part I had played in this scene, but made no reference to the fact

itself, possibly because he was as well acquainted with my movements as I was myself. He only gave utterance to an easy-toned, "Exactly!" which seemed not only to settle this matter, but some others then inflaming my curiosity.

"We have been waiting a long time for some such communication to pass between them," he presently resumed, with a benevolent condescension, springing, perhaps, from our close contact in that jolting cab. "Otherwise, we should have taken him to-day, and in his own house. We have had great difficulty in holding the reporters back and even in keeping our own men quiet. It was desirable, you see, to take them together."

"And couldn't she be found? Wasn't she at Mother Merry's?"

"Not lately. No one answering to her description has shown up there for days. She seems to have fled from that place, alarmed, no doubt, by the interest shown in her by the young gentleman who got speech with her at the cost of a couple of silver dollars."

I began to note the corners as we passed them.

"Then we are not going to Mother Merry's?" I observed.

"No, we are not going to Mother Merry's."

"Yet we are not far from the docks," I remarked, as I caught transitory glimpses of the unmistakable green and red lights of the ferry-boats shining mistily on the left.

"No, our errand takes us in the region of her old haunts. I hope you feel no concern as to your safety?"

"Concern?"

"Oh, there's cause enough, or would be, if we were not in force. But our preparations have been made very carefully, and you can trust us to bring you out all right."

I signified my entire satisfaction. The prospect of physical struggle or some open adventure was welcome to me. My inner excitement would thus find vent.

"Do not bother about me," said I. "What I dread most is the possibility of meeting that unhappy woman's eye. Seeing me with you, she may think I have betrayed her. And perhaps I have; but it was done without intention. She did not strike me as a wicked woman."

"So much the less excuse for the man who has made her his accomplice," came in quiet rejoinder.

This ended our conversation for the time.

We were now making our way up-town through upper West Street. As I came to what I knew must be Canal Street from the cars that went jingling across our path, the difficulties of advance became more marked, and finally the cab stopped.

"What is going on here?" I asked, as carriage after carriage rolled into our course, till the street was blocked and we found it impossible to proceed.

"It's a Cunarder going out. The tide sets late to-night."

Here a coach, with a sweet-faced girl, drew up along-side us. I could see her happy smile, her air of busy interest, as she bent her head to catch a glimpse of the steamer upon which she was perhaps about to take her first voyage abroad. I could even hear her laugh. The sensation was poignant. Wrapt up in the thought of Hope, whom I had not forgotten for one moment during this wild ride, the sight of joy which might never again be hers came like a glimpse into another sphere, so far removed did I feel from everything bespeaking the ordinary interests of life, much less its extraordinary pleasures and anticipations.

Mr. Gryce in the meantime was fuming over the delay.

"We might better have come up ---- Street," he said. "Ah! that's better. We will arrive at our destination now in less than ten minutes."

We had passed the Cunarder's wharf, and were now rolling rapidly northward.

Suddenly the cab stopped.

"Again?" I cried.

Mr. Gryce replied by stepping out upon the sidewalk.

"We alight here," said he.

I rapidly followed him.

The rain dashing in my face blinded me for a moment; then I perceived that we were standing on a corner in front of a saloon, and that Mr. Gryce was talking very earnestly to two men who seemed to have sprung up from nowhere. When he had finished with what he had to say to them, he turned to me.

"Sorry, sir, but we shall have to walk the rest of the way. There are alleys to explore, and a cab attracts attention."

"It's all one to me," I muttered; and it was.

He turned east and I followed him. At the first crossing, a man glided into our wake; at the second, another. Soon there were three men sauntering behind us at a convenient distance apart. Each held a policeman's club under his coat; and walked as if the rain had no power to wet him. Suddenly I felt myself wheeled into an alley-way.

It was pouring now, and even the street lamps shone through a veil of mist, which made them all look like stars. The alley was dark, for there were no lamps there; only at the remote end a distant glimmer shone. It came from the murky panes of some shop or saloon.

Towards this light we moved.

XXVII

RAIN

Suddenly the figure of a man stepped out before us. It was too dark to see his face, but his voice had a familiar sound as he said:

"It's all right. He's there. I saw him go in a half-hour ago."

"Very good. My man, Sweetwater," explained Mr. Gryce, turning for an instant towards me; then, in hurried tones to the other, "Do you know on which floor he is to be found; and whether the man at the bar suspects what's up?"

"If he does, he's pretty quiet about it. All looks natural inside. But you can't tell what whispers have gone about. As for him, he's chosen his place with his usual indifference to consequences. He's in one of the attic rooms, sir, well back, and can be reached from the outside by means of a shed that slopes up almost to the window-ledge. If he wanted to escape, he could easily do so by a drop of only four feet. But I have left a man on watch there and our young gentleman would fall into arms that wouldn't let him go in a hurry. Will you come around that way? There's a light in the window and there's neither curtain nor shade to hinder a man's looking in. If you wish, I can crawl up on the roof I spoke of and take a peep at our doves before we venture upon disturbing them."

"It can do no harm," rejoined the older detective; "and if the girl is where she can be seen, this gentleman can go up afterwards and identify her. It will mean surer and quieter work than approaching them by the stairway. The house is full, I suppose?"

"Chuck." And with this characteristic word Sweetwater melted from before us as if he had been caught up in one of the swirls of wind and rain that ever and anon swept through the alley, dashing our faces with wet and making our feet unsteady on the slippery pavement.

I began to feel strange and unlike myself. The night, the storm, the uncongenial place, our more than uncongenial errand, were having their effect, lending to that dark entrance into one of the worst corners of our great city a sense of mysterious awe which has caused it to remain in my memory as something quite out of the ordinary experiences of life. It was not a long alley, and we soon reached the light I have mentioned. We could hear voices now, loud voices raised one moment in contention, the next in drunken cheer; and, thrilling through it all, a woman's tones singing some bewildering melody. It was not the voice of Mille-fleurs. I could never have mistaken that--but it was a young voice, and did not lack sweetness in the low notes. As I was listening to it, something flew flapping into my face. It was a piece of damp paper peeled from some billboard by a wandering gust and sent scurrying through the air. I tore it away from my eyes, drawing a deep breath like a person suddenly released from suffocation; but I shall not soon forget the effect of that cold slap in the face at the moment when my every nerve was on tension. Mr. Gryce, who had seen nothing,--it was hardly possible to see in the deluge which now swept down upon us,--gave me a pull which drew me from before the swinging door I was unconsciously making for, into a corner where I found myself more or less shielded from the wind if not from the rain. The alley had an L, and leading down from this L was a narrow passage, within which we now stood, surrounded by reeking walls and facing (whenever the fury of the storm abated sufficiently for us to look up) an opening into what might be called a labyrinth of back-yards. As I was bracing myself to meet all alarms, real or imaginary, associated with this noisome place, I beheld a sudden figure emerge from the opening and hastily approach us. It was Sweetwater again. He had just descended from his clamber over the roofs, where he seemed to be as much at home as a cat.

"Lucky that it rains so," he panted; "keeps the kids in. Otherwise some of us would have been spotted long ago. There are about fifty of them in this one house." Then I heard him whisper in the ear that was necessarily very near mine:

"It's all right up there. I can see his figure plainly. He's sitting with his back to the window, but there's no mistaking Leighton Gillespie. He's in dinner dress, just as he came from his own table in Fifth Avenue. The girl----"

"Well, what of the girl?"

"Is in one of her heavy sleeps. I could not see her face, only her hair, which hung all about her----"

"I would know her hair," I put in.

The two men drew a step aside and whispered together. Then Mr. Gryce came back, and, putting his mouth to my ear, asked if I had enough agility to mount the shed as Sweetwater had done. "He says the wood is slippery, but the climb up quite practicable for an agile man. He had no difficulty, and if you will catch hold of the window-casings as you go along----"

"Let me see the place," said I.

Sweetwater at once drew me down the passage into the open place in the rear. Here wind and storm had their will again, and for a moment I could neither hear nor see anything but a vast expanse of hollow darkness, lit here and there with misty lights, and reverberating with all sorts of sounds, among which the shrieking wind wailed longest and most furiously.

"Up there!" called a voice in my ear, and then I became aware of an arm pointing over my shoulder towards a dark incline running up over a flight of stairs, upon the lower step of which I had almost stumbled. "That's your road. Can you take it?"

Jamming my hat over my head, I looked up. A lighted square met my eyes in the blank side of the wall, against which this none too desirable road, as he called it, ran up.

"The window is wide open," said I.

"As you see," said he.

"I shall make a noise; he will hear me----"

"He didn't hear _me_----"

"That's no proof he won't hear _me_. But I forget the gale, and that sound--what is it?"

"Tin cans rattling; loose in some gutter, I suppose----"

"It is infernal." Then with sudden resolution--a resolution I hardly understand, for I certainly did not feel called upon to risk either self-respect or safety in this cause--I cried out: "I'll try for it; though it's long since I put my agility to the proof. But how am I to get onto the roof?"

For reply, Sweetwater uttered a low but peculiar call, and a shadow near by became a man.

"Lend your back to this gentleman," said he; and as I took advantage of the assistance thus afforded me and worked my way up onto the ledge over his head, he softly added:

"Catch hold of everything that offers, and be careful your feet don't slip. When you're up, give one look and come down. We will be on hand to catch you when you get to the edge of the roof."

The rain was dripping from my hat to such an extent that it nearly blinded me. I tore it off and flung it at their feet; then I started on my perilous climb.

It was a difficult one, but not so difficult as I had expected; and in two minutes I was under that open window. A tangle of ropes struck my head--clothes-lines, I suppose. Laying hold of them, I steadied myself before looking in. As I did so, a consciousness of my position made the moment a bewildering one. I thought of Hope and what her surprise would be could she see me in my present situation on the peak of this sloping roof, thirty feet above the ground. Hope! the word brought resolution also. I would look in upon this man with eyes schooled to their duty, but unsharpened by hate. If there was forbearance due him, I would try and exercise that forbearance, remembering always that he was an object of affection to the woman I loved.

Was this why I, for the first time, saw him as he may have looked to her and probably did? He was seated in such a way that only his profile was visible beyond the casing around which I peered. But that profile struck me forcibly, and, forgetting my errand, I allowed myself a moment's study of the face I had never rightly seen till then.

I was astonished at the result; astonished at the effect it had upon me. Leighton Gillespie seen with his brothers was not the Leighton Gillespie I looked upon now. Beheld thus by himself he was an impressive figure. Lacking George's height and Alfred's regularity of feature he was apt to be regarded by superficial or prejudiced observers as the one plain man in an exceptionally handsome family. But I saw now that this was not so. He had attractions of his own which could bear comparison with those of most other men; and, relieved from too close comparison with these two conspicuous personalities, the traits of his dark, melancholy countenance came out, and in the regard of his sad and preoccupied eye was felt a charm which might have ripened into fascination had no dark secret beclouded their depths or interfered with the natural expression of feelings that must once have been both natural and spontaneous. Had he been more fortunate in his tastes or more able to put restraint upon his passions, he might, with that eye and smile, have been one of those men whose influence baffles the insight of the psychologist, and from whose magnetic personality spring innumerable benefits to those of his day and generation.

All this was forcibly impressed upon me as I knelt in the pouring rain, looking in upon his face at this momentous crisis of his life, and, had I known it, of my own also.

I had feared to advance my head too far lest he should be attracted by the movement and so detect my presence at the window. Consequently I had seen as yet nothing of Mille-fleurs, and but little of the room. This would not do, and I was just preparing to extend my view further when the face I was watching sank forward out of sight and a groan came to my ears so thrilling and heartbroken that my own heart stopped beating in my bewilderment and surprise. From whose lips had this expression of anguish sprung? From hers? It had not sounded like a woman's voice. Could it be----

Again! What could it--did it, mean? Had Leighton Gillespie received some warning of the fate which at this moment hung over him, and was it his voice I heard lifted in these heartbroken accents? I was willing to risk everything to see. Thrusting my head forward, I looked boldly into the room, and momentary as the glance was, or seemed to be, I have never forgotten the dolorous and awe-compelling picture upon which it fell.

By the light of a guttering candle, whose blowing flame threatened every minute to go out, I saw a wretched pallet drawn up against a dirty and mouldering wall. On this pallet lay a woman, with just a ragged counterpane covering limbs I had so lately seen moving in rhythmical measure. Her hair--those bewildering curls, the like of which I had never before seen and would never see again, lay about her wherever those faded rags failed to reach. It hid her arms, it framed her temples, and, flowing away, coiled in great masses over the side of that pallet and onto the floor it seemed to richen with its wealth. But it did not hide her face. Either she had moved or her locks had been drawn aside since Sweetwater crouched in my place, for now her features were plainly visible and in those features I had no difficulty in recognising--Mille-fleurs.

Beside her, and drawn up so close that the rich broadcloth of his sleeve brushed the foul bed and lost itself among those overflowing curls, sat Leighton Gillespie, with his head in his hands, weeping as a man weeps but once in a lifetime.

There was no mistaking that grief. Real heart agony cannot be simulated; and, touched with awe for what I could not understand, I was about to slip away from my post, when he gave an impetuous start, roused himself, and glanced in sudden anger towards a door set in the wall directly opposite me. Another instant he was on his feet, with his hands held out across the prostrate figure before him, in an attitude of jealous love such as I have never seen equalled. What had he seen or heard? The door was closed, yet he seemed to fear intrusion. Whose? Not mine, for his eyes did not turn towards the window, but remained fixed upon this door. Had the sound of steps reached him from the hall? Probably, for, as I watched the door with him, I beheld the knob turn, then the door itself open, slowly at first, then more quickly, till it suddenly fell back, disclosing the quiet form and composed countenance of the old detective I had left behind me in the dark corner of the passage at the side of the house.

At the same instant a voice whispered from over my shoulder into my ear:

"Lie still; or slip silently down to the officers stationed below. You were so long that Mr. Gryce became impatient."

Up till then I had supposed that only a moment had elapsed since I first looked in.

"I will stay," I whispered back. I saw that Leighton was about to speak.

"Who are you?" I heard him demand of the intruder, in a passion so great he failed to note the identity of the man he thus accosted. "I have a right to this room. I have paid for it--Ah!" He had just recognised the detective.

With a quick turn he drew the coverlet over the face he seemed to guard so jealously, then with an air of command, which was at once solemn and peremptory, he pointed to the hat which naturally rested on Mr. Gryce's head, and said:

"Respect for the dead! You will uncover, Mr. Gryce."

"The dead?" repeated the astonished detective, striding hurriedly into the room. "The dead? Is this girl dead?"

But his doubt, if doubt it were, disappeared before the look with which Leighton Gillespie regarded him.

"Dead!" that gentleman declared. Then as Mr. Gryce instinctively bared his head, this strange, this incomprehensible man advanced a step, and in tones inconceivably touching and dignified, added this short sentence:

"To respect her is to respect me; this woman is my wife."

XXVIII

BY THE LIGHT OF A GUTTERING CANDLE

My amazement was unaffected, and so overwhelming I hardly understood myself. His wife, Mille-fleurs! Alas, then, for Hope, who, in her unthinking if generous love for this man, was prepared for any other grief than this! Yet why "alas"? Had she not told me that her greatest wish, her supreme desire, was to see his character restored to its old standing in her eyes, and had he not at this moment cleared himself of the one sin her womanly heart would find it hardest to pardon? The cry of "poor Hope!" with which my heart was charged changed to "happy Hope," and my composure, which had been sadly shaken, was slowly returning, when the insoluable mystery of the situation absorbed me again, and I glanced at Mr. Gryce to see how he had been affected by Mr. Gillespie's announcement.

This aged detective, who, when I last looked his way, was standing alone in the doorway, now had Sweetwater at his side,--that agile young man having bounded into the room before the words which had made so great a change in the situation had fully left Mr. Gillespie's lips; and the contrast of expression as seen in the two faces was noticeable. Sweetwater, young in experience, young in feeling, reflected in look and attitude the sensations of awakening sympathy and interest with which I own my own breast was full, while the older detective, with characteristic prudence, withheld his judgment, and, consequently, his sympathy, for the explanations which such an avowal from such a man certainly demanded.

Indeed, the situation might very naturally suggest to one so accustomed to the seamy side of human nature, that this sudden demise of an inconvenient witness chimed in too opportunely with the need of the man he had come there to arrest, for it to be viewed without suspicion.

There was, however, only a tinge of this feeling in his voice as he quietly remarked:

"I thought you buried your _wife_ five years ago in Cornwall."

"And I thought so also," was Leighton Gillespie's quiet reply. "For many, many wretched weeks and months I believed this in common with all my friends. Then--but it is a long story, Mr. Gryce. Do you require me to relate it now and _here_?"

The reverence with which he allowed his hand to touch rather than fall on the breast he had so carefully covered from our curious gaze spoke volumes. At the sight of this simple action, both men bent their heads. I doubt if he noticed it. A stray lock which had escaped from the coverlet and now hung curling and glittering over the straw which protruded from the wretched pallet, had attracted his eye. Lifting it with a lingering touch, he put it softly out of sight; then he quietly said:

"I would like to have one fact made known to the public. My father was ignorant to the last that it was a stranger and not my wife we buried in Cornwall. There were reasons which made it difficult for me to tell him that Mrs. Gillespie still lived; and while I make no excuses for the silence I maintained towards him on this subject, I acknowledge that to it are due my present position and the misery I am now under of seeing the darling of my heart die in an attic where I would not house a dog."

The accents of heartfelt sorrow are not to be mistaken. The air of severity with which Mr. Gryce had hitherto surveyed this supposed criminal softened into a look more in keeping with his native benevolence, but he had no reply ready, and the silence became painful. Indeed, the situation was not an easy one for even so experienced a man as Mr. Gryce to handle, and, noting his embarrassment, I bounded into the room and took my place at his side, much as Sweetwater had done.

Mr. Gillespie scarcely remarked this new inroad upon his privacy. He doubtless took me for another police-officer, and as such not to be noted or counted. But the detectives showed some surprise at my intrusion, which seeing, I turned to Mr. Gryce and said:

"If you will excuse my presumption I should like to speak to Mr. Gillespie."

The latter started, possibly at my tone, and, wheeling about, gazed at my bare head and drenched figure with sharp curiosity in which a growing recognition soon became visible.

I at once bowed.

"You remember me," I suggested. "I am Mr. Outhwaite. If you will pardon my method of entrance and the proof which it gives of my connection with these men, I should like to offer you my assistance at this crisis. Mr. Gryce evidently wishes some conversation with you, which you rightly hesitate to accord him in a place made sacred by the presence of your dead wife. If you will have confidence in me, I will watch this room while you go below. No one shall approach the bed and no one shall enter the room, if Mr. Gryce will leave a guard at the door. Will you accept this service? It is sincerely tendered."

He stood perplexed, eyeing me with mingled doubt and astonishment; then, turning with an inexpressible look of longing towards the one object of his care, he cried:

"You do not understand or you would not ask me to leave her, not for a moment. I have not had her so near me, so near my hand, so near my heart, these many minutes in years. She cannot rise and run away from me now. She does not even wish to. This is a happiness to me you cannot appreciate, a happiness I cannot endure seeing cut short. Leave me, then, I pray, and come again when she has been laid in her grave. You will find me ready to receive you, ready to explain----"

"You ask the impossible," interrupted Mr. Gryce. "Some explanations will not bide the convenience of even so recent a mourner as yourself. If you do not wish to be taken immediately from this place, you will make some few things clear to us. What has this woman had to do with your father's death?"

"Nothing."

The fire with which Leighton Gillespie uttered this word made us both start. Aghast at what struck me as a direct falsehood, I instinctively opened my lips. But Mr. Gryce made me an imperceptible gesture, and I refrained from carrying out my inconsiderate impulse.

"I see," continued the unhappy man, "that suspicions which I had supposed confined to my brothers and myself have involved my innocent wife. This is more than I can bear. I will at once make known to you my miserable story."

Mr. Gryce drew up a chair and sat down. As there was no other in the room we knew what that meant. The damp air was beginning to tell upon the rheumatic old man. Attention being thus called to the open window, Sweetwater moved over and closed it. Never shall I forget the look which Leighton Gillespie cast towards the bed as that broken and ill-fitting sash came rattling down.

"See if the hall is clear," said Mr. Gryce.

The young detective crossed to the door. As he opened it and looked out, a gust of noisy laughter rose from below, mingled with the shrill sound of a woman's singing, the same, doubtless, which we had previously heard in front. These tones, heard amid brawl and shouting, seemed to pierce Mr. Gillespie to the heart. Mr. Gryce, who saw everything, motioned to Sweetwater to close the door as he had the window. Sweetwater complied by shutting himself out. This was an act of self-denial which I felt called upon to emulate.

"Shall I join Mr. Sweetwater?" I asked.

It was Mr. Gillespie who replied:

"No. I wish more than one listener; let the lawyer stay."

I was only too happy to remain. Wet as I was, I felt anxious to hear what this man so singled out by Hope had to say in explanation of his relations to the wretched woman he now acknowledged to be his wife.

He seemed in haste to make them.

"Seven years ago this fall," he began, "I met this woman, then a girl."

"Wait!" put in Mr. Gryce; "there is a point which must first be settled." And, advancing to the cot guarded so jealously by the man before him, he laid his hand upon the coverlet. "You will allow me," he said firmly, as with a gentle enough touch he drew it softly aside.

"How came this woman--pardon me, how came Mrs. Gillespie to die thus suddenly?"

The unhappy husband, after his first recoil of outraged feeling, forced himself into a recognition of the detective's rights, and, with apparent resignation, rejoined:

"I should have come to that in time. She died, as you can readily perceive, from exposure. Driven from Mother Merry's miserable quarters by some terror for which, perhaps, she had no name, she wandered in and out among the docks for two wretched days and nights, often dragging her feet through the ooze of the river, so that her garments were never dry and are not so yet. At last she came here, where once before she had found shelter in a biting storm. _Here!_ But it is a better place than the wharves, and I am glad God guided her to even so poor a refuge. She was raving with fever when she came straggling into the room below. But after the warmth struck her and she had tasted something, she came to herself again, and then--and then she sent for me."

He paused. I did not yet understand him or the circumstances which made this situation possible, but a strange reverence began to mingle with my wonder,--not for the man--I could not feel that yet; but for a love which could infuse such feeling into the lightest allusion he made to this beloved, if wretched waif.

"There was a doctor here when I came," he speedily continued. "You can find him;--he will tell no different tale from mine--but no doctor could help her after those nights of bitter cold and exposure, and I paid him to leave me alone with her; and she died in my arms. May I tell you why this was everything to me? Why, the happiness of having received her last sigh is so great, that I have no room for resentment against you for this intrusion, and hardly feel the shame of being found in this place, with my dead darling lying in her miserable rags on this hideous pallet!"

"You may tell us," assented Mr. Gryce, replacing the coverlet over the face upon which was fast settling that look of peace which is Death's last gift to the living.

Mr. Gillespie's tone grew deeper; it could hardly have grown more tender or more solemn.

"I loved this woman. She was young when I first saw her. So was I. There were no haggard lines about her dancing eyes and laughing lips then. She was a vision of--well, I will not say beauty; she was never beautiful--but of--I cannot tell you what; I can only say that my life began on that day, not to end till she died, a half-hour ago.

"I married her. She was not a woman to take into my father's house; perhaps not into any family circle. The stage was her home, the stage from which I took her; but I did not know this; I simply knew that she was wild in spirit, and unused to household ways and social restrictions. But had I understood her then as I do now, I doubt if I would have acted any differently. I was headstrong in those days and quite reckless enough to grasp at what I felt to be my own, even if aware it would fall to nothing in my frenzied clutch.

"I took her into my father's family. I took this wild bird out of its native air, and shut it up behind the strict bars of a conventional household. One promise only I exacted from her as the price of this gracious act on my part. She was never under any pretext, not even in the event of my death, to return to the stage. Poor child! she has kept that promise. Perhaps it is all she has kept: kept it, though hungry; kept it when the wild craving for morphine tore at her breast and brain and she could have got the drug for one strain from her marvellous voice; kept it, though her veins burned with longing for the movement that was her life, and the weights on her tongue lay heavy on her heart, which beat truly only while she was dancing or singing. It was her dancing and singing which had won my heart; or, rather, the woman when dancing and singing; yet I cut her off from these natural expressions of the turbulent joy springing from her exuberant nature, and expected her to be satisfied with my love and the routine of a well-regulated household. This was my folly; a folly born of the delight I took in her simple presence. I thought that she loved me as I did her, and found in love's madness the recompense for what she had laid aside. But I had not read her nature. No man could fill her heart as she filled mine. She was a genius,--an untamable one,--and the restiveness of her temperament made demands which could only find relief in spontaneous song or rhythmic movement.

"My father, who loved quiet women--women like my mother, whose force lay hidden in such sweetness that she shines with almost a saint's glory in our memory--could not understand my wife's temperament; and, consequently, could not show even common patience towards her. He was not harsh in his treatment of her, but he failed to give her credit for so much as wishing to conform to his ways and the habits of the people she must meet in our house. When he came upon her, stealthily posing before our long mirror in the drawing-room, or caught floating down the stairs a faint echo of her magical voice in one of the tragic strains she best loved to sing, he showed such open shrinking and distaste that she flew for comfort to the one resource capable of undermining for me all hope of a better future. I allude to her use of morphine.

"She had taken it before our marriage, but the fact was kept from me. When I awoke to a realisation of the horror menacing my happiness, I devoted time, strength, and every means I then knew, to win her from this practice. But I only partially succeeded. She did not realise the harmfulness of this habit and could not be made to. Eluding my vigilance, she resorted more and more to the drug I could never succeed in keeping out of her grasp, and it fell to me to stand in the breach thus made and keep the knowledge of this crowning humiliation from my father and brothers.

"Meanwhile my father, who was strictness itself in all matters of propriety, insisted upon her sitting opposite him at the table and comporting herself in every way as the lady of the house. Just because he so dreaded comment and had so much pride in his own social standing and that of his sons, he kept her continually on view and carried her to parties and balls, thinking that his prestige would cause recognition to be given her by his friends. And it did--but grudgingly! Admired for what she was not, she was scorned for what she was. I have seen her petted by some would-be society fine lady till my blood boiled, then marked the smile of supercilious sarcasm which would be thrown back upon her when her beautiful shoulders were turned. Yet I had hopes, strong hopes of better days after the first strangeness of the new life should have worn away and her good impulses had had time to develop into motive powers for kind actions. But it was not to be; never was to be. The fiend whose power I had set myself to combat was far stronger than any force I could bring against him. She grew worse--appeared once in public as she never before had appeared outside her own room, and my father, who was with her, never attempted to hold up his head again in his former unmoved fashion. Claire, who came to us later, had no power to hold her mother back, and while she was still an infant, the inevitable occurred--my wife ran away from us.

"It was the first overwhelming shock my hitherto unfailing faith had had to sustain. She had slipped away at nightfall without money and almost without farewell. The merest note left on the piano in our little room on the third floor told me she had tried to be happy in a domestic life, but had failed; and begged me not to seek her, for she was stifling for air and freedom.

"And I have no doubt she was. Seeing, since, where she has found pleasure, and under what conditions the old gay smile has revisited her lips, I have no doubt that the very luxury we prized was oppressive to her. But then I only thought of the dangers and privations she must encounter away from my protection; and, confiding to no one the calamity which had befallen me, I rushed from the house and sought her in every place which suggested itself to me as a possible refuge. It was a frenzied search, and ended in my coming upon her, ten days after her disappearance, in a plain but decent lodging-house. Her money was gone, and she lay in that heavy sleep which has no such hallowing effect upon the beauty as this we look upon now.

"Some men's love would have sickened and failed them at this degrading sight. But though a change took place in the feeling which had held me in an entranced state ever since my marriage, it was a change which deepened, rather than deadened, the affection with which I regarded her. From a creature whose untold charm bewitched and bewildered me, she became to me a sacred charge for which I was responsible to God and man; and while she still lay there and I stood in a maze of misery before her, I vowed that, come what would, I would remain true to her and by means of this faith and through the unfailing patience it would call forth, make what effort I could to stay her on the brink of that precipice she seemed doomed to perish by.

"But I was to be tried in ways I had little foreseen. She was glad to see me when she woke, and readily consented to return to her home and her child. But in two months she was off again, and this time I did not find her so easily. When I did, she was in such a hopeless condition of mental and moral degradation that I took her to a sanitarium, where I had every reason to expect that a proper secrecy would be maintained as to her real complaint and unhappy condition. For my pride was still a torment to me, and an open rupture with my father too undesirable for me to risk a revelation of the true extent of the vagaries indulged in by his unwelcome daughter-in-law. Her escapades, serious as they were, had affected him but little. For I had so closely followed her in her sudden flittings that we were looked upon as having left home together on some hurried tour or at the call of some thoughtless impulse. He had believed us out of town, while I was engaged in hunting the city through for her.

"But after a week spent in the sanitarium, I perceived by the looks I encountered, on every side, that my secret was discovered; and was thus in a measure prepared when the door of my room opened one day upon the stern figure of my father. He had heard the true cause of my wife's condition, and a stormy scene was before me.

"It was then that I regretted that my early opportunities had been slighted, and that, instead of being independent of his bounty, I was not considered capable of earning my own living. Had my home been one of my own making, I might have stood up and faced him at that hour with a resolution to hold by my wife, which in itself might have ensured his respect. But I was tied hand and tongue by the realisation of all I owed him, was owing him, and was likely to owe him to the end of my days. I was not master of my own life; how, then, could I propose to be the master of another's?

"My father, whose favourite I had never been, could not be expected to know what was passing in my heart; but he was not without a realisation of what he might find in the adjoining room, and, casting a glance that way, he asked coldly:

"'Is she--Mrs. Gillespie--(he never called her by her given name) _awake_?'

"No question could have pierced my heart more poignantly. It was not the hour for sleep, and the use of the word had intention in it. But I subdued all signs of distress, and, calling her by name, bade her come out and greet father; after which I stood breathless, waiting for her appearance, conscious that it might be a smiling one, and equally that it might be--I dared not think what. She was not always to be depended upon.

"She did not appear at once. 'Sit down, father,' I begged. 'She may be dressing.'

"And she was. In a minute or two, as we stood watching, she threw open the door, and in an instant I saw that whatever hope I may have cherished of her creating a good impression in her partially recovered state, was an ill-founded one. She was not in one of her depressed moods, but, what was worse, perhaps, in one of her ecstatic ones. All her genius, and she had much, had taken fire under some impulse of her erratic brain, and she came into the room prepared to conquer in the only way she knew how. Still young, still beautiful in her own way, which was that of no other woman, she glided into our presence in one rapturous whirl, a scarf floating from her neck, and a wreath of wild vine about her head. I rushed to prevent her, but it was too late. She _would_ dance, and she did, while my father, who had never seen her in this glowing state, drew me aside and watched with hard eyes, while she swayed and dipped and palpitated in what would have been a glorious ebullition of pure delight, had she not been my wife, and the man at my side as cold to her charm as the dew which stood out on my wretched forehead. When I could bear no more, I flung my arms about her and she stopped, panting and frightened, like a bird caught in full flight. 'Sing,' I whispered to her; 'sing that air from _AEnone_'. I thought the tragic pathos of her tones might make her dancing forgotten. And they did in a way. My father had never listened to any such dramatic rendering of a simple song before, and I saw that he was subdued by the feelings it awakened. But I gathered no hope from this. He had too little liking for public exhibitions of this kind on the part of women, for him to be affected long by any singing which was not that of the boudoir; and when, her first ebullition passed, she began to droop under the heavy reaction which inevitably followed these impulsive performances, I drew her into the other room, and shut the door. Then I came back and faced him.

"He was standing in the window of the large but unlovely room, drumming restlessly on the panes before him. As the light struck his head it brought to view the silver rapidly making its way through the dark locks he had been accustomed to pride himself upon, and a pang struck me at this sight, which made me quite dumb for the instant. I felt as if I, and not she, had been dancing over his heart. Then my ever-present thought of the woman I had sworn to cherish returned and held me steady while he said:

"'It is well that I have seen your wife once when the full spell was upon her. Now I know what has come into the Gillespie family. Leighton, do you love this woman?'

"'Enough to bear your condemnation if you choose to condemn us,' I assured him.

"'Then take her away out of my sight and from the possible sight of my growing grandchild. A dancing menad can be no mother to Claire.'

"'I will take her away,' I promised him. 'When this place has done all for her it can, I will carry her where she can offend no one but strangers.'

"'I would suggest an asylum,' he muttered. It was the only unjust thing I ever knew him to propose.

"'She is not insane,' I objected.

"'She is not sane,' he rejoined. 'No opium-eater is. But I will not force your conscience; only--let me never again see her in our home in Fifth Avenue. _You_ will always be welcome.'

"I could not retort that I would enter no house from which she was thus peremptorily excluded. The house in Fifth Avenue was my home, the home of my child; and about it clustered every dear association of my heart save those connected with my unhappy love.

"'A man who marries for a whim must expect unpleasant results,' my father resumed. 'You shall have what money you need for her establishment elsewhere; but this hemisphere is too narrow to harbour both her and myself. Go to Europe, Leighton; there is more room there for your wife to dance in.'

"And I meant to follow this suggestion, but her health was not good enough for me to risk a voyage at this juncture, and we drifted West and put up at a place called Mountain Springs. It was during our stay there, that, so far as the world is concerned, the story of my married life ended. But for me it had only begun. The facts regarding my wife and her connection with that great catastrophe which robbed more than one household of wife and mother differed much in reality from those reported to the world and accepted by my own family. She did not perish in that wreck, though I thought she had, and mourned her loss for many months. She had merely taken advantage of the circumstances to effect another escape. How, I will endeavour to relate, hard as it is to disclose the failings of one so dear to me.

"My wife, whose natural longings had been modified rather than extinguished by her experiences at the sanitarium, soon awakened to the old sense of restraint and a desire to enjoy again the irresponsibilities of her early Bohemian life. But having gained wisdom by her past experiences, she allowed no expression of her feelings to escape her; and, relying on the effect produced upon me by her apparent content, merely asked the privilege of enjoying the sports indulged in by the other boarders. Fearing to cross her too much, I gave her all possible liberty, but when she begged to go on a certain excursion--the excursion which ended so disastrously for all concerned--I felt forced to refuse her, for I had made an arrangement that day which would prevent me from accompanying her. However, after repeated solicitation, I yielded to her importunities and gave her my consent, at which she showed much joy, and lavished many expressions of fondness upon me. Had my suspicions not been lulled by the undisturbed peacefulness of the last few months, these open demonstrations of affection might have occasioned me some alarm, for they were not without a suggestion of remorse. But I mistrusted nothing; I was too happy, and when I parted from her it was with the full intention of sacrificing for her pleasure the first real business engagement I had ever entered upon. But I did not carry out this impulse; I merely made arrangements for the train to stop for me at the little station on the mountains where my affairs led me. But I did not confide this plan to her till I was upon the point of leaving. Then I told her she might look for me on the train immediately after passing Buckley, and while I wondered at the way she received my words, I thought the embarrassment she showed was due to surprise. Alas! it sprang from much deeper sources. She had planned to leave me again, this time forever; and, baffled as she thought in the attempt, she succumbed for a little while to despair. Then her fertile brain suggested an expedient. Two trains left Mountain Springs that morning, one north and one south. She would take the southern train, and lest she should be prematurely discovered in her flight and so be followed before she had found a refuge, she prevailed upon a girl over whom she had some influence, to exchange garments with her and take her place among the excursionists. She little dreamed what lay before those excursionists. As little did I realise that it was in behalf of a stranger I entered upon that mad chase after the runaway cars I had seen slip from the engine and go crashing down towards the train on which I believed my wife to be. I knew those cars to be loaded with dynamite, for it was in connection with this fact I had come to this place, and the thought that they were destined to prove the destruction of the life I so much prized maddened me to such an extent that it was a mere matter of instinct for me to leap upon the engine I saw bounding to her rescue. Had time been given me to think, I might not have shown such temerity, for I knew nothing of a fireman's duties or what would be expected of me by the engineer. But I did not pause to think; I only stood ready to hazard my life for the woman I loved,--the woman whom I believed to be on the train I even then could see advancing up the valley. Of that ride, its swirl and whirlwind rush, I remember little; every thought, every fear, was engrossed in the one question, How were we to save that train? But two methods suggested themselves to me in my ignorance and isolation from the brave engineer. Either we must overtake the cars and by coupling to them stay their downward rush to the main track below--a trick I did not understand--or we must crush so fiercely into them as to explode the dynamite with which they were loaded before they had a chance to collide with the advancing train. That the latter catastrophe did not happen was not owing to any precaution on my part, for I do not remember that I had the least dread of personal destruction. As I have just said, my one thought, my only thought in that dizzy descent, was to save her. And I failed to do it; or so I had reason to think. As you remember, all our efforts were in vain; the unspeakable occurred, and wreck, death, and disaster met my eyes when, after a period of blank darkness, I rose from the ground where I had been hurled by the force of that dynamite explosion. Amid this wreck, in face of this death, I plunged in my search for her, and, as I believed, found her. A loving husband cannot be deceived in his wife's clothes, and the fragments I handled told their tale, as I thought, only too well. But, as you now know, it was not my wife who wore these clothes, though we buried her as such, and I mourned my lost love as no one who has not fixed his whole heart upon one object can possibly understand.

"My father, whose relief at this release can be readily imagined, endeavoured to calm my grief, not by sympathy, for that he could not feel, but by an unvarying kindness which assured me that, now that this obstacle to a right understanding between us had been removed, I might hope for the establishment of more cordial relations between us. I was older now, and he more considerate of my many uncongenial ways and habits; besides, Claire made a tender bond between us, and with one of her baby smiles healed many a breach that might otherwise have separated us.

"I began to be content, when, having some business in a strange quarter of the city, I chanced to walk down East Fourteenth Street. It was a holiday of some kind and there had been a procession. The stir in the streets was just what usually follows the breaking up of long lines of people. But this did not disturb me. Claire had been unusually engaging that morning, and I was just rejoicing in the memory of her innocent prattle, when the band in the far distance broke out into a merry strain, and I saw on the sidewalk before me a cluster of people separate into a sort of ring, in the middle of which a woman stood poised with swaying arms, so like the image that was day by day receding farther and farther into the deep recesses of my memory, that a species of faintness came over me and I drew back, sick and half-blinded, directly in the path of the people pressing in my rear. This caused me to receive a push from behind which effectually roused me and gave me strength to look again at one who could recall my lost Mille-fleurs. I expected--how could I expect anything else?--to be met by a strange face and an unknown smile. But it was _her_ face, _her_ smile; and the figure, clad in such clothes as I had never, even in my worst dreams, associated with the woman to whom I had given my name, was _hers_. Had God made two such women? Two with such eyes, such hair, such instincts, and such genius? Was this a sister of Mille-fleurs; a twin of my lost darling, of whose existence I had never heard? God grant not! I had buried Mille-fleurs, and with her, memories which this creature would only bring back to the destruction of my peace. I dared not give way for one instant to the thought that this likeness was anything but a passing illusion which the next moment would dispel. I dared not for my life. And yet I stood staring; hearing and not hearing the shouts of wild applause rising around me, and was looking, yes, looking directly into her eyes, when they suddenly turned my way in startled recognition. It was Mille-fleurs! Mille-fleurs! The woman I had buried was a stranger, and she who was making pastime for the passing crowd was _my wife_!

"I made no scene. I accepted the fact as we accept any unforeseen catastrophe that comes upon us unawares, tearing up our peaceful present and making a chaos of the future. As she was still dancing, though fitfully and with curious breaks, I stopped her by my steady look and held her so, till the crowd had melted away sufficiently for me to take her by the hand and lead her under the cover of the first small shop we came to. Then I questioned her closely, and, when I understood all, asked her if she would go with me and be clothed and fed. She answered with a startled look. 'I cannot!' she cried, and wearily drooped her head. 'I am not worthy.'

"God knows what passed through my mind then. I stood there in the wretchedness of this low shop, beside a counter from which the smell of stale tobacco rose in nauseous fumes, together with the sickening smell of partially decayed fruits--a flower in my button-hole (put there by little Claire), and before me this woman, loved as few of earth's best and worthiest have been, telling me with trembling lips what explained her rags, the degradation which had fallen on her beauty, and the whole pitiable downfall of a womanhood which once struck my heart as ideal and worthy of a man's unselfish worship.

"Drawing the flower from my button-hole, I crushed it in my hand. If I could have donned the clothes of some of the men lolling about us in greedy curiosity, I would have done so at that moment, if only the contrast between our outer selves might have been less apparent. But this was impossible, and I could only stand in silence in face of this wreck of bygone delights, and in one moment and under the gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes peering from behind the counter and gaping in at the doorway, live down my bitter humiliation at this untoward resurrection of a love I had learned to rejoice in as buried. For this was no wretched waif of the streets I could pity and leave. This was my wife, the mother of my child; the woman whom I had once vowed to hold in honour to the end, and to succour, no matter what her need or to what degradation she might come. Besides, there was an appeal in her drooping attitude and quivering mouth which touched my heart in spite of my judgment. I felt her misery as I had never felt my own; a misery all the more pronounced because of the joy so openly preceding it; and, feeling a fresh thrill in the old cord of union that had made our hearts one, I quietly asked her if she had lost all love for me. She gave me one quick look; and I saw her eye quicken as she softly faltered, 'No. Only,' she made haste to add, 'I cannot live in big houses under the eyes of people who think my ways odd and wrong. If you take me back to him I cannot help going wrong again. But I would like something pretty to wear and something good to eat.'

"I took her to an East Side hotel. I bought her clothes and gave her food, over which she laughed like a child. Then I told her what I meant to do for her. I would buy her a home in a pretty country place, where she need not fear intruding eyes. There she should live with some woman I could trust and who would be kind to her. A piano, music, flowers, books--she should have all, and if, in the course of time, she came to wish it, I would bring our child to see her. Did she think she could be contented in a home like this? Wouldn't it be better than the cold and squalor of the streets and these wild dances before unsympathetic eyes?

"She answered with a burst of affection which was real enough at the time; then asked if I was going to let my father know she was living. This brought to light the spectre which had stood over against us ever since I first recognised her as the woman I had sworn to love and cherish. Could I tell my father? Could I bring down again upon myself the old coldness, the old distrust, the old sense of a division that was gall to me because of the reverence and love I naturally felt for him?

"I could not; I recognised the cowardice of it, but I could not. I was ready to give her succour; I was ready to devote time, money, and care to her establishment and well-being; I could deny myself the pleasures and pursuits natural to men of my age, and even the uninterrupted enjoyment of the home I had come to prize, but I could not tell my father that the wild-eyed creature he was forcing himself to forget, still lived, and might any day bring down fresh humiliation upon him.

"She saw my doubt and smiled as in the early days of her untrammelled youth.

"'Better so,' she cried; 'then if I fail to be good it will not so much matter. And I may fail; it is in my blood, Leighton; in my unfortunate Bohemian blood. Oh, why did you ever care for me?'

"Such gusts of feeling and regret over the havoc she had caused were common to her. They made it impossible for me to hope in her ultimate restoration to respectability and a quiet life. But, alas! they were but gusts, and after a few months of peaceful harbourage in the rose-covered cottage I found for her, she fled from me again and was lost for _years_. But I never ceased searching for her. The unrest of knowing she was restless under the roof I had provided for her was nothing to the restlessness of not knowing where she was and in what misery and under what deprivation she was pining away in the dark holes where alone she could find refuge. I have sat hours under my father's eye, talking of stocks and bonds and railway shares, while my every thought and feeling were with her whom in my fancy I saw wandering from river to river, in dark nights and in cold;--rain on the pavements or slush in the streets,--drawing up to lighted doors for warmth or hiding her brown head with its flying curls under sheds a dog might be glad to fly from.

"It has happened to me often to be in the presence of women, at church or concert or festival, and with their eyes on my face and the perfume of their presence floating about me, to behold in my mind's perspective a solitary figure poised on the edge of some dock, in whose lifted arms and upstrained countenance I read despair, the despair that leads to death; and, forgetting where I was and to whom my words were due, have rushed out to do--what? Wander those down-town streets and the bleak places I had seen in my fancy, in the hope of coming once again upon the being who, unaccountably to myself, still held the cord whose other end was bound indissolubly to my heart. What wonder that I was looked upon as eccentric, moody, strange, or that my father, who naturally explained these freaks according to his own lights, showed displeasure at my unaccountable whims? Yet I went on with my search, and finally the day arrived when my perseverance was rewarded and I came upon her once again.

"She was in a low dance-hall, but she was not dancing. She was simply gazing at another woman attempting those dizzy whirls which, under the sway of her own genius, had once attracted the applause of a different crowd from this. There was infinite longing in her eyes, mixed with the sadness which will sometimes creep over those who are homeless through their own choice. When she saw me, and this was perhaps sooner than was best for either herself or me, I saw the old look of terror rise in her eyes, but mingled with it was a certain recognition of my faithfulness and self-forgetful care for her which melted the ice about my heart and reawakened the old hope for her. But she did not follow me when I beckoned her out; nor could I induce her to do so without risking a scene which would necessarily attract all eyes to us. But she promised, if I gave her money, to return the next day to the little house in New Jersey.

"And she did; but her stay was short, and it became a common thing for her to drift back there for a day or so, and then to flee away again, to return when the fancy seized her or the devils of discomfort drove her to seek a respite from the horrors which had now become for her synonymous with freedom.

"She always found something to reward her for these visits; some surprise in the shape of a new article or some fresh source of amusement. Money to me was only valuable as it gave me power to rivet another link to the chain with which I endeavoured to hold her to a better life; and though I knew the false construction which might be put upon these expenditures, not only by my father but others, I spared no means, stopped at no extravagance which might add one more allurement to the nest I had made for my weary and bedraggled one.

"The woman who had orders to keep this house in a continual state of readiness for its fitful visitant was as discreet as she was sympathetic. She may have surmised my secret, or she may have supposed all these efforts the result of an ill-conceived philanthropy.

"I could never tell by her manner. But I knew she treated my poor one well. Time after time has she opened the door to a disordered and dishevelled creature, whom next morning I found sitting in a bower of roses, fitted out in dainty cashmeres, and with her long locks combed till they shone and shone again. Nay, I have come upon her on her knees before the bruised and frozen feet upon which she was thrusting slippers of downy softness, which made my darling laugh until their very softness became a burden, and she threw them off to dance. I have never lingered over these sights, but I have imagined them over and over with tear-filled eyes, for, explain it as you will, every backward slip made by my darling toward the precipice I ever saw yawning for her strengthened the hold she had upon my heart, till the pity with which I regarded her filled my whole bosom to bursting.

"But the wild hawk cannot be tamed. She would vanish from our care just when we thought it was becoming dear to her, and my wild pursuit would begin again, to be followed by chance findings and renewed disappointments. She was not to be held, though in the hope of doing so I have spent many stolen hours in the little house, reading to her, talking to her, playing with her, sacrificing my good name and the regard of my relatives just to win back one innocent look to her face and keep her amused and contented without the help of the accursed drug. She slipped away from us in spite of all our efforts, and during this last year returned only once.

"Yet I think she has felt more drawn to me this year than in all the time of our marriage. But she felt her unworthiness more. She had listened to the hymns sung by the Salvation Army on some of the down-town corners, and, being susceptible to impressions of this nature, had followed the singers into their halls and heard some of the good words that are uttered there. Sometimes, I am told, she laughed at what she heard, but oftener was seen to cry, and once she herself sang till, as they said, the very heavens seemed to open. When I heard this, I could not keep away from these meetings, though I never came upon her at any one of them either on the East or West side. She seemed to anticipate my approach there as elsewhere, for often have I been assured that she had just that minute gone out, and must be somewhere near, though I never succeeded in finding her.

"This looked to me then like hate, but now I think it was simply shame; for when she knew that death was upon her she sent for me; and, seeing the old look of forbearance on my face, she threw up her wasted arms, and, panting like a child who has reached its mother's arms at last, turned her tired, tired face towards my breast with a feeble 'Forgive!' and died.

"You cannot know the heart of a man who has followed his lost lamb for years through tangled thickets and by headlong precipices, and it may seem strange for me to pour into ears so hardened and necessarily so unsympathetic the sacred secrets of my soul. But my position is a strange one and my story one that must be told in its entirety for you to understand why that smile upon her face is so much to me that my sole prayer at this time is to be allowed to remain in sight of it for one hour. She has loved me always; not as I loved her, not to the point of saving me one heartache or sparing me one erratic impulse of her ungoverned nature, but still better than I feared; better than her conduct would show. For when I came to lay her head down again upon its pillow, I found tied about her neck and fast clutched in her chilling palm, _this_.

"Our wedding ring," he murmured. "She might have pawned it for a dollar during any of the many crises of her miserable life."

He paused, put the token back in his breast, and added but one more word. "When she was alive and well, with vigour in her dancing foot, and a deathless unrest in her gypsy heart, she chafed at my presence and fled from my protection. But when the final shadow settled and she felt all other props give way, then her poor arms rose in recognition of the love which had never failed her." There was an indescribable tone of triumph in his tones. "She had need of me in her dying hours; she smiled----"

He paused, and his eyes, which had been fixed on her form, rose instinctively, not to the dingy rafters overhead, but to the heaven he saw above those rafters. For him her spirit had fled upward. Whatever we might think of her, to him she was henceforth a being blessed and gathered into a refuge from which she would nevermore seek or wish to escape.

* * * * *

It was hard to break into this calm hopefulness with words of stern or sinister meaning. But Mr. Gryce had no choice.

"What, then, is your special desire?" asked that officer.

Mr. Gillespie's eyes fell, and for a moment he stood thinking, then he said;

"I have retribution to make to her memory. I wish to take her to my own house and bury her from there as my wife. The humiliation from which my pride recoiled in the old days has been meted out to me ten-fold. I no longer wish to evade my responsibilities."

His expression as he said this was very different from the smile I had surprised on his face the night he stooped over his dead father. Yet the one brought up the other, and, in a measure, acted as a mutual interpretation. By means of it and the determination he had just expressed, I could comprehend the feeling of that moment, when with police in the house and the whole family subjected to a suspicion which involved it in the utmost disgrace, he contemplated the features of the man whose pride found the hemisphere in which he lived too small to hold both himself and the daughter whose worst fault was a proclivity to dance and sing.

Mr. Gryce, who had no such memories to reconcile, was meanwhile surveying the young man with a curious hesitation.

"I regret," said he, "the presence of an obstacle to your very natural wish to bury your wife from your own house. Mr. Gillespie, it is my duty to inform you that we are not here on a simple errand of surveillance: my orders were to arrest you on the charge of murdering your father."

XXIX

THE QUIET HOUR

I would rather have been spared the pain of that moment. Mr. Gryce had virtually promised that I should not be present at Mr. Gillespie's arrest, but I presume he forgot not only his promise but my very existence in the unexpected interest of this extraordinary situation. Mr. Gillespie, who at another time might have succumbed to the emotion of seeing himself singled out from his brothers on the charge which had hitherto involved them all, was already in a state of too much agitation to make much demonstration over this fresh humiliation. Nevertheless it became evident, from the droop of his arms and the general air of discouragement which crept into his whole bearing, that the iron had entered his soul and the climax of his many woes had been reached.

"I hoped for other results when I entered upon my long and painful story," he remarked. "Certainly you have found me able to account for much that has seemed anomalous in my relations to my father and the attitude I have been compelled to preserve towards society. I am surprised that anyone should continue to regard me as having had anything to do with my father's unhappy death. May I ask what special evidence you imagine yourselves to have against me? I may be able to refute it with a word."

This was more than Mr. Gryce could grant, and he said so, though with less imperturbability of manner than usual. "I am under orders to bring you into the presence of the District Attorney," he explained, "who will use his own discretion in the matter of having you detained. Will you accompany me quietly, leaving the care of your wife to Mr. Outhwaite, who, I am sure, will follow your wishes in the choice of such assistants as he may think necessary to employ?"

The look he received in return was eloquent in its appeal, but Mr. Gryce knew no relenting where his duty was concerned, and, recognising this, Mr. Gillespie took a fresh resolve and boldly said:

"You have discovered that I carried a bottle of prussic acid into my father's house the day before he died. Shall I tell you where I procured it? From the hand of her who lies here. I found it tied about her neck, when, after months of fruitless search, I was led to investigate Mother Merry's lodging-house. She was asleep when I discovered it; asleep in a way I always found it impossible to break, and the shock of finding her in quiet possession of what I instinctively knew to be poison maddened me to such an extent that I tore the phial away from her and put in its place a roll of bank-notes. These were probably stolen from her, as no proof remains of her having used them; but the bottle I carried away, having impulsively thrust it into my trousers' pocket at the first intimation I received of a raid being made upon the place by the police."

The explanation was so natural, and the manner in which it was made so convincing, that the detective's look and mine crossed, and I became assured that he as well as myself was beginning to give credence to this man.

"I can give no information of the use which was made of this drug after its introduction into my father's home, nor can I designate the hand which took it from my bureau where I placed it on emptying my pockets. My connection with it ended at the moment I speak of. I did not even think of it again till I came in from the meeting where I had vainly sought distraction, and found my father lying low and heard the cry of poison raised in the house."

"This would have been a welcome explanation at the time," commented Mr. Gryce. "Your delay has compromised you."

"So be it," was the short but proud reply which came from this singular man. "When you reflect that by the time I was able to satisfy myself that this bottle was missing from the place where I had left it, any attempt to exonerate myself would have been a virtual accusation of one of my two brothers, you will realise why I hesitated to speak then, and only bring myself to speak now under the compelling force of an interest greater than family pride or affection. In my desire to share the last offices which can be paid to my wife, I possibly show myself for the second time a coward."

Did he? Mr. Gryce did not seem to think so. The forehead of this aged detective was clearing fast, and he actually looked younger by ten years than when he entered this house. Yet his exactions remained the same, and Mr. Gillespie prepared to accommodate himself to them.

Meanwhile the incessant hammering of the rain on the roof had become less noticeable, and the drip, drip, on the sill without, less wearily persistent. There seemed, too, a diminution in the turbulence of the wind; the doors and windows did not rattle so loudly, and the worst noises in the yards below had ceased. Anxious to see if the storm was abating, I raised the window and looked out. Rushing clouds with great torn edges met my eye, and, below, a chaos of towering walls surrounding an abyss in which the imagination could picture nothing save a collection of foul yards and reeking alleys. Recoiling from a prospect which the condition of my mind and heart made more than usually gloomy, I turned back from the possible tragedies hidden behind those great walls to the actual one in which I had myself been forced to take so ungracious a part. Mr. Gillespie was waiting to speak to me.

"I am allowed to give you the names of such people as can best assist you in the removal of my wife," he remarked. "Here they are, together with the address in New Jersey where I wish her ultimately carried. Mr. Gryce will give you what further information you need----"

He placed a paper in my hand with a word of quiet thanks, to which I responded in the manner I felt would be most pleasing to Hope. Then he cast a glance at the detective.

"I have promised Mr. Gillespie the privilege of passing a moment in this room unseen and alone," observed that official, stepping towards the door.

I bowed and withdrew, shutting Mr. Gillespie in and ourselves out. Instantly all the noises in the house crowded clamorously to our ears. Laughter, singing, brawling, the screaming of children and the scolding of their distracted mothers, made a sort of pandemonium, which little harmonised with the mood induced by the pathetic story we had just heard. But it was not for us to be particular at such a moment, and I was glad that I had given no sign of my inward disturbance, when Mr. Gryce suddenly remarked:

"I am getting old." (His alert eye and attentive ear turned towards the room we had just left did not seem to indicate it.) "I find that such scenes make a deeper impression upon me than formerly. I no longer dwell on the skill it takes to bring them about, but rather muse upon the mistakes and woes of poor humanity which make them possible."

I wished to ask him what he thought of Mr. Gillespie's prospects, but he gave me no encouragement to do so, and we remained silent till the door reopened and Mr. Gillespie came out.

"I am ready now," he quietly informed us. "Mr. Outhwaite, I can trust you; and if Hope--" He stopped and looked the entreaty he dared not utter.

"I will tell her the whole story just as it has fallen from your lips. You wish me to?"

He signified his assent, but still looked wistful.

"When she has heard the true cause of the division which has taken place between you and other members of your family, she will act as her own kind heart will prompt her," I added.

He would have pressed my hand, but remembering his position as a prisoner, refrained.

"Let us go," he now said, in natural recoil from the noises which just then burst in renewed outcry from every quarter of the house.

Mr. Gryce gave a faint whistle. It was answered in the same guarded manner from below. At which the old detective turned to me with a few final directions, after which, with a promise to leave me well guarded, he made a gesture which Mr. Gillespie could not fail to understand. They began to descend. When Mr. Gillespie was half-way down, he gave one backward look at the door swaying between him and what he had loved best on earth; then he passed on, and I was left standing on that dingy landing, alone.

There was some clamour and no little jeering in the rooms below as the detectives passed through them with their well-dressed prisoner; but these tokens of class animosity speedily weakened to a sullen growl, amidst which I thought I heard the rattling of departing wheels.

With a heart as heavy as the silence which now filled the house, I turned and went back into that room.

It was filled with moonlight. The candle from which the winding-sheet had long ago melted and run upon the table, had flickered out, but its fitful flame was not missed. The clouds which had seemed so impenetrable a short time before, had thinned out and parted till they flecked, rather than covered, the white disk of the moon, now revealed for the first time in days.

That storm and that clearing have never left my memory. As the last lingering shred of cloud drifted away, leaving the face of the moon quite clear, I found courage to look once more towards the bed.

There was a change there. She lay, not as before, with her features quite concealed, but with her face exposed save where the loose curls had forced their way across her cheeks and forehead. The coverlet, drawn close under her chin, hung smooth and decent to the floor, and across it lay stretched one white arm, upon the hand of which shone the wedding-ring which Leighton Gillespie had taken from her neck and placed there.

XXX

AN UNEXPECTED ALLY

That night was a busy one for me; nevertheless I found time to send a message to Hope, in which I begged her to read no papers till she saw me, and, if possible, to keep herself in her own room. To these hurried words I added the comforting assurance that the news I had to bring her would repay her for this display of self-control, and that I would not keep her waiting any longer than was necessary. But it was fully ten o'clock before I was able to keep this promise, and I found her looking pale and worn.

"I have obeyed you," she said, with an attempt at smiling as pitiful as it was ineffectual. "What has happened? Why did you not want me to see the papers or talk with Mrs. Penrhyn?"

"Because I wished to be the first to tell you the secret of Leighton Gillespie's life. It was not what was suggested to you by the discrepancies you observed between his character and life. He is sane as any man, but--" it was hard to proceed, with those eyes of unspeakable longing looking straight into mine--"but he has had great sorrows to bear, great suspenses to endure, a deception to keep up, not altogether justifiable, perhaps, but yet one that was not without some excuse. His wife--Did you ever see his wife?"

"No," she faltered.

"--Did not perish in that disaster of five years ago, as everyone supposed; and it was she----"

"Oh!" came in a burst of sudden comprehension from Hope, as she sank down out of sight among the curtains by the window. But the next moment she was standing again, crying in low tones in which I caught a note of immeasurable relief, "I thank God! I thank God!" Then the sobs came.

I noticed that, once she had taken in this fact of his personal rectitude, all fear left her as to the truth of the more serious charge against him. Even after I had explained to her how he came by the phial of poison, and how it was through his agency it came to be in his father's house, no doubt came to mar her restored confidence in this her most cherished relative. She even admitted that, now this one unexplainable point in his character had been made clear to her, she felt ready to meet any accusations which might be raised against him. "Let them publish their suspicions!" she cried. "He can bear them and so can I; for now that he has been proven a true man, nothing else much matters. I may blush at hearing his name,--it will be years, I think, before I shall overcome that,--but it will be because I failed to see in his kindness to me the sympathetic interest of one whose heart has been made tender towards women by his wild longing after the wandering spirit whom he called his wife."

Then she asked where I had placed Mille-fleurs (a name so natural to Millicent Gillespie that no other was ever suggested by her friends); and, having been told where, said she would like to sit beside her until the time came to lay her in the garden of that little home from which all shadow was now cleared away save that of chastened sorrow.

As this was what Leighton Gillespie secretly wished, I promised to accompany her to New Jersey, and then, taking this pure-hearted girl by the hand, I asked:

"Have I performed my task well?"

Her answer was--but that is my secret. Small reason as it gave me for personal hope, I yet went from that house with my heart lightened of its heaviest load.

I did not read the papers myself that morning. I had little heart for a reporter's version of what had so thrilled me coming from Leighton's own lips. Merely satisfying myself that the latter was still in custody, I busied myself with what came up in my office, till the stroke of five released me to a free exercise of my own thoughts.

How much nearer were we to the solution of this mystery than we had been the morning following Mr. Gillespie's death? Not much; and while Hope and possibly myself felt that the band of suspicion had narrowed in its circle, and by the exclusion of Leighton, whom we could no longer look upon as guilty, left the question of culpability to be settled between the two remaining sons of the deceased stockbroker, to the world in general and to the readers of sensational journals which now flooded the city with accounts of the most sacred incidents of Leighton Gillespie's past life he was still the man through whose agency the poison had entered the Gillespie house. Nor could we fail to see that the feeling called out by these tales of his domestic infelicities and the wild search in which most of his life had been passed had its reverse side for those people who read all stories of disinterested affection with doubt, and place no more faith in true religion than if the few bright spots made in the universal history of mankind by acts of unselfish devotion had no basis in fact, and were as imaginary as the dreams of poet or romancer.

That Leighton Gillespie had not been released after his conference with the District Attorney was proof that his way was not as clear before him as I had hoped. Yet I was positive that Mr. Gryce as well as Sweetwater shared my belief in his innocence; and while this was a comfort to me, I found my mind much exercised by the doubt as to what the next turn of the kaleidoscope would call up in this ever-changing case.

I had not seen Underhill in days, and I rather dreaded a chance meeting. He did not like Leighton, and would be the first to throw contempt upon any mercy being shown him on account of his faithful attachment to his disreputable wife. I seemed to hear the drawling query with which this favourite of the clubs would end any attempt I might make in this direction: "And so you think it probable that a man--a man, remember, with a child liable to flutter in and out of his room at all hours--would leave a phial of deadly poison on his dresser and never think of it again? Not much, old man. If he laid it down there, which I doubt, he took it up again. Don't waste your sympathy on a cad."

Yet I did; and to such an extent that I took a walk instead of going home and hearing these imaginary sentences uttered in articulated words. I walked up Madison Avenue, and, coming upon a store which had a reputation for an extra fine brand of cigars, I went in to buy one.

Have you ever greatly desired an event which your common sense told you was most unlikely to happen, and then suddenly seen it wrought out before you in the most unforeseen manner and by the most ordinary of means? From the first night of the tragedy with which these pages have been full, I had wished for an interview with the old butler, without witnesses, and as the result of a seeming chance. But I had never seen my way clear to this; and now, in this place and in this unexpected manner, I came upon him buying fruit at a grocer's counter.

I did not hesitate to approach him.

"How do you do, Hewson?" said I, with a kindly tap on his shoulder.

He turned slowly, gave me a look that was half an apology and half an appeal, then dropped his eyes.

"How do you do, sir?" said he.

"Been buying oranges for the family?" I went on. "Startling news, this! I mean the arrest of Mr. Gillespie's second son. I never thought of him as the guilty one, did you?"

The old butler did not break all up as I expected. He only shook his head, and, taking up the bundle which had just been handed him, remarked:

"We little know what's in the mind of the babies we dandle in our arms," and went feebly out.

I laid down a quarter, took a cigar from the case, forgot to light it, and sauntered into the street with it still in my hand. I felt thoroughly discouraged, and walked down the avenue in a sort of black mist formed of my own doubts and Hewson's calm acceptance of the guilt attributed to Leighton. But suddenly I stopped, put the cigar in my pocket, and exclaimed in vehement contradiction of my own uneasy thoughts: "Leighton Gillespie is as guiltless of his father's death as of other charges which have been made against him. I am ready to stake my own honour upon it," and went immediately to my apartments, without stopping, as I usually did, at Underhill's door.

I found a young man waiting for me in the vestibule. He had evidently been standing there for some time, for he no sooner heard my step than he gave a bound forward with the eager cry:

"It is I, sir,--Sweetwater."

He was a welcome visitor at that moment, and I was willing he should realise it.

"Come in; come in," I urged. "New developments, eh? Mr. Gillespie released, perhaps, or----"

"No," was his disappointing response as the door closed behind us and he sank into the chair I pushed forward. "Mr. Gillespie is still in detention and there are no new developments. But another day must not pass without them. I was witness to the sympathy you felt last night for the man who claimed the wretched being we saw before us for his wife; and, feeling a little soft-hearted towards him myself, I have come to ask you to lay your head with mine over this case in the hope that we two together may light upon some clue which will lead to his immediate enlargement. For I cannot believe him guilty; I just cannot. It was one of the others. But which one? I don't mean to eat or sleep till I find out."

"And Mr. Gryce?"

"He won't bother. Last night was too much for him, and he has gone home. The field is clear, sir, quite clear; and I mean to profit by it. Leighton Gillespie shall be freed in time to attend his wife's funeral or I will give up the detective business and go back to the carpenter's bench and my dear old mother in Sutherlandtown."

XXXI

SWEETWATER HAS AN IDEA

I was greatly interested. Taking out a box of cigars, I laid it before him on the table.

"Be free with them," said I. "If there is any help to be got out of smoke let us make use of it."

He eyed the cigars ruefully.

"Too bad," he murmured; "unfortunately, it does not work that way with me. Some people think better between whiffs, but smoking clouds my faculties, and I would be no friend to Mr. Gillespie if I took your cigars now. Free air and an undisturbed mind for Caleb Sweetwater when he settles down to work. Smoke yourself, sir; that won't affect me; but draw the box to your side of the table and give me a rebuking look if my hand goes out to it before this subject is settled."

I did as he requested, but not to the point of taking a cigar. I could think without its aid as well as he.

"Now, sir," he immediately began, "you were the first man to enter upon the scene of crime. May I ask if you will be so good as to relate afresh and circumstantially your whole experience with Mr. Gillespie? You cannot be too minute in your details. Somehow or somewhere we have missed the clue necessary to the clearing up of this case. You may be able to supply it. Will it bore you too much to try?"

"Not in the least. I am as anxious as yourself to get at the bottom of this business."

"Begin, then, sir. You won't mind my closing my eyes? I find it so much easier to identify myself with the situation when I see nothing about to distract me. And, sir, since I dread speaking when actively absorbed in this kind of work, will you pardon me if I simply raise my finger when I want a minute for reflection? I know I am a crank, and not much used to gentlemen's ways, but I appreciate kindness more than most folks, especially when it takes the form of respect paid to my whims."

I assured him I was only too ready to do anything which would serve to further the end we had in view; and all preliminaries being thus amicably settled he dropped his head into his hands and I began my tale in much the same language I have used in these pages. He listened without a movement while I spoke of Claire and of my entrance into the house, but his finger went up when I mentioned the appearance presented by Mr. Gillespie as he stood propping himself against the table in a condition of impending collapse.

"Was the house quiet?" he asked. "Did you hear no sneaking step in the halls or adjacent dining-room?"

"Not a step. I remember receiving the impression that this old gentleman and his grandchild were all alone in the house. One of the greatest surprises of my life was the discovery that there were servants in the basement and more than one member of the family on the floors above."

"A discovery which leads to our first argument, sir. We have taken it for granted (and certainly we were justified in doing so) that Mr. Gillespie knew whose hand poured out the poison he felt burning into his vitals. We have argued that it was this knowledge which led him to spend the final moments of his life in an extraordinary effort to settle the doubts of his favourite niece. But, sir, if he had had this knowledge, would he not have mentioned outright and without any circumlocution the name of the son he had finally settled upon as the guilty one, rather than have made use of the same vague phrase which had been his torment and hers, ever since the hour he told her of the shadowy hand he had detected hovering over his glass of medicine? With the remembrance in your mind of the few words he left behind him, are you ready to declare that you find in them any proof of his knowing then, any better than before, which of his three sons had mingled poison with his drink? And, sir,--you are a lawyer,--does it follow from any evidence we have since received that he even positively knew it was one of these three men? Might not his fears and the haunting memory of that former attempt have so worked upon his failing faculties that he took for granted it was one of his sons who had made this last effort at poisoning him?"

"It is possible," I admitted, "but----"

"You don't place much stress on the suggestion."

"No," said I, "I don't. Anxious as I am that each and all of these young men should be relieved from the appalling charge of parricide, I saw too great a display of anxiety on his part for the right delivery of what he believed to hold the last communication he had to make to his favourite niece, for me to think these final words of his contained nothing more definite than a repetition of his former vague surmise. He was facing immediate death, yet all his thought, all his fast-ebbing strength, were devoted to the effort of making her know that he had not been mistaken in his former conclusion: that it _was_ one of his sons who sought his life, and that this son had now actually succeeded in poisoning him. That he did not proceed further and name which one, was due probably to a sudden loss of strength. That he meant to say more than he did is evident from the _he_ which follows the four words we have been considering."

"True, true, but my argument holds; an argument which the difficulties of the case surely justify me in advancing. You say he would never have made such an effort to insure the safe delivery of words that were a mere repetition of a former statement. Yet what more were they in the unfinished condition in which we find them? Do you think he could have been blind to the fact that he had not succeeded in mentioning the name which alone could give value to his accusation, and make its safe delivery a matter of real moment to Miss Meredith? Surely, sir, you do not believe his wits were so far gone that he regarded himself as having made his suspicions clear in those five words: _one of my sons he_?"

"No, I do not. Yet who can tell. Bright as his eye was, his faculty of memory as well as of observation may have left him. Witness how he tore off the blank edge of the paper, instead of the words he wished to send."

"I know."

Sweetwater's tone was gloomy; a cloud seemed to have settled upon his newly risen hopes.

"Nevertheless," I now felt bound to admit, "I cannot quite bring myself to believe that he was so bewildered. On the contrary, I feel confident that he was in full possession of his faculties when he cast that dramatic glance upward, which, by a happy inspiration, I was led to interpret as meaning Hope. If we could penetrate this matter to its very core, I believe we should find the truth we seek either in those five words themselves or in the means he took of getting them to Miss Meredith. Have you ever thought, Sweetwater, that we have not given all the attention we should to the latter fact?"

"Yes, sir." His hands had fallen from his face, and he spoke with volubility. "It has struck you, I see, as oddly as it has us, that it was a very strange thing for him to send into the street for a messenger when he had one right at his hand."

"Claire, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"But Claire is a child; the slip of paper to which he attached such importance was unsealed and he dreaded its falling into wrong hands. Miss Meredith already knew his secret, but for him to proclaim openly that his death was due to the hatred or cupidity of one of his children would not be the act of a father who already, at the cost of so much misery to himself,--nay, as it proved, at the cost of his life,--had kept back from every ear save that of the one confidant of his misery, a knowledge of the fact that a previous attempt had been made upon his life."

"Yet to send into the street for a messenger! Why not send for one of the servants? Or why, if he knew which son he had cause to fear, did he not bid the child bring down one of the others?"

"Leighton was out, George was half drunk, and Alfred was two flights up. Besides, he might have thought that an alarm of this kind would prevent the delivery of the letter on which he laid such stress. Who knows what goes on in the mind of a man conscious of having but one minute in which to perform the most important act of his life?"

"True, true, sir; and yet there is something unnatural in his conduct, something I fail to understand. But I don't despair. I won't despair; we have only begun the recapitulation of details from which I hope so much; supposing we go on." And he sunk his head again in his hands.

I at once took up the thread of my relation at the point where I had dropped it.

"When I approached Mr. Gillespie I noted three things besides his tortured face and sinking figure. First, that the shade was pulled up over his desk; second, that a typewriter stood close to his hand; and third, that a pot of paste, knocked over by some previous movement on his part, lay near the typewriter, with its contents oozing over a sheet of unused paper. You ask me to mention all details and I have done so."

Dreamily he moved his finger, but whether in thanks or in an injunction for me to continue, I could not determine. I therefore remained still.

"I saw the paste," he murmured. And taking this as an intimation to proceed, I went on till I came to the moment when I pulled down the shade.

"You glanced out as you did that?" said he, lifting his finger as a signal for me to pause.

"Yes."

"And saw Mr. Rosenthal in his room in the neighbouring extension?"

"Yes."

"Standing how? With his back or his face to the window?"

"His back. He was sauntering about his room."

"So that settles one fact. He had not been looking into Mr. Gillespie's room at a critical moment. Had he seen that gentleman in a suffering condition or noted the curious incidents following your entrance, he would have been held to the spot by his curiosity, and you would have encountered his eager face staring down upon a scene of such uncommon interest."

"Very true. All he saw was the seemingly insignificant incident of Mr. Gillespie emptying the contents of a wine-glass out of his window."

As Sweetwater had no remark to make to this, I proceeded with my narrative, relating, with a careful attention to details, my journey upstairs, the words I had overheard at the door of Alfred's room, my first sight of Hope, and--I was proceeding to describe the results of my intrusion into the Gillespie attic, when I perceived that Sweetwater was no longer listening. His head, which he had raised from between his hands, was turned my way, but his eyes were looking into space and his whole body was quivering in intense excitement, such as I have seldom seen. As I paused, he came back to earth and jumped to his feet.

"Come," he cried. "Come with me to the Gillespie house. I have an idea. It may not stand the test, it may prove a fatuous one, but----"

The very hair on his forehead was bristling; the eagerness he tried to keep out of his voice showed itself in his eyes and in every jerking movement which he made.

"Come," he cried again; "it is not late. We will find the young gentlemen at home and perhaps----"

He added nothing to that significant "perhaps," but his repressed excitement had awakened mine, and my hat was on and I was following him down stairs before I realised that I had failed to turn out my gas.

As I wheeled about with the intention of rectifying this oversight, I encountered Underhill's languid figure loitering in his doorway. He accosted me with an easy:

"Halloo, Outhwaite!" Then, as he leaned close enough to whisper in my ear, he added, in an indescribable drawl, these unexpected words:

"I recognise your friend there. If you are piling up the evidence against poor Leighton Gillespie, you are doing wrong. No fellow with a heart like his ever put poison into his father's wine."

Which shows the folly of thinking you know a man's mind before he speaks it.

XXXII

WITH THE SHADE DOWN

Not many words passed between Sweetwater and myself on our way up the Avenue. He had his "idea" to brood upon, while I was engaged in turning over in my mind various vague conjectures rising out of the argument we had just indulged in. But before reaching the point of our destination, I ventured upon one question.

"Have you, during any of your investigations, public or private, learned which of the three sons of Mr. Gillespie is the greatest favourite with the old family servant, Hewson?"

"No; that is, yes. Why do you ask?"

"Because if it is not Leighton----"

"And it certainly is not."

"Then I advise you to direct your energies towards the one he is known to like best."

Sweetwater stopped short and surveyed me in very evident surprise before venturing upon the following remark:

"I should like to know just why you say that?"

I replied by relating my interview with the butler in the drug-store, and his easy acceptance of Leighton's guilt as implied in the arrest which had just taken place.

Sweetwater listened and moved on; but so quickly now I could hardly keep pace with him.

"If my idea has no will-o'-the-wisp uncertainty in it, and I have lighted upon a way out of this mystery, I will be made for life," he declared, as we reached the Gillespie house and he paused for a moment at the foot of the steps. "But there! I'm counting chickens--something which Mr. Gryce never approves of at any stage of the game." And rushing up the stoop, he rang the bell, while I waited below with my heart in my mouth, as they say.

Who would respond to the summons; and if we effected an entrance--which I felt to be a matter of some doubt--whom would we be likely to come upon in a visit of this nature? George? Alfred? I did not like to ask, and Sweetwater did not volunteer to inform me.

The opening of the door cut short my reflections as well as gave answer to my last-mentioned doubt. Old Hewson, and Hewson only, opened the door of this house; and whether this renewed encounter with his patient figure had something disappointing in it, or whether the solemn grandeur of the interior thus quietly disclosed to view produced an impression of family life that was more than painful under the circumstances, I experienced a recoil from the errand which had brought me there, and would have retreated if I had not recalled Hope's interest in this matter, and the joy it would give her to see Leighton Gillespie proved innocent of the crime for which he was at present held in custody.

Meantime, Sweetwater, with an air of perfect nonchalance admirably assumed, had stepped past Hewson into the house. Evidently he was accustomed to go in and out of the place at will, and though the old servant did not fail to show his indignation at this palpable infringement upon the family dignity, he did not abate a jot of his usual politeness or even watch the unwelcome intruder too closely in his passage down the hall.

But his complaisance did not extend to me. He gave me a look which demanded a response.

"Some formality of the law!" I whispered, hoping that the unaccustomed words would befog the old man sufficiently to cover my own embarrassment, and answer any doubts he might have as to the purpose of our errand there. And perhaps they did, for, with some muttered words, among which I heard this pathetic phrase, "There are so many of them!" he crept away and disappeared through the door leading into the dining-room. As he did so, I noted a man sitting on a settee pushed well into the corner near the study door. I did not know this man; I only noted that he sat there very quietly, and that the only movement he made at our approach was a slight raising and falling of his fingers on his crossed arms.

We were making for the study behind the stairs, and into this room Sweetwater, after unlocking it with a key he had taken from his pocket, now walked:

"Do you object to visiting this place again?" he asked, striking a match and reaching up to light the gas.

Of course I answered no, yet it was not quite a pleasant experience to stand there and watch the light flickering on his face, in a spot where I had last seen the one horrid spectacle of my life.

But when the cheerful flame had sprung up, and walls made familiar not by long seeing but close seeing had come into view, I was conscious simply of a strong desire to know why I had been brought to this room in such haste and secrecy, and what the "idea" was which had produced so marked an effect upon my singular companion.

He showed no immediate intention of enlightening me. He was engaged in casting a keen glance about him, a glance which seemingly took in every detail of the well-remembered room; then, as if satisfied that nothing had been disturbed since his last visit, he advanced to the window and pulled down the shade.

"We will not have the curious Mr. Rosenthal giving away _our_ secrets," he dryly commented. "And this is our secret, is it not? You won't feel called upon to repeat outside what goes on between us in this room?"

"Certainly not."

The assurance seemed unnecessary, but I did not regret giving it when I saw how it relieved him of all doubt, and caused his eye to lighten and his manner to grow easy as he went on to say:

"So far as mortal calculation can go, this room has not been entered by anyone but the police or persons acting under the instructions of the police, since the hour when Mr. Gillespie was carried out of it. Consequently we have a right to expect all articles remaining here to be in the same condition as on that night. This, for instance."

He had taken out the typewriter from a closet built in one of the corners, and set it as he spoke down in its old place on the edge of the desk.

"Ah!" I burst forth. "Your idea is in connection with this typewriter!"

He frowned, or almost frowned, for he was an amiable fellow; then, giving me a pleading look, observed:

"I am young yet, Mr. Outhwaite, and it is very easy for me to deceive myself with imaginary results. You will therefore allow me a minute to myself, and if I find out that I have struck a false trail, or if my idea proves to be one I cannot sustain by facts, I'll sing out and we will consult as to our next move."

"Shall I step outside?" I asked.

But this he would not listen to.

"All I want," said he, "is for you to look the other way while I stoop over this typewriter."

I naturally felt disposed to humour him, and meanwhile he remained so still that I was confident he did not touch the instrument. But the cry which impetuously burst from him after a moment of intense stillness startled me so I can never forget it. It was something between a sob and a shout, and it was so suggestive of triumph that I could not forbear turning about and rushing up to the instrument over which he still stooped.

He greeted me with a look of delight and a rush of confused gestures.

"See, sir; oh, see! How I wish Mr. Gryce were here! Look at the top of that key, sir--the one with the words, 'Shift key' on it. Yes, that one; that! What is the matter with it? Tell me."

"The face of it is obscured. I can scarcely read the words. There is something on it. Something like----"

"Paste!" he cried. "The paste that ran out of the bottle and spread over the desk. You can still see unmistakable signs of it here and here" (pointing rapidly as he spoke), "for Mr. Gryce would not allow a woman in the room, and nothing has been cleaned since that night. The paste is but a dry crust now, but you must remember that it was moist when Mr. Gillespie stooped over the table, so that when his fingers got into it in his struggle to reach the typewriter, he readily transferred it to the keys. This will be apparent to you if you will scrutinise the exact keys he made use of in writing those last five words. Observe the one marked _e_; now this _n_, and now the _o_. There is but a trace of paste on some of them; but it is thick on the _e_, and thicker still on--what key, sir?"

"The one you first drew my attention to; the one marked 'Shift key.'"

"Just so. Now, do you know the use of the 'Shift key?'"

"I do not."

"You press it down when you wish the letter you are writing to be a capital. For instance, I wish to write the capital I. I hold down this 'Shift key' with one finger and strike the key marked _i_ with another."

"Yes, but----"

"Oh, I know what you are going to say: 'No capital appears in the five words we are now considering.' True, sir, but does not this paste on the 'Shift key' show that he made an effort to write one; that a capital was in his mind even if it did not get on paper? In beginning any communication, one naturally starts with a capital, and you see, sir, that the space between this last hurriedly added phrase and the words of his unfinished letter is long enough to hold one. But the haste and agitation of this dying man were such that he did not put enough force into his stroke to bring an impression of this opening capital. If, therefore, we would read this communication intelligently, it is imperative upon us to supply this missing capital. Now, what letter do you think he meant to write there and did not?"

I blankly shook my head. My thoughts were in a great whirl.

"There is but one," he cried, "which would make any sense; the letter N, sir, the famous letter N. Supply that letter, sir; then tell me how those words would read. You know them well, or, stay, I have them here."

And Sweetwater spread before me a copy of the letter as it appeared after Mr. Gillespie had added the five words which had moulded the whole course of the investigation up to this point.

But this was an unnecessary precaution on his part. I knew the words by heart, and already had prefixed to them the capital N which he had just convinced me belonged there, as witness:

"one of my sons he"

"None of my sons he"

"Oh!" I cried, "what a difference!"

Young Sweetwater's face absolutely shone.

"Isn't there?" he cried. "I got that idea while you were talking about Miss Meredith. But that is not all. We are not through with our experiments yet. A letter prefixed is not enough. We need to affix a few. Can you supply them?"

I stared at him in amazement.

"'_None of my sons he_' fails to make good sense, Mr. Outhwaite. But look!"

Replacing the paper in the typewriter, he pressed a few keys, lifted the carriage, and drew me down to see. Imagine my amazement and the shock given to all my previous convictions when I saw written before me these words:

"None of my sons hewson."

XXXIII

IN WHICH WE CAN PARDON MR. GRYCE HIS UNFORTUNATE ILLNESS

"You didn't expect that? I thought I would surprise you, sir. Oh, I know what you want to say!" Sweetwater eagerly continued. "You miss the period and capital H which would show 'he' to be the beginning of a proper name. But, sir, Mr. Gillespie would not have been the failing man he was, if by this time he could think of capitals, much less periods. He was not even able to complete the word, though he evidently failed to realise this. 'None of my sons. Hewson' is what was in his mind; you may take my word for that. And now," he triumphantly concluded, after a short but satisfied contemplation of my face, "you can see why this dying man should expend his last energies in insuring the safe delivery of these words to the one person who knew his former dreadful suspicions. Shrinking as any father might from letting his sons know to what a fearful extent he had misjudged them, and dreading, as he doubtless had good reason to, some interference on the part of Hewson if he attempted to call any one in the house to his aid, he sent his little grandchild into the street----"

"But----"

"I know we are dealing with mere possibilities as yet, sir. But these possibilities are much more credible than the surmises in which we have hitherto indulged. I feel as if free air had entered my lungs for the first time since the inquest; and if I can refrain from yielding too much to the intoxication of it----"

"But," I again repeated, determined to have my say out before he had gone too far, "what motive can you ascribe to this poor old servant for a death which robbed him of a master he had served devotedly for years?"

"Motive be ----!" cried Sweetwater, in some heat. But, with his usual good nature, he instantly begged my pardon, and his next words were uttered with more restraint. "Facts first, motives afterwards. What motive have we been able to find for the committal of this deed by any one of his sons? Yet each and all of them have been suspected and almost arraigned. Still," he concluded, "if you want a motive, search for it here," and he drew from his pocket a second folded paper, which he opened out before my eyes.

It was a copy of Mr. Gillespie's will.

"Ah!" I cried, in dim perception of what he meant.

"A thousand dollars," explained Sweetwater. "Not much in your eyes, but quite a fortune in his."

"And for so paltry a legacy you think that this man----"

Sweetwater's finger went to his lips. "Excuse me," said he, "but had we not better put back this typewriter on the shelf from which we took it? If I do not mistake, it will figure largely in the trial which I plainly see approaching."

I nodded, recognising the wisdom of the admonition thus given, and together we placed the typewriter back in the closet. Then he turned towards me with a new light in his small grey eye.

"And now, sir," he cried, "let me request you to stand back a trifle. I am going to finish this business."

Opening the door with a sudden jerk, he plunged into the hall. A shadow was just disappearing from the opposite doorway. With a shout to me to light up, he leaped across the hall into the dining-room. The next minute I heard a cry, then a low gurgle; then the match I had hastily struck flared up, and I beheld the detective holding down the butler and looking eagerly towards me for the expected light.

The man in the hall was by this time at my side, and between us we soon had three jets lit, illuminating two white faces: Sweetwater's pale with triumph, Hewson's blue-white from fear.

"Murderer! Poisoner of your benefactor and friend, I have you at last!" cried the struggling detective, watching how each terrible word he hurled blanched to a greater and greater degree the face he held pressed back for our inspection.

"You could see without faltering your master's sons, the boys you have dandled on your knee, fall one after the other under the shadow of public suspicion. Now we will see if you can show as much heroism on your own account. You are the man who drugged Mr. Gillespie's wine; and if the officer here will take you in charge for an hour or so, I will go down and procure a warrant for your arrest."

The attack was so sudden, and Sweetwater's manner one of such complete conviction, that the old man succumbed to it without a struggle.

"Mercy!" he moaned. "I was old--tired of work--a little home--a little freedom in my old age--a--a----"

I fled from the room. It seemed as if the walls must cave in upon us. For this, for this!

The sight of a half-dozen frightened faces in the hall restored my self-possession. The servants had come up from below and stood crowding and jostling each other just as they had done three weeks before. At the sight of Hewson's cowering figure they began to moan and cry.

"Be quiet there!" exhorted Sweetwater, advancing upon them with the courage born of his triumphant success. "The old man whom you have doubtless thought the best-hearted and most reliable of you all has just confessed to the crime which has desolated this house and all but ruined the three young gentlemen, your masters. Cry away if you want to, but cry quietly and without giving the least alarm, for the good news has not gone upstairs yet, and this gentleman, who was the first to announce Mr. Gillespie's death to his sons, naturally would like the satisfaction of telling them that his murderer has been found. I have no doubt that Mr. George and his brother are to be found above."

"They be, sir, they be," spoke up a voice.

Sweetwater, whose divination of my wishes struck me as remarkable, stepped aside at this, and, waiting for me to pass him, followed me to the floor above with a step so light he seemed to be buoyed up by wings.

As on a former memorable occasion, I stopped at George's door first. The knock I gave was followed by a rather surly invitation to enter. Excusing his un-graciousness in consideration of the fact that his visitors of late had not been entirely those of his own choice and consequently far from welcome, I pushed open the door without any other exhibition of feeling than an apologetic smile.

A scene of disorder confronted me; the disorder of an idle man who feels that with the withdrawal of all women from the house he had lost all incentive to neatness, perhaps to decency. In its midst, and lolling on a table over which lay spread some cards he was pushing about with idle fingers, sat George, much the worse for liquor, and by just that much short of being the handsome man he was intended to be by nature.

At sight of me he rose, and, propping himself forward on the table, looked the inquiry he was probably unable to formulate in words. I answered as if he had spoken:

"You must pardon my intrusion, Mr. Gillespie. I have come to bring you very good news."

"What news?"

"News of your brother's speedy release. News of your father's murderer, who, though an inmate of his house, does not bear the name of Gillespie. It is your butler, Hewson----"

With a shout he threw out his hands, and then sank panting and with drooped head into the chair mercifully at hand to receive him.

"I have always sworn that Leighton was innocent," he cried out with unexpected vehemence. "In public and private, declared that--he could--no more--have done--that thing----"

Sweetwater slipped from the room and I quietly followed, shutting the door softly behind me.

We went directly above; and this time found the room we wished to visit, open. As the face of its natural occupant could be plainly seen from where we stood, we gratified our curiosity by a momentary contemplation of it. Like his brother, Alfred Gillespie was sitting at a table, but he was neither flushed with wine nor engaged in idle revery. On the contrary, he was very busy writing letters. But he was not satisfied with his work. He looked restless and disturbed, and, in the minute or two we stood there watching him, tore up the wretched scrawls he had just indited, with a groan indicative not only of impatience, but deep, almost heartrending anguish. On his pale brow and in his attenuated frame few signs remained of the once luxurious Alfred, and when, after a second attempt at expressing himself, he made a dash at the unfinished letter and, crumpling it to nothing in his hand, threw it into the fire, I turned to Sweetwater and whispered:

"Cut this misery short."

The young detective nodded, and with a clearing of his throat, meant, I am sure, as a warning, he advanced and entered the room, into which I rapidly followed him. Without pausing for any greeting from the astonished Alfred, he at once presented me in the following manner:

"Mr. Gillespie, will you allow me the honour of presenting Mr. Outhwaite, who has come to offer you his hearty congratulations?"

"Congratulations!" I don't know whether I was more moved by the sarcasm or the despair expressed in this repetition of the word, which must have fallen with strange effect on Alfred Gillespie's ear. "For what, may I ask?"

"For the speedy lifting of the cloud which has darkened this house; for the free and honourable return of your brother from his present place of detention, and the incarceration in his stead of the old man, Hewson, who has just confessed to the crime of having poisoned your father."

"Hewson! Old Hewson!" Alfred rose with a wild laugh that was not unlike a curse. "You are playing with me! You are----"

"No," I interposed, with a decision he could not but recognise. "Far from it, Mr. Gillespie. What the detective says is true. Hewson acknowledges the whole thing. He wanted a little home, knew that a legacy awaited him at your father's death, and wished to hasten his enjoyment of it. Your father recognised him as his poisoner when too late. He tried to communicate the fact to Miss Meredith in the five words: 'None of my sons. Hewson,' but his strength failed him, and he only succeeded in impressing on the paper the unfinished words: '_one of my sons he_.' The detective will explain."

"Ah!" was his troubled response, as he sank back into the seat from which he had risen. Then as he met our eyes fixed sympathetically upon him, he dropped his head upon his arms, crying brokenly: "Don't look at me! Don't look at me! All this misery and shame! And it was Hewson! Oh, Hope! Hope!"

We left him. It was all we could do. As we stepped down together into the lower hall, Sweetwater remarked to me, with one of his rare smiles:

"If you know of anyone to whom this unexpected clearing of the Gillespie name will be especially gratifying, you are at liberty now to make the good news known. I'm off for police headquarters, there to begin those proceedings which will release Leighton Gillespie in time to meet the body of his wife at Communipaw."

XXXIV

"IT WAS THE SHOCK!"

Later, Hewson made a fuller confession. In it, he explained how he first came to meditate the crime which he afterwards carried out with such diabolic persistence.

He had never indulged himself in dishonest longings, never allowed himself to dream of any other life than that of daily work in the household of which he had for so many years been a member, until the day he was called into his master's study on some errand or other which led him to the desk. A memorandum was lying there, and as he had his glasses on, he could not help seeing his own name among a list of others, with the figures $1000 against it. Now, it was no secret in the house that his master was at this very time engaged in drawing up his will. Indeed, the lawyer had been there that very morning. Consequently, Hewson immediately drew the inference that these figures represented the amount he was to receive upon his master's death, and though at the moment he experienced nothing but gratitude for the good-will thus shown, the knowledge of what he might expect under certain circumstances slowly roused in him strange ambitions and new desires, which afterwards resolved themselves into longings which gave him no rest day or night.

The relief from daily routine,--a little home in a country place where he could raise vegetables and flowers,--a quiet smoke in the twilight on a porch all his own,--all this would be paradise to the tired old man, and as he dwelt upon its charms he became impatient at his master's robust health, and began to note the difference in their years--which, alas! were entirely in his master's favour; and to think--yes, to think--that though it would cause him regret--naturally so--to see that master's health give way, it would not be so hard as this endless counting of years nothing but disease could annul; that, in short, a lifetime of service devoted to Mr. Gillespie and his sons had become as nothing in the light of his new desires, and when the usually healthy broker was finally seized with some complaint which laid him on his back, these desires grew into hopes which it was useless for him to smother, for he was now determined to have his little fortune whether or no, and have it before he was himself too old to miss its full enjoyment.

Meanwhile, he was much in the confidence of the family. He heard his master's symptoms discussed, and learned while waiting on table that Mr. Gillespie was being given small doses of a certain poison as medicine; doses which it would be dangerous to increase. He could go through all his duties with the utmost precision without ceasing to take in such a conversation; and when in the course of time he heard that Mr. Gillespie was improving and would soon be quite well, he allowed himself to dwell upon the tempter's whispered suggestion that three more little drops from a bottle constantly in use by his master's bedside would remedy all this, and in a safe and seemingly natural way end the one existence which stood between him and the money he now regarded as his own.

The carrying out of this thought was easy. He knew that his master was now well enough to be left alone at night, likewise to help himself to his own medicine after it was once prepared for him. One had only to steal into the room in the early hours of the night, and, with careful manipulation of bottle and glass, increase that dose before the time came for the sick man to want it. Hewson was accustomed to noiseless actions; he could even handle glass without a sound, having been trained in quiet ways by the very man who, in such an unexpected manner, was now destined to fall a victim to these very precautions. He therefore did not fear waking Mr. Gillespie; he only feared finding him already awake.

But even this possibility lost its terrors when he considered that to make himself quite safe he had but to utter the low-whispered _Father!_ with which the young gentlemen were accustomed to approach the sick-bed at night. If Mr. Gillespie heard and answered, he would know the moment badly chosen and steal away. While, if no answer came, he had but to proceed as the devil and his own dark instincts prompted.

Night came, and he went through his part, as he supposed, successfully; but in the morning he missed the alarm he had a right to expect, and soon learned that Mr. Gillespie had accidentally overthrown the glass of medicine which had been so carefully prepared for him. Worse than this, he saw the bottle of poison emptied clean out, and heard that Mr. Gillespie's medicine was to be changed to one quite harmless.

What did this mean, and how could he now hope to carry out the scheme he was more than ever resolved upon? For a while he felt quite discouraged, and drooped a little over his work, which was becoming hourly more irksome. He began to hate the man who had upset the glass which, if drank, would have insured him an immediate enjoyment of his little fortune; and even to cherish the same feeling towards Mr. Gillespie's three sons, to whose wants he catered and who were all young enough to wait for their fortunes, while he, now nearly four-score, could not. That is, he hated the two eldest; but Alfred--well, he didn't quite hate Alfred; indeed, he almost loved him, loved him well enough to be glad that he, as well as himself, would profit by the old man's death, if only some new way could be found of bringing it safely about.

Meanwhile, he found as many errands to his master's rooms as possible, especially when the doctor was there; and, being regarded as a piece of household furniture rather than a living, breathing, and determined man, these two rarely made an end to their talk or changed their topic on account of his presence. And so it was he heard them often discuss poisons, and was able to gather up one or two items in regard to these dangerous drugs which otherwise he might have missed. Among other things he learned that an acid smelling like bitter almonds killed quickly and without much pain; but he failed to take in that this very smell was calculated to give away its presence. Brooding over this happy discovery, he cast about in his mind how he could prepare a drink likely to please his master without awakening his distrust. For weeks he thought it over, testing and trying various concoctions. Finally he hit on one which he prepared under Mr. Gillespie's eye and partially under his directions, and which was so strongly spiced that his master did not detect, or at least made no objection, to the flavouring of bitter almonds which he was careful to put into it. Indeed, Mr. Gillespie grew to like it, and, for a reason now readily to be understood, seemed to prefer anything brought him by his old servant to the finest of wines poured out for him by his sons.

Having thus provided a means for disguising the poison when the opportunity came for administering it, he cast about how he could procure the necessary drug without risk to himself. Ignorant as he was in most matters, he knew that he could not walk into a drug-store and buy so deadly a poison without rousing suspicion. So, as I have said before, he waited. But not long. Will begets way, or, truer yet, the devil prepares the way for him who is willing to walk in it.

One morning he came upon a phial in Mr. Leighton's room whose very appearance strangely affected him. It was small; it held a dark liquid; and it had a wicked look strangely attractive to him. He took the phial up; he smelt it. Bitter almonds! Greatly excited and somewhat shaken, he set it down again. How had Mr. Leighton come by this? What did he want of it, and why was it left standing in this open way on his bureau? Was it for medicinal purposes like the other? Probably; but it seemed stronger, very strong indeed; it seemed strong enough to kill a man. Catching it up, he carried it away.

"If any inquiries are made, I'll say I knocked it over and broke it." But Hewson didn't think any inquiries would be made. Mr. Gillespie's sudden death would make all such little matters forgotten.

Having in this unexpected way secured the very poison he most desired, Hewson poured into the sink all but the few drops he had heard constituted a fatal dose. Then he put the phial away in a tea-cup and waited his opportunity. It was not long in coming. That evening he prepared the drink as usual for Mr. Gillespie, and, while waiting for that gentleman to call for it, saw Mr. George come into the dining-room and take away the bottle of sherry, and afterwards Mr. Alfred, who hunted about for his pencil. Later, he heard Mr. Leighton come downstairs, but he did not wait to see what that gentleman wanted, for his own work in the butler's pantry was now done, and he thought it better to show himself in the kitchen. But he was suddenly called up by the dining-room bell. Mr. Leighton wished a glass of sherry for his father. This was an unexpected order, and for the moment set him quite aback. For if Mr. Gillespie drank sherry now, he would not want his spiced drink later. However, he put a good face on the matter and got out the wine, which he handed to Mr. Leighton, who poured out a glassful and carried it in to his father. A moment later he heard the front door close. Leighton had gone out to one of his numerous meetings, and Mr. Gillespie was left alone.

Somehow the old servant had an irresistible desire to see how his master looked at this moment. There had been loud words between that master and Mr. Leighton before the latter had left, and he wanted to see how his master had borne it--wanted to see--well, he hardly knew what; but he went to the dining-room door and, finding the opposite one open, peered in.

Mr. Gillespie was standing just where his son had doubtless left him, gazing intently into the wine-glass which he held, untasted, in his hand. His face was wan and troubled. Suddenly he moved and, glancing behind him, like a man bound on some guilty errand, but not looking far enough into the distance to see Hewson watching him from the depths of the dimly lighted room on the other side of the hall, he hurried to the window, and, raising, first the shade and then the sash, flung out the contents of the glass into the back-yard. This done, he uttered a sigh, which spoke of some great inward trouble, and, reclosing the window, carried back the empty glass to the dining-room, from which Hewson had, by this time, slipped in guilty confusion.

Not understanding Mr. Gillespie's sudden distaste for the wine he had ordered, but determined to profit by what struck him as a very happy chance, Hewson put his own concoction on a tray, and, creeping to the buffet, took the phial out of the tea-cup in which he had concealed it, and emptied its contents into the glass he carried. Then not liking to put the phial back, he thrust it into his vest-pocket, mouth up (the cork having slipped from his hand and rolled away in the darkness). He was willing to be heard now, and was stepping briskly around the room, when Mr. Gillespie called out:

"Who's that? Is it Hewson?"

"It is, sir," was the demure reply. "I came up to make you that drink you like so well; but Mr. Leighton said you preferred sherry."

"Yes, yes; but I like your drink, too. Brew it and bring it in to me. I seem to be unusually thirsty to-night."

Without a quiver, without a conscious sense of doing anything greatly out of the common, this tried old servant brought him the glass which he knew would end all earthly relations between them. He even waited until he saw it emptied, then he took it out again and immediately washed it.

Why he felt this precaution necessary he hardly knew, unless it was to pass away the moment of suspense. He never dreamed for a minute that there was anything special for him to fear. Were not men dropping dead every day in counting-houses or in the streets? And why not this man? That the police would be called in or that so quiet a death would be treated as a crime, had never occurred to him. He had never read murder cases much; indeed, had never read anything much; he only knew he wanted his master to die, and that the quickest way to bring this about was to give him a dose of very strong poison. Yet after he had done this, he felt some nervousness, not over what he had done, but its seemingly slow results. He had expected Mr. Gillespie to fall at once, perhaps before he was, himself, well out of the room, and Mr. Gillespie did not fall. Hewson had had time to wash the glass, put it away, go down into the kitchen again, and come back, without hearing the heavy thud for which his ears were strained. Was his affair to fail again? Had the dark and pungent liquor been harmless, and was it decreed that he was to go back to the old life with no hopes of a change or relief? He was so worked up by this thought that he crept into the dining-room again and was making for the hall door to take another peep into the study, when his foot encountered a small object on the floor. Yielding to his usual methodical habits, he stooped and picked up what proved to be Alfred's pencil. This he mechanically dropped into his pocket, then he went on.

He found his master reeling over the study floor in the first consciousness, perhaps, of his alarming condition. He seemed to be trying to find the door, but as Hewson drew nearer (fascinated, perhaps, by the sight of suffering of which he himself had been the cause), Mr. Gillespie suddenly paused in this effort, and, meeting Hewson's eyes, threw up his arms and made for his desk, upon which he fell in a way which assured his anxious watcher that the last minutes of his quondam master were at hand.[A]

[Footnote A: It was at this moment probably, and not till this moment, that Mr. Gillespie recognized his real murderer. Of the tumult thus awakened in heart and brain, who can judge!]

As he had no wish to watch his sufferings, he made another journey downstairs and showed himself in the servants' hall just as little Claire broke away from her nurse and rushed, laughing loudly, up to her grandfather.

This convinced him that his own comings and goings had been so natural that they had not even been noticed by his fellow-servants. He saw that they had been playing a merry game with the child, and that not one of them had had an eye for him or his unaccustomed nervousness. This gave him courage, and soon, very soon now, they all had reason for nervousness. The long-delayed alarm was heard at last; strangers came into the house; the police followed, and this old reprobate, who had remained serene amidst all the turmoil, realised that there was more to fear in the matter than had ever struck his mind. With this fear came not only a desire to hide his own guilt, but the requisite cunning for doing so. He realised that he must get rid of the phial before he was searched, and, being left a minute to himself in the dining-room, he took it out of his side vest-pocket, and, shaking out the pencil which had slipped into it, he thrust it under the clock as being the one article not likely to be moved. It was a heavy lift for his old arms, and his elbows shook as he guided it back into place. The consequence was that he knocked over the glass which Mr. Gillespie had set down on the mantel-shelf a few minutes before; but though the clatter which it made attracted attention and the broken pieces of this glass were carefully examined, nothing was discovered from them, the glass having held nothing but sherry. Not so with poor Alfred's pencil, the end of which had rested in the last drop of poison remaining in the phial. The odour of prussic acid thus communicated to it came near bringing his favourite young master into jeopardy. But something, Hewson hardly knew what, intervened to save him, and all was going on well, or as well as could be expected after the suspicions expressed by Mr. Gillespie against his sons, when this young demon in the shape of a detective flung himself at the old butler's throat and, without telling him why or by what means he had learned it, accused him of being his master's poisoner.

"It was the shock! the shock!" the miserable wretch wailed out. "Had I had more time to think, I would have known that he had no proof against me; that it was all guess-work, and that I would be a fool to fear that. But it is too late now. I have said it, and I stand by it. Only I wish I could have seen the thousand dollars for which I killed my master lying for one instant in my hand. I would willingly go without the cottage, go without the evening pipe in the sight of hills and meadows, just to realise the sensation of holding all that money and knowing that it was _mine_."

XXXV

ROSES

One more scene, and this narration of my life's most stirring episode will have reached its conclusion.

It was a memorable scene to me. It took place in the parlours of the little cottage in New Jersey on the day we laid Mille-fleurs away to rest.

The burial had taken place, the guests had departed, and only the members of the family remained to close up the cottage, now more than ever precious in Leighton's eyes. George and Alfred, with an assumption of brotherly feeling they probably thought due the occasion, had stepped out together to see that everything was ready for Hope's departure, and, from the window where I stood, I could see--arrant spy that I was--the nonchalant air with which either turned a wary eye upon the other as Hope's voice was heard above, speaking to little Claire. They evidently still looked upon each other as the possible object of her preference, no suspicion having reached them of the tragic secret which had made this young girl's heart inaccessible to them both. I, who knew it, and had my own place in the tragedy to which they had been blind, did not watch them long, Leighton being the more interesting figure at that moment, as, standing on his desolate hearthstone, he allowed his eyes to wander for the last time, perhaps, over the beauties of the bijou dwelling which, exquisite as it was, had been as powerless as his love to hold his roving wife in check.

He was waiting for Hope, and as this thought, with its suggestion of another and longer waiting struck my mind, a pang seized me which it took all my self-possession to hide. Waiting for--Hope! Hope, who had sat that day with his child crushed close against her breast, and a look on her face which angels might view with pity, but which I----

Ah! she was coming! I turned my face away, not that I had anything to dread from this meeting, but that I felt as if I could not bear at this moment to see the shadow veiling his melancholy countenance lift, were it ever so lightly, at the sound of the step that was shaking my own heart. But I immediately glanced back; uncertainty was worse than knowledge; and, glancing back, saw Hope, and Hope only.

She was standing in the open doorway with her arms full of roses--roses which she had brought from New York, and which she now held out towards Leighton, with a smile I hardly think he saw, so much was his attention fixed upon the flowers.

"What are these for?" he asked, advancing towards her and touching the great roses with a trembling hand.

"They are for her," said Hope, in a low tone; "for my cousin Millicent. I could not bear to have her lie with only her husband's tokens on her breast, as if she had no--no----"

He caught her to his heart. Moved to the very soul, he kissed her on the lips; then he took the flowers.

As he passed out, she tottered pale and almost swooning to where I stood trembling with my own emotions. Lifting her face, with its candid eyes and quivering lips, she faltered between her sobs:

"Have patience with me! I see now that he has never loved me and never will. Had so much as the possibility been in his breast, he could not have kissed me like that to-day."

It was not on George's arm, or Alfred's, or even Leighton's that she passed out of that little house into the new life she was to share some day with me.

* * * * *

A long time after those flowers had withered on Mille-fleurs' peaceful breast, Leighton said to me, with his hand on the head of his child:

"I shall never marry again, Outhwaite. To train this child up to be my pride as she is now my joy, will fill my life as full of happiness as is necessary to me now. And, Outhwaite, she is a quiet child,--" he stopped--I knew what thought had stayed him,--"a quiet and a loving child. Yesterday she sat for a full hour with her arms about my neck and her cheek pressed to mine, listening while I talked to her of things a child usually cares but little about. This is balm for many a hurt, Outhwaite, and if it is given to her mother to look down upon us two----"

A smile, the rarest I had ever seen, finished the sentence. Seeing it, and noting how it irradiated features which once bore the stamp of deepest melancholy, I could never again look upon Leighton Gillespie as an unhappy man.

FINIS

* * * * *

Works by Anna Katharine Green

I.--THE LEAVENWORTH CASE. A Lawyer's Story. 4to, paper, 20 cents; 16to, paper, 50 cents; cloth $1.25

"She has worked up a _cause celebre_ with a fertility of device and ingenuity of treatment hardly second to Wilkie Collins or Edgar Allan Poe."--_Christian Union._

II.--BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. 16to, paper 50 cents; cloth $1.00

"... She has never succeeded better in baffling the reader."--_Boston Christian Register._

III.--THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES. A Story of New York Life. 16to, paper, 50 cents; cloth $1.00

"'The Sword of Damocles' is a book of great power, which far surpasses either of its predecessors from her pen, and places her high among American writers. The plot is complicated and is managed adroitly.... In the delineation of characters she has shown both delicacy and vigor."--_Congregationalist._

IV.--X. Y. Z.: A DETECTIVE STORY. 16to, paper 25 cents

"Well written and extremely exciting and captivating.... She is a perfect genius in the construction of a plot."--_N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._

V.--HAND AND RING. 16to, paper, illustrated 50 cents; cloth $1.00

"It is a tribute to the author's genius that she never tires and never loses her readers.... It moves on clean and healthy.... It is worked out powerfully and skilfully."--_N. Y. Independent._

VI.--A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE. 16to, paper 50 cents; cloth $1.00

"A most ingenious and absorbingly interesting story. The readers are held spell-bound until the last page."--_Cincinnati Commercial._

VII.--THE MILL MYSTERY. 16to, paper 50 cents; cloth $1.00

VIII.--7 to 12: A DETECTIVE STORY. Square 16to, paper 25 cents

IX.--THE OLD STONE HOUSE, AND OTHER STORIES. 16to, paper, 40 cents; cloth 75 cents

"It is a bundle of quite cleverly constructed pieces of fiction, with which an idle hour may be pleasantly passed."--_N. Y. Independent._

X.--CYNTHIA WAKEHAM'S MONEY. With frontispiece. 16to, paper, 50 cents; cloth $1.00

"'Cynthia Wakeham's Money' is a story notable even among the many vigorous works of Anna Katharine Green."--_New York Sun._

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"The ingenious plot is built up with all the skill of the writer of 'The Leavenworth Case' to the very last chapter, which contains the surprising solutions of several mysteries."

XII.--MISS HURD: AN ENIGMA. 16to, paper, 50 cents; cloth $1.00

"A strong and interesting novel in an entirely new field of romance."

XIII.--THE DOCTOR, HIS WIFE, AND THE CLOCK. 32to, limp cloth 50 cents

"The story is entertainingly told...."--_Cincinnati Tribune._

XIV.--DR. IZARD. 16to, paper, 50 cents; cloth $1.00

"Those who have read her other books will not need to be urged to read this; they will be eager to do so, and we assure them a very interesting story."--_Boston Times._

XV.--THAT AFFAIR NEXT DOOR. 16to, paper 50 cts.; cloth $1.00

"Startling in its ingenuity and its wonderful plot."--_Buffalo Enquirer._

XVI.--LOST MAN'S LANE. 16to, paper, 50 cts.; cloth $1.00

XVII.--AGATHA WEBB. 16to, paper, 50 cts.; cloth $1.25

XVIII.--ONE OF MY SONS. 16to, cloth only, illustrated $1.50

X. Y. Z, and 7 to 12, together, 16to, cloth $1.00

THE DEFENCE OF THE BRIDE, AND OTHER POEMS. 16to, cloth $1.00

RISIFI'S DAUGHTER. A Drama. 16to, cloth $1.00

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London

* * * * *

WORKS BY

RODRIGUES OTTOLENGUI

The Crime Of the Century. Hudson Library, No. 12. 16mo. $1.00; paper 50 cts.

"It is a tribute to the author's skill, that he never loses a reader. For fertility in imagining a complex plot, and holding the reader in ignorance of its solution until the very end, we know of no one who can rival him."--_Toledo Blade._

"The book deals with the subject involved in the most powerful style that the author has shown. There is more purpose and thought in it than in the other books."--_Boston Globe._

"It is one of the best-told stories of its kind we have read, and the reader will not be able to guess its ending easily. It is ingeniously worked out without giving away the true solution, and those who enjoy a well-written detective story should not fail to read it."--_Boston Times._

An Artist in Crime. 16mo, $1.00; paper 50 cts.

"One may safely say that it ranks with the best detective novels yet published in this country."--_Boston Times._

"'An Artist in Crime' is the best detective story which has been published in several years."--_New Haven Palladium._

A Conflict Of Evidence. 16 mo, $1.00; paper 50 cts.

"This particular book is the best of its kind and just what its title sets forth.... It is a masterpiece of consistent theory, and will bear reading at any time and in any place."--_Omaha Excelsior._

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A Modern Wizard. 16 mo, $1.00; paper 50 cts.

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"The story is ingenious, the characters are dramatic, and the evolution of the plot is natural."--_Boston Times._

Final proof, or, The Value of Evidence. Hudson Library, No. 33. 16mo, $1.00; paper 50 cts.

"Dr. Ottolengui has given us another of his powerfully imaginative detective stories. The present one is a continuation of 'An Artist in Crime' and 'The Crime of the Century.' The problem in this story is shrewdly solved, and the interest on the reader's part is kept up until the very close."--_New Orleans Picayune._

G. P. Putnam's Sons

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