"Perhaps; she felt the death of her husband very much – indeed, has never been quite the same since she lost him."
"And when was that, if you please?"
"Full fifteen years ago, sir; just before she came to this town."
"Did you know Mr. Clemmens?"
"No, sir; none of us knew him. They were married in some small village out West, where he died – well, I think she wrote – a month if not less after their marriage. She was inconsolable for a time, and, though she consented to come East, refused to take up her abode with any of her relatives, and so settled in this place, where she has remained ever since."
The manner of the coroner suddenly changed to one of great impressiveness.
"Miss Firman," he now asked, "did it ever strike you that the hermit life she led was due to any fear or apprehension which she may have secretly entertained?"
"Sir?"
The question was peculiar and no one wondered at the start which the good woman gave. But what mainly struck Mr. Byrd, and gave to the moment a seeming importance, was the fact that she was not alone in her surprise or even her expression of it; that the indefinable stir he had before observed had again taken place in the crowd before him, and that this time there was no doubt about its having been occasioned by the movements of a person whose elbow he could just perceive projecting beyond the door-way that led into the hall.
But there was no time for speculation as to whom this person might be. The coroner's questions were every moment growing more rapid, and Miss Firman's answers more interesting.
"I asked," here the coroner was heard to say, "whether, in your intercourse with Mrs. Clemmens, you have ever had reason to suppose she was the victim of any secret or personal apprehension that might have caused her to seclude herself as she did? Or let me put it in another way. Can you tell me whether you know of any other person besides this nephew of hers who is likely to be benefited by Mrs. Clemmens' death?"
"Oh, sir," was the hasty and somewhat excited reply, "you mean young Mr. Hildreth!"
The way in which this was said, together with the slight flush of satisfaction or surprise which rose to the coroner's brow, naturally awoke the slumbering excitement of the crowd and made a small sensation. A low murmur ran through the rooms, amid which Mr. Byrd thought he heard a suppressed but bitter exclamation. He could not be sure of it, however, and had just made up his mind that his ears had deceived him, when his attention was attracted by a shifting in the position of the sturdy, thick-set man who had been leaning against the opposite wall, but who now crossed and took his stand beside the jamb, on the other side of which sat the unknown individual toward whom so many inquiring glances had hitherto been directed.
The quietness with which this change was made, and the slight, almost imperceptible, alteration in the manner of the person making it, brought a sudden enlightenment to Mr. Byrd, and he at once made up his mind that this dull, abstracted-looking nonentity leaning with such apparent unconcern against the wall, was the new detective who had been sent up that morning from New York. His curiosity in regard to the identity of the individual round the corner was not lessened by this.
Meantime the coroner had answered the hasty exclamation of the witness, by disclaiming the existence of any special meaning of his own, and had furthermore pressed the question as to who this Mr. Hildreth was.
She immediately answered: "A gentleman of Toledo, sir; a young man who could only come into his property by the death of Mrs. Clemmens."
"How? You have not spoken of any such person as connected with her."
"No," was her steady response; "nor was he so connected by any tie of family or friendship. Indeed, I do not know as they were ever acquainted, or, as for that matter, ever saw each other's faces. The fact to which I allude was simply the result of a will, sir, made by Mr. Hildreth's grandfather."
"A will? Explain yourself. I do not understand."
"Well, sir, I do not know much about the law, and may make a dozen mistakes in telling you what you wish to know; but what I understand about the matter is this: Mr. Hildreth, the grandfather of the gentleman of whom I have just spoken, having a large property, which he wanted to leave in bulk to his grandchildren, – their father being a very dissipated and reckless man, – made his will in such a way as to prevent its distribution among his heirs till after the death of two persons whom he mentioned by name. Of these two persons one was the son of his head clerk, a young boy, who sickened and died shortly after Mr. Hildreth himself, and the other my cousin, the poor murdered woman, who was then a little girl visiting the family. I do not know how she came to be chosen by him for this purpose, unless it was that she was particularly round and ruddy as a child, and looked as if she might live for many years."
"And the Hildreths? What of them during these years?"
"Well, I cannot exactly say, as I never had any acquaintance with them myself. But I know that the father, whose dissipated habits were the cause of this peculiar will tying up the property, died some little time ago; also one or two of his children, but beyond that I know little, except that the remaining heirs are a young gentleman and one or two young girls, all of the worldliest and most fashionable description."
The coroner, who had followed all this with the greatest interest, now asked if she knew the first name of the young gentleman.
"Yes," said she, "I do. It is Gouverneur."
The coroner gave a satisfied nod, and remarked casually, "It is not a common name," and then, leaning forward, selected a paper from among several that lay on the table before him. "Miss Firman," he inquired, retaining this paper in his hand, "do you know when it was that Mrs. Clemmens first became acquainted with the fact of her name having been made use of in the elder Mr. Hildreth's will?"
"Oh, years ago; when she first came of age, I believe."
"Was it an occasion of regret to her? Did she ever express herself as sorry for the position in which she stood toward this family?"
"Yes, sir; she did."
The coroner's face assumed a yet greater gravity, and his manner became more and more impressive.
"Can you go a step farther and say that she ever acknowledged herself to have cherished apprehensions of her personal safety, during these years of weary waiting on the part of the naturally impatient heirs?"
A distressed look crossed the amiable spinster's face, and she looked around at the jury with an expression almost deprecatory in its nature.
"I scarcely know what answer to give," she hesitatingly declared. "It is a good deal to say that she was apprehensive; but I cannot help remembering that she once told me her peace of mind had left her since she knew there were persons in the world to whom her death would be a matter of rejoicing. 'It makes me feel as if I were keeping people out of their rights,' she remarked at the same time. 'And, though it is not my fault, I should not be surprised if some day I had to suffer for it.'"
"Was there ever any communication made to Mrs. Clemmens by persons cognizant of the relation in which she stood to these Hildreths? – or any facts or gossip detailed to her concerning them, that would seem to give color to her fears and supply her with any actual grounds for her apprehensions?"
"No; only such tales as came to her of their expensive ways of living and somewhat headlong rush into all fashionable freaks and follies."
"And Gouverneur Hildreth? Any special gossip in regard to him?"
"No!"
There are some noes that are equivalent to affirmations. This was one of them. Naturally the coroner pressed the question.
"I must request you to think again," he persisted. Then, with a change of voice: "Are you sure you have never heard any thing specially derogatory to this young man, or that Mrs. Clemmens had not?"
"I have friends in Toledo who speak of him as the fastest man about town, if that could be called derogatory. As for Mrs. Clemmens, she may have heard as much, and she may have heard more, I cannot say. I know she always frowned when his father's name was mentioned."
"Miss Firman," proceeded the coroner, "in the long years in which you have been more or less separated from Mrs. Clemmens, you have, doubtless, kept up a continued if not frequent correspondence with her?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you think, from the commencement and general tone of this letter, which I found lying half finished on her desk, that it was written and intended for yourself?"
Taking the letter from his outstretched hand, she fumbled nervously for her glasses, put them on, and then glanced hurriedly at the sheet, saying as she did so:
"There can be no doubt of it. She had no other friend whom she would have been likely to address as 'Dear Emily.'"
"Gentlemen of the Jury, you have a right to hear the words written by the deceased but a few hours, if not a few minutes, previous to the brutal assault that has led to the present inquiry. Miss Firman, as the letter was intended for yourself, will you be kind enough to read it aloud, after which you will hand it over to the jury."
With a gloomy shake of her head, and a certain trembling in her voice, that was due, perhaps, as much to the sadness of her task as to any foreboding of the real nature of the words she had to read, she proceeded to comply:
"Dear Emily: – I don't know why I sit down to write to you to-day. I have plenty to do, and morning is no time for indulging in sentimentalities. But I feel strangely lonely and strangely anxious. Nothing goes just to my mind, and somehow the many causes for secret fear which I have always had, assume an undue prominence in my mind. It is always so when I am not quite well. In vain I reason with myself, saying that respectable people do not lightly enter into crime. But there are so many to whom my death would be more than welcome, that I constantly see myself in the act of being —
"Good heavens!" ejaculated the spinster, dropping the paper from her hand and looking dismally around upon the assembled faces of the now deeply interested spectators.
Seeing her dismay, a man who stood at the right of the coroner, and who seemed to be an officer of the law, quietly advanced, and picking up the paper she had let fall, handed it to the jury. The coroner meanwhile recalled her attention to herself.
"Miss Firman," said he, "allow me to put to you one final question which, though it might not be called a strictly legal one, is surely justified by the gravity of the situation. If Mrs. Clemmens had finished this letter, and you in due course had received it, what conclusion would you have drawn from the words you have just read?"
"I could have drawn but one, sir. I should have considered that the solitary life led by my cousin was telling upon her mind."
"But these terrors of which she speaks? To what and whom would you have attributed them?"
"I don't like to say it, and I don't know as I am justified in saying it, but it would have been impossible for me, under the circumstances, to have thought of any other source for them than the one we have already mentioned."
"And that is?" inexorably pursued the coroner.
"Mr. Gouverneur Hildreth."
VIII.
THE THICK-SET MAN
Springs to catch woodcocks. – Hamlet.
IN the pause that followed, Miss Firman stepped aside, and Mr. Byrd, finding his attention released, stole a glance toward the hall-way and its nearly concealed occupant. He found the elbow in agitated movement, and, as he looked at it, saw it disappear and a hand project into view, groping for the handkerchief which was, doubtless, hidden in the hat which he now perceived standing on the floor in the corner of the door-way. He looked at that hand well. It was large, white, and elegantly formed, and wore a seal ring of conspicuous size upon the little finger. He had scarcely noticed this ring, and wondered if others had seen it too, when the hand plunged into the hat, and drawing out the kerchief, vanished with it behind the jamb that had already hidden so much from his view.
"A fine gentleman's hand, and a fine gentleman's ring," was Mr. Byrd's mental comment; and he was about to glance aside, when, to his great astonishment, he saw the hand appear once more with the handkerchief in it, but without the ring which a moment since had made it such a conspicuous mark for his eyes.
"Our fine gentleman is becoming frightened," he thought, watching the hand until it dropped the handkerchief back into the hat. "One does not take off a ring in a company like this without a good reason." And he threw a quick glance at the man he considered his rival in the detective business.
But that worthy was busily engaged in stroking his chin in a feeling way, strongly suggestive of a Fledgerby-like interest in his absent whisker; and well versed as was Mr. Byrd in the ways of his fellow-detectives, he found it impossible to tell whether the significant action he had just remarked had escaped the attention of this man or not. Confused if not confounded, he turned back to the coroner, in a maze of new sensations, among which a growing hope that his own former suspicions had been of a wholly presumptuous character, rose predominant.
He found that functionary preparing to make a remark.
"Gentlemen," said he; "you have listened to the testimony of Mrs. Clemmens' most confidential friend, and heard such explanations as she had to give, of the special fears which Mrs. Clemmens acknowledges herself to have entertained in regard to her personal safety. Now, while duly impressing upon you the necessity of not laying too much stress upon the secret apprehensions of a woman living a life of loneliness and seclusion, I still consider it my duty to lay before you another bit of the widow's writing, in which – "
Here he was interrupted by the appearance at his side of a man with a telegram in his hand. In the pause which followed his reading of the same, Mr. Byrd, with that sudden impulse of interference which comes upon us all at certain junctures, tore out a leaf from his memorandum-book, and wrote upon it some half dozen or so words indicative of the advisability of examining the proprietor of the Eastern Hotel as to the name and quality of the several guests entertained by him on the day of the murder; and having signed this communication with his initial letters H. B., looked about for a messenger to carry it to the coroner. He found one in the person of a small boy, who was pressing with all his might against his back, and having despatched him with the note, regained his old position at the window, and proceeded to watch, with a growing interest in the drama before him, the result of his interference upon the coroner.
He had not long to wait. The boy had no sooner shown himself at the door with the note, than Dr. Tredwell laid down the telegram he was perusing and took this new communication. With a slight smile Mr. Byrd was not slow in attributing to its true source, he read the note through, then turned to the officer at his side and gave him some command that sent him from the room. He then took up the slip he was on the point of presenting to the jury at the time he was first interrupted, and continuing his remarks in reference to it, said quietly:
"Gentlemen, this paper which I here pass over to you, was found by me in the recess of Mrs. Clemmens' desk at the time I examined it for the address of Miss Firman. It was in an envelope that had never been sealed, and was, if I may use the expression, tucked away under a pile of old receipts. The writing is similar to that used in the letter you have just read, and the signature attached to it is 'Mary Ann Clemmens.' Will Mr. Black of the jury read aloud the words he will there find written?"
Mr. Black, in whose hand the paper then rested, looked up with a flush, and slowly, if not painfully, complied:
"I desire" – such was the language of the writing before him – "that in case of any sudden or violent death on my part, the authorities should inquire into the possible culpability of a gentleman living in Toledo, Ohio, known by the name of Gouverneur Hildreth. He is a man of no principle, and my distinct conviction is, that if such a death should occur to me, it will be entirely due to his efforts to gain possession of property which cannot be at his full disposal until my death.
"Mary Ann Clemmens, Sibley, N. Y."
"A serious charge!" quoth a juryman, breaking the universal silence occasioned by this communication from the dead.
"I should think so," echoed the burly man in front of Mr. Byrd.
But Mr. Byrd himself and the quiet man who leaned so stiffly and abstractedly against the wall, said nothing. Perhaps they found themselves sufficiently engaged in watching that half-seen elbow, which since the reading of this last slip of paper had ceased all movement and remained as stationary as though it had been paralyzed.
"A charge which, as yet, is nothing but a charge," observed the coroner. "But evidence is not wanting," he went on, "that Mr. Hildreth is not at home at this present time, but is somewhere in this region, as will be seen by the following telegram from the superintendent of the Toledo police." And he held up to view, not the telegram he had just received, but another which he had taken from among the papers on the table before him:
"Party mentioned not in Toledo. Left for the East on midnight train of Wednesday the 27th inst. When last heard from was in Albany. He has been living fast, and is well known to be in pecuniary difficulties, necessitating a large and immediate amount of money. Further particulars by letter.
"That, gentlemen, I received last night. To-day," he continued, taking up the telegram that had just come in, "the following arrives:
"Fresh advices. Man you are in search of talked of suicide at his club the other night. Seemed in a desperate way, and said that if something did not soon happen he should be a lost man. Horse-flesh and unfortunate speculations have ruined him. They say it will take all he will ultimately receive to pay his debts.
"And below:
"Suspected that he has been in your town."
A crisis was approaching round the corner. This, to the skilled eyes of Mr. Byrd, was no longer doubtful. Even if he had not observed the wondering glances cast in that direction by persons who could see the owner of that now immovable elbow, he would have been assured that all was not right, by the alert expression which had now taken the place of the stolid and indifferent look which had hitherto characterized the face of the man he believed to be a detective.
A panther about to spring could not have looked more threatening, and the wonder was, that there were no more to observe this exciting by-play. Yet the panther did not spring, and the inquiry went on.
"The witness I now propose to call," announced the coroner, after a somewhat trying delay, "is the proprietor of the Eastern Hotel. Ah, here he is. Mr. Symonds, have you brought your register for the past week?"
"Yes, sir," answered the new-comer, with a good deal of flurry in his manner and an embarrassed look about him, which convinced Mr. Byrd that the words in regard to whose origin he had been so doubtful that morning, had been real words and no dream.
"Very well, then, submit it, if you please, to the jury, and tell us in the meantime whether you have entertained at your house this week any guest who professed to come from Toledo?"
"I don't know. I don't remember any such," began the witness, in a stammering sort of way. "We have always a great many men from the West stopping at our house, but I don't recollect any special one who registered himself as coming from Toledo."
"You, however, always expect your guests to put their names in your book?"
"Yes, sir."
There was something in the troubled look of the man which aroused the suspicion of the coroner, and he was about to address him with another question when one of the jury, who was looking over the register, spoke up and asked:
"Who is this Clement Smith who writes himself down here as coming from Toledo?"
"Smith? – Smith?" repeated Symonds, going up to the juryman and looking over his shoulder at the book. "Oh, yes, the gentleman who came yesterday. He – "
But at this moment a slight disturbance occurring in the other room, the witness paused and looked about him with that same embarrassed look before noted. "He is at the hotel now," he added, with an attempt at ease, transparent as it was futile.
The disturbance to which I have alluded was of a peculiar kind. It was occasioned by the thick-set man making the spring which, for some minutes, he had evidently been meditating. It was not a tragic leap, however, but a decidedly comic one, and had for its end and aim the recovery of a handkerchief which he had taken from his pocket at the moment when the witness uttered the name of Smith, and, by a useless flourish in opening it, flirted from his hand to the floor. At least, so the amused throng interpreted the sudden dive which he made, and the heedless haste that caused him to trip over the gentleman's hat that stood on the floor, causing it to fall and another handkerchief to tumble out. But Mr. Byrd, who had a detective's insight into the whole matter, saw something more than appeared in the profuse apologies which the thick-set man made, and the hurried manner in which he gathered up the handkerchiefs and stood looking at them before returning one to his pocket and the other to its place in the gentleman's hat. Nor was Mr. Byrd at all astonished to observe that the stand which his fellow-detective took, upon resettling himself, was much nearer the unseen gentleman than before, or that in replacing the hat, he had taken pains to put it so far to one side that the gentleman would be obliged to rise and come around the corner in order to obtain it. The drift of the questions propounded to the witness at this moment opened his eyes too clearly for him to fail any longer to understand the situation.
"Now at the hotel?" the coroner was repeating. "And came yesterday? Why, then, did you look so embarrassed when I mentioned his name?"
"Oh – well – ah," stammered the man, "because he was there once before, though his name is not registered but once in the book."
"He was? And on what day?"
"On Tuesday," asserted the man, with the sudden decision of one who sees it is useless to attempt to keep silence.
"The day of the murder?"
"Yes, sir."
"And why is his name not on the book at that time if he came to your house and put up?"
"Because he did not put up; he merely called in, as it were, and did not take a meal or hire a room."
"How did you know, then, that he was there? Did you see him or talk to him?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what did you say?"
"He asked me for directions to a certain house, and I gave them."
"Whose house?"
"The Widow Clemmens', sir."
Ah, light at last! The long-sought-for witness had been found! Coroner and jury brightened visibly, while the assembled crowd gave vent to a deep murmur, that must have sounded like a knell of doom – in one pair of ears, at least.
"He asked you for directions to the house of Widow Clemmens. At what time was this?"
"At about half-past eleven in the morning."
The very hour!
"And did he leave then?"
"Yes, sir; after taking a glass of brandy."
"And did you not see him again?"
"Not till yesterday, sir."
"Ah, and at what time did you see him yesterday?"
"At bedtime, sir. He came with other arrivals on the five o'clock train; but I was away all the afternoon and did not see him till I went into the bar-room in the evening."
"Well, and what passed between you then?"
"Not much, sir. I asked if he was going to stay with us, and when he said 'Yes,' I inquired if he had registered his name. He replied 'No.' At which I pointed to the book, and he wrote his name down and then went up-stairs with me to his room."
"And is that all? Did you say nothing beyond what you have mentioned? ask him no questions or make no allusions to the murder?"
"Well, sir, I did make some attempt that way, for I was curious to know what took him to the Widow Clemmens' house, but he snubbed me so quickly, I concluded to hold my tongue and not trouble myself any further about the matter."
"And do you mean to say you haven't told any one that an unknown man had been at your house on the morning of the murder inquiring after the widow?"
"Yes, sir. I am a poor man, and believe in keeping out of all sort of messes. Policy demands that much of me, gentlemen."
The look he received from the coroner may have convinced him that policy can be carried too far.
"And now," said Dr. Tredwell, "what sort of a man is this Clement Smith?"
"He is a gentleman, sir, and not at all the sort of person with whom you would be likely to connect any unpleasant suspicion."
The coroner surveyed the hotel-keeper somewhat sternly.
"We are not talking about suspicions!" he cried; then, in a different tone, repeated: "This gentleman, you say, is still at your house?"
"Yes, sir, or was at breakfast-time. I have not seen him since."
"We will have to call Mr. Smith as a witness," declared the coroner, turning to the officer at his side. "Go and see if you cannot bring him as soon as you did Mr. Symonds."
But here a voice spoke up full and loud from the other room.
"It is not necessary, sir. A witness you will consider more desirable than he is in the building." And the thick-set man showed himself for an instant to the coroner, then walking back, deliberately laid his hand on the elbow which for so long a time had been the centre of Mr. Byrd's wondering conjectures.
In an instant the fine, gentlemanly figure of the stranger, whom he had seen the night before in the bar-room, appeared with a bound from beyond the jamb, and pausing excitedly before the man, now fully discovered to all around as a detective, asked him, in shaking tones of suppressed terror or rage, what it was he meant.
"I will tell you," was the ready assurance, "if you will step out here in view of the coroner and jury."
With a glance that for some reason disturbed Mr. Byrd in his newly acquired complacency, the gentleman stalked hurriedly forward and took his stand in the door-way leading into the room occupied by the persons mentioned.
"Now," he cried, "what have you to say?"
But the detective, who had advanced behind him, still refrained from replying, though he gave a quick look at the coroner, which led that functionary to glance at the hotel-keeper and instantly ask:
"You know this gentleman?"
"It is Mr. Clement Smith."
A flush so violent and profuse, that even Mr. Byrd could see it from his stand outside the window, inundated for an instant the face and neck of the gentleman, but was followed by no words, though the detective at his side waited for an instant before saying:
"I think you are mistaken; I should call him now Mr. Gouverneur Hildreth!"
With a start and a face grown as suddenly white as it had but an instant before been red, the gentleman turned and surveyed the detective from head to foot, saying, in a tone of mock politeness:
"And why, if you please? I have never been introduced to you that I remember."
"No," rejoined the detective, taking from his pocket the handkerchief which he had previously put there, and presenting it to the other with a bow, "but I have read the monogram upon your handkerchief and it happens to be – "
"Enough!" interrupted the other, in a stern if not disdainful voice. "I see I have been the victim of espionage." And stepping into the other room, he walked haughtily up to the coroner and exclaimed: "I am Gouverneur Hildreth, and I come from Toledo. Now, what is it you have to say to me?"