The prisoner's lip curled disdainfully.
"And do you expect me to believe you regard this as a groundwork for suspicion? I should have given you credit for more penetration, sir."
"Then you do not think Mr. Orcutt knew what he was saying when, in answer to Miss Dare's appeal for him to tell who the murderer was, he answered: 'Blood will have blood!' and drew attention to his own violent end?"
"Did Mr. Orcutt say that?"
"He did."
"Very well, a man whose whole mind has for some time been engrossed with defending another man accused of murder, might say any thing while in a state of delirium."
Mr. Gryce uttered his favorite "Humph!" and gave his leg another pat, but added, gravely enough: "Miss Dare believes his words to be those of confession."
"You say Miss Dare once believed me to have confessed."
"But," persisted the detective, "Miss Dare is not alone in her opinion. Men in whose judgment you must rely, find it difficult to explain the words of Mr. Orcutt by means of any other theory than that he is himself the perpetrator of that crime for which you are yourself being tried."
"I find it difficult to believe that possible," quietly returned the prisoner. "What!" he suddenly exclaimed; "suspect a man of Mr. Orcutt's abilities and standing of a hideous crime – the very crime, too, with which his client is charged, and in defence of whom he has brought all his skill to bear! The idea is preposterous, unheard of!"
"I acknowledge that," dryly assented Mr. Gryce; "but it has been my experience to find that it is the preposterous things which happen."
For a minute the prisoner stared at the speaker incredulously; then he cried:
"You really appear to be in earnest."
"I was never more so in my life," was Mr. Gryce's rejoinder.
Drawing back, Craik Mansell looked at the detective with an emotion that had almost the character of hope. Presently he said:
"If you do distrust Mr. Orcutt, you must have weightier reasons for it than any you have given me. What are they? You must be willing I should know, or you would not have gone as far with me as you have."
"You are right," Gryce assured him. "A case so complicated as this calls for unusual measures. Mr. Ferris, feeling the gravity of his position, allows me to take you into our confidence, in the hope that you will be able to help us out of our difficulty."
"I help you! You'd better release me first."
"That will come in time."
"If I help you?"
"Whether you help or not, if we can satisfy ourselves and the world that Mr. Orcutt's words were a confession. You may hasten that conviction."
"How?"
"By clearing up the mystery of your flight from Mrs. Clemmens' house."
The keen eyes of the prisoner fell; all his old distrust seemed on the point of returning.
"That would not help you at all," said he.
"I should like to be the judge," said Mr. Gryce.
The prisoner shook his head.
"My word must go for it," said he.
The detective had been the hero of too many such scenes to be easily discouraged. Bowing as if accepting this conclusion from the prisoner, he quietly proceeded with the recital he had planned. With a frankness certainly unusual to him, he gave the prisoner a full account of Mr. Orcutt's last hours, and the interview which had followed between himself and Miss Dare. To this he added his own reasons for doubting the lawyer, and, while admitting he saw no motive for the deed, gave it as his serious opinion, that the motive would be found if once he could get at the secret of Mr. Orcutt's real connection with the deceased. He was so eloquent, and so manifestly in earnest, Mr. Mansell's eye brightened in spite of himself, and when the detective ceased he looked up with an expression which convinced Mr. Gryce that half the battle was won. He accordingly said, in a tone of great confidence:
"A knowledge of what went on in Mrs. Clemmens' house before he went to it would be of great help to us. With that for a start, all may be learned. I therefore put it to you for the last time whether it would not be best for you to explain yourself on this point. I am sure you will not regret it."
"Sir," said Mansell, with undisturbed composure, "if your purpose is to fix this crime on Mr. Orcutt, I must insist upon your taking my word that I have no information to give you that can in any way affect him."
"You could give us information, then, that would affect Miss Dare?" was the quick retort. "Now, I say," the astute detective declared, as the prisoner gave an almost imperceptible start, "that whatever your information is, Miss Dare is not guilty."
"You say it!" exclaimed the prisoner. "What does your opinion amount to if you haven't heard the evidence against her?"
"There is no evidence against her but what is purely circumstantial."
"How do you know that?"
"Because she is innocent. Circumstantial evidence may exist alike against the innocent and the guilty; real evidence only against the guilty. I mean to say that as I am firmly convinced Miss Dare once regarded you as guilty of this crime, I must be equally convinced she didn't commit it herself. This is unanswerable."
"You have stated that before."
"I know it; but I want you to see the force of it; because, once convinced with me that Miss Dare is innocent, you will be willing to tell all you know, even what apparently implicates her."
Silence answered this remark.
"You didn't see her strike the blow?"
Mansell roused indignantly.
"No, of course not!" he cried.
"You did not see her with your aunt that moment you fled from the house immediately before the murder!"
"I didn't see her."
That emphasis, unconscious, perhaps, was fatal. Gryce, who never lost any thing, darted on this small gleam of advantage as a hungry pike darts upon an innocent minnow.
"But you thought you heard her," he cried; "her voice, or her laugh, or perhaps merely the rustle of her dress in another room?"
"No," said Mansell, "I didn't hear her."
"Of course not," was the instantaneous reply. "But something said or done by somebody – a something which amounts to nothing as evidence – gives you to understand she was there, and so you hold your tongue for fear of compromising her."
"Amounts to nothing as evidence?" echoed Mansell. "How do you know that?"
"Because Miss Dare was not in the house with your aunt at that time. Miss Dare was in Professor Darling's observatory, a mile or so away."
"Does she say that?"
"We will prove that."
Aroused, excited, the prisoner turned his flashing blue eyes on the detective.
"I should be glad to have you," he said.
"But you must first tell me in what room you were when you received this intimation of Miss Dare's presence?"
"I was in no room; I was on the stone step outside of the dining-room door. I did not go into the house at all that morning, as I believe I have already told Mr. Ferris."
"Very good! It will all be simpler than I thought. You came up to the house and went away again without coming in; ran away, I may say, taking the direction of the swamp."
The prisoner did not deny it.
"You remember all the incidents of that short flight?"
The prisoner's lip curled.
"Remember leaping the fence and stumbling a trifle when you came down?"
"Yes."
"Very well; now tell me how could Miss Dare see you do that from Mrs. Clemmens' house?"
"Did Miss Dare tell you she saw me trip after I jumped the fence?"
"She did."
"And yet was in Professor Darling's observatory, a mile or so away?"
"Yes."
A satirical laugh broke from the prisoner.
"I think," said he, "that instead of my telling you how she could have seen this from Mrs. Clemmens' house, you should tell me how she could have seen it from Professor Darling's observatory."
"That is easy enough. She was looking through a telescope."
"What?"
"At the moment you were turning from Mrs. Clemmens' door, Miss Dare, perched in the top of Professor Darling's house, was looking in that very direction through a telescope."
"I – I would like to believe that story," said the prisoner, with suppressed emotion. "It would – "
"What?" urged the detective, calmly.
"Make a new man of me," finished Mansell, with a momentary burst of feeling.
"Well, then, call up your memories of the way your aunt's house is situated. Recall the hour, and acknowledge that, if Miss Dare was with her, she must have been in the dining-room."
"There is no doubt about that."
"Now, how many windows has the dining-room?"
"One."
"How situated?"
"It is on the same side as the door."
"There is none, then, which looks down to that place where you leaped the fence?"
"No."
"How account for her seeing that little incident, then, of your stumbling?"
"She might have come to the door, stepped out, and so seen me."
"Humph! I see you have an answer for every thing."
Craik Mansell was silent.
A look of admiration slowly spread itself over the detective's face.
"We must probe the matter a little deeper," said he. "I see I have a hard head to deal with." And, bringing his glance a little nearer to the prisoner, he remarked:
"If she had been standing there you could not have turned round without seeing her?"
"No."
"Now, did you see her standing there?"
"No."
"Yet you turned round?"
"I did?"
"Miss Dare says so."
The prisoner struck his forehead with his hand.
"And it is so," he cried. "I remember now that some vague desire to know the time made me turn to look at the church clock. Go on. Tell me more that Miss Dare saw."
His manner was so changed – his eye burned so brightly – the detective gave himself a tap of decided self-gratulation.
"She saw you hurry over the bog, stop at the entrance of the wood, take a look at your watch, and plunge with renewed speed into the forest."
"It is so. It is so. And, to have seen that, she must have had the aid of a telescope."
"Then she describes your appearance. She says you had your pants turned up at the ankles, and carried your coat on your left arm."
"Left arm?"
"Yes."
"I think I had it on my right."
"It was on the arm toward her, she declares. If she was in the observatory, it was your left side that she saw."
"Yes, yes; but the coat was over the other arm. I remember using my left hand in vaulting over the fence when I came up to the house."
"It is a vital point," said Mr. Gryce, with a quietness that concealed his real anxiety and chagrin. "If the coat was on the arm toward her, the fact of its being on the right – "
"Wait!" exclaimed Mr. Mansell, with an air of sudden relief. "I recollect now that I changed it from one arm to the other after I vaulted the fence. It was just at the moment I turned to come back to the side door, and, as she does not pretend to have seen me till after I left the door, of course the coat was, as she says, on my left arm."
"I thought you could explain it," returned Mr. Gryce, with an air of easy confidence. "But what do you mean when you say that you changed it at the moment you turned to come back to the side door? Didn't you go at once to the dining-room door from the swamp?"
"No. I had gone to the front door on my former visit, and was going to it this time; but when I got to the corner of the house I saw the tramp coming into the gate, and not wishing to encounter any one, turned round and came back to the dining-room door."
"I see. And it was then you heard – "
"What I heard," completed the prisoner, grimly.
"Mr. Mansell," said the other, "are you not sufficiently convinced by this time that Miss Dare was not with Mrs. Clemmens, but in the observatory of Professor Darling's house, to tell me what that was?"
"Answer me a question and I will reply. Can the entrance of the woods be seen from the position which she declares herself to have occupied?"
"It can. Not two hours ago I tried the experiment myself, using the same telescope and kneeling in the same place where she did. I found I could not only trace the spot where you paused, but could detect quite readily every movement of my man Hickory, whom I had previously placed there to go through the motions. I should not have come here if I had not made myself certain on that point."
Yet the prisoner hesitated.
"I not only made myself sure of that," resumed Mr. Gryce, "but I also tried if I could see as much with my naked eye from Mrs. Clemmens' side door. I found I could not, and my sight is very good."
"Enough," said Mansell; "hard as it is to explain, I must believe Miss Dare was not where I thought her."
"Then you will tell me what you heard?"
"Yes; for in it may lie the key to this mystery, though how, I cannot see, and doubt if you can. I am all the more ready to do it," he pursued, "because I can now understand how she came to think me guilty, and, thinking so, conducted herself as she has done from the beginning of my trial. All but the fact of her denouncing herself yesterday; that I cannot comprehend."
"A woman in love can do any thing," quoth Mr. Gryce. Then admonished by the flush of the prisoner's cheek that he was treading on dangerous ground, he quickly added: "But she will explain all that herself some day. Let us hear what you have to tell me."
Craik Mansell drooped his head and his brow became gloomy.
"Sir," said he, "it is unnecessary for me to state that your surmise in regard to my past convictions is true. If Miss Dare was not with my aunt just before the murder, I certainly had reasons for thinking she was. To be sure, I did not see her or hear her voice, but I heard my aunt address her distinctly and by name."
"You did?" Mr. Gryce's interest in the tattoo he was playing on his knee became intense.
"Yes. It was just as I pushed the door ajar. The words were these: 'You think you are going to marry him, Imogene Dare; but I tell you you never shall, not while I live.'"
"Humph!" broke involuntarily from the detective's lips, and, though his face betrayed nothing of the shock this communication occasioned him, his fingers stopped an instant in their restless play.
Mr. Mansell saw it and cast him an anxious look. The detective instantly smiled with great unconcern. "Go on," said he, "what else did you hear?"
"Nothing else. In the mood in which I was this very plain intimation that Miss Dare had sought my aunt, had pleaded with her for me and failed, struck me as sufficient. I did not wait to hear more, but hurried away in a state of passion that was little short of frenzy. To leave the place and return to my work was now my one wish. When I found, then, that by running I might catch the train at Monteith, I ran, and so unconsciously laid myself open to suspicion."
"I see," murmured the detective; "I see."
"Not that I suspected any evil then," pursued Mr. Mansell, earnestly. "I was only conscious of disappointment and a desire to escape from my own thoughts. It was not till next day – "
"Yes – yes," interrupted Mr. Gryce, abstractedly, "but your aunt's words! She said: 'You think you are going to marry him, Imogene Dare; but you never shall, not while I live.' Yet Imogene Dare was not there. Let us solve that problem."
"You think you can?"
"I think I must."
"How? how?"
The detective did not answer. He was buried in profound thought. Suddenly he exclaimed:
"It is, as you say, the key-note to the tragedy. It must be solved." But the glance he dived deep into space seemed to echo that "How? how?" of the prisoner, with a gloomy persistence that promised little for an immediate answer to the enigma before them. It occurred to Mansell to offer a suggestion.
"There is but one way I can explain it," said he. "My aunt was speaking to herself. She was deaf and lived alone. Such people often indulge in soliloquizing."
The slap which Mr. Gryce gave his thigh must have made it tingle for a good half-hour.
"There," he cried, "who says extraordinary measures are not useful at times? You've hit the very explanation. Of course she was speaking to herself. She was just the woman to do it. Imogene Dare was in her thoughts, so she addressed Imogene Dare. If you had opened the door you would have seen her standing there alone, venting her thoughts into empty space."
"I wish I had," said the prisoner.
Mr. Gryce became exceedingly animated. "Well, that's settled," said he. "Imogene Dare was not there, save in Mrs. Clemmens' imagination. And now for the conclusion. She said: 'You think you are going to marry him, Imogene Dare; but you never shall, not while I live.' That shows her mind was running on you."
"It shows more than that. It shows that, if Miss Dare was not with her then, she must have been there earlier in the day. For, when I left my aunt the day before, she was in entire ignorance of my attachment to Miss Dare, and the hopes it had led to."
"Say that again," cried Gryce.
Mr. Mansell repeated himself, adding: "That would account for the ring being found on my aunt's dining-room floor – "
But Mr. Gryce waved that question aside.
"What I want to make sure of is that your aunt had not been informed of your wishes as concerned Miss Dare."
"Unless Miss Dare was there in the early morning and told her herself."
"There were no neighbors to betray you?"
"There wasn't a neighbor who knew any thing about the matter."
The detective's eye brightened till it vied in brilliancy with the stray gleam of sunshine which had found its way to the cell through the narrow grating over their heads.
"A clue!" he murmured; "I have received a clue," and rose as if to leave.
The prisoner, startled, rose also.
"A clue to what?" he cried.
But Mr. Gryce was not the man to answer such a question.
"You shall hear soon. Enough that you have given me an idea that may eventually lead to the clearing up of this mystery, if not to your own acquittal from a false charge of murder."
"And Miss Dare?"
"Is under no charge, and never will be."
"And Mr. Orcutt?"
"Wait," said Mr. Gryce – "wait."
XLI.
A LINK SUPPLIED
Upon his bloody finger he doth wear
A precious ring.
– Titus Andronicus.
Make me to see it; or at the least so prove it,
That the probation bear no hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on.
– Othello.
MR. GRYCE did not believe that Imogene Dare had visited Mrs. Clemmens before the assault, or, indeed, had held any communication with her. Therefore, when Mansell declared that he had never told his aunt of the attachment between himself and this young lady, the astute detective at once drew the conclusion that the widow had never known of that attachment, and consequently that the words which the prisoner had overheard must have referred, not to himself, as he supposed, but to some other man, and, if to some other man – why to the only one with whom Miss Dare's name was at that time associated; in other words, to Mr. Orcutt!
Now it was not easy to measure the importance of a conclusion like this. For whilst there would have been nothing peculiar in this solitary woman, with the few thousands in the bank, boasting of her power to separate her nephew from the lady of his choice, there was every thing that was significant in her using the same language in regard to Miss Dare and Mr. Orcutt. Nothing but the existence of some unsuspected bond between herself and the great lawyer could have accounted, first, for her feeling on the subject of his marriage; and, secondly, for the threat of interference contained in her very emphatic words, – a bond which, while evidently not that of love, was still of a nature to give her control over his destiny, and make her, in spite of her lonely condition, the selfish and determined arbitrator of his fate.
What was that bond? A secret shared between them? The knowledge on her part of some fact in Mr. Orcutt's past life, which, if revealed, might serve as an impediment to his marriage? In consideration that the great mystery to be solved was what motive Mr. Orcutt could have had for killing this woman, an answer to this question was manifestly of the first importance.
But before proceeding to take any measures to insure one, Mr. Gryce sat down and seriously asked himself whether there was any known fact, circumstantial or otherwise, which refused to fit into the theory that Mr. Orcutt actually committed this crime with his own hand, and at the time he was seen to cross the street and enter Mrs. Clemmens' house. For, whereas the most complete chain of circumstantial evidence does not necessarily prove the suspected party to be guilty of a crime, the least break in it is fatal to his conviction. And Mr. Gryce wished to be as fair to the memory of Mr. Orcutt as he would have been to the living man.
Beginning, therefore, with the earliest incidents of the fatal day, he called up, first, the letter which the widow had commenced but never lived to finish. It was a suggestive epistle. It was addressed to her most intimate friend, and showed in the few lines written a certain foreboding or apprehension of death remarkable under the circumstances. Mr. Gryce recalled one of its expressions. "There are so many," wrote she, "to whom my death would be more than welcome." So many! Many is a strong word; many means more than one, more than two; many means three at least. Now where were the three? Hildreth, of course, was one, Mansell might very properly be another, but who was the third? To Mr. Gryce, but one name suggested itself in reply. So far, then, his theory stood firm. Now what was the next fact known? The milkman stopped with his milk; that was at half-past eleven. He had to wait a few minutes, from which it was concluded she was up-stairs when he rapped. Was it at this time she was interrupted in her letter-writing? If so, she probably did not go back to it, for when Mr. Hildreth called, some fifteen minutes later, she was on the spot to open the door. Their interview was short; it was also stormy. Medicine was the last thing she stood in need of; besides, her mind was evidently preoccupied. Showing him the door, she goes back to her work, and, being deaf, does not notice that he does not leave the house as she expected. Consequently her thoughts go on unhindered, and, her condition being one of anger, she mutters aloud and bitterly to herself as she flits from dining-room to kitchen in her labor of serving up her dinner. The words she made use of have been overheard, and here another point appears. For, whereas her temper must have been disturbed by the demand which had been made upon her the day before by her favorite relative and heir, her expressions of wrath at this moment were not levelled against him, but against a young lady who is said to have been a stranger to her, her language being: "You think you are going to marry him, Imogene Dare; but I tell you you never shall, not while I live." Her chief grievance, then, and the one thing uppermost in her thoughts, even at a time when she felt that there were many who desired her death, lay in this fact that a young and beautiful woman had manifested, as she supposed, a wish to marry Mr. Orcutt, the word him which she had used, necessarily referring to the lawyer, as she knew nothing of Imogene's passion for her nephew.
But this is not the only point into which it is necessary to inquire. For to believe Mr. Orcutt guilty of this crime one must also believe that all the other persons who had been accused of it were truthful in the explanations which they gave of the events which had seemingly connected them with it. Now, were they? Take the occurrences of that critical moment when the clock stood at five minutes to twelve. If Mr. Hildreth is to be believed, he was at that instant in the widow's front hall musing on his disappointment and arranging his plans for the future; the tramp, if those who profess to have watched him are to be believed, was on the kitchen portico; Craik Mansell on the dining-room door-step; Imogene Dare before her telescope in Professor Darling's observatory. Mr. Hildreth, with two doors closed between him and the back of the house, knew nothing of what was said or done there, but the tramp heard loud talking, and Craik Mansell the actual voice of the widow raised in words which were calculated to mislead him into thinking she was engaged in angry altercation with the woman he loved. What do all three do, then? Mr. Hildreth remains where he is; the tramp skulks away through the front gate; Craik Mansell rushes back to the woods. And Imogene Dare? She has turned her telescope toward Mrs. Clemmens' cottage, and, being on the side of the dining-room door, sees the flying form of Craik Mansell, and marks it till it disappears from her sight. Is there any thing contradictory in these various statements? No. Every thing, on the contrary, that is reconcilable.
Let us proceed then. What happens a few minutes later? Mr. Hildreth, tired of seclusion and anxious to catch the train, opens the front door and steps out. The tramp, skulking round some other back door, does not see him; Imogene, with her eye on Craik Mansell, now vanishing into the woods, does not see him; nobody sees him. He goes, and the widow for a short interval is as much alone as she believed herself to be a minute or two before when three men stood, unseen by each other, at each of the three doors of her house. What does she do now?
Why, she finishes preparing her dinner, and then, observing that the clock is slow, proceeds to set it right. Fatal task! Before she has had an opportunity to finish it, the front door has opened again, Mr. Orcutt has come in, and, tempted perhaps by her defenceless position, catches up a stick of wood from the fireplace and, with one blow, strikes her down at his feet, and rushes forth again with tidings of her death.
Now, is there any thing in all this that is contradictory? No; there is only something left out. In the whole of this description of what went on in the widow's house, there has been no mention made of the ring – the ring which it is conceded was either in Craik Mansell's or Imogene Dare's possession the evening before the murder, and which was found on the dining-room floor within ten minutes after the assault took place. If Mrs. Clemmens' exclamations are to be taken as an attempt to describe her murderer, then this ring must have been on the hand which was raised against her, and how could that have been if the hand was that of Mr. Orcutt? Unimportant as it seemed, the discovery of this ring on the floor, taken with the exclamations of the widow, make a break in the chain that is fatal to Mr. Gryce's theory. Yet does it? The consternation displayed by Mr. Orcutt when Imogene claimed the ring and put it on her finger may have had a deeper significance than was thought at the time. Was there any way in which he could have come into possession of it before she did? and could it have been that he had had it on his hand when he struck the blow? Mr. Gryce bent all his energies to inquire.
First, where was the ring when the lovers parted in the wood the day before the murder? Evidently in Mr. Mansell's coat-pocket. Imogene had put it there, and Imogene had left it there. But Mansell did not know it was there, so took no pains to look after its safety. It accordingly slipped out; but when? Not while he slept, or it would have been found in the hut. Not while he took the path to his aunt's house, or it would have been found in the lane, or, at best, on the dining-room door-step. When, then? Mr. Gryce could think of but one instant, and that was when the young man threw his coat from one arm to the other at the corner of the house toward the street. If it rolled out then it would have been under an impetus, and, as the coat was flung from the right arm to the left, the ring would have flown in the direction of the gate and fallen, perhaps, directly on the walk in front of the house. If it had, its presence in the dining-room seemed to show it had been carried there by Mr. Orcutt, since he was the next person who went into the house.
But did it fall there? Mr. Gryce took the only available means to find out.
Sending for Horace Byrd, he said to him:
"You were on the court-house steps when Mr. Orcutt left and crossed over to the widow's house?"
"Yes, sir."
"Were you watching him? Could you describe his manner as he entered the house; how he opened the gate; or whether he stopped to look about him before going in?"
"No, sir," returned Byrd; "my eyes may have been on him, but I don't remember any thing especial that he did."
Somewhat disappointed, Mr. Gryce went to the District Attorney and put to him the same question. The answer he received from him was different. With a gloomy contraction of his brow, Mr. Ferris said:
"Yes, I remember his look and appearance very well. He stepped briskly, as he always did, and carried his head – Wait!" he suddenly exclaimed, giving the detective a look in which excitement and decision were strangely blended. "You think Mr. Orcutt committed this crime; that he left us standing on the court-house steps and crossed the street to Mrs. Clemmens' house with the deliberate intention of killing her, and leaving the burden of his guilt to be shouldered by the tramp. Now, you have called up a memory to me that convinces me this could not have been. Had he had any such infernal design in his breast he would not have been likely to have stopped as he did to pick up something which he saw lying on the walk in front of Mrs. Clemmens' house."
"And did Mr. Orcutt do that?" inquired Mr. Gryce, with admirable self-control.
"Yes, I remember it now distinctly. It was just as he entered the gate. A man meditating a murder of this sort would not be likely to notice a pin lying in his path, much less pause to pick it up."
"How if it were a diamond ring?"
"A diamond ring?"
"Mr. Ferris," said the detective, gravely, "you have just supplied a very important link in the chain of evidence against Mr. Orcutt. The question is, how could the diamond ring which Miss Dare is believed to have dropped into Mr. Mansell's coat-pocket have been carried into Mrs. Clemmens' house without the agency of either herself or Mr. Mansell? I think you have just shown." And the able detective, in a few brief sentences, explained the situation to Mr. Ferris, together with the circumstances of Mansell's flight, as gleaned by him in his conversation with the prisoner.