, yet. We’re not sure yet. Ned, is there any chance for him to be alive——”

“Not any.”

Her hand touched my arm. “You haven’t any idea how he died?”

“No. It’s absolutely baffling. But try not to think about it. Everything will come out right for you, in the end.”

I hadn’t meant to say just that—to recall her to the uncertainty of her own future now that her uncle, financially ruined, had disappeared.

“I’m not thinking—about what will happen to me.” She suddenly straightened, and her eyes kindled. “About the other—Ned, I’m not going to try to keep from thinking about it. I’m going to think about it all I can, until I see it through. Only thought, and keen, true thought, can help us now. I’ve had to do a lot of thinking in my life, overcoming difficulties. And there’s no one really vitally interested but me—I was the closest relative, except for his uncle, that Nealman had. I’m going to find out the mystery of that lagoon! Perhaps, in finding it, I can solve a lot of other problems too—perhaps the one you just mentioned. Uncle Grover was kind to me, he gave me his protection and shelter—and I’m going to know what killed him!”

I found myself staring into her blazing, determined eyes. She meant what she said. The fire of a zealot was in her face. “Good Heavens, Edith! That isn’t work for a woman——”

“It’s work for anybody, with a clear enough brain to see the truth, and courage to prove it out——”

In some mysterious way her hands had got into mine. We were standing face to face in the shadowed hall. “But promise me—you won’t go into danger!”

“I promise—that I’ll take every precaution—to preserve myself.”

CHAPTER XVII

The coroner questioned Fargo particularly closely. I had testified that we had met him, at the lower hallway, fully dressed, and evidently the official attributed sinister importance to the fact. Fargo stood tightly by his guns, however, testifying that he sat in the same chair in the library from shortly after the dinner hour until he had heard the scream.

“What was the nature of the scream, Mr. Fargo?” the coroner asked.

“It was very high and loud—I would say a very frantic scream.”

“You would say it was a cry of agony? Like some one mortally wounded?”

“I wouldn’t hardly think so.”

“And why not?”

“I don’t think a wounded man could have uttered that scream. It was too loud and strong—given by a man whose strength was still largely unimpaired.”

The coroner leaned nearer. “How further would you describe it?”

“It was a distinct cry for help,” Fargo answered. “The word he said was ‘Help’—I heard it distinctly. But it wasn’t a cry of any one mortally injured. If anything, it was a cry of—fear.”

“Where did it come from?”

“From the lagoon.”

The coroner’s eyes snapped. “If you knew it was from the lagoon why did you ask Mr. Killdare, when he encountered you last night, where it was from.”

Fargo stiffened, meeting his gaze. “I wasn’t sure last night, Mr. Weldon,” he answered. “I knew it was somewhere in that direction. When Mr. Killdare said it was from the lagoon I instantly knew he was right. I can’t say just how I knew. All the testimony I’ve heard to-day proves the same thing.”

“No one wants you to tell what other people have testified, Mr. Fargo,” the coroner reproved him. “We want to know what you saw with your own eyes and heard with your own ears and what you thought at the time, not now. To go further. You think that the cry was uttered by a man whose strength was unimpaired. A strong, full-lunged cry. Moreover, it was given in deadly fear. Does that suggest anything in your mind?”

“I don’t see what you are getting at.”

“You say it was a long, full-voiced cry. Or did you say it was long?”

“I don’t think I said so. It was rather long-drawn, though. It’s impossible to give a full-lunged cry without having it give the effect of being long-drawn.”

“You would say it lasted—how long?”

“A second, I should say. Certainly not more. Just about a second.”

“A second is a long time, isn’t it, Mr. Fargo, when a man stands at the brink of death. Often the tables can be turned in as long a time as a second. Many times a second has given a man time to save his life—to prepare a defense—even to flee. Does it seem to you unusual that a man would give that much energy and time to cry for help when he was still uninjured, and still had a second of life.”

“Not at all—under certain circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

“It would depend on the nature of the force. A man might see—that while he still had strength left to fight, he wouldn’t have the least chance to win.”

“Exactly. Yet if a man had time to call out that way, he’d at least have time to run. A man can take a big jump in a second, Fargo.”

Fargo’s voice fell. “Perhaps he couldn’t run.”

“Ah!” The coroner paused. “Because he was in the grasp of his assailant?”

“Yes.”

“Yet he still had his strength left. Nealman was a man among men, wasn’t he, Fargo?”

“Indeed he was!” Fargo’s eyes snapped. “I’d like to see any one deny it.”

“He wasn’t a coward then. He’d fight as long as he had a chance, instead of giving all his energies to yelling for help—help that could not reach him short of many seconds. In other words, Nealman knew that he didn’t have the least kind of a fighting chance. He was in the grasp of his assailant so he couldn’t run. And his assailant was strong—and powerful enough—that there was no use to fight him.”

It was curious how his voice rang in that silent room. Fargo had leaned back in his chair, as if the words struck him like physical blows. A negro janitor at one side inhaled with a sharp, distinct sound.

“It might have been more than one man,” Fargo suggested uneasily.

“Do you believe it was?”

“I don’t know. It’s wholly a blank to me.”

“Have you any theory where the body is?”

“I suppose—in the lagoon.”

“Would you say that cry was given while he was in the water?”

“I hardly think so. I’m slightly known as a swimmer, Mr. Weldon—was once, anyway, and I know something about the water. A drowning man can’t call that loud. Mr. Nealman was a corking good swimmer himself—nothing fancy at all, but fairly well able to take care of himself. When he disappeared the tide was running out—the lagoon on this side of the rock wall was still as glass. If Mr. Nealman, through some accident or other, fell in that lagoon he’d swim out—unless he was held in. At least he’d try to swim out. And by the time he found out he couldn’t make the shore, he’d be so tired he couldn’t cry out like he did last night.”

“I see your point. I don’t know that it would always work out. Occasionally a man—simply loses his nerve.”

“Not Nealman—in still water, most of which isn’t over five feet deep.”

“‘Unless he was held in,’ you say. What do you think held him in?”

Fargo’s hands gripped his chair-arms. “Mr. Weldon, I don’t know what you want me to say,” he answered clearly. “I feel the same way about this mystery that I felt about the other—that human enemies did him to death. I don’t think anything held him in. I think he was dead before ever he was thrown into the water. I think two or three men—perhaps only one—surrounded him—probably pointed a gun at him. He yelled for help, and they killed him—probably with a knife or black-jack. That’s the whole story.”

The coroner dismissed him, then slowly gazed about the circle. For the first time I began to realize that these mysteries of Kastle Krags were pricking under his skin. He looked baffled, irritated, his temper was lost, as gone as the missing men themselves.

Ever his attitude was more belligerent, pugnacious. His lips were set in a fighting line, his eyes scowled, and evidently he intended to wring the testimony from his witnesses by third degree methods. Suddenly he whirled to Pescini.

“How did you happen to be fully dressed at the time of Nealman’s disappearance last night?” he demanded.

Pescini met his gaze coolly and easily. Perhaps little points of light glittered in his eyes, but his pale face was singularly impassive. “I hadn’t gone to bed,” he answered simply.

“How did that happen? Do you usually wait till long after midnight to go to bed?”

“Not always. I have no set hour. Last night I was reading.”

“Some book that was in your room?”

“A book I had carried with me. ‘The diary of a Peruvian Princess’ was the title. An old book—but exceedingly interesting.”

He spoke gravely, yet it was good to hear him. “I’ll make a note of it,” the coroner said, falling into his mood. But at once he got back to business. “You didn’t remove your coat?”

“No. I got so interested that I forgot to make any move towards bed.”

The coroner paused, then took another tack. “You’ve known Nealman for a long time, have you not, Pescini?”

“Something over four years, I should judge.”

“You knew him in a business way?”

“More in a social way. We had few business dealings.”

“Ah!” The coroner seemed to be studying the pattern of the rugs. “The inquiry of the other day showed you and he from the same city. I suppose you moved largely in the same circle. Belonged to the same clubs, and all that? Mr. Pescini, was Nealman a frequent visitor to your house?”

The witness seemed to stiffen. The coroner leaned forward in his chair.

“He came quite often,” the former replied quietly. “He was a rather frequent dinner guest. He and I liked to talk over various subjects.”

“You will pardon me, Mr. Pescini, if I have to venture into personal subjects—subjects that will be unpleasant for you to discuss. This inquiry, however, takes the place of a formal inquest. Two men have disappeared. It is the duty of the state, whose representative I am, to spare no man’s sensibilities in finding out the truth. We’ve got to get down to cases. You understand that, I suppose.”

“Perfectly.” Pescini leaned back, folding his hands. “Perfectly,” he said again.

“I believe you recently filed and won a suit for divorce against your wife, Marie Pescini. Isn’t this true?”

The witness nodded. None of us heard him speak.

“May I ask what was your grounds, stated in your complaint?”

“I don’t see that it makes any difference. The grounds were the only ones by which divorce can be granted in the State of New York.”

“Infidelity, I believe?”

“Yes. Infidelity.”

“You named certain co-respondents?”

“Yes.”

“I ask you this. Was there any man whom you regarded as one of those that had helped to break up your home that, for any reason in the world, you did not name in your complaint?”

“There was not. You are absolutely off on the wrong track.”

The coroner dismissed him pre-emptorily, then turned to Edith Nealman. He asked her the usual questions, with considerable care and in rather surprising detail—how long she had worked as Nealman’s secretary, whether he had any enemies; he sounded her as to the missing man’s habits, his finances, his most intimate life.

“When did you last see Mr. Nealman?” he asked quickly.

“Just before yesterday’s inquest—when he went to his room.”

“He didn’t call you for any work?”

“No.”

“You didn’t see him in the corridor—in his room—in the study adjoining his room—or anywhere else?”

“No.” Edith’s face was stark white, and her voice was very low. Not one of us could ever forget how she looked—that slim, girlish figure in the big chair, the frightened eyes, the pale, sober face. The coroner smiled, a little, grim smile that touched some unpleasant part of me, then abruptly turned to Mrs. Gentry, the housekeeper.

“I’ll have to ask you to give publicly, Mrs. Gentry, the testimony you gave me before this inquest.”

“I didn’t tell you that to speak out in court,” the woman replied, angrily. “There wasn’t nothin’ to it, anyway. I’m sorry I told you——”

“That’s for me to decide—whether there was anything to it. It won’t injure any one who is innocent, Mrs. Gentry. What happened, about ten-thirty or eleven o’clock.”

The woman answered as if under compulsion—in the helpless voice of one who, in a long life’s bitter struggle, has learned the existence of many masters. Mrs. Gentry had learned to yield. To her this trivial court was a resistless power, many of which existed in her world.

“I was at the end of the corridor on the second floor—tendin’ to a little work. Then I saw Miss Edith come stealin’ out of her room.”

“You say she was ‘stealing.’ Describe how she came. Did she give the impression of trying to go—unseen?”

“Yes. I don’t think she wanted any one to see her. She went on tip-toe.”

“Did she carry anything in her hands?”

“Yes. She had a black book, not big and not little either. She had it under her arm. She crept along the hall, and a door opened to let her in.”

“What door was it?”

“The door of Mr. Nealman’s suite—a little hall, with one door leading into his chamber—the other to his study.”

“Nealman opened the door for her, then?”

“Yes. I saw his sleeve as he closed it behind her.”

The coroner’s face grew stern, and he turned once more to Edith. To all outward appearance she hadn’t heard the testimony. She leaned easily in her big chair, and her palm rested under her chin. Her eyes were shadowy and far-away.

“How can you account for that, Miss Nealman?” Weldon asked.

“There’s nothing I can say about it,” was her quiet answer.

“You admit it’s true, then?”

“I can’t make Mrs. Gentry out a liar.” It seemed to me that a dim smile played at her lips; but it was a thing even closely watching eyes might easily mistake. “It’s perfectly true.”

“Then why, Miss Nealman, did you tell us a few minutes ago you hadn’t seen Mr. Nealman since afternoon? That was a lie, was it not? I didn’t ask you to take formal oath when you gave me your testimony. I presumed you’d stay by the truth. Why did you tell us what you did?”

“I didn’t see any use in trying to explain. I didn’t tell you—because Mr. Nealman asked me not to.”

A little shiver of expectancy passed over the court. “What do you mean?”

“Just that—he asked me to tell no one about my visit to the little study adjoining his room. The whole thing was simply this—there’s certainly no good in withholding it any more. About eleven he rang for me. There is a bell, you know, that connects that study with my room. I answered it as I’ve always done. He asked me if I had a Bible—and I told him I did. He asked me to get it for him, as quietly as possible.

“I got it—quietly as possible—just as he said. There was nothing very peculiar about it—he often wants some book out of the library. I gave him the book and he dismissed me, first asking me to tell no one, under any conditions, that he had asked for it. I didn’t know why he asked it, but he is my employer, and I complied with his request. Mrs. Gentry saw me as I was coming down the hall with the Bible under my arm. I didn’t tell you about it because he asked me not to.”

“It was your Bible, then, that we found in his room?”

“Of course.”

“Mr. Nealman was given to reading the Bible at various times?”

“On the contrary I don’t think he ever read it. He didn’t have a copy. He was not, outwardly, according to the usual manifestations, a highly religious man.”

“Yet you say he was intrinsically religious? At least, that he had religious instincts?”

“He had very fine instincts. He had a great deal of natural religion.”

“You often brought him books, you say. Yet you must have thought it peculiar—that he would ask for the Bible—in the dead of night.”

“Yes.” Her voice dropped a tone. “Of course it was peculiar.”

“Then why didn’t you notify some one about it?”

“Because he told me not to.”

The coroner seemed baffled—but only for an instant. “Did it occur to you that he was perhaps trying to get some religious consolation—just before he took some important or tragic step? Did the thought of—suicide ever occur to you?”

“No. It didn’t occur to me. My uncle didn’t commit suicide.”

“You have only your beliefs as to that?”

“Yes, but they are enough. I know him too well. I’m sure he didn’t commit suicide.”

“How did he appear when you talked to him—excited, frenzied? Did he seem changed at all?”

“I think he was somewhat excited. His eyes were very bright. I wouldn’t call him desperate, however. He was dressed in the flannels he had worn when he went to his room. Of course he looked dreadfully worn and tired—he had been through a great deal that day. As you know he had just heard about his frightful losses on the stock exchange, wiping out his entire fortune and even leaving some few debts.”

“You went away quietly—at once? Leaving him to read the Bible?”

“Very soon. We talked a few minutes, perhaps.”

Then the coroner began upon a series of questions that were abhorrent to every man in the room. There was nothing to do, however, but to listen to them in silence. The man was within his rights.

“You say that Nealman was your uncle?” he asked.

The girl’s eyes fastened on his, and narrowed as we watched her. “Of course. My father’s brother.”

“A blood relative, eh?” The coroner spoke more slowly, carefully. “I suppose you could prove that point to the satisfaction of a court.”

“With a little time. I’d have to go back to the records of my own old home. What are you getting at?”

“What was your father’s name, may I ask?”

“Henry H. Nealman.”

“Older or younger than Grover Nealman?”

“Nearly ten years older, or thereabouts.”

“Where was Mr. Nealman born?”

“In Rensselaer, New York. His father was named Henry H. Nealman, also. He was a rug manufacturer. There was also one sister that died many years ago—Grace Nealman. Are you satisfied that I am really his niece, Mr. Weldon?”

“Perfectly.” The coroner nodded, slowly. “Perfectly satisfied.”

He dismissed her, but it came about that I failed to hear the testimony given immediately thereafter. One of Slatterly’s men that had been sent for to help him drag the lake brought me in a telegram.

It was the belated answer to the wire I had sent to Mrs. Noyes, of New Hampshire the previous day, and signed by the woman’s husband. It read as follows: