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„Masterpieces of Mystery” is a scintillating collection of suspenseful stories of murder and mayhem from pioneering American detective-story writer Anna Katharine Green, one of the first female writers of detective fiction. Green’s many thrillers were characterized by logical construction and a knowledge of criminal law. Her stories are full of mystery and written in an elegant manner, true to the time period in which the story is set. This collection includes the classic stories „Room No. 3”, „The Staircase at Heart’s Delight”, „The Grey Lady”, „The House in the Mist” and more. Tantalizingly tangled plots and unpredictable revelations abound. The collection is highly recommended for people who like to treat a mystery story as a solvable riddle.
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Contents
1. Midnight in Beauchamp Row
2. Room Number 3
3. The Ruby and the Caldron
4. The Little Steel Coils
5. The Staircase at Heart’s Delight
6. The Amethyst Box
7. The Grey Lady
8. The Thief
9. The House in the Mist
Midnight In Beauchamp Row
It was the last house in Beauchamp Row, and it stood several rods away from its nearest neighbour. It was a pretty house in the daytime, but owing to its deep, sloping roof and small bediamonded windows it had a lonesome look at night, notwithstanding the crimson hall-light which shone through the leaves of its vine-covered doorway.
Ned Chivers lived in it with his six months’ married bride, and as he was both a busy fellow and a gay one there were many evenings when pretty Letty Chivers sat alone until near midnight.
She was of an uncomplaining spirit, however, and said little, though there were times when both the day and evening seemed very long and married life not altogether the paradise she had expected.
On this evening–a memorable evening for her, the 24th of December, 1911–she had expected her husband to remain with her, for it was not only Christmas eve, but the night when, as manager of a large manufacturing concern, he brought up from New York the money with which to pay off the men on the next working day, and he never left her when there was any unusual amount of money in the house. But with the first glimpse she had of his figure coming up the road she saw that for some reason it was not to be thus to-night, and, indignant, alarmed almost, at the prospect of a lonesome evening under such circumstances, she ran hastily down to the gate to meet him, crying:
“Oh, Ned, you look so troubled I know you have only come home for a hurried supper. But you cannot leave me to-night. Tennie” (their only maid) “has gone for a holiday, and I never can stay in this house alone with all that.” She pointed to the small bag he carried, which, as she knew, was filled to bursting with bank notes.
He certainly looked troubled. It is hard to resist the entreaty in a young bride’s uplifted face. But this time he could not help himself, and he said:
“I am dreadfully sorry, but I must ride over to Fairbanks to-night. Mr. Pierson has given me an imperative order to conclude a matter of business there, and it is very important that it should be done. I should lose my position if I neglected the matter, and no one but Hasbrouck and Suffern knows that we keep the money in the house. I have always given out that I intrusted it to Hale’s safe over night.”
“But I cannot stand it,” she persisted. “You have never left me on these nights. That is why I let Tennie go. I will spend the evening at The Larches, or, better still, call in Mr. and Mrs. Talcott to keep me company.”
But her husband did not approve of her going out or of her having company. The Larches was too far away, and as for Mr. and Mrs. Talcott, they were meddlesome people, whom he had never liked; besides, Mrs. Talcott was delicate, and the night threatened storm. Let her go to bed like a good girl, and think nothing about the money, which he would take care to put away in a very safe place.
“Or,” said he, kissing her downcast face, “perhaps you would rather hide it yourself; women always have curious ideas about such things.”
“Yes, let me hide it,” she entreated. “The money, I mean, not the bag. Every one knows the bag. I should never dare to leave it in that.” And begging him to unlock it, she began to empty it with a feverish haste that rather alarmed him, for he surveyed her anxiously and shook his head as if he dreaded the effects of this excitement upon her.
But as he saw no way out of the difficulty, he confined himself to using such soothing words as were at his command, and then, humouring her weakness, helped her to arrange the bills in the place she had chosen, and restuffing the bag with old receipts till it acquired its former dimensions, he put a few bills on top to make the whole look natural, and, laughing at her white face, relocked the bag and put the key back in his pocket.
“There, dear; a notable scheme and one that should relieve your mind entirely!” he cried. “If any one should attempt burglary in my absence and should succeed in getting into a house as safely locked as this will be when I leave it, then trust to their being satisfied when they see this booty, which I shall hide where I always hide it–in the cupboard over my desk.”
“And when will you be back?” she questioned, trembling in spite of herself at these preparations.
“By one o’clock if possible. Certainly by two.”
“And our neighbours go to bed at ten,” she murmured. But the words were low, and she was glad he did not hear them, for if it was his duty to obey the orders he had received, then it was her duty to meet the position in which it left her as bravely as she could.
At supper she was so natural that his face rapidly brightened, and it was with quite an air of cheerfulness that he rose at last to lock up the house and make such preparations as were necessary for his dismal ride over the mountains to Fairbanks. She had the supper dishes to wash up in Tennie’s absence, and as she was a busy little housewife she found herself singing a snatch of song as she passed back and forth from dining-room to kitchen. He heard it, too, and smiled to himself as he bolted the windows on the ground floor and examined the locks of the three lower doors, and when he finally came into the kitchen with his greatcoat on to give her his final kiss, he had but one parting injunction to urge, and this was for her to lock and bolt the front door after him and then forget the whole matter till she heard his double knock at midnight.
She smiled and held up her ingenuous face.
“Be careful of yourself,” she begged of him. “I hate this dark ride for you, and on such a night too.” And she ran with him to the door to look out.
“It is certainly very dark,” he responded, “but I’m to have one of Brown’s safest horses. Do not worry about me. I shall do well enough, and so will you, too, or you are not the plucky little woman I have always thought you.”
She laughed, but there was a choking sound in her voice that made him look at her again. But at sight of his anxiety she recovered herself, and pointing to the clouds said earnestly:
“It’s going to snow. Be careful as you ride by the gorge, Ned; it is very deceptive there in a snowstorm.”
But he vowed that it would not snow before morning and giving her one final embrace he dashed down the path toward Brown’s livery stable. “Oh, what is the matter with me?” she murmured to herself as his steps died out in the distance. “I never knew I was such a coward.” And she paused for a moment, looking up and down the road, as if in despite of her husband’s command she had the desperate idea of running away to some neighbour.
But she was too loyal for that, and smothering a sigh she retreated into the house. As she did so the first flakes fell of the storm that was not to have come till morning.
It took her an hour to get her kitchen in order, and nine o’clock struck before she was ready to sit down. She had been so busy she had not noticed how the wind had increased or how rapidly the snow was falling. But when she went to the front door for another glance up and down the road she started back, appalled at the fierceness of the gale and at the great pile of snow that had already accumulated on the doorstep.
Too delicate to breast such a wind, she saw herself robbed of her last hope of any companionship, and sighing heavily she locked and bolted the door for the night and went back into her little sitting-room, where a great fire was burning. Here she sat down, and determined, since she must pass the evening alone, to do it as cheerfully as possible, she began to sew. “Oh, what a Christmas eve!” she thought, as a picture of other homes rose before her eyes,–homes in which husbands sat by wives and brothers by sisters; and a great wave of regret poured over her and a longing for something, she hardly dared say what, lest her unhappiness should acquire a sting that would leave traces beyond the passing moment.
The room in which she sat was the only one on the ground floor except the dining-room and kitchen. It therefore was used both as parlour and sitting-room, and held not only her piano, but her husband’s desk.
Communicating with it was the tiny dining-room. Between the two, however, was an entry leading to a side entrance. A lamp was in this entry, and she had left it burning, as well as the one in the kitchen, that the house might look cheerful and as if the whole family were at home.
She was looking toward this entry and wondering what made it seem so dismally dark to her, when there came a faint sound from the door at its further end.
Knowing that her husband must have taken peculiar pains with the fastenings of this door, as it was the one toward the woods and therefore most accessible to wayfarers, she sat where she was, with all her faculties strained to listen. But no further sound came from that direction, and after a few minutes of silent terror she was allowing herself to believe that she had been deceived by her fears when she suddenly heard the same sound at the kitchen door, followed by a muffled knock.
Frightened now in good earnest, but still alive to the fact that the intruder was as likely to be a friend as foe, she stepped to the door, and with her hand on the lock stooped and asked boldly enough who was there. But she received no answer, and more affected by this unexpected silence than by the knock she had heard, she recoiled farther and farther till not only the width of the kitchen, but the dining-room also, lay between her and the scene of her alarm, when to her utter confusion the noise shifted again to the side of the house, and the door she thought so securely fastened, swung violently open as if blown in by a fierce gust, and she saw precipitated into the entry the burly figure of a man covered with snow and shaking with the violence of the storm that seemed at once to fill the house.
Her first thought was that it was her husband come back, but before she could clear her eyes from the snow which had rushed tumultuously in, he had thrown off his outer covering and she found herself face to face with a man in whose powerful frame and cynical visage she saw little to comfort her and much to surprise and alarm.
“Ugh!” was his coarse and rather familiar greeting. “A hard night, missus! Enough to drive any man indoors. Pardon the liberty, but I couldn’t wait for you to lift the latch; the wind drove me right in.”
“Was–was not the door locked?” she feebly asked, thinking he must have staved it in with his foot, which was certainly well fitted for such a task.
“Not much,” he chuckled. “I s’pose you’re too hospitable for that.” And his eyes passed from her face to the comfortable firelight shining through the sitting-room.
“Is it refuge you want?” she demanded, suppressing as much as possible all signs of fear.
“Sure, missus–what else! A man can’t live in a gale like that, specially after a tramp of twenty miles or more. Shall I shut the door for you?” he asked, with a mixture of bravado and good nature that frightened her more and more.
“I will shut it,” she replied, with a half notion of escaping this sinister stranger by a flight through the night.
But one glance into the swirling snowstorm deterred her, and making the best of the alarming situation, she closed the door, but did not lock it, being now more afraid of what was inside the house than of anything left lingering without.
The man, whose clothes were dripping with water, watched her with a cynical smile, and then, without any invitation, entered the dining-room, crossed it, and moved toward the kitchen fire.
“Ugh! ugh! But it is warm here!” he cried, his nostrils dilating with an animal-like enjoyment, that in itself was repugnant to her womanly delicacy. “Do you know, missus, I shall have to stay here all night? Can’t go out in that gale again; not such a fool.” Then with a sly look at her trembling form and white face he insinuatingly added, “All alone, missus?”
The suddenness with which this was put, together with the leer that accompanied it, made her start. Alone? Yes, but should she acknowledge it? Would it not be better to say that her husband was upstairs? The man evidently saw the struggle going on in her mind, for he chuckled to himself and called out quite boldly:
“Never mind, missus; it’s all right. Just give me a bit of cold meat and a cup of tea or something, and we’ll be very comfortable together. You’re a slender slip of a woman to be minding a house like this. I’ll keep you company if you don’t mind, leastwise until the storm lets up a bit, which ain’t likely for some hours to come. Rough night, missus, rough night.”
“I expect my husband home at any time,” she hastened to say. And thinking she saw a change in the man’s countenance at this she put on quite an air of sudden satisfaction and bounded toward the front of the house. “There! I think I hear him now,” she cried.
Her motive was to gain time, and if possible to obtain the opportunity of shifting the money from the place where she had first put it into another and safer one. “I want to be able,” she thought, “to swear that I have no money with me in this house. If I can only get it into my apron I will drop it outside the door into the snowbank. It will be as safe there as in the vaults it came from.” And dashing into the sitting-room she made a feint of dragging down a shawl from a screen, while she secretly filled her skirt with the bills which had been put between some old pamphlets on the bookshelves.
She could hear the man grumbling in the kitchen, but he did not follow her front, and taking advantage of the moment’s respite from his none too encouraging presence she unbarred the door and cheerfully called out her husband’s name.
The ruse was successful. She was enabled to fling the notes where the falling flakes would soon cover them from sight, and feeling more courageous, now that the money was out of the house, she went slowly back, saying she had made a mistake, and that it was the wind she had heard.
The man gave a gruff but knowing guffaw and then resumed his watch over her, following her steps as she proceeded to set him out a meal, with a persistency that reminded her of a tiger just on the point of springing. But the inviting look of the viands with which she was rapidly setting the table soon distracted his attention, and allowing himself one grunt of satisfaction, he drew up a chair and set himself down to what to him was evidently a most savoury repast.
“No beer? No ale? Nothing o’ that sort, eh? Don’t keep a bar?” he growled, as his teeth closed on a huge hunk of bread.
She shook her head, wishing she had a little cold poison bottled up in a tight-looking jug.
“Nothing but tea,” she smiled, astonished at her own ease of manner in the presence of this alarming guest.
“Then let’s have that,” he grumbled, taking the bowl she handed him, with an odd look that made her glad to retreat to the other side of the room.
“Jest listen to the howling wind,” he went on between the huge mouthfuls of bread and cheese with which he was gorging himself. “But we’re very comfortable, we two! We don’t mind the storm, do we?”
Shocked by his familiarity and still more moved by the look of mingled inquiry and curiosity with which his eyes now began to wander over the walls and cupboards, she hurried to the window overlooking her nearest neighbour, and, lifting the shade, peered out. A swirl of snowflakes alone confronted her. She could neither see her neighbours, nor could she be seen by them. A shout from her to them would not be heard. She was as completely isolated as if the house stood in the centre of a desolate western plain.
“I have no trust but in God,” she murmured as she came from the window. And, nerved to meet her fate, she crossed to the kitchen.
It was now half-past ten. Two hours and a half must elapse before her husband could possibly arrive.
She set her teeth at the thought and walked resolutely into the room.
“Are you done?” she asked.
“I am, ma’am,” he leered. “Do you want me to wash the dishes? I kin, and I will.” And he actually carried his plate and cup to the sink, where he turned the water upon them with another loud guffaw.
“If only his fancy would take him into the pantry,” she thought, “I could shut and lock the door upon him and hold him prisoner till Ned gets back.”
But his fancy ended its flight at the sink, and before her hopes had fully subsided he was standing on the threshold of the sitting-room door.
“It’s pretty here,” he exclaimed, allowing his eye to rove again over every hiding-place within sight. “I wonder now–” He stopped. His glance had fallen on the cupboard over her husband’s desk.
“Well?” she asked, anxious to break the thread of his thought, which was only too plainly mirrored in his eager countenance.
He started, dropped his eyes, and, turning, surveyed her with a momentary fierceness. But, as she did not let her own glance quail, but continued to meet his gaze with what she meant for an ingratiating smile, he subdued this outward manifestation of passion, and, chuckling to hide his embarrassment, began backing into the entry, leering in evident enjoyment of the fears he caused.
However, once in the hall, he hesitated for a long time; then slowly made for the garment he had dropped on entering, and stooping, drew from underneath its folds a wicked-looking stick. Giving a kick to the coat, which sent it into a remote corner, he bestowed upon her another smile, and still carrying the stick, went slowly and reluctantly away into the kitchen.
“Oh, God Almighty, help me!” was her prayer.
There was nothing left for her now but to endure, so throwing herself into a chair, she tried to calm the beating of her heart and summon up courage for the struggle which she felt was before her. That he had come to rob and only waited to take her off her guard she now felt certain, and rapidly running over in her mind all the expedients of self-defence possible to one in her situation, she suddenly remembered the pistol which Ned kept in his desk.
Oh, why had she not thought of it before! Why had she let herself grow mad with terror when here, within reach of her hand, lay such a means of self-defence? With a feeling of joy (she had always hated pistols before and scolded Ned when he bought this one) she started to her feet and slid her hand into the drawer. But it came back empty. Ned had taken the weapon away with him.
For a moment, a surge of the bitterest feeling she had ever experienced passed over her; then she called reason to her aid and was obliged to acknowledge that the act was but natural, and that from his standpoint he was much more likely to need it than herself. But the disappointment, coming so soon after hope, unnerved her, and she sank back in her chair, giving herself up for lost.
How long she sat there with her eyes on the door through which she momentarily expected her assailant to reappear, she never knew. She was conscious only of a sort of apathy that made movement difficult and even breathing a task. In vain she tried to change her thoughts. In vain she tried to follow her husband in fancy over the snow-covered roads and into the gorge of the mountains. Imagination failed her at this point. Do what she would, all was misty to her mind’s eye, and she could not see that wandering image. There was blankness between his form and her, and no life or movement anywhere but here in the scene of her terror.
Her eyes were on a strip of rug covering the entry floor, and so strange was the condition of her mind that she found herself mechanically counting the tassels finishing off its edge, growing wroth over one that was worn, till she hated that sixth tassel and mentally determined that if she ever outlived this night she would strip them all off and be done with them.
The wind had lessened, but the air had grown cooler and the snow made a sharp sound where it struck the panes. She felt it falling, though she had cut off all view of it. It seemed to her that a pall was settling over the world and that she would soon be smothered under its folds.
Meanwhile no sound came from the kitchen. A dreadful sense of doom was creeping upon her–a sense growing in intensity till she found herself watching for the shadow of that lifted stick on the wall of the entry and almost imagined she saw the tip of it appearing.
But it was the door which again blew in, admitting another man of so threatening an aspect that she succumbed instantly before him and forgot all her former fears in this new terror.
The second intruder was a negro of powerful frame and lowering aspect, and as he came forward and stood in the doorway there was observable in his fierce and desperate countenance no attempt at the insinuation of the other, only a fearful resolution that made her feel like a puppet before him, and drove her, almost without her volition, to her knees.
“Money? Is it money you want?” was her desperate greeting. “If so, here’s my purse and here are my rings and watch. Take them and go.”
But the stolid wretch did not even stretch out his hands. His eyes went beyond her, and the mingled anxiety and resolve which he displayed would have cowed a stouter heart than that of this poor woman.
“Keep de trash,” he growled. “I want de company’s money. You’ve got it–two thousand dollars. Show me where it is, that’s all, and I won’t trouble you long after I close on it.”
“But it’s not in the house,” she cried. “I swear it is not in the house. Do you think Mr. Chivers would leave me here alone with two thousand dollars to guard?”
But the negro, swearing that she lied, leaped into the room, and tearing open the cupboard above her husband’s desk, seized the bag from the corner where they had put it.
“He brought it in this,” he muttered, and tried to force the bag open, but finding this impossible he took out a heavy knife and cut a big hole in its side. Instantly there fell out the pile of old receipts with which they had stuffed it, and seeing these he stamped with rage, and flinging them at her in one great handful, rushed to the drawers below, emptied them, and, finding nothing, attacked the bookcase.
“The money is somewhere here. You can’t fool me,” he yelled. “I saw the spot your eyes lit on when I first came into the room. Is it behind these books?” he growled, pulling them out and throwing them helter-skelter over the floor. “Women is smart in the hiding business. Is it behind these books, I say?”
They had been, or rather had been placed between the books, but she had taken them away, as we know, and he soon began to realise that his search was bringing him nothing. Leaving the bookcase he gave the books one kick, and seizing her by the arm, shook her with a murderous glare on his strange and distorted features.
“Where’s the money?” he hissed. “Tell me, or you are a goner.”
He raised his heavy fist. She crouched and all seemed over, when, with a rush and cry, a figure dashed between them and he fell, struck down by the very stick she had so long been expecting to see fall upon her own head. The man who had been her terror for hours had at the moment of need acted as her protector.
She must have fainted, but if so, her unconsciousness was but momentary, for when she woke again to her surroundings she found the tramp still standing over her adversary.
“I hope you don’t mind, ma’am,” he said, with an air of humbleness she certainly had not seen in him before, “but I think the man’s dead.” And he stirred with his foot the heavy figure before him.
“Oh, no, no, no!” she cried. “That would be too fearful. He’s shocked, stunned; you cannot have killed him.”
But the tramp was persistent. “I’m ‘fraid I have,” he said. “I done it before. I’m powerful strong in the biceps. But I couldn’t see a man of that colour frighten a lady like you. My supper was too warm in me, ma’am. Shall I throw him outside the house?”
“Yes,” she said, and then, “No; let us first be sure there is no life in him.” And, hardly knowing what she did, she stooped down and peered into the glassy eyes of the prostrate man.
Suddenly she turned pale–no, not pale, but ghastly, and cowering back, shook so that the tramp, into whose features a certain refinement had passed since he had acted as her protector, thought she had discovered life in those set orbs, and was stooping down to make sure that this was so, when he saw her suddenly lean forward and, impetuously plunging her hand into the negro’s throat, tear open the shirt and give one look at his bared breast.
It was white.
“O God! O God!” she moaned, and lifting the head in her two hands she gave the motionless features a long and searching look. “Water!” she cried. “Bring water.” But before the now obedient tramp could respond, she had torn off the woolly wig disfiguring the dead man’s head, and seeing the blond curls beneath had uttered such a shriek that it rose above the gale and was heard by her distant neighbours.
It was the head and hair of her husband.
* *
*
They found out afterwards that he had contemplated this theft for months; that each and every precaution necessary to the success of this most daring undertaking had been made use of and that but for the unexpected presence in the house of the tramp, he would doubtless not only have extorted the money from his wife, but have so covered up the deed by a plausible alibi as to have retained her confidence and that of his employers.
Whether the tramp killed him out of sympathy for the defenceless woman or in rage at being disappointed in his own plans has never been determined. Mrs. Chivers herself thinks he was actuated by a rude sort of gratitude
Room Number 3
1
“What door is that? You’ve opened all the others; why do you pass that one by?”
“Oh, that! That’s only Number 3. A mere closet, gentlemen,” responded the landlord in a pleasant voice. “To be sure, we sometimes use it as a sleeping-room when we are hard pushed. Jake, the clerk you saw below, used it last night. But it’s not on our regular list. Do you want a peep at it?”
“Most assuredly. As you know, it’s our duty to see every room in this house, whether it is on your regular list or not.”
“All right. I haven’t the key of this one with me. But–yes, I have. There, gentlemen!” he cried, unlocking the door and holding it open for them to look inside. “You see it no more answers the young lady’s description than the others do. And I haven’t another to show you. You have seen all those in front, and this is the last one in the rear. You’ll have to believe our story. The old lady never put foot in this tavern.”
The two men he addressed peered into the shadowy recesses before them, and one of them, a tall and uncommonly good-looking young man of stalwart build and unusually earnest manner, stepped softly inside. He was a gentleman farmer living near, recently appointed deputy sheriff on account of a recent outbreak of horse-stealing in the neighbourhood.
“I observe,” he remarked, after a hurried glance about him, “that the paper on these walls is not at all like that she describes. She was very particular about the paper; said that it was of a muddy pink colour and had big scrolls on it which seemed to move and crawl about in whirls as you looked at it. This paper is blue and striped. Otherwise–”
“Let’s go below,” suggested his companion, who, from the deference with which his most casual word was received, was evidently a man of some authority. “It’s cold here, and there are several new questions I should like to put to the young lady. Mr. Quimby,”–this to the landlord, “I’ve no doubt you are right, but we’ll give this poor girl another chance. I believe in giving every one the utmost chance possible.”
“My reputation is in your hands, Coroner Golden,” was the quiet reply. Then, as they both turned, “my reputation against the word of an obviously demented girl.”
The words made their own echo. As the third man moved to follow the other two into the hall, he seemed to catch this echo, for he involuntarily cast another look behind him as if expectant of some contradiction reaching him from the bare and melancholy walls he was leaving. But no such contradiction came. Instead, he appeared to read confirmation there of the landlord’s plain and unembittered statement. The dull blue paper with its old-fashioned and uninteresting stripes seemed to have disfigured the walls for years. It was not only grimy with age, but showed here and there huge discoloured spots, especially around the stovepipe-hole high up on the left-hand side. Certainly he was a dreamer to doubt such plain evidences as these. Yet–
Here his eye encountered Quimby’s, and pulling himself up short, he hastily fell into the wake of his comrade now hastening down the narrow passage to the wider hall in front. Had it occurred to him to turn again before rounding the corner–but no, I doubt if he would have learned anything even then. The closing of a door by a careful hand–the slipping up behind him of an eager and noiseless step–what is there in these to re-awaken curiosity and fix suspicion? Nothing, when the man concerned is Jacob Quimby; nothing. Better that he failed to look back; it left his judgment freer for the question confronting him in the room below.
Three Forks Tavern has been long forgotten, but at the time of which I write it was a well-known but little-frequented house, situated just back of the highway on the verge of the forest lying between the two towns of Chester and Danton in southern Ohio. It was of ancient build, and had all the picturesquesness of age and the English traditions of its original builder. Though so near two thriving towns, it retained its own quality of apparent remoteness from city life and city ways. This in a measure was made possible by the nearness of the woods which almost enveloped it; but the character of the man who ran it had still more to do with it, his sympathies being entirely with the old, and not at all with the new, as witness the old-style glazing still retained in its ancient doorway. This, while it appealed to a certain class of summer boarders, did not so much meet the wants of the casual traveller, so that while the house might from some reason or other be overfilled one night, it was just as likely to be almost empty the next, save for the faithful few who loved the woods and the ancient ways of the easy-mannered host and his attentive, soft-stepping help. The building itself was of wooden construction, high in front and low in the rear, with gables toward the highway, projecting here and there above a strip of rude old-fashioned carving. These gables were new, that is, they were only a century old; the portion now called the extension, in the passages of which we first found the men we have introduced to you, was the original house. Then it may have enjoyed the sunshine and air of the valley it overlooked, but now it was so hemmed in by yards and outbuildings as to be considered the most undesirable part of the house, and Number 3 the most undesirable of its rooms; which certainly does not speak well for it.
But we are getting away from our new friends and their mysterious errand. As I have already intimated, this tavern with the curious name (a name totally unsuggestive, by the way, of its location on a perfectly straight road) had for its southern aspect the road and a broad expanse beyond of varied landscape which made the front rooms cheerful even on a cloudy day; but it was otherwise with those in the rear and on the north end. They were never cheerful, and especially toward night were frequently so dark that artificial light was resorted to as early as three o’clock in the afternoon. It was so to-day in the remote parlour which these three now entered. A lamp had been lit, though the daylight still struggled feebly in, and it was in this conflicting light that there rose up before them the vision of a woman, who seen at any time and in any place would have drawn, if not held, the eye, but seen in her present attitude and at such a moment of question and suspense, struck the imagination with a force likely to fix her image forever in the mind, if not in the heart, of a sympathetic observer.
I should like to picture her as she stood there, because the impression she made at this instant determined the future action of the man I have introduced to you as not quite satisfied with the appearances he had observed above. Young, slender but vigorous, with a face whose details you missed in the fire of her eye and the wonderful red of her young, fresh but determined mouth, she stood, on guard as it were, before a shrouded form on a couch at the far end of the room. An imperative Keep back! spoke in her look, her attitude, and the silent gesture of one outspread hand, but it was the Keep back! of love, not of fear, the command of an outraged soul, conscious of its rights and instinctively alert to maintain them.
The landlord at sight of the rebuke thus given to their intrusion, stepped forward with a conciliatory bow.
“I beg pardon,” said he, “but these gentlemen, Doctor Golden, the coroner from Chester, and Mr. Hammersmith, wish to ask you a few more questions about your mother’s death. You will answer them, I am sure.”
Slowly her eyes moved till they met those of the speaker.
“I am anxious to do so,” said she, in a voice rich with many emotions. But seeing the open compassion in the landlord’s face, the colour left her cheeks, almost her lips, and drawing back the hand which she had continued to hold outstretched, she threw a glance of helpless inquiry about her which touched the younger man’s heart and induced him to say:
“The truth should not be hard to find in a case like this. I’m sure the young lady can explain. Doctor Golden, are you ready for her story?”
The coroner, who had been silent up till now, probably from sheer surprise at the beauty and simple, natural elegance of the woman caught, as he believed, in a net of dreadful tragedy, roused himself at this direct question, and bowing with an assumption of dignity far from encouraging to the man and woman anxiously watching him, replied:
“We will hear what she has to say, of course, but the facts are well known. The woman she calls mother was found early this morning lying on her face in the adjoining woods quite dead. She had fallen over a half-concealed root, and with such force that she never moved again. If her daughter was with her at the time, then that daughter fled without attempting to raise her. The condition and position of the wound on the dead woman’s forehead, together with such corroborative facts as have since come to light, preclude all argument on this point. But we’ll listen to the young woman, notwithstanding; she has a right to speak, and she shall speak. Did not your mother die in the woods? No hocus-pocus, miss, but the plain unvarnished truth.”
“Sirs,”–the term was general, but her appeal appeared to be directed solely to the one sympathetic figure before her, “if my mother died in the wood–and, for all I can say, she may have done so–it was not till after she had been in this house. She arrived in my company, and was given a room. I saw the room and I saw her in it. I cannot be deceived in this. If I am, then my mind has suddenly failed me;–something which I find it hard to believe.”
“Mr. Quimby, did Mrs. Demarest come to the house with Miss Demarest?” inquired Mr. Hammersmith of the silent landlord.
“She says so,” was the reply, accompanied by a compassionate shrug which spoke volumes. “And I am quite sure she means it,” he added, with kindly emphasis. “But ask Jake, who was in the office all the evening. Ask my wife, who saw the young lady to her room. Ask anybody and everybody who was around the tavern last night. I’m not the only one to say that Miss Demarest came in alone. All will tell you that she arrived here without escort of any kind; declined supper, but wanted a room, and when I hesitated to give it to her, said by way of explanation of her lack of a companion that she had had trouble in Chester and had left town very hurriedly for her home. That her mother was coming to meet her and would probably arrive here very soon. That when this occurred I was to notify her; but if a gentleman called instead, I was to be very careful not to admit that any such person as herself was in the house. Indeed, to avoid any such possibility she prayed that her name might be left off the register–a favour which I was slow in granting her, but which I finally did, as you can see for yourselves.”
“Oh!” came in indignant exclamation from the young woman before them. “I understand my position now. This man has a bad conscience. He has something to hide, or he would not take to lying about little things like that. I never asked him to allow me to leave my name off the register. On the contrary I wrote my name in it and my mother’s name, too. Let him bring the book here and you will see.”
“We have seen,” responded the coroner. “We looked in the register ourselves. Your names are not there.”
The flush of indignation which had crimsoned her cheeks faded till she looked as startling and individual in her pallor as she had the moment before in her passionate bloom.
“Not there?” fell from her lips in a frozen monotone as her eyes grew fixed upon the faces before her and her hand went groping around for some support.
Mr. Hammersmith approached with a chair.
“Sit,” he whispered. Then, as she sank slowly into an attitude of repose, he added gently, “You shall have every consideration. Only tell the truth, the exact truth without any heightening from your imagination, and, above all, don’t be frightened.”
She may have heard his words, but she gave no sign of comprehending them. She was following the movements of the landlord, who had slipped out to procure the register, and now stood holding it out toward the coroner.
“Let her see for herself,” he suggested, with a bland, almost fatherly, air.
Doctor Golden took the book and approached Miss Demarest.
“Here is a name very unlike yours,” he pointed out, as her eye fell on the page he had opened to. “Annette Colvin, Lansing, Michigan.”
“That is not my name or writing,” said she.
“There is room below it for your name and that of your mother, but the space is blank, do you see?”
“Yes, yes, I see,” she admitted. “Yet I wrote my name in the book! Or is it all a monstrous dream!”
The coroner returned the book to the landlord.
“Is this your only book?” he asked.
“The only book.”
Miss Demarest’s eyes flashed. Hammersmith, who had watched this scene with intense interest, saw, or believed that he saw, in this flash the natural indignation of a candid mind face to face with arrant knavery. But when he forced himself to consider the complacent Quimby he did not know what to think. His aspect of self-confidence equalled hers. Indeed, he showed the greater poise. Yet her tones rang true as she cried:
“You made up one plausible story, and you may well make up another. I demand the privilege of relating the whole occurrence as I remember it,” she continued with an appealing look in the one sympathetic direction. “Then you can listen to him.”
“We desire nothing better,” returned the coroner.
“I shall have to mention a circumstance very mortifying to myself,” she proceeded, with a sudden effort at self-control, which commanded the admiration even of the coroner. “My one adviser is dead,” here her eyes flashed for a moment toward the silent form behind her. “If I make mistakes, if I seem unwomanly–but you have asked for the truth and you shall have it, all of it. I have no father. Since early this morning I have had no mother. But when I had, I found it my duty to work for her as well as for myself, that she might have the comforts she had been used to and could no longer afford. For this purpose I sought a situation in Chester, and found one in a family I had rather not name.” A momentary tremor, quickly suppressed, betrayed the agitation which this allusion cost her. “My mother lived in Danton (the next town to the left). Anybody there will tell you what a good woman she was. I had wished her to live in Chester (that is, at first; later, I–I was glad she didn’t), but she had been born in Danton, and could not accustom herself to strange surroundings. Once a week I went home, and once a week, usually on a Wednesday, she would come and meet me on the highroad, for a little visit. Once we met here, but this is a circumstance no one seems to remember. I was very fond of my mother and she of me. Had I loved no one else, I should have been happy still, and not been obliged to face strangers over her body and bare the secrets of my heart to preserve my good name. There is a man, he seems a thousand miles away from me now, so much have I lived since yesterday. He–he lived in the house where I did–was one of the family–always at table–always before my eyes. He fancied me. I–I might have fancied him had he been a better man. But he was far from being of the sort my mother approved, and when he urged his suit too far, I grew frightened and finally ran away. It was not so much that I could not trust him,” she bravely added after a moment of silent confusion, “but that I could not trust myself. He had an unfortunate influence over me, which I hated while I half yielded to it.”
“You ran away. When was this?”
“Yesterday afternoon at about six. He had vowed that he would see me again before the evening was over, and I took that way to prevent a meeting. There was no other so simple,–or such was my thought at the time. I did not dream that sorrows awaited me in this quiet tavern, and perplexities so much greater than any which could have followed a meeting with him that I feel my reason fail when I contemplate them.”
“Go on,” urged the coroner, after a moment of uneasy silence. “Let us hear what happened after you left your home in Chester.”
“I went straight to the nearest telegraph office, and sent a message to my mother. I told her I was coming home, and for her to meet me on the road near this tavern. Then I went to Hudson’s and had supper, for I had not eaten before leaving my employer’s. The sun had set when I finally started, and I walked fast so as to reach Three Forks before dark. If my mother had got the telegram at once, which I calculated on her doing, as she lived next door to the telegraph office in Danton, she would be very near this place on my arrival here. So I began to look for her as soon as I entered the woods. But I did not see her. I came as far as the tavern door, and still I did not see her. But farther on, just where the road turns to cross the railroad-track, I spied her coming, and ran to meet her. She was glad to see me, but asked a good many questions which I had some difficulty in answering. She saw this, and held me to the matter till I had satisfied her. When this was done it was late and cold, and we decided to come to the tavern for the night. And we came! Nothing shall ever make me deny so positive a fact. We came, and this man received us.”
With her final repetition of this assertion, she rose and now stood upright, with her finger pointing straight at Quimby. Had he cringed or let his eyes waver from hers by so much as a hair’s breadth, her accusation would have stood and her cause been won. But not a flicker disturbed the steady patience of his look, and Hammersmith, who had made no effort to hide his anxiety to believe her story, showed his disappointment with equal frankness as he asked:
“Who else was in the office? Surely Mr. Quimby was not there alone?”
She reseated herself before answering. Hammersmith could see the effort she made to recall that simple scene. He found himself trying to recall it, too–the old-fashioned, smoke-begrimed office, with its one long window toward the road and the glass-paned door leading into the hall of entrance. They had come in by that door and crossed to the bar, which was also the desk in this curious old hostelry. He could see them standing there in the light of possibly a solitary lamp, the rest of the room in shadow unless a game of checkers were on, which evidently was not so on this night. Had she turned her head to peer into those shadows? It was not likely. She was supported by her mother’s presence, and this she was going to say. By some strange telepathy that he would have laughed at a few hours before, he feels confident of her words before she speaks. Yet he listens intently as she finally looks up and answers:
“There was a man, I am sure there was a man somewhere at the other end of the office. But I paid no attention to him. I was bargaining for two rooms and registering my name and that of my mother.”
“Two rooms; why two? You are not a fashionable young lady to require a room alone.”
“Gentlemen, I was tired. I had been through a wearing half-hour. I knew that if we occupied the same room or even adjoining ones that nothing could keep us from a night of useless and depressing conversation. I did not feel equal to it, so I asked for two rooms a short distance apart.”
An explanation which could at least be accepted. Mr. Hammersmith felt an increase of courage and scarcely winced as his colder-blooded companion continued this unofficial examination by asking:
“Where were you standing when making these arrangements with Mr. Quimby?”
“Right before the desk.”
“And your mother?”
“She was at my left and a little behind me. She was a shy woman. I usually took the lead when we were together.”
“Was she veiled?” the coroner continued quietly.
“I think so. She had been crying–” The bereaved daughter paused.
“But don’t you know?”
“My impression is that her veil was down when we came into the room. She may have lifted it as she stood there. I know that it was lifted as we went upstairs. I remember feeling glad that the lamps gave so poor a light, she looked so distressed.”
“Physically, do you mean, or mentally?”
Mr. Hammersmith asked this question. It seemed to rouse some new train of thought in the girl’s mind. For a minute she looked intently at the speaker, then she replied in a disturbed tone:
“Both. I wonder–” Here her thought wavered and she ceased.
“Go on,” ordered the coroner impatiently. “Tell your story. It contradicts that of the landlord in almost every point, but we’ve promised to hear it out, and we will.”
Rousing, she hastened to obey him.
“Mr. Quimby told the truth when he said that he asked me if I would have supper, also when he repeated what I said about a gentleman, but not when he declared that I wished to be told if my mother should come and ask for me. My mother was at my side all the time we stood there talking, and I did not need to make any requests concerning her. When we went to our rooms a woman accompanied us. He says she is his wife. I should like to see that woman.”
“I am here, miss,” spoke up a voice from a murky corner no one had thought of looking in till now.
Miss Demarest at once rose, waiting for the woman to come forward. This she did with a quick, natural step which insensibly prepared the mind for the brisk, assertive woman who now presented herself. Mr. Hammersmith, at sight of her open, not unpleasing face, understood for the first time the decided attitude of the coroner. If this woman corroborated her husband’s account, the poor young girl, with her incongruous beauty and emotional temperament, would not have much show. He looked to see her quailing now. But instead of that she stood firm, determined, and feverishly beautiful.