One of My Sons E-Book

Anna Katharine Green

• Herausgeber: Muhammad
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

A young girl frantically summons a gentleman walking by on the street to come in and help her grandfather. Arthur Outhwaite answers her cry for help only to find himself as the last person to see her grandfather alive and left with the admonishment from the dying man to deliver a letter to someone, and to that person only. 
 

Leseprobe

One of My Sons

Anna Katharine Green

.

I

THE CHILD, AND WHAT SHE LED ME INTO

I was walking at a rapid pace up the avenue one raw, fall evening, when somewhere near the corner of Fifty----Street I was brought to a sudden stand-still by the sound of a child's voice accosting me from the stoop of one of the handsome houses I was then passing.

"O sir!" it cried, "please come in. Please come to grandpa. He's sick and wants you."

Surprised, for I knew no one on the block, I glanced up and saw bending from the open doorway the trembling figure of a little girl, with a wealth of curly hair blowing about her sweet, excited face.

"You have made a mistake," I called up to her. "I am not the person you suppose. I am a stranger. Tell me whom you know about here and I will see that someone comes to your grandpa."

But this did not satisfy her. Running down the stoop, she seized me by the arm with childish impetuosity, crying: "No, no. There isn't time. Grandpa told me to bring in the first man I saw going by. You are the first man. Come!"

There was urgency in her tones, and unconsciously I began to yield to her insistence, and allow myself to be drawn towards the stoop.

"Who is your grandpa?" I asked, satisfied from the imposing look of the house that he must be a man of some prominence. "If he is sick there are the servants"--But here her little foot came down in infantile impatience.

"Grandpa never waits!" she cried, dragging me with her small hands up the stoop and into the open door. "If you don't hurry he'll think I didn't do as he told me."

What man would not have yielded? The hall, as seen from the entrance, was wide and unusually rich. Indeed, an air of the highest respectability, as well as of unbounded wealth, characterised the whole establishment; and however odd the adventure appeared, it certainly offered nothing calculated to awaken distrust. Entering with her, I shut the door behind me. In an instant she was half-way down the hall.

"Here! here!" she cried, pausing before a door near its end.

The confidence with which she summoned me (I sometimes wonder if my countenance conveys more than the ordinary amount of good nature) and the pretty picture she made, standing in the flood of light which poured from the unseen apartment toward which she beckoned me, lured me on till I reached her side, and stood in full view of a scene which certainly justified her fear if not the demand she made upon a passing stranger.

In the midst of a small room, plain as any office, I saw an elderly gentleman standing who, even to my unaccustomed eyes, seemed to be not simply ill, but in the throes of actual dissolution.

Greatly disturbed, for I had anticipated nothing so serious, I turned to fly for assistance, when the little child, rushing by me, caught her grandfather by the knees and gave me such a look, I had not the heart to leave her.

Indeed it would have been cruel to do so. The appearance and attitude of the sick man were startling even to me. Though in a state bordering on death, he was, as I have said, standing, not lying, and his tall figure swaying against the large table to which he clung, formed a picture of mental and physical suffering such as I had never before seen, and can never in all my life to come, forget. One hand was pressed against his heart, but the other, outspread in a desperate attempt to support his weight, had fallen on some half-dozen sheets or so of typewritten paper, which, slipping under the pressure put upon them, kept him tottering, though he did not fall. He was looking my way, and as I advanced into the room, his collapsing frame shook with sudden feeling, and the hand which he held clenched over his heart opened slightly, revealing a scrap of paper crushed between his fingers.

Struck with compassion, for the contrast was pitiful between his naturally imposing appearance and his present helplessness, I murmured some words of sympathy and encouragement, and then supposing him to be alone in the house with his grandchild, inquired what I could do to serve him.

He cast a meaning glance down at his hand, then seeing that I did not understand him, made a super-human effort and held that member out, uttering some inarticulate words which I was able to construe into a prayer to take from him the paper which his stiffening clutch made it difficult for him to release.

Touched by his extremity, and anxious to afford him all the solace his desperate case demanded, I drew the paper from between his fingers. As I did so I noted, first, that it was a portion of one of the sheets I saw scattered about on every side, and, secondly, that it was folded together as if intended for someone's private perusal.

"What shall I do with this?" I asked, consulting his eye over which a glaze was fast forming.

He let his own glance wander eagerly till it fell upon some envelopes, then it became fixed, and I understood.

Drawing out one, I placed the slip in it, and fastening the envelope, consulted his face with a smile.

He answered with a look so full of thanks, appreciation, and confidence that I felt abashed. Something of more than ordinary significance was conveyed by that look, and I was about to ask what name I should write on the envelope, when the faint sounds with which he had been trying to express his secret wishes became articulate, and I heard these words:

[Illustration: "ONE HAND WAS PRESSED AGAINST HIS HEART"]

"To no one--no one else! To--to----"

Alas! at this critical moment and just as the name was faltering on his lips, his utterance failed. He strove for expression, but no words would come.

In a desperation, which was but the faint reflection of his own, I tried to help him.

"Is it for your lawyer?" I suggested; then, as he made no sign, I hastily added: "For your doctor? For your wife? For anyone in the house?"

He gave me one supreme look, raised his eyes, and for an instant stood in an attitude so expressive of joy and indefinable expectancy that I was astonished beyond words and forgot that I was in the presence of death. But only for a moment. While I was still marvelling at this sudden change in him, the child who was clinging to him uttered a terrified scream and unloosed her arms. Then I saw him sink, gasp, and fall forward, and, springing, caught him in my arms before his head could touch the floor. Alas! it was the last service I could render him. By the time I had laid him down he had expired, and I found myself, in no other company than that of a trembling child, bending above the dead body of a man who with his last breath had charged me with a commission of whose purport I understood nothing, save that under no circumstances and upon no pretext was I to deliver the letter he had entrusted to me, to anyone but the person for whom it was intended.

But who was this person? Ah, that was the question! Certainly my position in this house of strangers was a most extraordinary one.

 

II

THE YOUNG DOCTOR AND THE OLD

Meanwhile the child had started down the hall, and up the stairs, calling:

"Papa! Papa!"

Startled by this intimation of another person's presence in a house I had supposed to hold no one but ourselves, I hastily followed her till she reached the floor above and paused before a shut door. Here something seemed to restrain her.

"Papa's inside," she whispered.

If this was so, he was not alone. Laughter, quick exclamations, and the clink of glasses could plainly be heard through the door; and shocked at the contrast offered by this scene of mirth to the solemn occurrence which had just taken place below, I hesitated to enter, and looked about for some means of communicating with the servants who I now felt must be below. But here the terrified child, who was clinging to my knee, interposed:

"I do not think papa is there. Papa does not like cards. Uncle George does. Come, let's look for papa."

She dragged me toward the front of the house, entered another room, and seemed surprised to find the light turned down and her papa gone.

"Perhaps he is with Uncle Alph," she faltered, and, bounding up another flight of stairs, turned around to see if I was behind her.

There seemed no alternative left but to follow her till I came upon someone; so I hastened up this second staircase. She had already entered a room.

"O Uncle Alph!" I heard her cry. "Grandpa's lying on the floor downstairs. I cannot find papa. I'm so frightened," and she ran sobbing towards the young man, who rose to receive her in an abstraction which even these startling words failed to break.

For this and other reasons I noticed him particularly notwithstanding the embarrassment of my own position. He was a handsome man of the luxury-loving type, whose characteristics it would be useless to describe, since they were of a nature to suggest, rather than explain the extent of his attractions. I afterwards heard from such of my friends as were in the habit of walking the avenue with him, that he never failed to draw the attention of passers-by; something in his features, his carriage, or the turn of his head and shoulders stamping him as a man worth looking at, not only once, but twice. At this moment, however, I was not so much impressed by his good looks, as by his uneasy and feverish expression.

He had caught up a letter which he had been engaged in writing at our entrance, and as the child's appeal rang out, he crumpled it nervously in his hand, and dropped it into the waste-paper basket. As a certain furtive haste characterised this action, my attention was caught by it, and I found myself wondering whether it was a letter or memorandum he thus sacrificed to his surprise.

Meanwhile he seemed to be trying to take in what the little one wanted. Evidently he had not as yet noticed me standing in the doorway, and I thought it best to introduce myself.

"I beg your pardon," said I, "I am Arthur Outhwaite of the firm of Robinson & Outhwaite, lawyers. I was passing by the house when this child called me in to the assistance of her grandfather whom, I am sorry to say, I found in a very precarious condition in his study downstairs. If he is your father, you have my sympathy for his sudden demise. He died in my arms a moment ago; and having been the witness of his last moments, I could not leave the house without explaining my position to his relatives."

"Dead! Father?"

It was not grief, it was hardly astonishment which gave force to this brief and involuntary exclamation. It was something quite different, something which it shocked me to hear in his tones and see sparkle in his eye. But this expression, whatever it betokened, lasted but a moment. Catching up the child in his arms, he hid his face behind her and rushed towards the door. Me he hardly noticed.

"Where is he?" he asked, ignoring or forgetting what I had told him.

It was the child who answered.

"In the den, Uncle Alph. Don't take me there; I'm afraid. Set me down; I want to find Hope."

He hastily obeyed her, and the child ran away. Then, and only then, he seemed to take in my presence.

"You were called in from the street?" he wonderingly observed; "I don't understand it. Where were my brothers? They were near enough to render him assistance. Why should a stranger be called in?"

This was a question for which I had no answer, so I made none. He did not seem to be struck by the omission.

"Let us go down," said he.

I opened the door which the little one had closed behind her, and proceeded toward the stair-head. From certain indistinct noises which I had heard during the foregoing short interchange of words, I expected to find the house in a state of alarm and everyone alert. But the card-players were still at their game on the floor below, and I was not surprised to see my companion pause and give an admonitory kick to the door through which such incongruous noises issued.

"Father's ill!" he shouted in a voice hoarse with many passions; and waiting for no reply, he rushed ahead of me downstairs, followed by some half-dozen partially sobered men.

Among these latter I noticed one whom I took to be the elder brother of him whom the little one had addressed as Uncle Alph. He had the same commanding appearance, the same abstracted air, and woke, when he did wake, to the same curious condition of conflicting emotions. But I did not have time to dwell long upon this feature of the extraordinary affair in which I had become thus curiously involved.

The alarm which had been so slow in spreading above, had passed like wildfire through the lower part of the house, and we found some half-dozen servants standing in and about the small room where the master of the house lay stretched. Some were wringing their hands, some were crying, and some, rigid with terror, stared at the face they had so lately seen with the hue of health upon it.

At our approach they naturally withdrew to the hall, and I presently found myself standing between the group thus formed and the three or four young gentlemen visitors who had not followed the brothers into the room. Amongst the latter I saw one whose face was not altogether unfamiliar, and it was from him that I gained my first information concerning the man to whose dying passion I had been witness, and from whom I had received the strange commission which, unknown to those about me, made my continued presence in this house a necessity from which the embarrassment of the occasion could not release me.

The dead man was Archibald Gillespie, the well-known stockbroker and railroad magnate, whose name, as well as those of his three spendthrift sons, was in every man's mouth since that big deal by which he had made two millions in less than two months.

Meanwhile one of the gentlemen who had accompanied the two Gillespies into the room where their father lay, came out looking very pale. He was a doctor, though to all appearance not the family physician.

"Will one of you go for Dr. Bennett?" he asked. "Bring him at once and at any cost; Mr. Gillespie cannot be moved till he comes."

Dr. Bennett evidently was the family physician.

"Why can't he be moved?" called out a voice near me. "Is there anything wrong? Mr. Gillespie was violently sick a month ago. I suppose he got around too quickly."

But the young doctor, without replying, stepped back into the room, leaving us all agog, though few of us ventured upon open remonstrance.

In another minute one of the men near me slipped out in obedience to the request just made.

"Is Mrs. Gillespie living?" I asked, after a moment spent in more or less indecision.

"Where have you come from?" was the answer given, seasoned by a stare I bore with what equanimity I could. "Mrs. Gillespie has been dead these fifteen years."

So! the letter was not meant for his wife.

Here I caught an eye fixed on mine. It was that of one of the servants who stood huddled about the doorway of what appeared to be a large dining-room on the opposite side of the hall. When this man, for it was a male servant, saw that he had attracted my attention, he made me an imperceptible sign. As he was old and grey-haired, I heeded the sign he made and stepped towards him. Instantly he greeted me with the whisper:

"You seem to be the only sober man here. Don't let them do anything till Mr. Leighton comes in. He is the saint of the family, sir."

"Is he the little girl's father?" I asked.

The man nodded. "And a good man, too," he insisted. "A very good man."

Was this honest judgment or sarcasm? I had heard that each of Mr. Gillespie's sons had given his father no end of trouble.

Meantime a silence deeper than that of awe had spread throughout the house. Feeling myself out of place and yet strangely in place, I drew aside into as inconspicuous a corner as I could find, and waited as all the others did, for the family physician.

While doing so I caught stray glimpses of my first acquaintance, Alfred Gillespie, who, fretted by some anxiety he could not altogether conceal, came more than once into the hall and threw furtive glances up the stairway. Was it the little girl he was concerned about? If so, I shared his anxiety.

At last the bell rang. Instantly, so great was the strain upon us, we all moved, and one or two bounded towards the door. But it was opened by the butler with that mechanical habitude such old servants acquire, and, though nothing could shake the calm deference of this trained domestic, there was something in the bow with which he greeted the newcomer which assured us that the man we so anxiously expected had arrived.

I had seen Dr. Bennett more than once, but never before showing so much anxiety. Whether from shock or some secret cause not to be communicated to us, this old and capable physician seemed to be in a condition of as much agitation as ourselves, and obeyed the summons of the young doctor who stood beckoning to him from the threshold of the little den, with an appearance of alacrity that nevertheless had an odd element of hesitation in it. I might not have noticed this under other circumstances, and am quite sure that no one else detected any peculiarity in his manner, but to me, everything was important which offered anything like a clue to the proper understanding of a situation in which I found myself so deeply, yet so secretly involved.

Mr. Gillespie's physician remained for some minutes closeted with the sons of the deceased and their young medical friend; then he came out. Instantly I saw from his expression that our fears or rather, those of the young doctor, were not without foundation. Yet he was careful not to raise an alarm, and in addressing us, spoke in strictly professional tones:

"A sad case, gentlemen! Mr. Gillespie has taken an overdose of chloral. We will have to leave him where he is till the coroner can be called."

A gasp followed by the clink of breaking glass came from the dining-room behind me. The old butler had dropped a glass he had just lifted off the mantel-shelf of the dining-room.

The doctor was at his side in a moment.

"What is that?" he demanded.

The butler stooped for the pieces.

"Only the glass Mr. Gillespie drank out of. He asked for wine a half hour ago. Your words frightened me, sir."

He did not look frightened; but old servants of his stamp possess a strange immobility.

"I will pick up these pieces," said the doctor, stooping beside the man.

The butler drew back. Dr. Bennett picked up the pieces. They were all dry. Evidently the glass had been drained.

As he came out he cast a keen but not unkindly glance at the group of young men drawn up in the doorway.

"Which of you was the witness of Mr. Gillespie's death?" he asked.

I bowed. I dreaded his questions, yet saw no way of evading them. If only Mr. Gillespie had been able to articulate the one word which would have relieved me of all further responsibility in this matter!

"You are the person who was called into the house by Mr. Gillespie's grandchild?" the doctor now asked, meeting my eye with the same expression of instantaneous and complete confidence I had seen on the features of his unhappy patient.

"I am," I replied; and proceeded to relate the circumstances with all the simplicity the occasion required. Only I said nothing about the letter which had been entrusted to me for delivery to some unknown person. How could I? There had been no encouragement in Mr. Gillespie's expression when I asked him if the note I had taken from him was meant for his doctor.

The account I was able to give of the deceased broker's last moments seemed to deepen the impression which had been made upon the physician by the condition in which he found him. Taking up the pieces of glass he had collected from the dining-room hearth, he sniffed them carefully, during which act the two sons of Mr. Gillespie watched him with starting eyes. When he laid them down again, we could none of us conceal our curiosity.

"You have something dreadful to communicate," murmured the elder son.

The doctor hesitated; then he glanced from one to the other of the two handsome faces before him, and remarked:

"Your brother is not here. Do you know if he is likely to return soon?"

"Where is Mr. Leighton?" inquired Alfred, turning towards the servants. "I thought he meant to remain home to-night."

The butler respectfully advanced.

"Mr. Leighton went out an hour ago," said he. "He and Mr. Gillespie had a few words in the den, sir, after which he put on his hat and coat and went out."

"Did you see your master at that time?"

"No, sir, I only heard his voice."

"Did that sound natural?"

The old servant seemed loath to reply, but feeling the doctor's eye resting imperatively upon him, he hesitatingly admitted:

"It wasn't quiet, sir, if you mean that. Mr. Gillespie seemed to be angry or very much displeased. He spoke quite loud."

"Where were you?"

"In the dining-room, sir, putting away the last of the dinner dishes."

"Did you hear what your master said?"

"No, sir; it was something about religion; too much religion."

"My brother attends too many mission services to please my father," explained Alfred in a low tone.

The doctor heard, but did not take his eye from the old servant.

"Was this before he took the glass of wine you have just told us he asked for?"

"Yes, sir, just before. It was Mr. Leighton who came for it. He said his father looked tired."

"Ah, and how came the glass to be back then on the dining-room mantel-shelf?"

"I don't know, sir. Perhaps Mr. Gillespie put it there himself. He never liked any litter on his study table, sir."

At this statement the older brother opened his lips, but I noticed he did not speak. There were no traces of intoxication about him now.

"I wish you would show me the bottle from which you poured the wine."

The butler, whose name I afterwards learned to be Hewson, led the way to a large buffet extending half across the dining-room wall. From where I stood in the hall-way I could see him pointing out a bottle of what looked like sherry. Suddenly he gave a start.

"That isn't the one," he cried, loud enough for me to hear. "The bottle I took out for Mr. Leighton was half-empty. This is quite full."

Again I saw the lips of the elder brother move, and again he refrained from speaking.

"I should like to have that bottle found," said the physician; "but no one need look for it now. Indeed, it would be better for us to wait for Leighton's return before making any further movement. George, Alfred, may I ask you to leave me alone with your father for a few minutes. And let the dining-room be cleared. I don't want to have to make any excuses to the coroner when he arrives. Your father has not died a natural death."

It was an announcement for which we had been in a measure prepared by the serious manner of the young doctor, yet it seemed to me it ought to have occasioned a greater, or at least a different display of feeling on the part of the two most intimately concerned. I looked for an exchange of glances between them or at least some hurried words of sorrow or dismay. But though all evinced strong emotion, no looks passed between them, nor did they make the least attempt at mutual sympathy or encouragement. Were they not on confidential terms? The moment certainly was one to call out whatever brotherly feeling they possessed.

"I shall have to make use of the telephone," Dr. Bennett now announced. "You must pardon my seeming disrespect to the dead. The occasion demands it."

And with one hurried look to see that his commands had been obeyed, and that the dining-room had been cleared of the huddling servants, he stepped back into the so-called den and closed the door behind him.

Next moment we heard his voice rise in the inevitable "Hallo!"

"I don't understand Dr. Bennett's strange demeanour," I now heard uttered in remark near me. It was George speaking in a low tone to his brother.

But that brother, with one of his anxious looks up the stairs, failed to answer.

"Father was in the habit of taking chloral, but I thought he always waited until he got to his own room. I never knew him to take it downstairs before," George went on in a low tone between a whisper and a grumble.

This time Alfred answered.

"He made an exception to-night," said he. "When I ran down to your door at half-past eight, I met Claire coming out of father's room with a bottle in her hand. She had been sent up after the chloral, and was taking it down to him."

George gave his brother a suspicious look.

"Did she say so?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Poor child! She will miss her grandfather. I wonder if she knows?"

I felt that I had no right to listen. But I was standing where the doctor had left me, and hardly knew how to withdraw till I had received my dismissal from someone in authority. Yet I was thinking of going farther front when the doctor came out again and, approaching me, remarked:

"This delay is probably causing you great inconvenience. But I must ask you to remain a short time longer. I presume you can find a seat in the drawing-room."

With a glance at the young gentlemen, I expressed my obligations for his courtesy, but did not make a move towards the room he had indicated.

Instantly, and with an understanding of my feelings which surprised me, George took the hint I had given him, and stepping forward, raised a heavy plush curtain at the left and begged me to be seated in the richly appointed room within. But I had hardly taken a step towards it when a diversion was created by the entrance into the house of a gentleman whom I at once took to be the third brother for whose presence all waited with more or less suspense.

He was sufficiently prepossessing in appearance to awaken admiration, but he bore no resemblance to his brothers. He seemed to have more character and less--well, I find it difficult to say just what impression he made upon me at this moment. Enough that with my first glimpse of him I felt confident that no ordinary person had entered upon the scene, though just what special characteristic of his personality or disposition would prove the emphatic one it was not easy to judge, at a moment's notice.

He had a downcast air, and to my eyes looked weary to the point of collapse, but he roused at the sight of a stranger, and cast an inquiring look at the doctor and then at the servants crowding in the passage beyond.

He evidently took me for one of his brothers' boon companions.

"What's amiss?" he demanded in some irritation--an irritation I was fain to construe into a total lack of preparation for the fatal news awaiting him. "What's the matter, George? What's the matter, Alph?"

"The worst!" came in simultaneous reply.

"Father is dead!" cried George.

"Took too much chloral," added Alfred.

Leighton Gillespie stood stock-still for a moment, then threw off his hat and rushed down the hall. But at the door of what now might be called the chamber of death, he found the doctor standing in an attitude which compelled him to come to a sudden stop.

"Wait a moment," said that gentleman. "I have to correct an impression. Your father has not died from an overdose of chloral as I had at first supposed, but from a deadly dose of prussic acid. You have only to smell his lips to be certain of this fact. Now, Leighton, you may enter."

 

III

WHAT A DOOR HID

It was a startling declaration, and the horror it called up was visible on every face. But the surprise which should have accompanied it was lacking, and however quickly the three nearest the deceased man's heart strove to cover up their first instinctive acceptance of a fact so suggestive of hidden troubles, I could not but see that the prosperous stockbroker had had griefs, anxieties, or hopes to which this sudden end seemed to those who knew him best, a natural sequence.

I began to regret the chance which had brought me into such close relations with this family, and felt the closed envelope in my pocket weighing on my breast like lead.

Meanwhile, he whom they called Leighton was saying in a highly strained tone, which he vainly endeavoured to make natural:

"May not Dr. Bennett be mistaken? There is the chloral bottle on the shelf over the fireplace. We are not in the habit of seeing it here. Does not its presence in this room argue that father felt the need of it. Prussic acid can only be obtained through a doctor, and I am confident you never prescribed him such a dangerous drug, Dr. Bennett."

"No, for it is totally inapplicable to his case. But you will find that he died from taking it, Leighton; all his symptoms show it, and we have only to determine now whether he took it in the chloral, in the glass of wine he drank, or by means of some other agency not yet discovered. I regret to speak so unequivocally, but I never mince matters where my profession is concerned. And, besides, the coroner would not show you this consideration even if I did. The fact is too patent."

They were now inside the study and I did not hear Leighton's reply, but when they all came out again, I saw that the latter had not only accepted the situation, but that he had been informed of the part I had been called upon to play in this matter. This was apparent from the way he greeted me, and the questions he put concerning his child's conduct during the last terrible moments of her grandfather's life.

As he did this I had a fuller opportunity for studying his face. It was the most melancholy one I had ever seen, and what struck me as being worthy of remark was that this melancholy seemed a settled one and quite apart from the present grief and disturbance. Yet he had been heavily shaken by his father's sudden if not inexplicable death, or appeared to be, which possibly is not quite the same thing.

"I do not understand why my father should have called anyone in from the street to witness his sufferings while he had sons in the house," he courteously remarked; "but having felt this necessity and having succeeded in obtaining such help, I am glad that chance favoured him and us with a person of such apparent good feeling as yourself."

I scarcely heeded him. I was pondering over the letter and whether I should pass it over to this man. But instinct withheld me, or rather my lawyer-like habits which happily acted as a restraint upon my natural impulse. I had received no intimation as yet that it was intended for any of Mr. Gillespie's sons.

"You will oblige us by waiting for the coroner?" he now went on. "He has telephoned that he will be here immediately."

"I shall wait," I said. And it was by his invitation I now stepped into the parlour.

A quarter of an hour, a half-hour, passed before the front door bell rang again. From the hubbub which ensued, I knew that the man we wished for had arrived, but it was a long while before he entered the room in which I sat, during which tedious interim I had to possess my soul in patience. But at last I heard his step on the threshold, and looking up, I beheld a spare, earnest man who approached me with great seriousness, and sat down near enough to indulge in confidential talk without running the risk of being heard by anyone.

"You are Mr. Outhwaite," he began. "I have heard of your firm and have more than once seen Mr. Robinson. Had you any acquaintance with Mr. Gillespie or his family before to-night?"

"No, sir; Mr. Gillespie was known to me only by reputation."

"Then it was pure chance which led you to be a witness of his final moments?"

"Pure chance, if we do not believe in Providence," I returned.

He surveyed me quite intently.

"Relate what passed."

Now here was a dilemma. Did my duty exact a revelation of the facts which I had hitherto felt obliged to keep even from the deceased man's sons? It was a question not to be decided in a moment, so I made up my mind to be guided by developments, and confined my narration to a recapitulation of my former plain account of Mr. Gillespie's last moments. This narrative I made as simple as I could. When I had finished he asked if Mr. Gillespie's grandchild had been present at the moment her grandfather expired.

I answered that she had been clinging to him all the time he remained erect, but shrank back and ran out of the room the moment he gave signs of falling to the floor.

"Did he speak to her?"

"Not that I heard."

"Did he say anything?"

"A few inarticulate words, no names."

"He did not ask for his sons?"

"No."

"For none of them?"

"No."

"How came the alarm to be spread?"

"I went up with the child and called the young men down."

Coroner Frisbie stroked his chin, still looking at me intently.

"Was there an empty phial or a piece of paper lying about on the study-table or on the floor when you went in?"

I started.

"Paper?" I repeated. "What kind of paper?"

"Such as is used by druggists and physicians in rolling up their prescriptions. The prussic acid which Mr. Gillespie has evidently taken must have been bought in liquid form. The bottle which held it should be lying about and possibly the paper in which it was wrapped. That is, if this poison was swallowed intentionally by Mr. Gillespie."

I recalled the exact look of the scrap of paper I had put into an envelope at this gentleman's request. It was not such a one as is used by druggists in wrapping up parcels, and I felt my breast grow lighter by a degree.

"I did not see any such paper."

"Where is the little girl?" he now queried. "I must see her."

I had made up my mind to one thing. If the child said that I had been given a paper by her grandfather I would acknowledge it and produce the envelope. But if she had forgotten the fact or had been too frightened to notice it, I would preserve silence in regard to it a little longer, in the hope of being shown a way out of my difficulty.

I was therefore not sorry to hear him ask for the little girl.

"I take it that you are not anxious to remain here," he now remarked. "If you will give me your address and hold yourself in readiness to obey my summons, I can excuse you for the night."

For answer I held out my card, and seeing that I had no further excuse for lingering, was moving toward the door, when Dr. Bennett came hurriedly in.

"I have found something--" he began, and then paused with a quick glance in my direction, as if questioning the propriety of proceeding further with his discovery in my presence.

The coroner showed no such hesitation. Hastening to meet the old family physician, he said:

"You have found the bottle or only the paper in which the bottle was wrapped?"

Dr. Bennett drew him aside, and I saw what looked like a small cork pass between them.

"Was it in Mr. Gillespie's study you found this?" queried the coroner. "I thought I had thoroughly searched the study."

The answer was uttered in the lowest of low tones, but I had no difficulty in catching the gist of what he said.

"It was on the dining-room floor, under the edge of the rug. A very suspicious fact, don't you think so? Mr. Gillespie would never have thrust it there. Some other person--don't know who--not say anything yet--shrink from seeing the police in this house."

The two doctors interchanged a look which I surprised in the large mirror opposite. But I gave no sign of having seen anything extraordinary. I felt too keenly the delicacy of my own position. Next minute we were all walking towards the hall.

"Silence!" came in admonitory tones from the coroner as we paused for a moment on the threshold. "Let us not disturb the young men any further than is necessary to-night."

At that moment we heard the cry:

"Where is Miss Meredith? Has anyone seen Miss Meredith? I cannot find her in any of the rooms upstairs."

"Hope! Hope! Where are you, Hope?" called out another voice, charged with feeling.

Hope! Did my heart beat faster as this name, destined to play such a part in my future life, was sounded in my ears? I cannot say. That heart has beat often enough since at the utterance of this sweet monosyllable, but at that time--well, I think I was too interested in the alarm which this cry instantly raised, to note my personal sensations. From one end of the house to the other, men and women rushed from room to room, and I heard not only this name called out, but that of the child, which it seems was Claire.

"Cannot the child be found either?" I inquired impetuously of the coroner who still lingered in the lower hall.

"It seems not. Who is Miss Meredith?"

It was the old butler who answered him.

"She is the young gentlemen's cousin," said he. "She was a great favourite with Mr. Gillespie, and lived here like a daughter. They will find her somewhere upstairs."

But the prophecy proved to be a false one. Slowly the servants came creeping down whispering among themselves and looking very much frightened. Then we saw George descend shaking his head impatiently, and then Leighton, wild with an anxiety for which he had no name.

"She must be here!" he cried, thinking only of his child. "Claire! Claire!" And he began running through the great drawing-room where we knew she could not be.

Alfred had remained above.

Suddenly I recalled a fact connected with my own visit upstairs.

"Have they been up to the fourth floor?" I inquired of Dr. Bennett. "When I was in Mr. Alfred Gillespie's room on the third floor, I remember hearing someone rush through the hall. I supposed at that time it was someone going below. But it may have been someone going higher up."

"Let us go see!" the doctor suggested.

I followed him without a thought. As we passed Alfred's door, we could see him standing in the middle of the room in a state of rage which made him oblivious of our approach. He was tearing into morsels a piece of paper which had the same appearance as the one he had formerly thrust into the waste-paper basket, and as he tore, he muttered words amongst which I caught the following:

"Why should I write? If she loved me she would wait. She would not run away now, unless he----"

Dr. Bennett, with his finger on his lip, slid by. I hastened after him, and together we mounted the last flight.

We were now in a portion of the building as new to the doctor as to myself. When we reached the top of the stairs we found the whole place dark save for a little glimmer towards the front which proved to be a gas-jet burning low in one of the attic rooms.

Turning this up we looked around, opened a closet-door or two, then walked into the back, where the doctor struck a match. Two closed doors met our eyes. One of these upon being opened disclosed a well-furnished room, similar in appearance to those in front, the other an unfinished garret half filled with trunks and boxes.

"Well!" he ejaculated, as the match went out upon this scene. "This is a mystery."

"Hark!" I urged; "our ears rather than our eyes must do service in this emergency."

He took the hint, and together we listened till some sound--was it the breathing of a person concealed near us?--caused us both to start and the doctor to light another match.

This time we saw something, but the match went out before we could determine what.

Annoyed by these momentary flashes of light, I dashed back into one of the rooms we had left, and catching up a candle I had previously noted there, lit it at the gas-jet, and proceeded back with it to this garret room.

Instantly a sight full of the strangest interest revealed itself.

Crouched against the farther wall, with wide-extended eyes fixed full upon us, we perceived a woman, upon whose pallid face and risen locks terror or some other equally emphatic passion had so fixed its impress that she looked like some affrighted creature balked in flight by some dreadful, some unprecedented sight which held her spell-bound. That she was beautiful, in that touching, feminine way which goes to the heart, did not lessen the effect of her appearance, nor were we unmoved by the fact that the child for whom the house had just been ransacked lay curled up and asleep at her feet.

"Who is it?" I asked. "Miss Meredith?"

The doctor pressed my hand. "We must be careful," he whispered. "She seems on the verge of delirium."

"The child shows no fear," I murmured.

Meanwhile the doctor was approaching the new object of his care.

"Why choose so cold a place?" he asked, smiling on the young girl who still clung, as if fastened, to the wall against which she had drawn herself. "Claire will catch cold; had you not better come downstairs?"

With a start she looked down at the little one resting at her feet, and her eyes showed a sudden intelligence.

"How did she come here?" she asked. "I did not call her."

"And how came you to be here?" he smiled. "Your white dress looks out of place in this garret."

She lifted herself straight up, with her back to the wall. Claire, who was thus dislodged from the place at her feet woke, and began to cry.

"I heard that Mr. Gillespie was dead," came from lips so stiff with fright or some other deep emotion that I wondered they could form the words. "I loved Mr. Gillespie, and I brought my grief here."

[Illustration: "CROUCHED AGAINST THE FARTHER WALL, WITH WIDE-EXTENDED EYES FIXED FULL UPON US"]

She was still standing pressed against the wall, her hands behind her; and disguise the fact as I would, I could see that her teeth were chattering with something more than cold, or even such fear as might follow the sudden death of a near friend and benefactor.

"Will you not come below?" urged the doctor, taking up Claire to his fatherly breast.

"Never!" her lips seemed to cry; but I heard no sound, and when the doctor, giving me the child, threw his arm about her and drew her away, she yielded pliantly enough, though with a steady look into his face I did not understand then nor for a long time afterwards.

At the stair-head we met Alfred. Perhaps he had heard us go up, perhaps he had simply thought of searching the attic himself. His recoil and the exclamation he made were simultaneous.

"You have found her!" was his cry, a cry which did not refer to the child. Then in reproachful tones: "Hope, why should you give us such a scare? Had we not enough to face without having our hearts wrung with terror for you?"

Her answer was a murmur. With the first moment of encounter with this man her face had become a mask.

 

IV

"HE DRANK IT ALONE" 

In making this statement it is not my wish to create any special prejudice against Alfred. Indeed, I have no right to do so, for when a few minutes later his brother Leighton came running up the stairs at sound of his child's voice, I noticed the same recoil on her part, followed by the same impassibility. Nor did she show a different feeling when in the hall below George came forward with the inquiries her surprising absence had naturally provoked. From one and all she involuntarily shrank, but not without suffering to herself and an obvious attempt to hide this natural impulse under a demeanour more in accordance with her near relationship to these three men. In Alfred this chilling conduct awakened emotions only too easy to read; in Leighton, surprise, and in George, a distrust bordering upon a passion so fierce that he turned from white to red and from red to white in an instant. Evanescent expressions all of them, but important as showing the feelings entertained towards her by these men among whom she had been living for more or less time as a sister.

But of my personal sensations you have already heard too much, especially at this period of my story. Happily, I was able to hide them from other eyes, and simply showed a natural curiosity when Dr. Bennett, with a sly look in her direction, whispered in my ear:

"How came she to know of her uncle's death so soon after its occurrence? You say you heard her rush upstairs while you were in Alfred's room. That was very soon after you laid the old gentleman out of your arms. Is it possible that you had already met Miss Meredith? Did she share that first alarm with you?"

"Not to my knowledge," I returned. "My first view of her was in the attic with you. Yet she may have been somewhere in this great hall, or in some of the many rooms I see about us."

Meanwhile I was taking in her beauty, or what I must call beauty from the lack of any other adequate word. I believe she was not what people call beautiful. She did not need to be; her charm was incontestable without it; too incontestable, I fear, for the peace of mind of more men than Alfred and George Gillespie.

She was standing by the newel-post, in a position startlingly like that she had maintained above; and while I shrank from the doubts thus called up, I could not but perceive in the straightforward look of her eyes, and the fierce clutch of her hands behind her, that some determination was absorbing all her energies; a determination little in accord, I fear, with the attitude of simple grief she made such an effort to maintain. Leighton appeared to see this also, for he set down the child he had been straining to his breast, and approaching his cousin, plied her with a few hurried questions.

But the coroner, who had shown some embarrassment at the appearance on the scene of so young and charming a lady, advanced at this juncture and prevented the answer which was slowly forming on her lips.

"If you are Miss Meredith, Mr. Gillespie's niece and assistant, you are justified in your grief. Mr. Gillespie has passed away under very extraordinary circumstances."

Her hands which had been behind her, came suddenly together in front, but she did not shift her eyes from the point where she had fixed them. Perhaps she dreaded to encounter the gaze of the three young men grouped behind the man addressing her.

"Have those circumstances been related to you?" resumed Dr. Frisbie with the encouragement in his tone which her loveliness and sorrow naturally called forth.

"No."

The answer came quickly, and with a sharp accentuation which showed her to be a woman of force, notwithstanding the condition in which we had first found her.

"Then this little one had said nothing," he continued with a glance at Claire who had nestled again at her cousin's feet.

"Claire?" she exclaimed in evident surprise. "Claire?" and her eyes followed his till they fell inquiringly upon the child whose presence up to this moment she had probably not noticed. "No, she has said nothing; at least nothing that I have heard." And her hand went out as if she would urge the child away. But she did not complete the gesture, and I doubt if anyone understood her movement unless it was myself.