Chapter 6

X. A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

At an early hour the next morning, Sweetwater stood before the coroner’s desk, urging a plea he feared to hear refused. He wished to be present at the interview soon to be held with Mr. Brotherson, and he had no good reason to advance why such a privilege should be allotted him.

“It’s not curiosity,” said he. “There’s a question I hope to see settled. I can’t communicate it--you would laugh at me; but it’s an important one, a very important one, and I beg that you will let me sit in one of the corners and hear what he says. I won’t bother and I’ll be very still, so still that he’ll hardly notice me. Do grant me this favour, sir.”

The coroner, who had had some little experience with this man, surveyed him with a smile less forbidding than the poor fellow expected.

“You seem to lay great store by it,” said he; “if you want to sort those papers over there, you may.”

“Thank you. I don’t understand the job, but I promise you not to increase the confusion. If I do; if I rattle the leaves too loudly, it will mean, ‘Press him further on this exact point,’ but I doubt if I rattle them, sir. No such luck.”

The last three words were uttered sotto voce, but the coroner heard him, and followed his ungainly figure with a glance of some curiosity, as he settled himself at the desk on the other side of the room.

“Is the man--” he began, but at this moment the man entered, and Dr. Heath forgot the young detective, in his interest in the new arrival.

Neither dressed with the elegance known to the habitues of the Clermont, nor yet in the workman’s outfit in which he had thought best to appear before the Associated Brotherhood, the newcomer advanced, with an aspect of open respect which could not fail to make a favourable impression upon the critical eye of the official awaiting him. So favourable, indeed, was this impression that that gentleman half rose, infusing a little more consideration into his greeting than he was accustomed to show to his prospective witnesses. Such a fearless eye he had seldom encountered, nor was it often his pleasure to confront so conspicuous a specimen of physical and intellectual manhood.

“Mr. Brotherson, I believe,” said he, as he motioned his visitor to sit.

“That is my name, sir.”

“Orlando Brotherson?”

“The same, sir.”

“I’m glad we have made no mistake,” smiled the doctor. “Mr. Brotherson, I have sent for you under the supposition that you were a friend of the unhappy lady lately dead at the Hotel Clermont.”

“Miss Challoner?”

“Certainly; Miss Challoner.”

“I knew the lady. But--” here the speaker’s eye took on a look as questioning as that of his interlocutor--“but in a way so devoid of all publicity that I cannot but feel surprised that the fact should be known.”

At this, the listening Sweetwater hoped that Dr. Heath would ignore the suggestion thus conveyed and decline the explanation it apparently demanded. But the impression made by the gentleman’s good looks had been too strong for this coroner’s proverbial caution, and, handing over the slip of a note which had been found among Miss Challoner’s effects by her father, he quietly asked:

“Do you recognise the signature?”

“Yes, it is mine.”

“Then you acknowledge yourself the author of these lines?”

“Most certainly. Have I not said that this is my signature?”

“Do you remember the words of this note, Mr. Brotherson?”

“Hardly. I recollect its tenor, but not the exact words.”

“Read them.”

“Excuse me, I had rather not. I am aware that they were bitter and should be the cause of great regret. I was angry when I wrote them.”

“That is evident. But the cause of your anger is not so clear, Mr. Brotherson. Miss Challoner was a woman of lofty character, or such was the universal opinion of her friends. What could she have done to a gentleman like yourself to draw forth such a tirade?”

“You ask that?”

“I am obliged to. There is mystery surrounding her death;--the kind of mystery which demands perfect frankness on the part of all who were near her on that evening, or whose relations to her were in any way peculiar. You acknowledge that your friendship was of such a guarded nature that it surprised you greatly to hear it recognised. Yet you could write her a letter of this nature. Why?”

“Because--” the word came glibly; but the next one was long in following. “Because,” he repeated, letting the fire of some strong feeling disturb for a moment his dignified reserve, “I offered myself to Miss Challoner, and she dismissed me with great disdain.”

“Ah! and so you thought a threat was due her?”

“A threat?”

“These words contain a threat, do they not?”

“They may. I was hardly master of myself at the time. I may have expressed myself in an unfortunate manner.”

“Read the words, Mr. Brotherson. I really must insist that you do so.”

There was no hesitancy now. Rising, he leaned over the table and read the few words the other had spread out for his perusal. Then he slowly rose to his full height, as he answered, with some slight display of compunction:

“I remember it perfectly now. It is not a letter to be proud of. I hope--”

“Pray finish, Mr. Brotherson.”

“That you are not seeking to establish a connection between this letter and her violent death?”

“Letters of this sort are often very mischievous, Mr. Brotherson. The harshness with which this is written might easily rouse emotions of a most unhappy nature in the breast of a woman as sensitive as Miss Challoner.”

“Pardon me, Dr. Heath; I cannot flatter myself so far. You overrate my influence with the lady you name.”

“You believe, then, that she was sincere in her rejection of your addresses?”

A start, too slight to be noted by any one but the watchful Sweetwater, showed that this question had gone home. But the self-poise and mental control of this man were perfect, and in an instant he was facing the coroner again, with a dignity which gave no clew to the disturbance into which his thoughts had just been thrown. Nor was this disturbance apparent in his tones when he made his reply:

“I have never allowed myself to think otherwise. I have seen no reason why I should. The suggestion you would convey by such a question is hardly welcome, now. I pray you to be careful in your judgment of such a woman’s impulses. They often spring from sources not to be sounded even by her dearest friends.”

Just; but how cold! Dr. Heath, eyeing him with admiration rather than sympathy, hesitated how to proceed; while Sweetwater, peering up from his papers, sought in vain for some evidence of the bereaved lover in the impressive but wholly dispassionate figure of him who had just spoken. Had pride got the better of his heart? or had that organ always been subordinate to the will in this man of instincts so varying, that at one time he impressed you simply as a typical gentleman of leisure; at another, as no more than a fiery agitator with powers absorbed by, if not limited to the one cause he advocated; and again--and this seemed the most contradictory of all--just the ardent inventor, living in a tenement, with Science for his goddess and work always under his hand? As the young detective weighed these possibilities and marvelled over the contradictions they offered, he forgot the papers now lying quiet under his hand. He was too interested to remember his own part--something which could not often be said of Sweetwater.

Meantime, the coroner had collected his thoughts. With an apology for the extremely personal nature of his inquiry, he asked Mr. Brotherson if he would object to giving him some further details of his acquaintanceship with Miss Challoner; where he first met her and under what circumstances their friendship had developed.

“Not at all,” was the ready reply. “I have nothing to conceal in the matter. I only wish that her father were present that he might listen to the recital of my acquaintanceship with his daughter. He might possibly understand her better and regard with more leniency the presumption into which I was led by my ignorance of the pride inherent in great families.”

“Your wish can very easily be gratified,” returned the official, pressing an electric button on his desk.

“Mr. Challoner is in the adjoining room.” Then, as the door communicating with the room he had mentioned swung ajar and stood so, Dr. Heath added, without apparent consciousness of the dramatic character of this episode, “You will not need to raise your voice beyond its natural pitch. He can hear perfectly from where he sits.”

“Thank you. I am glad to speak in his presence,” came in undisturbed self-possession from this not easily surprised witness. “I shall relate the facts exactly as they occurred, adding nothing and concealing nothing. If I mistook my position, or Miss Challoner’s position, it is not for me to apologise. I never hid my business from her, nor the moderate extent of my fortune. If she knew me at all, she knew me for what I am; a man of the people who glories in work and who has risen by it to a position somewhat unique in this city. I feel no lack of equality even with such a woman as Miss Challoner.”

A most unnecessary preamble, no doubt, and of doubtful efficacy in smoothing his way to a correct understanding with the deeply bereaved father. But he looked so handsome as he thus asserted himself and made so much of his inches and the noble poise of his head--though cold of eye and always cold of manner--that those who saw, as well as heard him, forgave this display of egotism in consideration of its honesty and the dignity it imparted to his person.

“I first met Miss Challoner in the Berkshires,” he began, after a moment of quiet listening for any possible sound from the other room. “I had been on the tramp, and had stopped at one of the great hotels for a seven days’ rest. I will acknowledge that I chose this spot at the instigation of a relative who knew my tastes and how perfectly they might be gratified there. That I should mingle with the guests may not have been in his thought, any more than it was in mine at the beginning of my stay. The panorama of beauty spread out before me on every side was sufficient in itself for my enjoyment, and might have continued so to the end if my attention had not been very forcibly drawn on one memorable morning to a young lady--Miss Challoner--by the very earnest look she gave me as I was crossing the office from one verandah to another. I must insist on this look, even if it shock the delicacy of my listeners, for without the interest it awakened in me, I might not have noticed the blush with which she turned aside to join her friends on the verandah. It was an overwhelming blush which could not have sprung from any slight embarrassment, and, though I hate the pretensions of those egotists who see in a woman’s smile more than it by right conveys, I could not help being moved by this display of feeling in one so gifted with every grace and attribute of the perfect woman. With less caution than I usually display, I approached the desk where she had been standing and, meeting the eyes of the clerk, asked the young lady’s name. He gave it, and waited for me to express the surprise he expected it to evoke. But I felt none and showed none. Other feelings had seized me. I had heard of this gracious woman from many sources, in my life among the suffering masses of New York, and now that I had seen her and found her to be not only my ideal of personal loveliness but seemingly approachable and not uninterested in myself, I allowed my fancy to soar and my heart to become touched. A fact which the clerk now confided to me naturally deepened the impression. Miss Challoner had seen my name in the guest-book and asked to have me pointed out to her. Perhaps she had heard my name spoken in the same quarter where I had heard hers. We have never exchanged confidences on the subject, and I cannot say. I can only give you my reason for the interest I felt in Miss Challoner and why I forgot, in the glamour of this episode, the aims and purposes of a not unambitious life and the distance which the world and the so-called aristocratic class put between a woman of her wealth and standing and a simple worker like myself.

“I must be pardoned. She had smiled upon me once, and she smiled again. Days before we were formally presented, I caught her softened look turned my way, as we passed each other in hall or corridor. We were friends, or so it appeared to me, before ever a word passed between us, and when fortune favoured us and we were duly introduced, our minds met in a strange sympathy which made this one interview a memorable one to me. Unhappily, as I then considered it, this was my last day at the hotel, and our conversation, interrupted frequently by passing acquaintances, was never resumed. I exchanged a few words with her by way of good-bye but nothing more. I came to New York, and she remained in Lenox. A month after and she too came to New York.”

“This good-bye--do you remember it? The exact language, I mean?”

“I do; it made a great impression on me. ‘I shall hope for our further acquaintance,’ she said. ‘We have one very strong interest in common.’ And if ever a human face spoke eloquently, it was hers at that moment. The interest, as I understood it, was our mutual sympathy for our toiling, half-starved, down-trodden brothers and sisters in the lower streets of this city; but the eloquence--that I probably mistook. I thought it sprang from personal interest, and it gave me courage to pursue the intention which had taken the place of every other feeling and ambition by which I had hitherto been moved. Here was a woman in a thousand; one who could make a man of me indeed. If she could ignore the social gulf between us, I felt free to take the leap. Cowardice had never been a fault of mine. But I was no fool even then. I realised that I must first let her see the manner of man I was and what life meant to me and must mean to her if the union I contemplated should become an actual fact. I wrote letters to her, but I did not give her my address or even request a reply. I was not ready for any word from her. I am not like other men and I could wait. And I did, for weeks, then I suddenly appeared at her hotel.”

The change of voice--the bitterness which he infused into this final sentence made every one look up. Hitherto he had spoken calmly, almost monotonously, as if no present heart-beat responded to this tale of vanished love; but with the words, “Then I suddenly appeared at her hotel,” he showed himself human again, and betrayed a passion which though curbed was of the fiery quality, befitting his extraordinary attributes of mind and person.

“This was when?” put in Dr. Heath, anxious to bridge the pause which must have been very painful to the listening father.

“The week after Thanksgiving. I did not see her the first day, and only casually the second. But she knew I was in the building, and when I came upon her one evening seated at the very desk in the mezzanine which we all have such bitter cause to remember, I could not forbear expressing myself in a way she could not misunderstand. The result was of a kind to drive a man like myself to an extremity of self-condemnation and rage. She rose up as if insulted, and flung me one sentence and one sentence only before she hailed the elevator and left my presence. A cur could not have been dismissed with less ceremony.”

“That is not like my daughter. What was the sentence you allude to? Let me hear the very words.” Mr. Challoner had come forward and now stood awaiting his reply, a dignified but pathetic figure, which all must view with respect.

“I hate the memory of them, but since you demand it, I will repeat them just as they fell from her lips,” was Mr. Brotherson’s bitter retort. “She said, ‘You of all men should recognise the unseemliness of these proposals. Had your letters given me any hint of the feelings you have just expressed, you would never have had this opportunity of approaching me.’ That was all; but her indignation was scathing. Ladies who have supped exclusively off silver, show a fine scorn for the common ware of the cottager.”

Mr. Challoner bowed. “There is some mistake,” said he. “My daughter might be averse to your addresses, but she would never show indignation to any aspirant for her hand, simply on account of extraneous conditions. She had wide sympathies--wider than I often approved. Something in your conduct or the confidence you showed shocked her nicer sense; not your lack of the luxuries she often misprised. This much I feel obliged to say, out of justice to her character, which was uniformly considerate.”

“You have seen her with men of her own world and yours,” was the harsh response. “She had another side to her nature for the man of a different sphere. And it killed my love--that you can see--and led to my sending her the injudicious letter with which you have confronted me. The hurt bull utters one bellow before he dies. I bellowed, and bellowed loudly, but I did not die. I’m my own man still and mean to remain so.”

The assertive boldness--some would call it bravado--with which he thus finished the story of his relations with the dead heiress, seemed to be more than Mr. Challoner could stand. With a look of extreme pain and perplexity he vanished from the doorway, and it fell to Dr. Heath to inquire:

“Is this letter--a letter of threat you will remember--the only communication which passed between you and Miss Challoner after this unfortunate passage of arms at the Clermont?”

“Yes. I had no wish to address her again. I had exhausted in this one outburst whatever humiliation I felt.”

“And she? Did she give no sign, make you no answer?”

“None whatever.” Then, as if he found it impossible to hide this hurt to his pride, “She did not even seem to consider me worthy the honour of an added rebuke. Such arrogance is, no doubt, commendable in a Challoner.”

This time his bitterness did not pass unrebuked by the coroner:

“Remember the grey hairs of the only Challoner who can hear you, and respect his grief.”

Mr. Brotherson bowed.

“I have finished,” said he. “I shall have nothing more to say on the subject.” And he drew himself up in expectation of the dismissal he evidently thought pending.

But the coroner was not done with him by any means. He had a theory in regard to this lamentable suicide which he hoped to establish by this man’s testimony, and, in pursuit of this plan, he not only motioned to Mr. Brotherson to reseat himself, but began at once to open a fresh line of examination by saying:

“You will pardon me, if I press this matter. I have been given to understand that notwithstanding your break with Miss Challoner, you have kept up your visits to the Clermont and were even on the spot at the time of her death.”

“On the spot?”

“In the hotel, I mean.”

“There you are right; I was in the hotel.”

“At the time of her death?”

“Very near the time. I remember hearing some disturbance in the lobby behind me, just as I was passing out at the Broadway entrance.”

“You did, and did not return?”

“Why should I return? I am not a man of much curiosity. There was no reason why I should connect a sudden alarm in the lobby of the Clermont with any cause of special interest to myself.”

This was so true and the look which accompanied the words was so frank that the coroner hesitated a moment before he said:

“Certainly not, unless--well, to be direct, unless you had just seen Miss Challoner and knew her state of mind and what was likely to follow your abrupt departure.”

“I had no interview with Miss Challoner.”

“But you saw her? Saw her that evening and just before the accident?”

Sweetwater’s papers rattled; it was the only sound to be heard in that moment of silence. Then--“What do you mean by those words?” inquired Mr. Brotherson, with studied composure. “I have said that I had no interview with Miss Challoner. Why do you ask me then, if I saw her?”

“Because I believe that you did. From a distance possibly, but yet directly and with no possibility of mistake.”

“Do you put that as a question?”

“I do. Did you see her figure or face that night?”

“I did.”

Nothing--not even the rattling of Sweetwater’s papers--disturbed the silence which followed this admission.

“From where?” Dr. Heath asked at last.

“From a point far enough away to make any communication between us impossible. I do not think you will require me to recall the exact spot.”

“If it were one which made it possible for her to see you as clearly as you could see her, I think it would be very advisable for you to say so.”

“It was--such--a spot.”

“Then I think I can locate it for you, or do you prefer to locate it yourself?”

“I will locate it myself. I had hoped not to be called upon to mention what I cannot but consider a most unfortunate coincidence. As a gentleman you will understand my reticence and also why it is a matter of regret to me that with an acumen worthy of your position, you should have discovered a fact which, while it cannot explain Miss Challoner’s death, will drag our little affair before the public, and possibly give it a prominence in some minds which I am sure does not belong to it. I met Miss Challoner’s eye for one instant from the top of the little staircase running up to the mezzanine. I had yielded thus far to an impulse I had frequently combated, to seek by another interview to retrieve the bad effect which must have been made upon her by my angry note. I knew that she frequently wrote letters in the mezzanine at this hour, and got as far as the top of the staircase in my effort to join her. But got no further. When I saw her on her feet, with her face turned my way, I remembered the scorn with which she had received my former heart-felt proposals and, without taking another step forward, I turned away from her and fled down the steps and so out of the building by the main entrance. She saw me, for her hand flew up with a startled gesture, but I cannot think that my presence on the same floor with her could have caused her to strike the blow which terminated her life. Why should I? No woman sacrifices her life out of mere regret for the disdain she has shown a man she has taken no pains to understand.”

His tone and his attitude seemed to invite the concurrence of Dr. Heath in this statement. But the richness of the one and the grace of the other showed the handsome speaker off to such advantage that the coroner was rather inclined to consider how a woman, even of Miss Challoner’s fine taste and careful breeding, might see in such a situation much for regret, if not for active despair and the suicidal act. He gave no evidence of his thought, however, but followed up the one admission made by Mr. Brotherson which he and others must naturally view as of the first importance.

“You saw Miss Challoner lift her hand, you say. Which hand, and what was in it? Anything?”

“She lifted her right hand, but it would be impossible for me to tell you whether there was anything in it or not. I simply saw the movement before I turned away. It looked like one of alarm to me. I felt that she had some reason for this. She could not know that it was in repentance I came rather than in fulfilment of my threat.”

A sigh from the adjoining room. Mr. Brotherson rose, as he heard it, and in doing so met the clear eye of Sweetwater fixed upon his own. Its language was, no doubt, peculiar and it seemed to fascinate him for a moment, for he started as if to approach the detective, but forsook this intention almost immediately, and addressing the coroner, gravely remarked:

“Her death following so quickly upon this abortive attempt of mine at an interview startled me by its coincidence as much as it does you. If in the weakness of her woman’s nature, it was more than this--if the scorn she had previously shown me was a cloak she instinctively assumed to hide what she was not ready to disclose, my remorse will be as great as any one here could wish. But the proof of all this will have to be very convincing before my present convictions will yield to it. Some other and more poignant source will have to be found for that instant’s impulsive act than is supplied by this story of my unfortunate attachment.”

Dr. Heath was convinced, but he was willing to concede something to the secret demand made upon him by Sweetwater, who was bundling up his papers with much clatter.

Looking up with a smile which had elements in it he was hardly conscious of perhaps himself, he asked in an off-hand way:

“Then why did you take such pains to wash your hands of the affair the moment you had left the hotel?”

“I do not understand.”

“You passed around the corner into--street, did you not?”

“Very likely. I could go that way as well as another.”

“And stopped at the first lamp-post?”

“Oh, I see. Someone saw that childish action of mine.”

“What did you mean by it?”

“Just what you have suggested. I did go through the pantomime of washing my hands of an affair I considered definitely ended. I had resisted an irrepressible impulse to see and talk with Miss Challoner again, and was pleased with my firmness. Unaware of the tragic blow which had just fallen, I was full of self-congratulations at my escape from the charm which had lured me back to this hotel again and again in spite of my better judgment, and I wished to symbolise my relief by an act of which I was, in another moment, ashamed. Strange that there should have been a witness to it. (Here he stole a look at Sweetwater.) Stranger still, that circumstances by the most extraordinary of coincidences, should have given so unforeseen a point to it.”

“You are right, Mr. Brotherson. The whole occurrence is startling and most strange. But life is made up of the unexpected, as none know better than we physicians, whether our practice be of a public or private character.”

As Mr. Brotherson left the room, the curiosity to which he had yielded once before, led him to cast a glance of penetrating inquiry behind him full at Sweetwater, and if either felt embarrassment, it was not the hunted but the hunter.

But the feeling did not last.

“I’ve simply met the strongest man I’ve ever encountered,” was Sweetwater’s encouraging comment to himself. “All the more glory if I can find a joint in his armour or a hidden passage to his cold, secretive heart.”

XI. ALIKE IN ESSENTIALS

“Mr. Gryce, I am either a fool or the luckiest fellow going. You must decide which.”

The aged detective, thus addressed, laid down his evening paper and endeavoured to make out the dim form he could just faintly discern standing between him and the library door.

“Sweetwater, is that you?”

“No one else. Sweetwater, the fool, or Sweetwater, much too wise for his own good. I don’t know which. Perhaps you can find out and tell me.”

A grunt from the region of the library table, then the sarcastic remark:

“I’m just in the mood to settle that question. This last failure to my account ought to make me an excellent judge of another’s folly. I’ve meddled with the old business for the last time, Sweetwater. You’ll have to go it lone from now on. The Department has no more work for Ebenezar Gryce, or rather Ebenezar Gryce will make no more fool attempts to please them. Strange that a man don’t know when his time has come to quit. I remember low I once scored Yeardsley for hanging on after he had lost his grip; and here am I doing the same thing. But what’s the matter with you? Speak out, my boy. Something new in the wind?”

“No, Mr. Gryce; nothing new. It’s the same old business. But, if what I suspect is true, this same old business offers opportunities for some very interesting and unusual effort. You’re not satisfied with the coroner’s verdict in the Challoner case?”

“No. I’m satisfied with nothing that leaves all ends dangling. Suicide was not proved. It seemed the only presumption possible, but it was not proved. There was no blood-stain on that cutter-point.”

“Nor any evidence that it had ever been there.”

“No. I’m not proud of the chain which lacks a link where it should be strongest.”

“We shall never supply that link.”

“I quite agree with you.”

“That chain we must throw away.”

“And forge another?”

Sweetwater approached and sat down.

“Yes; I believe we can do it; yet I have only one indisputable fact for a starter. That is why I want you to tell me whether I’m growing daft or simply adventurous. Mr. Gryce, I don’t trust Brotherson. He has pulled the wool over Dr. Heath’s eyes and almost over those of Mr. Challoner. But he can’t pull it over mine. Though he should tell a story ten times more plausible than the one with which he has satisfied the coroner’s jury, I would still listen to him with more misgiving than confidence. Yet I have caught him in no misstatement, and his eye is steadier than my own. Perhaps it is simply a deeply rooted antipathy on my part, or the rage one feels at finding he has placed his finger on the wrong man. Again it may be--”

“What, Sweetwater?”

“A well-founded distrust. Mr. Gryce, I’m going to ask you a question.”

“Ask away. Ask fifty if you want to.”

“No; the one may involve fifty, but it is big enough in itself to hold our attention for a while. Did you ever hear of a case before, that in some of its details was similar to this?”

“No, it stands alone. That’s why it is so puzzling.”

“You forget. The wealth, beauty and social consequence of the present victim has blinded you to the strong resemblance which her case bears to one you know, in which the sufferer had none of the worldly advantages of Miss Challoner. I allude to--”

“Wait! the washerwoman in Hicks Street! Sweetwater, what have you got up your sleeve? You do mean that Brooklyn washerwoman, don’t you?”

“The same. The Department may have forgotten it, but I haven’t. Mr. Gryce, there’s a startling similarity in the two cases if you study the essential features only. Startling, I assure you.”

“Yes, you are right there. But what if there is? We were no more successful in solving that case than we have been in solving this. Yet you look and act like a hound which has struck a hot scent.” The young man smoothed his features with an embarrassed laugh.

“I shall never learn,” said he, “not to give tongue till the hunt is fairly started. If you will excuse me we’ll first make sure of the similarity I have mentioned. Then I’ll explain myself. I have some notes here, made at the time it was decided to drop the Hicks Street case as a wholly inexplicable one. As you know, I never can bear to say ‘die,’ and I sometimes keep such notes as a possible help in case any such unfinished matter should come up again. Shall I read them?”

“Do. Twenty years ago it would not have been necessary. I should have remembered every detail of an affair so puzzling. But my memory is no longer entirely reliable. So fire away, my boy, though I hardly see your purpose or what real bearing the affair in Hicks Street has upon the Clermont one. A poor washerwoman and the wealthy Miss Challoner! True, they were not unlike in their end.”

“The connection will come later,” smiled the young detective, with that strange softening of his features which made one at times forget his extreme plainness. “I’m sure you will not consider the time lost if I ask you to consider the comparison I am about to make, if only as a curiosity in criminal annals.”

And he read:

“‘On the afternoon of December Fourth, 1910, the strong and persistent screaming of a young child in one of the rooms of a rear tenement in Hicks Street, Brooklyn, drew the attention of some of the inmates and led them, after several ineffectual efforts to gain an entrance, to the breaking in of the door which had been fastened on the inside by an old-fashioned door-button.

“‘The tenant whom all knew for an honest, hard-working woman, had not infrequently fastened her door in this manner, in order to safeguard her child who was abnormally active and had a way of rattling the door open when it was not thus secured. But she had never refused to open before, and the child’s cries were pitiful.

“‘This was no longer a matter of wonder, when, the door having been wrenched from its hinges, they all rushed in. Across a tub of steaming clothes lifted upon a bench in the open window, they saw the body of this good woman, lying inert and seemingly dead; the frightened child tugging at her skirts. She was of a robust make, fleshy and fair, and had always been considered a model of health and energy, but at the sight of her helpless figure, thus stricken while at work, the one cry was ‘A stroke! till she had been lifted off and laid upon the floor. Then some discoloration in the water at the bottom of the tub led to a closer examination of her body, and the discovery of a bullet-hole in her breast directly over the heart.

“‘As she had been standing with face towards the window, all crowded that way to see where the shot had come from. As they were on the fourth storey it could not have come from the court upon which the room looked. It could only have come from the front tenement, towering up before them some twenty feet away. A single window of the innumerable ones confronting them stood open, and this was the one directly opposite.

“‘Nobody was to be seen there or in the room beyond, but during the excitement, one man ran off to call the police and another to hunt up the janitor and ask who occupied this room.

“‘His reply threw them all into confusion. The tenant of that room was the best, the quietest and most respectable man in either building.

“‘Then he must be simply careless and the shot an accidental one. A rush was made for the stairs and soon the whole building was in an uproar. But when this especial room was reached, it was found locked and on the door a paper pinned up, on which these words were written: Gone to New York. Will be back at 6:30! Words that recalled a circumstance to the janitor. He had seen the gentleman go out an hour before. This terminated all inquiry in this direction, though some few of the excited throng were for battering down this door just as they had the other one. But they were overruled by the janitor, who saw no use in such wholesale destruction, and presently the arrival of the police restored order and limited the inquiry to the rear building, where it undoubtedly belonged.’

“Mr. Gryce,” (here Sweetwater laid by his notes that he might address the old gentleman more directly), “I was with the boys when they made their first official investigation. This is why you can rely upon the facts as here given. I followed the investigation closely and missed nothing which could in any way throw light on the case. It was a mysterious one from the first, and lost nothing by further inquiry into the details.

“The first fact to startle us as we made our way up through the crowd which blocked halls and staircases was this:--A doctor had been found and, though he had been forbidden to make more than a cursory examination of the body till the coroner came, he had not hesitated to declare after his first look, that the wound had not been made by a bullet but by some sharp and slender weapon thrust home by a powerful hand. (You mark that, Mr. Gryce.) As this seemed impossible in face of the fact that the door had been found buttoned on the inside, we did not give much credit to his opinion and began our work under the obvious theory of an accidental discharge of some gun from one of the windows across the court. But the doctor was nearer right than we supposed. When the coroner came to look into the matter, he discovered that the wound was not only too small to have been made by the ordinary bullet, but that there was no bullet to be found in the woman’s body or anywhere else. Her heart had been reached by a thrust and not by a shot from a gun. Mr. Gryce, have you not heard a startling repetition of this report in a case nearer at hand?

“But to go back. This discovery, so important if true, was as yet--that is, at the time of our entering the room,--limited to the off-hand declaration of an irresponsible physician, but the possibility it involved was of so astonishing a nature that it influenced us unconsciously in our investigation and led us almost immediately into a consideration of the difficulties attending an entrance into, as well as an escape from, a room situated as this was.

“Up three flights from the court, with no communication with the adjoining rooms save through a door guarded on both sides by heavy pieces of furniture no one person could handle, the hall door buttoned on the inside, and the fire-escape some fifteen feet to the left, this room of death appeared to be as removed from the approach of a murderous outsider as the spot in the writing-room of the Clermont where Miss Challoner fell.

“Otherwise, the place presented the greatest contrast possible to that scene of splendour and comfort. I had not entered the Clermont at that time, and no, such comparison could have struck my mind. But I have thought of it since, and you, with your experience, will not find it difficult to picture the room where this poor woman lived and worked. Bare walls, with just a newspaper illustration pinned up here and there, a bed--tragically occupied at this moment--a kitchen stove on which a boiler, half-filled with steaming clothes still bubbled and foamed,--an old bureau,--a large pine wardrobe against an inner door which we later found to have been locked for months, and the key lost,--some chairs--and most pronounced of all, because of its position directly before the window, a pine bench supporting a wash-tub of the old sort.

“As it was here the woman fell, this tub naturally received the closest examination. A board projected from its further side, whither it had evidently been pushed by the weight of her falling body; and from its top hung a wet cloth, marking with its lugubrious drip on the boards beneath the first heavy moments of silence which is the natural accompaniment of so serious a survey. On the floor to the right lay a half-used cake of soap just as it had slipped from her hand. The window was closed, for the temperature was at the freezing-point, but it had been found up, and it was put up now to show the height at which it had then stood. As we all took our look at the house wall opposite, a sound of shouting came up from below. A dozen children were sliding on barrel staves down a slope of heaped-up snow. They had been engaged in this sport all the afternoon and were our witnesses later that no one had made a hazardous escape by means of the ladder of the fire-escape, running, as I have said, at an almost unattainable distance towards the left.

“Of her own child, whose cries had roused the neighbours, nothing was to be seen. The woman in the extreme rear had carried it off to her room; but when we came to see it later, no doubt was felt by any of us that this child was too young to talk connectedly, nor did I ever hear that it ever said anything which could in any way guide investigation.

“And that is as far as we ever got. The coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of death by means of a stab from some unknown weapon in the hand of a person also unknown, but no weapon was ever found, nor was it ever settled how the attack could have been made or the murderer escape under the conditions described. The woman was poor, her friends few, and the case seemingly inexplicable. So after creating some excitement by its peculiarities, it fell of its own weight. But I remembered it, and in many a spare hour have tried to see my way through the no-thoroughfare it presented. But quite in vain. To-day, the road is as blind as ever, but--” here Sweetwater’s face sharpened and his eyes burned as he leaned closer and closer to the older detective--“but this second case, so unlike the first in non-essentials but so exactly like it in just those points which make the mystery, has dropped a thread from its tangled skein into my hand, which may yet lead us to the heart of both. Can you guess--have you guessed--what this thread is? But how could you without the one clew I have not given you? Mr. Gryce, the tenement where this occurred is the same I visited the other night in search of Mr. Brotherson. And the man characterised at that time by the janitor as the best, the quietest and most respectable tenant in the whole building, and the one you remember whose window opened directly opposite the spot where this woman lay dead, was Mr. Dunn himself, or, in other words, our late redoubtable witness, Mr. Orlando Brotherson.”

XII. Mr. GRYCE FINDS AN ANTIDOTE FOR OLD AGE

“I thought I should make you sit up. I really calculated upon doing so, sir. Yes, I have established the plain fact that this Brotherson was near to, if not in the exact line of the scene of crime in each of these extraordinary and baffling cases. A very odd coincidence, is it not?” was the dry conclusion of our eager young detective.

“Odd enough if you are correct in your statement. But I thought it was conceded that the man Brotherson was not personally near,--was not even in the building at the time of the woman’s death in Hicks Street; that he was out and had been out for hours, according to the janitor.”

“And so the janitor thought, but he didn’t quite know his man. I’m not sure that I do. But I mean to make his acquaintance and make it thoroughly before I let him go. The hero--well, I will say the possible hero of two such adventures--deserves some attention from one so interested in the abnormal as myself.”

“Sweetwater, how came you to discover that Mr. Dunn of this ramshackle tenement in Hicks Street was identical with the elegantly equipped admirer of Miss Challoner?”

“Just this way. The night before Miss Challoner’s death I was brooding very deeply over the Hicks Street case. It had so possessed me that I had taken this street in on my way from Flatbush; as if staring at the house and its swarming courtyard was going to settle any such question as that! I walked by the place and I looked up at the windows. No inspiration. Then I sauntered back and entered the house with the fool intention of crossing the courtyard and wandering into the rear building where the crime had occurred. But my attention was diverted and my mind changed by seeing a man coming down the stairs before me, of so fine a figure that I involuntarily stopped to look at him. Had he moved a little less carelessly, had he worn his workman’s clothes a little less naturally, I should have thought him some college bred man out on a slumming expedition. But he was entirely too much at home where he was, and too unconscious of his jeans for any such conclusion on my part, and when he had passed out I had enough curiosity to ask who he was.

“My interest, you may believe, was in no wise abated when I learned that he was that highly respectable tenant whose window had been open at the time when half the inmates of the two buildings had rushed up to his door, only to find a paper on it displaying these words: Gone to New York; will be back at 6:30. Had he returned at that hour? I don’t think anybody had ever asked; and what reason had I for such interference now? But an idea once planted in my brain sticks tight, and I kept thinking of this man all the way to the Bridge. Instinctively and quite against my will, I found myself connecting him with some previous remembrance in which I seemed to see his tall form and strong features under the stress of some great excitement. But there my memory stopped, till suddenly as I was entering the subway, it all came back to me. I had met him the day I went with the boys to investigate the case in Hicks Street. He was coming down the staircase of the rear tenement then, very much as I had just seen him coming down the one in front. Only the Dunn of to-day seemed to have all his wits about him, while the huge fellow who brushed so rudely by me on that occasion had the peculiar look of a man struggling with horror or some other grave agitation. This was not surprising, of course, under the circumstances. I had met more than one man and woman in those halls who had worn the same look; but none of them had put up a sign on his door that he had left for New York and would not be back till 6:30, and then changed his mind so suddenly that he was back in the tenement at three, sharing the curiosity and the terrors of its horrified inmates.

“But the discovery, while possibly suggestive, was not of so pressing a nature as to demand instant action; and more immediate duties coming up, I let the matter slip from my mind, to be brought up again the next day, you may well believe, when all the circumstances of the death at the Clermont came to light and I found myself confronted by a problem very nearly the counterpart of the one then occupying me.

“But I did not see any real connection between the two cases, until, in my hunt for Mr. Brotherson, I came upon the following facts: that he was not always the gentleman he appeared: that the apartment in which he was supposed to live was not his own but a friend’s; and that he was only there by spells. When he was there, he dressed like a prince and it was while so clothed he ate his meals in the cafe of the Hotel Clermont.

“But there were times when he had been seen to leave this apartment in a very different garb, and while there was no one to insinuate that he was slack in paying his debts or was given to dissipation or any overt vice, it was generally conceded by such as casually knew him, that there was a mysterious side to his life which no one understood. His friend--a seemingly candid and open-minded gentleman--explained these contradictions by saying that Mr. Brotherson was a humanitarian and spent much of his time in the slums. That while so engaged he naturally dressed to suit the occasion, and if he was to be criticised at all, it was for his zeal which often led him to extremes and kept him to his task for days, during which time none of his up-town friends saw him. Then this enthusiastic gentleman called him the great intellectual light of the day, and--well, if ever I want a character I shall take pains to insinuate myself into the good graces of this Mr. Conway.

“Of Brotherson himself I saw nothing. He had come to Mr. Conway’s apartment the night before--the night of Miss Challoner’s death, you understand but had remained only long enough to change his clothes. Where he went afterwards is unknown to Mr. Conway, nor can he tell us when to look for his return. When he does show up, my message will be given him, etc., etc. I have no fault to find with Mr. Conway.

“But I had an idea in regard to this elusive Brotherson. I had heard enough about him to be mighty sure that together with his other accomplishments he possessed the golden tongue and easy speech of an orator. Also, that his tendencies were revolutionary and that for all his fine clothes and hankering after table luxuries and the like, he cherished a spite against wealth which made his words under certain moods cut like a knife. But there was another man, known to us of the ---- Precinct, who had very nearly these same gifts, and this man was going to speak at a secret meeting that very evening. This we had been told by a disgruntled member of the Associated Brotherhood. Suspecting Brotherson, I had this prospective speaker described, and thought I recognised my man. But I wanted to be positive in my identification, so I took Anderson with me, and--but I’ll cut that short. We didn’t see the orator and that ‘go’ went for nothing; but I had another string to my bow in the shape of the workman Dunn who also answered to the description which had been given me; so I lugged poor Anderson over into Hicks Street.

“It was late for the visit I proposed, but not too late, if Dunn was also the orator who, surprised by a raid I had not been let into, would be making for his home, if only to establish an alibi. The subway was near, and I calculated on his using it, but we took a taxicab and so arrived in Hicks Street some few minutes before him. The result you know. Anderson recognised the man as the one whom he saw washing his hands in the snow outside of the Clermont, and the man, seeing himself discovered, owned himself to be Brotherson and made no difficulty about accompanying us the next day to the coroner’s office.

“You have heard how he bore himself; what his explanations were and how completely they fitted in with the preconceived notions of the Inspector and the District Attorney. In consequence, Miss Challoner’s death is looked upon as a suicide--the impulsive act of a woman who sees the man she may have scouted but whom she secretly loves, turn away from her in all probability forever. A weapon was in her hand--she impulsively used it, and another deplorable suicide was added to the melancholy list. Had I put in my oar at the conference held in the coroner’s office; had I recalled to Dr. Heath the curious case of Mrs. Spotts, and then identified Brotherson as the man whose window fronted hers from the opposite tenement, a diversion might have been created and the outcome been different. But I feared the experiment. I’m not sufficiently in with the Chief as yet, nor yet with the Inspector. They might not have called me a fool--you may; but that’s different--and they might have listened, but it would doubtless have been with an air I could not have held up against, with that fellow’s eyes fixed mockingly on mine. For he and I are pitted for a struggle, and I do not want to give him the advantage of even a momentary triumph. He’s the most complete master of himself of any man I ever met, and it will take the united brain and resolution of the whole force to bring him to book--if he ever is brought to book, which I doubt. What do you think about it?”

“That you have given me an antidote against old age,” was the ringing and unexpected reply, as the thoughtful, half-puzzled aspect of the old man yielded impulsively to a burst of his early enthusiasm. “If we can get a good grip on the thread you speak of, and can work ourselves along by it, though it be by no more than an inch at a time, we shall yet make our way through this labyrinth of undoubted crime and earn for ourselves a triumph which will make some of these raw and inexperienced young fellows about us stare. Sweetwater, coincidences are possible. We run upon them every day. But coincidence in crime! that should make work for a detective, and we are not afraid of work. There’s my hand for my end of the business.”

“And here’s mine.”

Next minute the two heads were closer than ever together, and the business had begun.

XIII. TIME, CIRCUMSTANCE, AND A VILLAIN’S HEART

“Our first difficulty is this. We must prove motive. Now, I do not think it will be so very hard to show that this Brotherson cherished feelings of revenge towards Miss Challoner. But I have to acknowledge right here and now that the most skillful and vigourous pumping of the janitor and such other tenants of the Hicks Street tenement as I have dared to approach, fails to show that he has ever held any communication with Mrs. Spotts, or even knew of her existence until her remarkable death attracted his attention. I have spent all the afternoon over this, and with no result. A complete break in the chain at the very start.”

“Humph! we will set that down, then, as so much against us.”

“The next, and this is a bitter pill too, is the almost insurmountable difficulty already recognised of determining how a man, without approaching his victim, could manage to inflict a mortal stab in her breast. No cloak of complete invisibility has yet been found, even by the cleverest criminals.”

“True. The problem is such as a nightmare offers. For years my dreams have been haunted by a gnome who proposes just such puzzles.”

“But there’s an answer to everything, and I’m sure there’s an answer to this. Remember his business. He’s an inventor, with startling ideas. So much I’ve seen for myself. You may stretch probabilities a little in his case; and with this conceded, we may add by way of off-set to the difficulties you mention, coincidences of time and circumstance, and his villainous heart. Oh, I know that I am prejudiced; but wait and see! Miss Challoner was well rid of him even at the cost of her life.”

“She loved him. Even her father believes that now. Some lately discovered letters have come to light to prove that she was by no means so heart free as he supposed. One of her friends, it seems, has also confided to him that once, while she and Miss Challoner were sitting together, she caught Miss Challoner in the act of scribbling capitals over a sheet of paper. They were all B’s with the exception of here and there a neatly turned O, and when her friend twitted her with her fondness for these two letters, and suggested a pleasing monogram, Miss Challoner answered, ‘O. B. (transferring the letters, as you see) are the initials of the finest man in the world.’”

“Gosh! has he heard this story?”

“Who?”

“The gentleman in question.”

“Mr. Brotherson?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think so. It was told me in confidence.”

“Told you, Mr. Gryce? Pardon my curiosity.”

“By Mr. Challoner.”

“Oh! by Mr. Challoner.”

“He is greatly distressed at having the disgraceful suggestion of suicide attached to his daughter’s name. Notwithstanding the circumstances,--notwithstanding his full recognition of her secret predilection for a man of whom he had never heard till the night of her death, he cannot believe that she struck the blow she did, intentionally. He sent for me in order to inquire if anything could be done to reinstate her in public opinion. He dared not insist that another had wielded the weapon which laid her low so suddenly, but he asked if, in my experience, it had never been known that a woman, hyper-sensitive to some strong man’s magnetic influence, should so follow his thought as to commit an act which never could have arisen in her own mind, uninfluenced. He evidently does not like Brotherson either.”

“And what--what did you--say?” asked Sweetwater, with a halting utterance and his face full of thought.

“I simply quoted the latest authority on hypnotism that no person even in hypnotic sleep could be influenced by another to do what was antagonistic to his natural instincts.”

“Latest authority. That doesn’t mean a final one. Supposing that it was hypnotism! But that wouldn’t account for Mrs. Spotts’ death. Her wound certainly was not a self-inflicted one.”

“How can you be sure?”

“There was no weapon found in the room, or in the court. The snow was searched and the children too. No weapon, Mr. Gryce, not even a paper-cutter. Besides--but how did Mr. Challoner take what you said? Was he satisfied with this assurance?”

“He had to be. I didn’t dare to hold out any hope based on so unsubstantial a theory. But the interview had this effect upon me. If the possibility remains of fixing guilt elsewhere than on Miss Challoner’s inconsiderate impulse, I am ready to devote any amount of time and strength to the work. To see this grieving father relieved from the worst part of his burden is worth some effort and now you know why I have listened so eagerly to you. Sweetwater, I will go with you to the Superintendent. We may not gain his attention and again we may. If we don’t--but we won’t cross that bridge prematurely. When will you be ready for this business?”

“I must be at Headquarters to-morrow.”

“Good, then let it be to-morrow. A taxicab, Sweetwater. The subway for the young. I can no longer manage the stairs.”

XIV. A CONCESSION

“It is true; there seems to be something extraordinary in the coincidence.”

Thus Mr. Brotherson, in the presence of the Inspector.

“But that is all there is to it,” he easily proceeded. “I knew Miss Challoner and I have already said how much and how little I had to do with her death. The other woman I did not know at all; I did not even know her name. A prosecution based on grounds so flimsy as those you advance would savour of persecution, would it not?”

The Inspector, surprised by this unexpected attack, regarded the speaker with an interest rather augmented than diminished by his boldness. The smile with which he had uttered these concluding words yet lingered on his lips, lighting up features of a mould too suggestive of command to be associated readily with guilt. That the impression thus produced was favourable, was evident from the tone of the Inspector’s reply:

“We have said nothing about prosecution, Mr. Brotherson. We hope to avoid any such extreme measures, and that we may the more readily do so, we have given you this opportunity to make such explanations as the situation, which you yourself have characterised as remarkable, seems to call for.”

“I am ready. But what am I called upon to explain? I really cannot see, sir. Knowing nothing more about either case than you do, I fear that I shall not add much to your enlightenment.”

“You can tell us why with your seeming culture and obvious means, you choose to spend so much time in a second-rate tenement like the one in Hicks Street.”

Again that chill smile preceding the quiet answer:

“Have you seen my room there? It is piled to the ceiling with books. When I was a poor man, I chose the abode suited to my purse and my passion for first-rate reading. As I grew better off, my time became daily more valuable. I have never seen the hour when I felt like moving that precious collection. Besides, I am a man of the people. I like the working class, and am willing to be thought one of them. I can find time to talk to a hard-pushed mechanic as easily as to such members of the moneyed class as I encounter on stray evenings at the Hotel Clermont. I have led--I may say that I am leading--a double life; but of neither am I ashamed, nor have I cause to be. Love drove me to ape the gentleman in the halls of the Clermont; a broad human interest in the work of the world, to live as a fellow among the mechanics of Hicks Street.”

“But why make use of one name as a gentleman of leisure and quite a different one as the honest workman?”

“Ah, there you touch upon my real secret. I have a reason for keeping my identity quiet till my invention is completed.”

“A reason connected with your anarchistic tendencies?”

“Possibly.” But the word was uttered in a way to carry little conviction. “I am not much of an anarchist,” he now took the trouble to declare, with a careless lift of his shoulders. “I like fair play, but I shall never give you much trouble by my manner of insuring it. I have too much at stake. My invention is dearer to me than the overthrow of present institutions. Nothing must stand in the way of its success, not even the satisfaction of inspiring terror in minds shut to every other species of argument. I have uttered my last speech; you can rely on me for that.”

“We are glad to hear it, Mr. Dunn. Physical overthrow carries more than the immediate sufferer with it.”

If this were meant as an irritant, it did not act successfully. The social agitator, the political demagogue, the orator whose honeyed tones had rung with biting invective in the ears of the United Brotherhood of the Awl, the Plane and the Trowel, simply bowed and calmly waited for the next attack.

Perhaps it was of a nature to surprise even him.

“We have no wish,” continued the Inspector, “to probe too closely into concerns seemingly quite removed from the main issue. You say that you are ready, nay more, are even eager to answer all questions. You will probably be anxious then to explain away a discrepancy between your word and your conduct, which has come to our attention. You were known to have expressed the intention of spending the afternoon of Mrs. Spotts’ death in New York and were supposed to have done so, yet you were certainly seen in the crowd which invaded that rear building at the first alarm. Are you conscious of possessing a double, or did you fail to cross the river as you expected to?”

“I am glad this has come up.” The tone was one of self-congratulation which would have shaken Sweetwater sorely had he been admitted to this unofficial examination. “I have never confided to any one the story of my doings on that unhappy afternoon, because I knew of no one who would take any interest in them. But this is what occurred. I did mean to go to New York and I even started on my walk to the Bridge at the hour mentioned. But I got into a small crowd on the corner of Fulton Street, in which a poor devil who had robbed a vendor’s cart of a few oranges, was being hustled about. There was no policeman within sight, and so I busied myself there for a minute paying for the oranges and dragging the poor wretch away into an alley, where I could have the pleasure of seeing him eat them. When I came out of the alley the small crowd had vanished, but a big one was collecting up the street very near my home. I always think of my books when I see anything suggesting fire, and naturally I returned, and equally naturally, when I heard what had happened, followed the crowd into the court and so up to the poor woman’s doorway. But my curiosity satisfied, I returned at once to the street and went to New York as I had planned.”

“Do you mind telling us where you went in New York?”

“Not at all. I went shopping. I wanted a certain very fine wire, for an experiment I had on hand, and I found it in a little shop in Fourth Avenue. If I remember rightly, the name over the door was Grippus. Its oddity struck me.”

There was nothing left to the Inspector but to dismiss him. He had answered all questions willingly, and with a countenance inexpressive of guile. He even indulged in a parting shot on his own account, as full of frank acceptance of the situation as it was fearless in its attack. As he halted in the doorway before turning his back upon the room, he smiled for the third time as he quietly said:

“I have ceased visiting my friend’s apartment in upper New York. If you ever want me again, you will find me amongst my books. If my invention halts and other interests stale, you have furnished me this day with a problem which cannot fail to give continual occupation to my energies. If I succeed in solving it first, I shall be happy to share my knowledge with you. Till then, trust the laws of nature. No man when once on the outside of a door can button it on the inside, nor could any one without the gift of complete invisibility, make a leap of over fifteen feet from the sill of a fourth story window on to an adjacent fire escape, without attracting the attention of some of the many children playing down below.”

He was half-way out the door, but his name quickly spoken by the Inspector drew him back.

“Anything more?” he asked.

The Inspector smiled.

“You are a man of considerable analytic power, as I take it, Mr. Brotherson. You must have decided long ago how this woman died.”

“Is that a question, Inspector?”

“You may take it as such.”

“Then I will allow myself to say that there is but one common-sense view to take of the matter. Miss Challoner’s death was due to suicide; so was that of the washerwoman. But there I stop. As for the means--the motive--such mysteries may be within your province but they are totally outside mine! God help us all! The world is full of misery. Again I wish you good-day.”

The air seemed to have lost its vitality and the sun its sparkle when he was gone.

“Now, what do you think, Gryce?”

The old man rose and came out of his corner.

“This: that I’m up against the hardest proposition of my lifetime. Nothing in the man’s appearance or manner evinces guilt, yet I believe him guilty. I must. Not to, is to strain probability to the point of breakage. But how to reach him is a problem and one of no ordinary nature. Years ago, when I was but little older than Sweetwater, I had just such a conviction concerning a certain man against whom I had even less to work on than we have here. A murder had been committed by an envenomed spring contained in a toy puzzle. I worked upon the conscience of the suspect in that case, by bringing constantly before his eyes a facsimile of that spring. It met him in the folded napkin which he opened at his restaurant dinner. He stumbled upon it in the street, and found it lying amongst his papers at home. I gave him no relief and finally he succumbed. He had been almost driven mad by remorse. But this man has no conscience. If he is not innocent as the day, he’s as hard as unquarried marble. He might be confronted with reminders of his crime at every turn without weakening or showing by loss of appetite or interrupted sleep any effect upon his nerves. That’s my opinion of the gentleman. He is either that, or a man of uncommon force and self-restraint.”

“I’m inclined to believe him the latter.”

“And so give the whole matter the go-by?”

“Possibly.”

“It will be a terrible disappointment to Sweetwater.”

“That’s nothing.”

“And to me.”

“That’s different. I’m disposed to consider you, Gryce--after all these years.”

“Thank you; I have done the state some service.”

“What do you want? You say the mine is unworkable.”

“Yes, in a day, or in a week, possibly in a month. But persistence and a protean adaptability to meet his moods might accomplish something. I don’t say will, I only say might. If Sweetwater had the job, with unlimited time in which to carry out any plan he may have, or even for a change of plans to suit a changed idea, success might be his, and both time, effort and outlay justified.”

“The outlay? I am thinking of the outlay.”

“Mr. Challoner will see to that. I have his word that no reasonable amount will daunt him.”

“But this Brotherson is suspicious. He has an inventor’s secret to hide, if none other. We can’t saddle him with a guy of Sweetwater’s appearance and abnormal loquaciousness.”

“Not readily, I own. But time will bring counsel. Are you willing to help the boy, to help me and possibly yourself by this venture in the dark? The Department shan’t lose money by it; that’s all I can promise.”

“But it’s a big one. Gryce, you shall have your way. You’ll be the only loser if you fail; and you will fail; take my word for it.”

“I wish I could speak as confidently to the contrary, but I can’t. I can give you my hand though, Inspector, and Sweetwater’s thanks. I can meet the boy now. An hour ago I didn’t know how I was to do it.”

XV. THAT’S THE QUESTION

“How many times has he seen you?”

“Twice.”

“So that he knows your face and figure?”

“I’m afraid so. He cannot help remembering the man who faced him in his own room.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Damned unfortunate; but one must expect some sort of a handicap in a game like this. Before I’m done with him, he’ll look me full in the face and wonder if he’s ever seen me before. I wasn’t always a detective. I was a carpenter once, as you know, and I’ll take to the tools again. As soon as I’m handy with them I’ll hunt up lodgings in Hicks Street. He may suspect me at first, but he won’t long; I’ll be such a confounded good workman. I only wish I hadn’t such pronounced features. They’ve stood awfully in my way, Mr. Gryce. I don’t like to talk about my appearance, but I’m so confounded plain that people remember me. Why couldn’t I have had one of those putty faces which don’t mean anything? It would have been a deuced sight more convenient.”

“You’ve done very well as it is.”

“But I want to do better. I want to deceive him to his face. He’s clever, this same Brotherson, and there’s glory to be got in making a fool of him. Do you think it could be done with a beard? I’ve never worn a beard. While I’m settling back into my old trade, I can let the hair grow.”

“Do. It’ll make you look as weak as water. It’ll be blonde, of course.”

“And silky and straggling. Charming addition to my beauty. But it’ll take half an inch off my nose, and it’ll cover my mouth, which means a lot in my case. Then my complexion! It must be changed naturally. I’ll consult a doctor about that. No sort of make-believe will go with this man. If my eyes look weak, they must really be so. If I walk slowly and speak huskily, it must be because I cannot help it. I can bear the slight inconvenience of temporary ill-health in a cause like this; and if necessary the cough will be real, and the headache positive.

“Sweetwater! We’d better give the task to another man--to someone Brotherson has never seen and won’t be suspicious of?”

“He’ll be suspicious of everybody who tries to make friends with him now; only a little more so with me; that’s all. But I’ve got to meet that, and I’ll do it by being, temporarily, of course, exactly the man I seem. My health will not be good for the next few weeks, I’m sure of that. But I’ll be a model workman, neat and conscientious with just a suspicion of dash where dash is needed. He knows the real thing when he sees it, and there’s not a fellow living more alive to shams. I won’t be a sham. I’ll be it. You’ll see.”

“But the doubt. Can you do all this in doubt of the issue?”

“No; I must have confidence in the end, and I must believe in his guilt. Nothing else will carry me through. I must believe in his guilt.”

“Yes, that’s essential.”

“And I do. I never was surer of anything than I am of that. But I’ll have the deuce of a time to get evidence enough for a grand jury. That’s plainly to be seen, and that’s why I’m so dead set on the business. It’s such an even toss-up.”

“I don’t call it even. He’s got the start of you every way. You can’t go to his tenement; the janitor there would recognise you even if he didn’t.”

“Now I will give you a piece of good news. They’re to have a new janitor next week. I learned that yesterday. The present one is too easy. He’ll be out long before I’m ready to show myself there; and so will the woman who took care of the poor washerwoman’s little child. I’d not have risked her curiosity. Luck isn’t all against us. How does Mr. Challoner feel about it?”

“Not very confident; but willing to give you any amount of rope. Sweetwater, he let me have a batch of letters written by his daughter which he found in a secret drawer. They are not to be read, or even opened, unless a great necessity arises. They were written for Brotherson’s eye--or so the father says--but she never sent them; too exuberant perhaps. If you ever want them--I cannot give them to you to-night, and wouldn’t if I could,--don’t go to Mr. Challoner--you must never be seen at his hotel--and don’t come to me, but to the little house in West Twenty-ninth Street, where they will be kept for you, tied up in a package with your name on it. By the way, what name are you going to work under?”

“My mother’s--Zugg.”

“Good! I’ll remember. You can always write or even telephone to Twenty-ninth Street. I’m in constant communication with them there, and it’s quite safe.”

“Thanks. You’re sure the Superintendent is with me?”

“Yes, but not the Inspector. He sees nothing but the victim of a strange coincidence in Orlando Brotherson.”

“Again the scales hang even. But they won’t remain so. One side is bound to rise. Which? That’s the question, Mr. Gryce.”

XVI. OPPOSED

There was a new tenant in the Hicks Street tenement. He arrived late one afternoon and was shown two rooms, one in the rear building and another in the front one. Both were on the fourth floor. He demurred at the former, thought it gloomy but finally consented to try it. The other, he said, was too expensive. The janitor--new to the business--was not much taken with him and showed it, which seemed to offend the newcomer, who was evidently an irritable fellow owing to ill health.

However, they came to terms as I have said, and the man went away, promising to send in his belongings the next day. He smiled as he said this and the janitor who had rarely seen such a change take place in a human face, looked uncomfortable for a moment and seemed disposed to make some remark about the room they were leaving. But, thinking better of it, locked the door and led the way downstairs. As the prospective tenant followed, he may have noticed, probably did, that the door they had just left was a new one--the only new thing to be seen in the whole shabby place.

The next night that door was locked on the inside. The young man had taken possession. As he put away the remnants of a meal he had cooked for himself, he cast a look at his surroundings, and imperceptibly sighed. Then he brightened again, and sitting down on his solitary chair, he turned his eyes on the window which, uncurtained and without shade, stared open-mouthed, as it were, at the opposite wall rising high across the court.

In that wall, one window only seemed to interest him and that was on a level with his own. The shade of this window was up, but there was no light back of it and so nothing of the interior could be seen. But his eye remained fixed upon it, while his hand, stretched out towards the lamp burning near him, held itself in readiness to lower the light at a minute’s notice.

Did he see only the opposite wall and that unillumined window? Was there no memory of the time when, in a previous contemplation of those dismal panes, he beheld stretching between them and himself, a long, low bench with a plain wooden tub upon it, from which a dripping cloth beat out upon the boards beneath a dismal note, monotonous as the ticking of a clock?

One might judge that such memories were indeed his, from the rapid glance he cast behind him at the place where the bed had stood in those days. It was placed differently now.

But if he saw, and if he heard these suggestions from the past, he was not less alive to the exactions of the present, for, as his glance flew back across the court, his finger suddenly moved and the flame it controlled sputtered and went out. At the same instant, the window opposite sprang into view as the lamp was lit within, and for several minutes the whole interior remained visible--the books, the work-table, the cluttered furniture, and, most interesting of all, its owner and occupant. It was upon the latter that the newcomer fixed his attention, and with an absorption equal to that he saw expressed in the countenance opposite.

But his was the absorption of watchfulness; that of the other of introspection. Mr. Brotherson--(we will no longer call him Dunn even here where he is known by no other name)--had entered the room clad in his heavy overcoat and, not having taken it off before lighting his lamp, still stood with it on, gazing eagerly down at the model occupying the place of honour on the large centre table. He was not touching it,--not at this moment--but that his thoughts were with it, that his whole mind was concentrated on it, was evident to the watcher across the court; and, as this watcher took in this fact and noticed the loving care with which the enthusiastic inventor finally put out his finger to re-arrange a thread or twirl a wheel, his disappointment found utterance in a sigh which echoed sadly through the dull and cheerless room. Had he expected this stern and self-contained man to show an open indifference to work and the hopes of a lifetime? If so, this was the first of the many surprises awaiting him.

He was gifted, however, with the patience of an automaton and continued to watch his fellow tenant as long as the latter’s shade remained up. When it fell, he rose and took a few steps up and down, but not with the celerity and precision which usually accompanied his movements. Doubt disturbed his mind and impeded his activity. He had caught a fair glimpse of Brotherson’s face as he approached the window, and though it continued to show abstraction, it equally displayed serenity and a complete satisfaction with the present if not with the future. Had he mistaken his man after all? Was his instinct, for the first time in his active career, wholly at fault?

He had succeeded in getting a glimpse of his quarry in the privacy of his own room, at home with his thoughts and unconscious of any espionage, and how had he found him? Cheerful, and natural in all his movements.

But the evening was young. Retrospect comes with later and more lonely hours. There will be opportunities yet for studying this impassive countenance under much more telling and productive circumstances than these. He would await these opportunities with cheerful anticipation. Meanwhile, he would keep up the routine watch he had planned for this night. Something might yet occur. At all events he would have exhausted the situation from this standpoint.

And so it came to pass that at an hour when all the other hard-working people in the building were asleep, or at least striving to sleep, these two men still sat at their work, one in the light, the other in the darkness, facing each other, consciously to the one, unconsciously to the other, across the hollow well of the now silent court. Eleven o’clock! Twelve! No change on Brotherson’s part or in Brotherson’s room; but a decided one in the place where Sweetwater sat. Objects which had been totally indistinguishable even to his penetrating eye could now be seen in ever brightening outline. The moon had reached the open space above the court, and he was getting the full benefit of it. But it was a benefit he would have been glad to dispense with. Darkness was like a shield to him. He did not feel quite sure that he wanted this shield removed. With no curtain to the window and no shade, and all this brilliance pouring into the room, he feared the disclosure of his presence there, or, if not that, some effect on his own mind of those memories he was more anxious to see mirrored in another’s discomfiture than in his own.

Was it to escape any lack of concentration which these same memories might bring, that he rose and stepped to the window? Or was it under one of those involuntary impulses which move us in spite of ourselves to do the very thing our judgment disapproves?

No sooner had he approached the sill than Mr. Brotherson’s shade flew way up and he, too, looked out. Their glances met, and for an instant the hardy detective experienced that involuntary stagnation of the blood which follows an inner shock. He felt that he had been recognised. The moonlight lay full upon his face, and the other had seen and known him. Else, why the constrained attitude and sudden rigidity observable in this confronting figure, with its partially lifted hand? A man like Brotherson makes no pause in any action however trivial, without a reason. Either he had been transfixed by this glimpse of his enemy on watch, or daring thought! had seen enough of sepulchral suggestion in the wan face looking forth from this fatal window to shake him from his composure and let loose the grinning devil of remorse from its iron prison-house? If so, the movement was a memorable one, and the hazard quite worth while. He had gained--no! he had gained nothing. He had been the fool of his own wishes. No one, let alone Brotherson, could have mistaken his face for that of a woman. He had forgotten his newly-grown beard. Some other cause must be found for the other’s attitude. It savoured of shock, if not fear. If it were fear, then had he roused an emotion which might rebound upon himself in sharp reprisal. Death had been known to strike people standing where he stood; mysterious death of a species quite unrecognisable. What warranty had he that it would not strike him, and now? None.

Yet it was Brotherson who moved first. With a shrug of the shoulder plainly visible to the man opposite, he turned away from the window and without lowering the shade began gathering up his papers for the night, and later banking up his stove with ashes.

Sweetwater, with a breath of decided relief, stepped back and threw himself on the bed. It had really been a trial for him to stand there under the other’s eye, though his mind refused to formulate his fear, or to give him any satisfaction when he asked himself what there was in the situation suggestive of death to the woman or harm to himself.

Nor did morning light bring counsel, as is usual in similar cases. He felt the mystery more in the hubbub and restless turmoil of the day than in the night’s silence and inactivity. He was glad when the stroke of six gave him an excuse to leave the room, and gladder yet when in doing so, he ran upon an old woman from a neighbouring room, who no sooner saw him than she leered at him and eagerly remarked:

“Not much sleep, eh? We didn’t think you’d like it. Did you see anything?”

Now this gave him the one excuse he wanted.

“See anything?” he repeated, apparently with all imaginable innocence. “What do you mean by that?”

“Don’t you know what happened in that room?”

“Don’t tell me!” he shouted out. “I don’t want to hear any nonsense. I haven’t time. I’ve got to be at the shop at seven and I don’t feel very well. What did happen?” he mumbled in drawing off, just loud enough for the woman to hear. “Something unpleasant I’m sure.” Then he ran downstairs.

At half past six he found the janitor. He was, to all appearance, in a state of great excitement and he spoke very fast.

“I won’t stay another night in that room,” he loudly declared, breaking in where the family were eating breakfast by lamplight. “I don’t want to make any trouble and I don’t want to give my reasons; but that room don’t suit me. I’d rather take the dark one you talked about yesterday. There’s the money. Have my things moved to-day, will ye?”

“But your moving out after one night’s stay will give that room a bad name,” stammered the janitor, rising awkwardly. “There’ll be talk and I won’t be able to let that room all winter.”

“Nonsense! Every man hasn’t the nerves I have. You’ll let it in a week. But let or not let, I’m going front into the little dark room. I’ll get the boss to let me off at half past four. So that’s settled.”

He waited for no reply and got none; but when he appeared promptly at a quarter to five, he found his few belongings moved into a middle room on the fourth floor of the front building, which, oddly perhaps, chanced to be next door to the one he had held under watch the night before.

The first page of his adventure in the Hicks Street tenement had been turned, and he was ready to start upon another.

XVII. IN WHICH A BOOK PLAYS A LEADING PART

When Mr. Brotherson came in that night, he noticed that the door of the room adjoining his own stood open. He did not hesitate. Making immediately for it, he took a glance inside, then spoke up with a ringing intonation:

“Halloo! coming to live in this hole?”

The occupant a young man, evidently a workman and somewhat sickly if one could judge from his complexion--turned around from some tinkering he was engaged in and met the intruder fairly, face to face. If his jaw fell, it seemed to be from admiration. No other emotion would have so lighted his eye as he took in the others proportions and commanding features. No dress--Brotherson was never seen in any other than the homeliest garb in these days--could make him look common or akin to his surroundings. Whether seen near or far, his presence always caused surprise, and surprise was what the young man showed, as he answered briskly:

“Yes, this is to be my castle. Are you the owner of the buildings? If so--”

“I am not the owner. I live next door. Haven’t I seen you before, young man?”

Never was there a more penetrating eye than Orlando Brotherson’s. As he asked this question it took some effort on the part of the other to hold his own and laugh with perfect naturalness as he replied:

“If you ever go up Henry Street it’s likely enough that you’ve seen me not once, but many times. I’m the fellow who works at the bench next the window in Schuper’s repairing shop. Everybody knows me.”

Audacity often carries the day when subtler means would fail. Brotherson stared at the youth, then ventured another question:

“A carpenter, eh?”

“Yes, and I’m an A1 man at my job. Excuse my brag. It’s my one card of introduction.”

“I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you somewhere else than in Schuper’s shop. Do you remember me?”

“No, sir; I’m sorry to be imperlite but I don’t remember you at all. Won’t you sit down? It’s not very cheerful, but I’m so glad to get out of the room I was in last night that this looks all right to me. Back there, other building,” he whispered. “I didn’t know, and took the room which had a window in it; but--” The stop was significant; so was his smile which had a touch of sickliness in it, as well as humour.

But Brotherson was not to be caught.

“You slept in the building last night? In the other half, I mean?”

“Yes, I--slept.”

The strong lip of the other man curled disdainfully.

“I saw you,” said he. “You were standing in the window overlooking the court. You were not sleeping then. I suppose you know that a woman died in that room?”

“Yes; they told me so this morning.”

“Was that the first you’d heard of it?”

“Sure!” The word almost jumped at the questioner. “Do you suppose I’d have taken the room if--”

But here the intruder, with a disdainful grunt, turned and went out, disgust in every feature,--plain, unmistakable, downright disgust, and nothing more!

This was what gave Sweetwater his second bad night; this and a certain discovery he made. He had counted on hearing what went on in the neighbouring room through the partition running back of his own closet. But he could hear nothing, unless it was the shutting down of a window, a loud sneeze, or the rattling of coals as they were put on the fire. And these possessed no significance. What he wanted was to catch the secret sigh, the muttered word, the involuntary movement. He was too far removed from this man still.

How should he manage to get nearer him--at the door of his mind--of his heart? Sweetwater stared all night from his miserable cot into the darkness of that separating closet, and with no result. His task looked hopeless; no wonder that he could get no rest.

Next morning he felt ill, but he rose all the same, and tried to get his own breakfast. He had but partially succeeded and was sitting on the edge of his bed in wretched discomfort, when the very man he was thinking of appeared at his door.

“I’ve come to see how you are,” said Brotherson. “I noticed that you did not look well last night. Won’t you come in and share my pot of coffee?”

“I--I can’t eat,” mumbled Sweetwater, for once in his life thrown completely off his balance. “You’re very kind, but I’ll manage all right. I’d rather. I’m not quite dressed, you see, and I must get to the shop.” Then he thought--“What an opportunity I’m losing. Have I any right to turn tail because he plays his game from the outset with trumps? No, I’ve a small trump somewhere about me to lay on this trick. It isn’t an ace, but it’ll show I’m not chicane.” And smiling, though not with his usual cheerfulness, Sweetwater added, “Is the coffee all made? I might take a drop of that. But you mustn’t ask me to eat--I just couldn’t.”

“Yes, the coffee is made and it isn’t bad either. You’d better put on your coat; the hall’s draughty.” And waiting till Sweetwater did so, he led the way back to his own room. Brotherson’s manner expressed perfect ease, Sweetwater’s not. He knew himself changed in looks, in bearing, in feeling, even; but was he changed enough to deceive this man on the very spot where they had confronted each other a few days before in a keen moral struggle? The looking-glass he passed on his way to the table where the simple breakfast was spread out, showed him a figure so unlike the alert, business-like chap he had been that night, that he felt his old assurance revive in time to ease a situation which had no counterpart in his experience.

“I’m going out myself to-day, so we’ll have to hurry a bit,” was Brotherson’s first remark as they seated themselves at table. “Do you like your coffee plain or with milk in it?”

“Plain. Gosh! what pictures! Where do you get ‘em? You must have a lot of coin.” Sweetwater was staring at the row of photographs, mostly of a very high order, tacked along the wall separating the two rooms. They were unframed, but they were mostly copies of great pictures, and the effect was rather imposing in contrast to the shabby furniture and the otherwise homely fittings.

“Yes, I’ve enough for that kind of thing,” was his host’s reply. But the tone was reserved, and Sweetwater did not presume again along this line. Instead, he looked well at the books piled upon the shelves under these photographs, and wondered aloud at their number and at the man who could waste such a lot of time in reading them. But he made no more direct remarks. Was he cowed by the penetrating eye he encountered whenever he yielded to the fascination exerted by Mr. Brotherson’s personality and looked his way? He hated to think so, yet something held him in check and made him listen, open-mouthed, when the other chose to speak.

Yet there was one cheerful moment. It was when he noticed the careless way in which those books were arranged upon their shelves. An idea had come to him. He hid his relief in his cup, as he drained the last drops of the coffee which really tasted better than he had expected.

When he returned from work that afternoon it was with an auger under his coat and a conviction which led him to empty out the contents of a small phial which he took down from a shelf. He had told Mr. Gryce that he was eager for the business because of its difficulties, but that was when he was feeling fine and up to any game which might come his way. Now he felt weak and easily discouraged. This would not do. He must regain his health at all hazards, so he poured out the mixture which had given him such a sickly air. This done and a rude supper eaten, he took up his auger. He had heard Mr. Brotherson’s step go by. But next minute he laid it down again in great haste and flung a newspaper over it. Mr. Brotherson was coming back, had stopped at his door, had knocked and must be let in.

“You’re better this evening,” he heard in those kindly tones which so confused and irritated him.

“Yes,” was the surly admission. “But it’s stifling here. If I have to live long in this hole I’ll dry up from want of air. It’s near the shop or I wouldn’t stay out the week.” Twice this day he had seen Brotherson’s tall figure stop before the window of this shop and look in at him at his bench. But he said nothing about that.

“Yes,” agreed the other, “it’s no way to live. But you’re alone. Upstairs there’s a whole family huddled into a room just like this. Two of the kids sleep in the closet. It’s things like that which have made me the friend of the poor, and the mortal enemy of men and women who spread themselves over a dozen big rooms and think themselves ill-used if the gas burns poorly or a fireplace smokes. I’m off for the evening; anything I can do for you?”

“Show me how I can win my way into such rooms as you’ve just talked about. Nothing less will make me look up. I’d like to sleep in one to-night. In the best bedroom, sir. I’m ambitious; I am.”

A poor joke, though they both laughed. There Mr. Brotherson passed on, and Sweetwater listened till he was sure that his too attentive neighbour had really gone down the three flights between him and the street. Then he took up his auger again and shut himself up in his closet.

There was nothing peculiar about this closet. It was just an ordinary one with drawers and shelves on one side, and an open space on the other for the hanging up of clothes. Very few clothes hung there at present; but it was in this portion of the closet that he stopped and began to try the wall of Brotherson’s room, with the butt end of the tool he carried.

The sound seemed to satisfy him, for very soon he was boring a hole at a point exactly level with his ear; but not without frequent pauses and much attention given to the possible return of those departed foot-steps. He remembered that Mr. Brotherson had a way of coming back on unexpected errands after giving out his intention of being absent for hours.

Sweetwater did not want to be caught in any such trap as that; so he carefully followed every sound that reached him from the noisy halls. But he did not forsake his post; he did not have to. Mr. Brotherson had been sincere in his good-bye, and the auger finished its job and was withdrawn without any interruption from the man whose premises had been thus audaciously invaded.

“Neat as well as useful,” was the gay comment with which Sweetwater surveyed his work, then laid his ear to the hole. Whereas previously he could barely hear the rattling of coals from the coal-scuttle, he was now able to catch the sound of an ash falling into the ash-pit.

His next move was to test the depth of the partition by inserting his finger in the hole he had made. He found it stopped by some obstacle before it had reached half its length, and anxious to satisfy himself of the nature of this obstacle, he gently moved the tip of his finger to and fro over what was certainly the edge of a book.

This proved that his calculations had been correct and that the opening so accessible on his side, was completely veiled on the other by the books he had seen packed on the shelves. As these shelves had no other backing than the wall, he had feared striking a spot not covered by a book. But he had not undertaken so risky a piece of work without first noting how nearly the tops of the books approached the line of the shelf above them, and the consequent unlikelihood of his striking the space between, at the height he planned the hole. He had even been careful to assure himself that all the volumes at this exact point stood far enough forward to afford room behind them for the chips and plaster he must necessarily push through with his auger, and also--important consideration--for the free passage of the sounds by which he hoped to profit.

As he listened for a moment longer, and then stooped to gather up the debris which had fallen on his own side of the partition, he muttered, in his old self-congratulatory way:

“If the devil don’t interfere in some way best known to himself, this opportunity I have made for myself of listening to this arrogant fellow’s very heartbeats should give me some clew to his secret. As soon as I can stand it, I’ll spend my evenings at this hole.”

But it was days before he could trust himself so far. Meanwhile their acquaintance ripened, though with no very satisfactory results. The detective found himself led into telling stories of his early home-life to keep pace with the man who always had something of moment and solid interest to impart. This was undesirable, for instead of calling out a corresponding confidence from Brotherson, it only seemed to make his conversation more coldly impersonal.

In consequence, Sweetwater suddenly found himself quite well and one evening, when he was sure that his neighbour was at home, he slid softly into his closet and laid his ear to the opening he had made there. The result was unexpected. Mr. Brotherson was pacing the floor, and talking softly to himself.

At first, the cadence and full music of the tones conveyed nothing to our far from literary detective. The victim of his secret machinations was expressing himself in words, words;--that was the point which counted with him. But as he listened longer and gradually took in the sense of these words, his heart went down lower and lower till it reached his boots. His inscrutable and ever disappointing neighbour was not indulging in self-communings of any kind. He was reciting poetry, and what was worse, poetry which he only half remembered and was trying to recall;--an incredible occupation for a man weighted with a criminal secret.

Sweetwater was disgusted, and was withdrawing in high indignation from his vantage-point when something occurred of a startling enough nature to hold him where he was in almost breathless expectation.

The hole which in the darkness of the closet was always faintly visible, even when the light was not very strong in the adjoining room, had suddenly become a bright and shining loop-hole, with a suggestion of movement in the space beyond. The book which had hid this hole on Brotherson’s side had been taken down--the one book in all those hundreds whose removal threatened Sweetwater’s schemes, if not himself.

For an instant the thwarted detective listened for the angry shout or the smothered oath which would naturally follow the discovery by Brotherson of this attempted interference with his privacy.

But all was still on his side of the wall. A rustling of leaves could be heard, as the inventor searched for the poem he wanted, but nothing more. In withdrawing the book, he had failed to notice the hole in the plaster back of it. But he could hardly fail to see it when he came to put the book back. Meantime, suspense for Sweetwater.

It was several minutes before he heard Mr. Brotherson’s voice again, then it was in triumphant repetition of the lines which had escaped his memory. They were great words surely and Sweetwater never forgot them, but the impression which they made upon his mind, an impression so forcible that he was able to repeat them, months afterward to Mr. Gryce, did not prevent him from noting the tone in which they were uttered, nor the thud which followed as the book was thrown down upon the floor.

“Fool!” The word rang out in bitter irony from his irate neighbour’s lips. “What does he know of woman! Woman! Let him court a rich one and see--but that’s all over and done with. No more harping on that string, and no more reading of poetry. I’ll never,--” The rest was lost in his throat and was quite unintelligible to the anxious listener.

Self-revealing words, which an instant before would have aroused Sweetwater’s deepest interest! But they had suddenly lost all force for the unhappy listener. The sight of that hole still shining brightly before his eyes had distracted his thoughts and roused his liveliest apprehensions. If that book should be allowed to lie where it had fallen, then he was in for a period of uncertainty he shrank from contemplating. Any moment his neighbour might look up and catch sight of this hole bored in the backing of the shelves before him. Could the man who had been guilty of submitting him to this outrage stand the strain of waiting indefinitely for the moment of discovery? He doubted it, if the suspense lasted too long.

Shifting his position, he placed his eye where his ear had been. He could see very little. The space before him, limited as it was to the width of the one volume withdrawn, precluded his seeing aught but what lay directly before him. Happily, it was in this narrow line of vision that Mr. Brotherson stood. He had resumed work upon his model and was so placed that while his face was not visible, his hands were, and as Sweetwater watched these hands and noticed the delicacy of their manipulation, he was enough of a workman to realise that work so fine called for an undivided attention. He need not fear the gaze shifting, while those hands moved as warily as they did now.

Relieved for the moment, he left his post and, sitting down on the edge of his cot, gave himself up to thought.

He deserved this mischance. Had he profited properly by Mr. Gryce’s teachings, he would not have been caught like this; he would have calculated not upon the nine hundred and ninety-nine chances of that book being left alone, but upon the thousandth one of its being the very one to be singled out and removed. Had he done this,--had he taken pains to so roughen and discolour the opening he had made, that it would look like an ancient rat hole instead of showing a clean bore, he would have some answer to give Brotherson when he came to question him in regard to it. But now the whole thing seemed up! He had shown himself a fool and by good rights ought to acknowledge his defeat and return to Headquarters. But he had too much spirit for that. He would rather--yes, he would rather face the pistol he had once seen in his enemy’s hand. Yet it was hard to sit here waiting, waiting--Suddenly he started upright. He would go meet his fate--be present in the room itself when the discovery was made which threatened to upset all his plans. He was not ashamed of his calling, and Brotherson would think twice before attacking him when once convinced that he had the Department behind him.

“Excuse me, comrade,” were the words with which he endeavoured to account for his presence at Brotherson’s door. “My lamp smells so, and I’ve made such a mess of my work to-day that I’ve just stepped in for a chat. If I’m not wanted, say so. I don’t want to bother you, but you do look pleasant here. I hope the thing I’m turning over in my head--every man has his schemes for making a fortune, you know--will be a success some day. I’d like a big room like this, and a lot of books, and--and pictures.”

Craning his neck, he took a peep at the shelves, with an air of open admiration which effectually concealed his real purpose. What he wanted was to catch one glimpse of that empty space from his present standpoint, and he was both astonished and relieved to note how narrow and inconspicuous it looked. Certainly, he had less to fear than he supposed, and when, upon Mr. Brotherson’s invitation, he stepped into the room, it was with a dash of his former audacity, which gave him, unfortunately, perhaps, a quick, strong and unexpected likeness to his old self.

But if Brotherson noticed this, nothing in his manner gave proof of the fact. Though usually averse to visitors, especially when employed as at present on his precious model, he quite warmed towards his unexpected guest, and even led the way to where it stood uncovered on the table.

“You find me at work,” he remarked. “I don’t suppose you understand any but your own?”

“If you mean to ask if I understand what you’re trying to do there, I’m free to say that I don’t. I couldn’t tell now, off-hand, whether it’s an air-ship you’re planning, a hydraulic machine or--or--” He stopped, with a laugh and turned towards the book-shelves. “Now here’s what I like. These books just take my eye.”

“Look at them, then. I like to see a man interested in books. Only, I thought if you knew how to handle wire, I would get you to hold this end while I work with the other.”

“I guess I know enough for that,” was Sweetwater’s gay rejoinder. But when he felt that communicating wire in his hand and experienced for the first time the full influence of the other’s eye, it took all his hardihood to hide the hypnotic thrill it gave him. Though he smiled and chatted, he could not help asking himself between whiles, what had killed the poor washerwoman across the court, and what had killed Miss Challoner. Something visible or something invisible? Something which gave warning of attack, or something which struck in silence. He found himself gazing long and earnestly at this man’s hand, and wondering if death lay under it. It was a strong hand, a deft, clean-cut member, formed to respond to the slightest hint from the powerful brain controlling it. But was this its whole story. Had he said all when he had said this?

Fascinated by the question, Sweetwater died a hundred deaths in his awakened fancy, as he followed the sharp short instructions which fell with cool precision from the other’s lips. A hundred deaths, I say, but with no betrayal of his folly. The anxiety he showed was that of one eager to please, which may explain why on the conclusion of his task, Mr. Brotherson gave him one of his infrequent smiles and remarked, as he buried the model under its cover, “You’re handy and you’re quiet at your job. Who knows but that I shall want you again. Will you come if I call you?”

“Won’t I?” was the gay retort, as the detective thus released, stooped for the book still lying on the floor. “Paolo and Francesca,” he read, from the back, as he laid it on the table. “Poetry?” he queried.

“Rot,” scornfully returned the other, as he moved to take down a bottle and some glasses from a cupboard let into another portion of the wall.

Sweetwater taking advantage of the moment, sidled towards the shelf where that empty space still gaped with the tell-tale hole at the back. He could easily have replaced the missing book before Mr. Brotherson turned. But the issue was too doubtful. He was dealing with no absent-minded fool, and it behooved him to avoid above all things calling attention to the book or to the place on the shelf where it belonged.

But there was one thing he could do and did. Reaching out a finger as deft as Brotherson’s own, he pushed a second volume into the place of the one that was gone. This veiled the auger-hole completely; a fact which so entirely relieved his mind that his old smile came back like sunshine to his lips, and it was only by a distinct effort that he kept the dancing humour from his eyes as he prepared to refuse the glass which Brotherson now brought forward:

“None of that!” said he. “You mustn’t tempt me. The doctor has shut down on all kinds of spirits for two months more, at least. But don’t let me hinder you. I can bear to smell the stuff. My turn will come again some day.”

But Brotherson did not drink. Setting down the glass he carried, he took up the book lying near, weighed it in his hand and laid it down again, with an air of thoughtful inquiry. Then he suddenly pushed it towards Sweetwater. “Do you want it?” he asked.

Sweetwater was too taken aback to answer immediately. This was a move he did not understand. Want it, he? What he wanted was to see it put back in its place on the shelf. Did Brotherson suspect this? The supposition was incredible; yet who could read a mind so mysterious?

Sweetwater, debating the subject, decided that the risk of adding to any such possible suspicion was less to be dreaded than the continued threat offered by that unoccupied space so near the hole which testified so unmistakably of the means he had taken to spy upon this suspected man’s privacy. So, after a moment of awkward silence, not out of keeping with the character he had assumed, he calmly refused the present as he had the glass.

Unhappily he was not rewarded by seeing the despised volume restored to its shelf. It still lay where its owner had pushed it, when, with some awkwardly muttered thanks, the discomfited detective withdrew to his own room.

XVIII. WHAT AM I TO DO NOW

Early morning saw Sweetwater peering into the depths of his closet. The hole was hardly visible. This meant that the book he had pushed across it from the other side had not been removed.

Greatly re-assured by the sight, he awaited his opportunity, and as soon as a suitable one presented itself, prepared the hole for inspection by breaking away its edges and begriming it well with plaster and old dirt. This done, he left matters to arrange themselves; which they did, after this manner.

Mr. Brotherson suddenly developed a great need of him, and it became a common thing for him to spend the half and, sometimes, the whole of the evening in the neighbouring room. This was just what he had worked for, and his constant intercourse with the man whose secret he sought to surprise should have borne fruit. But it did not. Nothing in the eager but painstaking inventor showed a distracted mind or a heavily-burdened soul. Indeed, he was so calm in all his ways, so precise and so self-contained, that Sweetwater often wondered what had become of the fiery agitator and eloquent propagandist of new and startling doctrines.

Then, he thought he understood the riddle. The model was reaching its completion, and Brotherson’s extreme interest in it and the confidence he had in its success swallowed up all lesser emotions. Were the invention to prove a failure--but there was small hope of this. The man was of too well-poised a mind to over-estimate his work or miscalculate its place among modern improvements. Soon he would reach the goal of his desires, be praised, feted, made much of by the very people he now professedly scorned. There was no thoroughfare for Sweetwater here. Another road must be found; some secret, strange and unforeseen method of reaching a soul inaccessible to all ordinary or even extraordinary impressions.

Would a night of thought reveal such a method? Night! the very word brought inspiration. A man is not his full self at night. Secrets which, under the ordinary circumstances of everyday life, lie too deep for surprise, creep from their hiding-places in the dismal hours of universal quiet, and lips which are dumb to the most subtle of questioners break into strange and self-revealing mutterings when sleep lies heavy on ear and eye and the forces of life and death are released to play with the rudderless spirit.

It was in different words from these that Sweetwater reasoned, no doubt, but his conclusions were the same, and as he continued to brood over them, he saw a chance--a fool’s chance, possibly, (but fools sometimes win where wise men fail) of reaching those depths he still believed in, notwithstanding his failure to sound them.

Addressing a letter to his friend in Twenty-ninth Street, he awaited reply in the shape of a small package he had ordered sent to the corner drug-store. When it came, he carried it home in a state of mingled hope and misgiving. Was he about to cap his fortnight of disappointment by another signal failure; end the matter by disclosing his hand; lose all, or win all by an experiment as daring and possibly as fanciful as were his continued suspicions of this seemingly upright and undoubtedly busy man?

He made no attempt to argue the question. The event called for the exercise of the most dogged elements in his character and upon these he must rely. He would make the effort he contemplated, simply because he was minded to do so. That was all there was to it. But any one noting him well that night, would have seen that he ate little and consulted his watch continually. Sweetwater had not yet passed the line where work becomes routine and the feelings remain totally under control.

Brotherson was unusually active and alert that evening. He was anxious to fit one delicate bit of mechanism into another, and he was continually interrupted by visitors. Some big event was on in the socialistic world, and his presence was eagerly demanded by one brotherhood after another. Sweetwater, posted at his loop-hole, heard the arguments advanced by each separate spokesman, followed by Brotherson’s unvarying reply: that when his work was done and he had proved his right to approach them with a message, they might look to hear from him again; but not before. His patience was inexhaustible, but he showed himself relieved when the hour grew too late for further interruption. He began to whistle--a token that all was going well with him, and Sweetwater, who had come to understand some of his moods, looked forward to an hour or two of continuous work on Brotherson’s part and of dreary and impatient waiting on his own. But, as so many times before, he misread the man. Earlier than common--much earlier, in fact, Mr. Brotherson laid down his tools and gave himself up to a restless pacing of the floor. This was not usual with him. Nor did he often indulge himself in playing on the piano as he did to-night, beginning with a few heavenly strains and ending with a bang that made the key-board jump. Certainly something was amiss in the quarter where peace had hitherto reigned undisturbed. Had the depths begun to heave, or were physical causes alone responsible for these unwonted ebullitions of feeling?

The question was immaterial. Either would form an excellent preparation for the coup planned by Sweetwater; and when, after another hour of uncertainty, perfect silence greeted him from his neighbour’s room, hope had soared again on exultant wing, far above all former discouragements.

Mr. Brotherson’s bed was in a remote corner from the loop-hole made by Sweetwater; but in the stillness now pervading the whole building, the latter could hear his even breathing very distinctly. He was in a deep sleep.

The young detective’s moment had come.

Taking from his breast a small box, he placed it on a shelf close against the partition. An instant of quiet listening, then he touched a spring in the side of the box and laid his ear, in haste, to his loop-hole.

A strain of well-known music broke softly, from the box and sent its vibrations through the wall.

It was answered instantly by a stir within; then, as the noble air continued, awakening memories of that fatal instant when it crashed through the corridors of the Hotel Clermont, drowning Miss Challoner’s cry if not the sound of her fall, a word burst from the sleeping man’s lips which carried its own message to the listening detective.

It was Edith! Miss Challoner’s first name, and the tone bespoke a shaken soul.

Sweetwater, gasping with excitement, caught the box from the shelf and silenced it. It had done its work and it was no part of Sweetwater’s plan to have this strain located, or even to be thought real. But its echo still lingered in Brotherson’s otherwise unconscious ears; for another “Edith!” escaped his lips, followed by a smothered but forceful utterance of these five words, “You know I promised you--”

Promised her what? He did not say. Would he have done so had the music lasted a trifle longer? Would he yet complete his sentence? Sweetwater trembled with eagerness and listened breathlessly for the next sound. Brotherson was awake. He was tossing in his bed. Now he has leaped to the floor. Sweetwater hears him groan, then comes another silence, broken at last by the sound of his body falling back upon the bed and the troubled ejaculation of “Good God!” wrung from lips no torture could have forced into complaint under any daytime conditions.

Sweetwater continued to listen, but he had heard all, and after some few minutes longer of fruitless waiting, he withdrew from his post. The episode was over. He would hear no more that night.

Was he satisfied? Certainly the event, puerile as it might seem to some, had opened up strange vistas to his aroused imagination. The words “Edith, you know I promised you--” were in themselves provocative of strange and doubtful conjectures. Had the sleeper under the influence of a strain of music indissolubly associated with the death of Miss Challoner, been so completely forced back into the circumstances and environment of that moment that his mind had taken up and his lips repeated the thoughts with which that moment of horror was charged? Sweetwater imagined the scene--saw the figure of Brotherson hesitating at the top of the stairs--saw hers advancing from the writing-room, with startled and uplifted hand--heard the music--the crash of that great finale--and decided, without hesitation, that the words he had just heard were indeed the thoughts of that moment. “Edith, you know I promised you--” What had he promised? What she received was death! Had this been in his mind? Would this have been the termination of the sentence had he wakened less soon to consciousness and caution?

Sweetwater dared to believe it. He was no nearer comprehending the mystery it involved than he had been before, but he felt sure that he had been given one true and positive glimpse into this harassed soul which showed its deeply hidden secret to be both deadly and fearsome; and happy to have won his way so far into the mystic labyrinth he had sworn to pierce, he rested in happy unconsciousness till morning when--

Could it be? Was it he who was dreaming now, or was the event of the night a mere farce of his own imagining? Mr. Brotherson was whistling in his room, gaily and with ever increasing verve, and the tune which filled the whole floor with music was the same grand finale from William Tell which had seemed to work such magic in the night. As Sweetwater caught the mellow but indifferent notes sounding from those lips of brass, he dragged forth the music-box he held hidden in his coat pocket, and flinging it on the floor stamped upon it.

“The man is too strong for me,” he cried. “His heart is granite; he meets my every move. What am I to do now?”

XIX. THE DANGER MOMENT

For a day Sweetwater acknowledged himself to be mentally crushed, disillusioned and defeated. Then his spirits regained their poise. It would take a heavy weight indeed to keep them down permanently.

His opinion was not changed in regard to his neighbour’s secret guilt. A demeanour of this sort suggested bravado rather than bravery to the ever suspicious detective. But he saw, very plainly by this time, that he would have to employ more subtle methods yet ere his hand would touch the goal which so tantalisingly eluded him.

His work at the bench suffered that week; he made two mistakes. But by Saturday night he had satisfied himself that he had reached the point where he would be justified in making use of Miss Challoner’s letters. So he telephoned his wishes to New York, and awaited the promised developments with an anxiety we can only understand by realising how much greater were his chances of failure than of success. To ensure the latter, every factor in his scheme must work to perfection. The medium of communication (a young, untried girl) must do her part with all the skill of artist and author combined. Would she disappoint them? He did not think so. Women possess a marvellous adaptability for this kind of work and this one was French, which made the case still more hopeful.

But Brotherson! In what spirit would he meet the proposed advances? Would he even admit the girl, and, if he did, would the interview bear any such fruit as Sweetwater hoped for? The man who could mock the terrors of the night by a careless repetition of a strain instinct with the most sacred memories, was not to be depended upon to show much feeling at sight of a departed woman’s writing. But no other hope remained, and Sweetwater faced the attempt with heroic determination.

The day was Sunday, which ensured Brotherson’s being at home. Nothing would have lured Sweetwater out for a moment, though he had no reason to expect that the affair he was anticipating would come off till early evening.

But it did. Late in the afternoon he heard the expected steps go by his door--a woman’s steps. But they were not alone. A man’s accompanied them. What man? Sweetwater hastened to satisfy himself on this point by laying his ear to the partition.

Instantly the whole conversation became audible. “An errand? Oh, yes, I have an errand!” explained the evidently unwelcome intruder, in her broken English. “This is my brother Pierre. My name is Celeste; Celeste Ledru. I understand English ver well. I have worked much in families. But he understands nothing. He is all French. He accompanies me for--for the--what you call it? les convenances. He knows nothing of the beesiness.”

Sweetwater in the darkness of his closet laughed in his gleeful appreciation.

“Great!” was his comment. “Just great! She has thought of everything--or Mr. Gryce has.”

Meanwhile, the girl was proceeding with increased volubility.

“What is this beesiness, monsieur? I have something to sell--so you Americans speak. Something you will want much--ver sacred, ver precious. A souvenir from the tomb, monsieur. Will you give ten--no, that is too leetle--fifteen dollars for it? It is worth--Oh, more, much more to the true lover. Pierre, tu es bete. Teins-tu droit sur ta chaise. M. Brotherson est un monsieur comme il faut.”

This adjuration, uttered in sharp reprimand and with but little of the French grace, may or may not have been understood by the unsympathetic man they were meant to impress. But the name which accompanied them--his own name, never heard but once before in this house, undoubtedly caused the silence which almost reached the point of embarrassment, before he broke it with the harsh remark:

“Your French may be good, but it does not go with me. Yet is it more intelligible than your English. What do you want here? What have you in that bag you wish to open; and what do you mean by the sentimental trash with which you offer it?”

“Ah, monsieur has not memory of me,” came in the sweetest tones of a really seductive voice. “You astonish me, monsieur. I thought you knew--everybody else does--Oh, tout le monde, monsieur, that I was Miss Challoner’s maid--near her when other people were not--near her the very day she died.”

A pause; then an angry exclamation from some one. Sweetwater thought from the brother, who may have misinterpreted some look or gesture on Brotherson’s part. Brotherson himself would not be apt to show surprise in any such noisy way.

“I saw many things--Oh many things--” the girl proceeded with an admirable mixture of suggestion and reserve. “That day and other days too. She did not talk--Oh, no, she did not talk, but I saw--Oh, yes, I saw that she--that you--I’ll have to say it, monsieur, that you were tres bons amis after that week in Lenox.”

“Well?” His utterance of this word was vigorous, but not tender. “What are you coming to? What can you have to show me in this connection that I will believe in for a moment?”

“I have these--is monsieur certaine that no one can hear? I wouldn’t have anybody hear what I have to tell you, for the world--for all the world.”

“No one can overhear.”

For the first time that day Sweetwater breathed a full, deep breath. This assurance had sounded heartfelt. “Blessings on her cunning young head. She thinks of everything.”

“You are unhappy. You have thought Miss Challoner cold;--that she had no response for your ver ardent passion. But--” these words were uttered sotto voce and with telling pauses “--but--I--know--ver much better than that. She was ver proud. She had a right; she was no poor girl like me--but she spend hours--hours in writing letters she--nevaire send. I saw one, just once, for a leetle minute; while you could breathe so short as that; and began with Cheri, or your English for that, and ended with words--Oh, ver much like these: You may nevaire see these lines, which was ver interesting, veree so, and made one want to see what she did with letters she wrote and nevaire mail; so I watch and look, and one day I see them. She had a leetle ivory box--Oh, ver nice, ver pretty. I thought it was jewels she kept locked up so tight. But, non, non, non. It was letters--these letters. I heard them rattle, rattle, not once but many times. You believe me, monsieur?”

“I believe you to have taken every advantage possible to spy upon your mistress. I believe that, yes.”

“From interest, monsieur, from great interest.”

“Self-interest.”

“As monsieur pleases. But it was strange, ver strange for a grande dame like that to write letters--sheets on sheets--and then not send them, nevaire. I dreamed of those letters--I could not help it, no; and when she died so quick--with no word for any one, no word at all, I thought of those writings so secret, so of the heart, and when no one noticed--or thought about this box, or--or the key she kept shut tight, oh, always tight in her leetle gold purse, I--Monsieur, do you want to see those letters?” asked the girl, with a gulp. Evidently his appearance frightened her--or had her acting reached this point of extreme finish? “I had nevaire the chance to put them back. And--and they belong to monsieur. They are his--all his--and so beautiful! Ah, just like poetry.”

“I don’t consider them mine. I haven’t a particle of confidence in you or in your story. You are a thief--self-convicted; or you’re an agent of the police whose motives I neither understand nor care to investigate. Take up your bag and go. I haven’t a cent’s worth of interest in its contents.”

She started to her feet. Sweetwater heard her chair grate on the painted floor, as she pushed it back in rising. The brother rose too, but more calmly. Brotherson did not stir. Sweetwater felt his hopes rapidly dying down--down into ashes, when suddenly her voice broke forth in pants:

“And Marie said--everybody said--that you loved our great lady; that you, of the people, common, common, working with the hands, living with men and women working with the hands, that you had soul, sentiment--what you will of the good and the great, and that you would give your eyes for her words, si fines, si spirituelles, so like des vers de poete. False! false! all false! She was an angel. You are--read that!” she vehemently broke in, opening her bag and whisking a paper down before him. “Read and understand my proud and lovely lady. She did right to die. You are hard--hard. You would have killed her if she had not--”

“Silence, woman! I will read nothing!” came hissing from the strong man’s teeth, set in almost ungovernable anger. “Take back this letter, as you call it, and leave my room.”

“Nevaire! You will not read? But you shall, you shall. Behold another! One, two, three, four!” Madly they flew from her hand. Madly she continued her vituperative attack. “Beast! beast! That she should pour out her innocent heart to you, you! I do not want your money, Monsieur of the common street, of the common house. It would be dirt. Pierre, it would be dirt. Ah, bah! je m’oublie tout a fait. Pierre, il est bete. Il refuse de les toucher. Mais il faut qu’il les touche, si je les laisse sur le plancher. Va-t’en! Je me moque de lui. Canaille! L’homme du peuple, tout a fait du peuple!”

A loud slam--the skurrying of feet through the hall, accompanied by the slower and heavier tread of the so-called brother, then silence, and such silence that Sweetwater fancied he could catch the sound of Brotherson’s heavy breathing. His own was silenced to a gasp. What a treasure of a girl! How natural her indignation! What an instinct she showed and what comprehension! This high and mighty handling of a most difficult situation and a most difficult man, had imposed on Brotherson, had almost imposed upon himself. Those letters so beautiful, so spirituelle! Yet, the odds were that she had never read them, much less abstracted them. The minx! the ready, resourceful, wily, daring minx!

But had she imposed on Brotherson? As the silence continued, Sweetwater began to doubt. He understood quite well the importance of his neighbour’s first movement. Were he to tear those letters into shreds! He might be thus tempted. All depended on the strength of his present mood and the real nature of the secret which lay buried in his heart.

Was that heart as flinty as it seemed? Was there no place for doubt or even for curiosity, in its impenetrable depths? Seemingly, he had not moved foot or hand since his unwelcome visitors had left. He was doubtless still staring at the scattered sheets lying before him; possibly battling with unaccustomed impulses; possibly weighing deeds and consequences in those slow moving scales of his in which no man could cast a weight with any certainty how far its even balance would be disturbed.

There was a sound as of settling coal. Only at night would one expect to hear so slight a sound as that in a tenement full of noisy children. But the moment chanced to be propitious, and it not only attracted the attention of Sweetwater on his side of the wall, but it struck the ear of Brotherson also. With an ejaculation as bitter as it was impatient, he roused himself and gathered up the letters. Sweetwater could hear the successive rustlings as he bundled them up in his hand. Then came another silence--then the lifting of a stove lid.

Sweetwater had not been wrong in his secret apprehension. His identification with his unimpressionable neighbour’s mood had shown him what to expect. These letters--these innocent and precious outpourings of a rare and womanly soul--the only conceivable open sesame to the hard-locked nature he found himself pitted against, would soon be resolved into a vanishing puff of smoke.

But the lid was thrust back, and the letters remained in hand. Mortal strength has its limits. Even Brotherson could not shut down that lid on words which might have been meant for him, harshly as he had repelled the idea.

The pause which followed told little; but when Sweetwater heard the man within move with characteristic energy to the door, turn the key and step back again to his place at the table, he knew that the danger moment had passed and that those letters were about to be read, not casually, but seriously, as indeed their contents merited.

This caused Sweetwater to feel serious himself. Upon what result might he calculate? What would happen to this hardy soul, when the fact he so scornfully repudiated, was borne in upon him, and he saw that the disdain which had antagonised him was a mere device--a cloak to hide the secret heart of love and eager womanly devotion? Her death--little as Brotherson would believe it up till now--had been his personal loss the greatest which can befall a man. When he came to see this--when the modest fervour of her unusual nature began to dawn upon him in these self-revelations, would the result be remorse, or just the deadening and final extinction of whatever tenderness he may have retained for her memory?

Impossible to tell. The balance of probability hung even. Sweetwater recognised this, and clung, breathless, to his loop-hole. Fain would he have seen, as well as heard.

Mr. Brotherson read the first letter, standing. As it soon became public property, I will give it here, just as it afterwards appeared in the columns of the greedy journals:

“Beloved:

“When I sit, as I often do, in perfect quiet under the stars, and dream that you are looking at them too, not for hours as I do, but for one full moment in which your thoughts are with me as wholly as mine are with you, I feel that the bond between us, unseen by the world, and possibly not wholly recognised by ourselves, is instinct with the same power which links together the eternities.

“It seems to have always been; to have known no beginning, only a budding, an efflorescence, the visible product of a hidden but always present reality. A month ago and I was ignorant, even, of your name. Now, you seem the best known to me, the best understood, of God’s creatures. One afternoon of perfect companionship--one flash of strong emotion, with its deep, true insight into each other’s soul, and the miracle was wrought. We had met, and henceforth, parting would mean separation only, and not the severing of a mutual bond. One hand, and one only, could do that now. I will not name that hand. For us there is nought ahead but life.

“Thus do I ease my heart in the silence which conditions impose upon us. Some day I shall hear your voice again, and then-”

The paper dropped from the reader’s hand. It was several minutes before he took up another.

This one, as it happened, antedated the other, as will appear on reading it:

“My friend:

“I said that I could not write to you--that we must wait. You were willing; but there is much to be accomplished, and the silence may be long. My father is not an easy man to please, but he desires my happiness and will listen to my plea when the right hour comes. When you have won your place--when you have shown yourself to be the man I feel you to be, then my father will recognise your worth, and the way will be cleared, despite the obstacles which now intervene.

“But meantime! Ah, you will not know it, but words will rise --the heart must find utterance. What the lip cannot utter, nor the looks reveal, these pages shall hold in sacred trust for you till the day when my father will place my hand in yours, with heart-felt approval.

“Is it a folly? A woman’s weak evasion of the strong silence of man? You may say so some day; but somehow, I doubt it--I doubt it.”

The creaking of a chair;--the man within had seated himself. There was no other sound; a soul in turmoil wakens no echoes. Sweetwater envied the walls surrounding the unsympathetic reader. They could see. He could only listen.

A little while; then that slight rustling again of the unfolding sheet. The following was read, and then the fourth and last:

“Dearest:

“Did you think I had never seen you till that day we met in Lenox? I am going to tell you a secret--a great, great secret--such a one as a woman hardly whispers to her own heart.

“One day, in early summer, I was sitting in St. Bartholomew’s Church on Fifth Avenue, waiting for the services to begin. It was early and the congregation was assembling. While idly watching the people coming in, I saw a gentleman pass by me up the aisle, who made me forget all the others. He had not the air of a New Yorker; he was not even dressed in city style, but as I noted his face and expression, I said way down in my heart, ‘That is the kind of man I could love; the only man I have ever seen who could make me forget my own world and my own people.’ It was a passing thought, soon forgotten. But when in that hour of embarrassment and peril on Greylock Mountain, I looked up into the face of my rescuer and saw again that countenance which so short a time before had called into life impulses till then utterly unknown, I knew that my hour was come. And that was why my confidence was so spontaneous and my belief in the future so absolute.

“I trust your love which will work wonders; and I trust my own, which sprang at a look but only gathered strength and permanence when I found that the soul of the man I loved bettered his outward attractions, making the ideal of my foolish girlhood seem as unsubstantial and evanescent as a dream in the glowing noontide.”

“My Own:

“I can say so now; for you have written to me, and I have the dancing words with which to silence any unsought doubt which might subdue the exuberance of these secret outpourings.

“I did not expect this. I thought that you would remain as silent as myself. But men’s ways are not our ways. They cannot exhaust longing in purposeless words on scraps of soulless paper, and I am glad that they cannot. I love you for your impatience; for your purpose, and for the manliness which will win for you yet all that you covet of fame, accomplishment and love. You expect no reply, but there are ways in which one can keep silent and yet speak. Won’t you be surprised when your answer comes in a manner you have never thought of?”

XX. CONFUSION

In his interest in what was going on on the other side of the wall, Sweetwater had forgotten himself. Daylight had declined, but in the darkness of the closet this change had passed unheeded. Night itself might come, but that should not force him to leave his post so long as his neighbour remained behind his locked door, brooding over the words of love and devotion which had come to him, as it were from the other world.

But was he brooding? That sound of iron clattering upon iron! That smothered exclamation and the laugh which ended it! Anger and determination rang in that laugh. It had a hideous sound which prepared Sweetwater for the smell which now reached his nostrils. The letters were burning; this time the lid had been lifted from the stove with unrelenting purpose. Poor Edith Challoner’s touching words had met, a different fate from any which she, in her ignorance of this man’s nature,--a nature to which she had ascribed untold perfections--could possibly have conceived.

As Sweetwater thought of this, he stirred nervously in the darkness, and broke into silent invective against the man who could so insult the memory of one who had perished under the blight of his own coldness and misunderstanding. Then he suddenly started back surprised and apprehensive. Brotherson had unlocked his door, and was coming rapidly his way. Sweetwater heard his step in the hall and had hardly time to bound from his closet, when he saw his own door burst in and found himself face to face with his redoubtable neighbour, in a state of such rage as few men could meet without quailing, even were they of his own stature, physical vigour and prowess; and Sweetwater was a small man.

However, disappointment such as he had just experienced brings with it a desperation which often outdoes courage, and the detective, smiling with an air of gay surprise, shouted out:

“Well, what’s the matter now? Has the machine busted, or tumbled into the fire or sailed away to lands unknown out of your open window?”

“You were coming out of that closet,” was the fierce rejoinder. “What have you got there? Something which concerns me, or why should your face go pale at my presence and your forehead drip with sweat? Don’t think that you’ve deceived me for a moment as to your business here. I recognised you immediately. You’ve played the stranger well, but you’ve a nose and an eye nobody could forget. I have known all along that I had a police spy for a neighbour; but it didn’t faze me. I’ve nothing to conceal, and wouldn’t mind a regiment of you fellows if you’d only play a straight game. But when it comes to foisting upon me a parcel of letters to which I have no right, and then setting a fellow like you to count my groans or whatever else they expected to hear, I have a right to defend myself, and defend myself I will, by God! But first, let me be sure that my accusations will stand. Come into this closet with me. It abuts on the wall of my room and has its own secret, I know. What is it? I have you at an advantage now, and you shall tell.”

He did have Sweetwater at an advantage, and the detective knew it and disdained a struggle which would have only called up a crowd, friendly to the other but inimical to himself. Allowing Brotherson to drag him into the closet, he stood quiescent, while the determined man who held him with one hand, felt about with the other over the shelves and along the partitions till he came to the hole which had offered such a happy means of communication between the two rooms. Then, with a laugh almost as bitter in tone as that which rang from Brotherson’s lips, he acknowledged that business had its necessities and that apologies from him were in order; adding, as they both stepped out into the rapidly darkening room:

“We’ve played a bout, we two; and you’ve come out ahead. Allow me to congratulate you, Mr. Brotherson. You’ve cleared yourself so far as I am concerned. I leave this ranch to-night.”

The frown had come back to the forehead of the indignant man who confronted him.

“So you listened,” he cried; “listened when you weren’t sneaking under my eye! A fine occupation for a man who can dove-tail a corner like an adept. I wish I had let you join the brotherhood you were good enough to mention. They would know how to appreciate your double gifts and how to reward your excellence in the one, if not in the other. What did the police expect to learn about me that they should consider it necessary to call into exercise such extraordinary talents?”

“I’m not good at conundrums. I was given a task to perform, and I performed it,” was Sweetwater’s sturdy reply. Then slowly, with his eye fixed directly upon his antagonist, “I guess they thought you a man. And so did I until I heard you burn those letters. Fortunately we have copies.”

“Letters!” Fury thickened the speaker’s voice, and lent a savage gleam to his eye. “Forgeries! Make believes! Miss Challoner never wrote the drivel you dare to designate as letters. It was concocted at Police Headquarters. They made me tell my story and then they found some one who could wield the poetic pen. I’m obliged to them for the confidence they show in my credulity. I credit Miss Challoner with such words as have been given me to read here to-day? I knew the lady, and I know myself. Nothing that passed between us, not an event in which we were both concerned, has been forgotten by me, and no feature of our intercourse fits the language you have ascribed to her. On the contrary, there is a lamentable contradiction between facts as they were and the fancies you have made her indulge in. And this, as you must acknowledge, not only proves their falsity, but exonerates Miss Challoner from all possible charge of sentimentality.”

“Yet she certainly wrote those letters. We had them from Mr. Challoner. The woman who brought them was really her maid. We have not deceived you in this.”

“I do not believe you.”

It was not offensively said; but the conviction it expressed was absolute. Sweetwater recognised the tone, as one of truth, and inwardly laid down his arms. He could never like the man; there was too much iron in his fibre; but he had to acknowledge that as a foe he was invulnerable and therefore admirable to one who had the good sense to appreciate him.

“I do not want to believe you.” Thus did Brotherson supplement his former sentence. “For if I were to attribute those letters to her, I should have to acknowledge that they were written to another man than myself. And this would be anything but agreeable to me. Now I am going to my room and to my work. You may spend the rest of the evening or the whole night, if you will, listening at that hole. As heretofore, the labour will be all yours, and the indifference mine.”

With a satirical play of feature which could hardly be called a smile, he nodded and left the room.

XXI. A CHANGE

“It’s all up. I’m beaten on my own ground.” Thus confessed Sweetwater, in great dejection, to himself. “But I’m going to take advantage of the permission he’s just given me and continue the listening act. Just because he told me to and just because he thinks I won’t. I’m sure it’s no worse than to spend hours of restless tossing in bed, trying to sleep.”

But our young detective did neither.

As he was putting his supper dishes away, a messenger boy knocked at his door and handed him a note. It was from Mr. Gryce and ran thus:

“Steal off, if you can, and as soon as you can, and meet me in Twenty-ninth Street. A discovery has been made which alters the whole situation.”

XXII. O. B. AGAIN

“What’s happened? Something very important. I ought to hope so after this confounded failure.”

“Failure? Didn’t he read the letters?”

“Yes, he read them. Had to, but--”

“Didn’t weaken? Eh?”

“No, he didn’t weaken. You can’t get water out of a millstone. You may squeeze and squeeze; but it’s your fingers which suffer, not it. He thinks we manufactured those letters ourselves on purpose to draw him.”

“Humph! I knew we had a reputation for finesse, but I didn’t know that it ran that high.”

“He denies everything. Said she would never have written such letters to him; even goes so far to declare that if she did write them--(he must be strangely ignorant of her handwriting) they were meant for some other man than himself. All rot, but--” A hitch of the shoulder conveyed Sweetwater’s disgust. His uniform good nature was strangely disturbed.

But Mr. Gryce’s was not. The faint smile with which he smoothed with an easy, circling movement, the already polished top of his ever present cane conveyed a secret complacency which called up a flash of discomfiture to his greatly irritated companion.

“He says that, does he? You found him on the whole tolerably straightforward, eh? A hard nut; but hard nuts are usually sound ones. Come, now! prejudice aside, what’s your honest opinion of the man you’ve had under your eye and ear for three solid weeks? Hasn’t there been the best of reasons for your failure? Speak up, my boy. Squarely, now.”

“I can’t. I hate the fellow. I hate any one who makes me look ridiculous. He--well, well, if you’ll have it, sir, I will say this much. If it weren’t for that blasted coincidence of the two deaths equally mysterious, equally under his eye, I’d stake my life on his honesty. But that coincidence stumps me and--and a sort of feeling I have here.”

It is to be hoped that the slap he gave his breast, at this point, carried off some of his superfluous emotion. “You can’t account for a feeling, Mr. Gryce. The man has no heart. He’s as hard as rocks.”

“A not uncommon lack where the head plays so big a part. We can’t hang him on any such argument as that. You’ve found no evidence against him?”

“N--no.” The hesitating admission was only a proof of Sweetwater’s obstinacy.

“Then listen to this. The test with the letters failed, because what he said about them was true. They were not meant for him. Miss Challoner had another lover.”

“Only another? I thought there were a half-dozen, at least.”

“Another whom she favoured. The letters found in her possession--not the ones she wrote herself, but those which were written to her over the signature O. B. were not all from the same hand. Experts have been busy with them for a week, and their reports are unanimous. The O. B. who wrote the threatening lines acknowledged to by Orlando Brotherson, was not the O. B. who penned all of those love letters. The similarity in the writing misled us at first, but once the doubt was raised by Mr. Challoner’s discovery of an allusion in one of them which pointed to another writer than Mr. Brotherson, and experts had no difficulty in reaching the decision I have mentioned.”

“Two O. B.s! Isn’t that incredible, Mr. Gryce?”

“Yes, it is incredible; but the incredible is not the impossible. The man you’ve been shadowing denies that these expressive effusions of Miss Challoner were meant for him. Let us see, then, if we can find the man they were meant for.”

“The second O. B.?”

“Yes.”

Sweetwater’s face instantly lit up.

“Do you mean that I--after my egregious failure--am not to be kept on the dunce’s seat? That you will give me this new job?”

“Yes. We don’t know of a better man. It isn’t your fault, you said it yourself, that water couldn’t be squeezed out of a millstone.”

“The Superintendent--how does he feel about it?”

“He was the first one to mention you.”

“And the Inspector?”

“Is glad to see us on a new tack.”

A pause, during which the eager light in the young detective’s eye clouded over. Presently he remarked:

“How will the finding of another O. B. alter Mr. Brotherson’s position? He still will be the one person on the spot, known to have cherished a grievance against the victim of this mysterious killing. To my mind, this discovery of a more favoured rival, brings in an element of motive which may rob our self-reliant friend of some of his complacency. We may further, rather than destroy, our case against Brotherson by locating a second O.B.”

Mr. Gryce’s eyes twinkled.

“That won’t make your task any more irksome,” he smiled. “The loop we thus throw out is as likely to catch Brotherson as his rival. It all depends upon the sort of man we find in this second O. B.; and whether, in some way unknown to us, he gave her cause for the sudden and overwhelming rush of despair which alone supports this general theory of suicide.”

“The prospect grows pleasing. Where am I to look for my man?”

“Your ticket is bought to Derby, Pennsylvania. If he is not employed in the great factories there, we do not know where to find him. We have no other clew.”

“I see. It’s a short journey I have before me.”

“It’ll bring the colour to your cheeks.”

“Oh, I’m not kicking.”

“You will start to-morrow.”

“Wish it were to-day.”

“And you will first inquire, not for O. B., that’s too indefinite; but for a young girl by the name of Doris Scott. She holds the clew; or rather she is the clew to this second O. B.”

“Another woman!”

“No, a child;--well, I won’t say child exactly; she must be sixteen.”

“Doris Scott.”

“She lives in Derby. Derby is a small place. You will have no trouble in finding this child. It was to her Miss Challoner’s last letter was addressed. The one--”

“I begin to see.”

“No, you don’t, Sweetwater. The affair is as blind as your hat; nobody sees. We’re just feeling along a thread. O. B.’s letters--the real O. B., I mean, are the manliest effusions possible. He’s no more of a milksop than this Brotherson; and unlike your indomitable friend he seems to have some heart. I only wish he’d given us some facts; they would have been serviceable. But the letters reveal nothing except that he knew Doris. He writes in one of them: ‘Doris is learning to embroider. It’s like a fairy weaving a cobweb!’ Doris isn’t a very common name. She must be the same little girl to whom Miss Challoner wrote from time to time.”

“Was this letter signed O. B.?”

“Yes; they all are. The only difference between his letters and Brotherson’s is this: Brotherson’s retain the date and address; the second O. B.’s do not.”

“How not? Torn off, do you mean?”

“Yes, or rather, neatly cut away; and as none of the envelopes were kept, the only means by which we can locate the writer is through this girl Doris.”

“If I remember rightly Miss Challoner’s letter to this child was free from all mystery.”

“Quite so. It is as open as the day. That is why it has been mentioned as showing the freedom of Miss Challoner’s mind five minutes before that fatal thrust.”

Sweetwater took up the sheet Mr. Gryce pushed towards him and re-read these lines:

“Dear Little Doris:

“It is a snowy night, but it is all bright inside and I feel no chill in mind or body. I hope it is so in the little cottage in Derby; that my little friend is as happy with harsh winds blowing from the mountains as she was on the summer day she came to see me at this hotel. I like to think of her as cheerful and beaming, rejoicing in tasks which make her so womanly and sweet. She is often, often in my mind.

“Affectionately your friend, “EDITH A. CHALLONER.”

“That to a child of sixteen!”

“Just so.”

“D-o-r-i-s spells something besides Doris.”

“Yet there is a Doris. Remember that O. B. says in one of his letters, ‘Doris is learning to embroider.’”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“So you must first find Doris.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And as Miss Challoner’s letter was directed to Derby, Pennsylvania, you will go to Derby.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything more?”

“I’ve been reading this letter again.”

“It’s worth it.”

“The last sentence expresses a hope.”

“That has been noted.”

Sweetwater’s eyes slowly rose till they rested on Mr. Gryce’s face: “I’ll cling to the thread you’ve given me. I’ll work myself through the labyrinth before us till I reach HIM.”

Mr. Gryce smiled; but there was more age, wisdom and sympathy for youthful enthusiasm in that smile than there was confidence or hope.