Chapter IV: Book I: The Shadow (3)

Here the coroner advanced to question her, and I am happy to say that my presence gave her courage to bear up under the ordeal. This was what he elicited from her.

She did not know what was in the letter. It had been written by her uncle while still on his sick bed and after an experience which I will not relate here, as it will be found more fully stated in the letter itself. This letter I will reproduce for you at once, though it was weeks before I knew its whole contents:

GEORGE, LEIGHTON, AND ALFRED:

I may not have been a good father, but I have at least been
a just one. Though each and all of you since coming to man's
estate have given me great cause for complaint, I have never
been harsh towards you, nor have I ever denied you anything
from mere caprice or from an egotistic desire to save myself
trouble. Yet to one of you my life is of so little value
that he is willing to resort to crime to rid himself of me.
Does this shock you, Leighton, George, Alfred? We are a
Christian family, members of an honourable community,
trained each and all in religious principles, you, by the
best, the sweetest of mothers--does it move you to think
that one of you could contemplate parricide and even attempt
it? It moves me; and in two of you must awaken a horror,
the anticipation of which affords me the sole comfort now
remaining to my doomed and miserable life. For nothing will
ever make me believe that this act was a concerted one or
that the attempt which has just been made upon my life had
its birth in more than one dark breast. One guilty soul
there is among you, but only one; and lest to the remaining
two the accusation I have just made may seem fanciful,
unreal, the result of nightmare or the effect of fever, I
will relate what happened in this room last night, just as I
related it to Hope when she asked me this morning why I
seemed so loath to see you before you went out to your
several lounging places.

I was dozing. The lamp which since my illness has never been
turned out in my room, threw great shadows on wall and
ceiling. I seemed conscious of these shadows, though I was
half asleep, but not so conscious that I was not aware of
the light shining through the transom from the gas jet near
the top of the stairs. This light has always been company
for me, especially in wakeful nights or when I found myself
troubled by dreams or any physical distress. It seemed to
connect me with the rest of the house, and simple as it may
seem to you, accounts for the cheerfulness with which I have
declined the offers of my sons to sit with me during these
last painful nights. I had no need of their company while
this light shone; and as for pain--why, that is an evil
which all men are called upon sooner or later to endure.

I was resting then, in this mild reflected light, when
suddenly it went out. This woke me, for the orders are
strict that this jet be left burning till the servants come
downstairs in the morning. But I did not stir in my bed; I
simply listened. Though aroused and somewhat disturbed by
this palpable disregard of my wishes, I exerted all of my
faculties to detect the step I now heard loitering about my
door. But it was studiously cautious and made no distinct
sound in my ear. I did not like this, and listened still
more intently, whereupon I heard the door open and someone
come in, softly, and with long pauses such as were not wont
to accompany the entrance of any member of my household. I
was deciding whether to raise an alarm or lie still and let
myself be robbed of the money which I had just received from
the bank, when I heard the whispered "Father" with which one
and all of you approach me at night when you wish to
ascertain if I am asleep or awake.

Why did I hear myself called and yet make no reply? What was
in my heart, or what have I seen of late in your natures or
conduct, that I should remain quiet under this appeal and
lie there shut-eyed and watchful? I had no definite reason
for doubting any of you. I knew you were in debt and that
two of you at least were in crying need of money, but I
hardly think I dreaded the rifling of my desk by the hands
of one of my sons. Yet that approach so gentle and so
measured! the drawn-in breath! the shadow that grew and grew
upon the wall!--all these spoke of something quite different
from the anxiety of a son keeping watch over a sick father's
slumbers.

The desk was near the window towards which my eyes were
turned in open watchfulness, and I hoped by lying still to
catch sight of the intruder's figure at the moment of his
passing between me and the faint illumination made on the
curtains by the street lamp opposite. But the intruder did
not advance in that direction. He passed instead to the
little cupboard over the wash-stand, where, as you all know,
my medicines are kept. This I was made aware of by the faint
click made by one bottle striking another. "George has come
home ill, or Leighton has one of his terrible headaches,"
was the soothing thought which then came to me, and I found
it difficult not to speak out and ask who was sick and what
bottle was wanted. But the something which from the first
had acted in the way of restraint upon me, held me still,
and I remained dumb while that sneaking hand continued to
fumble among the phials and glasses. Suddenly a fear struck
me, a fear so far removed from any which I had ever before
known, that my whole attitude of thought towards my sons
must have undergone an instantaneous change--a gulf opening
where an instant before was confidence and love. The
medicine was kept there from which my nightly dose was
prepared; a medicine which you have all heard declared by my
physician to be a deadly poison, which must be measured most
carefully and given in only such doses as he had prescribed.
Could it be that my son was feeling about for this? Had
George bet once too often on that mare which will be his
ruin, or Leighton found his religion an insufficient cloak
for indiscretions which ever shunned the light of day; or
Alfred--the child of my heart, he whom his dying mother
placed as a last trust in my arms--confounded the _ennui_ of
inaction with that weariness of life which is the bane of
rich men's sons? I know the despairs that come in youth, and
I quaked where I lay; but it was not upon self-destruction
that this man at the cupboard was bent. I felt my whole
frame tremble and my heart sink in unutterable despair as he
advanced, still quietly and with great pauses, up to the
foot-board of my bed, then around to the side, protected, as
you know, by a screen, till he crouched out of sight, but
within reach of the small table where my glass stands with
the spoon beside it, ready for my use if I grow restless and
weary.

To have turned, to have intercepted the creeping figure in
its work, and thus have known definitely and forever which
one of you had thus furtively visited my medicine cabinet
before proceeding to my bedside, might have been the natural
course with some; but it was not my course. I was not
content just to interrupt. I wanted to know the full extent
of what I had to fear. A remark which Dr. Bennett had once
let fall recurred to me, transfixing me to my bed. "If you
were not a careful man," he had said in diagnosing my
present illness, "I should say that you had taken something
foreign into your system; something which has no business
there; something which under other circumstances and in
another man's case I should denominate _poison_." It had
seemed nonsense to me at the time, and I laughed at what I
considered a fatuous remark, uttered with unnecessary
gravity; but now that there was really poison in the house,
and one of my own blood stood hiding behind the screen
within a foot of my medicine glass, I could not but choke
down the cry which this thought caused to rise in my throat
and listen for what might come. Alas! I was destined to
behold with my eyes as well as hear with my ears the next
move made by my unknown visitant. By the grace of God or
through some coincidence equally providential, the gas at
this momentous instant was relit in the hall, and I
perceived, amid the old shadows thus called out upon the
wall, a new one--that of a hand holding a bottle, which,
projecting itself beyond the straight line cast by the
screen, was now stealing slowly but surely in the direction
of the table on which stood my glass of medicine. I did not
gasp or cry. Thought, feeling, consciousness even of my own
unfathomable misery seemed lost in the one instinct--to
watch that hand. Would it falter? Should I see it tremble or
hesitate in its short passage across the faintly illumined
space upon which my eyes were fixed? Yes, some monition of
conscience, some secret fear or filial remembrance made it
pause for an instant; but even as my heart bounded in glad
relief and human feelings began to re-awake in my frozen
breast, it steadied and passed on, and though I could no
longer see aught but a shadowy arm, I could hear
one--two--three--a dozen drops falling into my drink--a
sound which, faint as it was, made the guilty heart behind
the screen quake; for the hand shook as it retreated, and I
beheld distinctly outlined on the illumined space before me
the end of the semi-detached label which marked the special
bottle on which the word _poison_ is printed in large
letters.

No further doubt was possible. The medicine in my glass had
been strengthened and by the hand of one of my sons.

Which one?

In the misery of the moment I felt as if I did not care.
That any of you should seek my death was an overwhelming
grief to me. But as thought and reason returned, the wild
desire to know just what and whom I had to fear seized me in
the midst of my horror, mixed with another sentiment harder
to explain, and which I can best characterise as a feeling
of dread lest I should betray my suspicions and so raise
between my children and myself an insurmountable barrier.

Subduing my emotion and summoning to my aid all the powers
of acting with which I have been by nature endowed, I moved
restlessly under the clothes, calling out in a sort of
sleepy alarm:

"Who's there? Is it you, George? If so, reach me my
medicine."

But no George stepped forth.

"Leighton?" I cried petulantly. "Surely I hear one of you in
the room." But my son Leighton did not reply.

I did not call for Alfred. I could not! He was the last son
of his mother.

Did I wrong the others in not uttering his name also?

Meantime all was quiet behind the screen. Then I heard a
quick movement, followed by the shutting of a door, and I
realised that an escape had been effected from the room in a
way I had not calculated on--that is, by means of the
dressing-room opening out of the alcove in which my bed
stands.

I had thought myself a weak man up to that hour; but when I
heard that door close, I bounded to my feet and attempted to
reach the hall before the man who had thus escaped me could
find refuge in any of the adjoining rooms. But I must have
fallen insensible almost immediately, for when I came to
myself I found the foot-board of the bed within reach of my
hand, and the clock on the point of striking two.

I dragged myself up and staggered back to bed. I had neither
the courage nor the strength to push the matter further at
that time. Indeed, I felt a sort of physical fear, probably
the result of illness, which made it quite impossible for me
to traverse the halls and creep from room to room seeking
for guilt in eyes whose expression up to this unhallowed
hour had betrayed nothing worse than a reckless disregard of
my wishes.

Yet it was torment unspeakable to lie there in an
uncertainty which threw a cloud over all my sons. For hours
my thoughts ran the one gamut, George, Leighton, Alfred,
clinging agonisedly to each beloved name in turn, only to
drop into a dreadful uncertainty as I remembered the
temptations besetting each one of you, and the readiness
with which you all, from the oldest to the youngest, have
ever succumbed to them. There was no determining point in
the character of any of you which made me able to say in
this solitary and awful communion with my own fears, "This
one at least is innocent!" If I dwelt on George's generous
good nature, I also recalled his wild extravagance and the
debts he so recklessly heaps up at every turn he makes in
this God-forsaken city; if some recollection of Leighton's
strict ways in open matters of conscience came to soothe me,
there instantly came with it the remembrance of the various
tales which had reached my ears of certain secret
attachments which drew him into circles where crime is more
than a suggestion, and murder a possible attendant upon
every feast. Then Alfred--youngest of all but the least
youthful in his attitude towards the world and his
fellow-men--what honourable ambition had he ever shown
calculated to give me solace at this awful time, and make
the association of his name with a damnable crime an
impossibility and an outrage?

Meanwhile, my whole mental vision was clouded with the
pictured remembrances of your faces as seen in childhood, in
early youth, or at any other time, indeed, than the
intolerable present. George's, when he brought home his
first school medal; Leighton's, when he denied himself a new
pair of skates that he might give the money to a crying
street urchin; Alfred's, when the fever left him and his
cheeks grew rosy again with renewed health. All these young
and innocent faces crowded about me, awakening poignant
suggestions of the change which a few short, short years had
wrought in relations which once seemed warm and alive with
promise. Then, a group of frank-eyed boys; now,--this awful
question: _which?_

It was not till an hour had passed that I remembered that
the phial had not been returned to the cabinet. In whose
possession would it be found? Should I have a search made
for it? I turned cold in bed at the debasing, the
intolerable prospect of acting as detective in my own house.
Then the poisoned glass! it still stood beside me; if I left
it untouched it would show suspicion on my part, and
suspicion might precipitate my doom. How could I avoid
taking it without raising doubts as to my discovery of the
trick which had been played so near me? In the feverish
condition of my mind but one plan suggested itself. Throwing
out my arm, I precipitated the glass to the floor, over
which I heard it roll, with extraordinary sensations. Then I
waited for daybreak, in much the same condition of mind in
which a man awaits his last hour; for my heart yearned over
my sons even while panting under the consciousness that one
of them was a monster of ingratitude and innate depravity.

When Hewson and the girls came down, and I heard the stir of
life in the house, I rang my bell and asked for Hope. She
came in with beaming face and a smile full of happiness. She
had risen from a beauty sleep and, possibly because my
thoughts had been so dark, I had never seen her look so
bright and lovely. But her cheeks paled as she approached my
bedside and noticed my miserable appearance; and it was with
sudden anxiety she cried:

"What a wretched night you must have had, uncle! You look
poorly this morning. You should have sent for me before."

Again I summoned up all my powers of acting.

"I knocked over my medicine in the night. Perhaps that is
why I look so wretched. I did not sleep after four. You can
say so, if any of the boys ask after me at the breakfast
table."

With a woman's solicitude she moved around to my side, where
the screen stood.

"Why, what's this?" she exclaimed, stooping as her foot
encountered some small object.

I expected her to lift the glass. Instead of that she lifted
the bottle. It had been left there on the floor and not
carried out of the room, as I had naturally supposed.

I endeavoured to look undisturbed and as if this bottle had
been thrown over with the glass, but I failed pitiably. At
the sight of her dear, womanly face and the affection
beaming in every look, I broke down and raised my arms
imploringly towards her.

"Come to my arms!" I prayed. "Let me feel one true head on
my breast."

The next minute I was conscious of having said a word too
much. Her look, which you all know and love, changed, and,
while she submitted to my caresses and even warmly returned
them, it was with an appearance of doubt which I almost
cursed myself for having roused in that innocent breast.

"Why one true heart?" she repeated. "Are there not others in
this house? George and Alfred love you devotedly; and little
Claire--what child could show more fondness for a
grandfather than she?"

Why had she not included Leighton?

I endeavoured to right myself with some mechanical phrase or
other, but the attempt was not very successful, and she was
leaving the room in great disturbance when I called her
hurriedly back.

"I want you to smile as usual," I gravely enjoined.
"George's extravagances and Alfred's caprices are no new
story to you. I have been thinking about them, that is all,
but I had rather they did not know it."

I could not mention Leighton's name, either.

Meantime she was standing there with the poison bottle in
her hand. I could not bear to look at it, and motioned her
to restore it to the cabinet. As she did so, I perceived her
turn with half-open lips, as if about to ask some question.
But she either lacked the courage or the will to do so, for
she proceeded to the cabinet with the bottle, which she
placed quietly on the shelf. But almost instantly she took
it up again.

"Why, uncle," she cried, "there is not as much here as there
ought to be! I am sure the bottle was half full last night."

And then I remembered it was she who prepared my medicine
for me.

"And I left it on the shelf," she went on. "Uncle, how came
it to be lying by the side of your bed? Did you try to
strengthen the dose? You know you ought not to; Dr. Bennett
said that three drops in half a glass of water were all you
could take with safety."

I had not a word to say. My mind seemed a blank, and no
excuse presented itself. The wish which I had openly
cherished of seeing Hope married to one of my sons clogged
my faculties. My protest confined itself to a slow shake of
the head and a dubious smile she was far from understanding.

"I think I will stay with you," she gently suggested.
"Nellie will bring my breakfast up with yours, and we can
have a _tete-a-tete_ meal at your bedside."

But this did not chime in with my plans.

"No," said I. "Nellie can stay with me if you wish, but I
want you to go down. Your cousins will miss you if you are
not there to pour the coffee for them. Alfred shows an
astonishing punctuality of late, and George quite emulates
his younger brother's precision and haste. Leighton was
never late."

Her cheek grew the colour of a rose. Never before had I so
much as suggested to her the secret wish you have one and
all entertained ever since her beauty and affectionate
nature brought sunshine into this cold dwelling.

I was glad to see this colour; at the same time I was made
poignantly wretched by what it suggested. If Hope loved one
of my sons, and he should be the one who had--I felt more
than ever called upon to act warily. Here was someone
besides myself to think of. Your mother is dead and in
Paradise, but Hope is young and the crushing weight under
which I staggered could not well be borne by her. For her
sake if not for my own, I must locate the plague-spot that
to my mind spread defilement over all my sons. I must know
which of you to trust and which to fear; and that no mistake
should follow my attempt at this, I made haste to insure
that no warning should reach you through any change in
Hope's manner. So I reiterated my old command.

"Let me see you smile," said I, "or I shall think you regard
me as being in worse condition than I really am. Indeed, I
am almost well, Hope. My disease has yielded to Dr.
Bennett's treatment, and when I can rise above these sickly
fancies, which are the effect, no doubt, of the powerful
remedies I have taken, I shall be quite like my old self.
After breakfast let me see you here again. I may have some
letters requiring an immediate answer."

My natural tones reassured her. The force of my feelings had
brought some colour into my cheeks, and I probably looked
less ghastly. She turned away with a smile. Alas! her face
renewed its brightness and shone with sweet expectancy as
she approached the door.

Nellie brought me my breakfast and I forced myself to eat
it. My mind was regaining its equilibrium and my will its
power. Just as I was folding my napkin, Hewson came in. He
had brought me an especial tid-bit, prepared in the chafing
dish by Hope's own hands. But I could not eat it. The
thought would rise that she had seen far enough into my mind
to imagine I would dread eating anything she had not cooked
for me herself. As Hewson was withdrawing, I asked if you
were all well. His answer was an astonished Yes. At which I
ventured to remark that I had heard someone up in the night.
"That was Miss Meredith," he explained. "I heard her tell
Mr. George at the breakfast table that she came down to your
door about one in the morning to listen if you were quiet.
She said she found the gas blown out in the hall, and that
she lit it again. I had left the sky-light open; it don't do
these windy nights, sir."

I was disturbed by this discovery. That she should have been
at the door at a moment so fraught with danger and misery to
myself was a thrilling thought; besides, might she not have
been so happy or so unhappy as to have caught a glimpse of
the man who crept out of my dressing-closet a moment later!
Overcome by a possibility which might settle the whole
question for me, I let Hewson go in silence; and when Hope
came back, drew her gently but resolutely down on the bed at
my side and said to her with a smile:

"I have just learned how my dear girl watches over her
uncle's slumbers. You are too careful of me; I had rather
have you sleep. George's room is on this floor; let him come
and see how I am in the night, if you are so uneasy."

"George would never wake up without assistance," said she.
"I could not trust you to his tender care, well meaning as
he is."

"Leighton, then. He's a light sleeper. I have often heard
you say that you have heard him pacing the floor of his room
as late as three in the morning."

"But he sleeps better now. Alfred might stop on his way in;
but Alfred does not stay out as late as he used to. He comes
in quite regularly since you have been ill."

Were her eyes quite true? Yes, they were as true as the sky
they mirror. I grasped her hand and ventured upon a vital
question.

"Who was up at the same time you were last night? I am sure
I heard a man's step in the hall, just about the time you
relighted the gas."

"Did you know about the gas?" she asked. "I found it
smelling dreadfully. But I didn't encounter anyone in the
hall. I guess you imagined that, uncle."

"Perhaps!" was my muttered reply, as I wondered how I was to
ask the next question. "When did you go upstairs?" I finally
inquired.

"Oh, right away. I didn't wait a minute after I found you
quiet. It was cold in the halls--Hewson had left the
sky-light open, and my trip after a match chilled me."

"Was your cousin Leighton's door open?" I instantly
inquired. "Or did you hear any door shut after you went up?"

She leaned over me and looked anxiously into my face.

"Why do you ask so many questions, uncle, and in so hard a
voice? Would there have been any harm in my cousins being
up, or in my running across one of them in the hall?"

"Not ordinarily. But last night----"

Here my weakness found vent. I must share my secret, if only
as a safeguard; I could not breathe under the dreadful
weight imposed upon me by this uncertainty. And she knew I
had some dreadful tale to tell; this I was assured of by the
white line creeping into view about her lips, and by the
convulsive clasp with which she answered my clutch.
Forgetting her youth, ignoring all the resolves I had made
in the secret watches of the night, I drew her ear down to
my mouth and gasped into it the few tell-tale sentences
which revealed the dishonour of our house. I caught the
thrill of anguish which went through her as I made plain
the attempt which had been made upon my life, and never
shall I forget her eyes as she slowly drew back at the
completion of my tale, and surveyed me in the silent
suspense which seemed to mirror forth my own deep
heart-question: _Which?_

Sons, I could not answer the demand made by that look, nor
can I answer it now. You all came in soon after, and each
and all of you had something to say about the mischance of
the night which had so visibly affected me. And I did not
dare to read your eyes. Brought face to face with you, I
seemed to shrink from, rather than seek for, the settling of
this dreadful question. Perhaps because I regard you with
equal affection. Perhaps because your mother's picture was
visible over your heads, and it seemed like sacrilege to her
memory to consider such a question under her loving and
trusting eyes. At all events you left me with my mind still
in doubt, to confront Hope again, and with her the wretched
future which the night's experience had unfolded before us
both. I found her filled with a confidence I could not
easily share. She believed in the integrity of the man she
held dearest, but she would not tell me which of you she
thus loved. And I could only guess. But even this belief
weakened a little as we talked together, and I soon saw by
the arguments she used that peace and certainty would never
be hers again as long as a doubt remained as to which of her
cousins had conceived and perpetrated this criminal act. As
for me, the future holds no comfort. I shall give each of
you a thousand dollars to-night in celebration of my
anniversary of marriage, and perhaps this will awaken the
conscience of the one who loves my money better than my
life. Then, though I shall not change my will, I shall
publish abroad that I have had losses which only a fortunate
speculation can make good, and see if by these means the
cupidity which came near costing me my life may not serve to
insure me a sufficiently prolonged existence for me to
separate in my own mind the one black sheep from the white.
But if these measures fail, if I am doomed to fall a victim
to the unknown hand which I must henceforth see lifted over
my life, if Hope's watchfulness and my own vigilance cannot
prevent the repetition of an act which, if once determined
upon, cannot fail of fulfilment in a house like this, then
this letter read by you all in concert must prove the
punishment of the guilty one. And since none of you will
read these lines except under these circumstances of death
and crime, I hereby charge that guilty one to speak, and as
he hopes to escape my curse and the wrath of an outraged
Deity, to avow his crime in her presence and in that of the
two brothers he will thus exonerate.

Having done this, he may take or leave his portion of the
estate. I shall be satisfied, and the God whose commandments
he has doubly defied may forget to avenge a crime forgiven
by its object.

To my two sons whose filial instincts have never been thus
disturbed, I leave my blessing. May all happiness be theirs,
whether this does or does not include the love of the dear
girl whose future I have thus endeavoured to clear.

ARCHIBALD GILLESPIE.

I have inserted this letter here that you may understand the situation which ensued upon its perusal by the three brothers.

We, who had not read it, were simply startled to note the way in which these three young men drew back as from a common centre, as the last words fell from Leighton's well-nigh paralysed lips.

Then Alfred, in a rush of ferocious passion, bounded forward again, and striding up to George, shouted out in an awful voice, "_You_ are the man!" and struck him without mercy to the floor.

IX

THE CLOCK THAT HAD RUN DOWN

In the commotion which followed, I noted two things. First, that at sight of this violence from one brother to the other, Leighton drew back without offering assistance to the one or rebuke to the other. Secondly, that Alfred's show of anger ceased as soon as it had thus expended itself, and that his next thought was for Hope.

But he was not allowed to approach her. The coroner now interfered with his authority, and all words were forbidden between these members of a disrupted household, till the police had finished an investigation, which had now become as serious as the crime which had called it forth.

The search was for the little phial which had held the acid, and when it was generally understood that the investigation would not cease till this was found, Miss Meredith, who had clung to me as her one stay in this overturning of every other natural support, asked me in agitated tones if I thought her cousins would be subjected to personal search. As no other course was open to the police after the direct accusation which had just been made by the infuriated Alfred, I answered in the affirmative; whereupon she attempted to flee the place, saying she could not endure to see them subjected to such humiliation.

But here Alfred, as if divining her thoughts, offered his person to Mr. Gryce with the remark:

"I have nothing to conceal. Look through my pockets, if you wish. You will find nothing to reward your pains. _I_ am not the villain."

A growl of anger, bridled but concentrated, came from the other side of the room, and I caught a sudden glimpse of George, quivering under the restraining hands of Dr. Bennett and Sweetwater, in a mad attempt to reach his brother, whom he seemed to curse between his teeth.

"If you search him, you must do the same to me," were the words with which he seasoned this struggle. "You will find nothing more incriminating on me than on him; probably less, for my pockets are always open--while his----" A gnash of his teeth finished these almost inarticulate phrases. He was not as easily roused as his brother, but more tenacious in his passions, and less readily appeased.

"Peace, there! You shall both be satisfied," interposed a businesslike voice. In face of these open accusations, the coroner felt himself relieved from the embarrassment which had hitherto restrained him, and made no further effort to hide his suspicions.

Miss Meredith, who unconsciously to herself had drawn me as far as the drawing-room door in her efforts to escape the disquieting scene she had herself precipitated, paused as these words left the coroner's lips, and, yielding to the terrible fascination of the moment, caught my arm, and clinging thus with both hands, turned her eyes again upon the men under whose roof she had eaten, slept, and loved; ay, loved, as I knew by the tension of her body, communicated to me by the pressure of her hands.

Suddenly that pressure was removed. Her hands had flown to her eyes, shutting out the spectacle she could no longer confront. Nor was it easy for me to look on unmoved, or view with even an appearance of equanimity the scene before me.

I have not mentioned Leighton. He had not come forward with the other two, but he allowed his pockets to be searched without a protest when his turn came, though it was very evident that the proceeding caused him more suffering and a keener sensation of disgrace than it did the other two. Was this on account of the superior sensitiveness of his nature, or because he shrunk with a proud man's shame from the publicity entailed upon the anomalous articles which were drawn from his inner pockets? When some few minutes later my eyes fell on these objects lying piled on the library table, I marvelled over the character of a man who could gather and retain in one place a small prayer-book, a lock of woman's hair, the programme of some common music hall, and a photograph which after one glance I instinctively turned face downwards, lest it should fall under the eye of his cousin, whose delicacy could not fail to be hurt by it.

The phial had not been found on any of the young gentlemen.

When Miss Meredith became aware that the ordeal was over, she let her hands drop, and stepped hastily into the drawing-room. I did not follow her, but remained in the doorway watching the detectives as they moved from room to room in the search which was now being extended to all parts of the house. As I saw these men pass so quietly but with such an air of authority into rooms where a few hours before they would have hesitated to put foot even upon the genial owner's express invitation, I experienced such a realisation of the abyss into which this hitherto well-reputed family had fallen that I lost for a little while that sense of personal bitterness which the predictions evinced by Miss Meredith had so selfishly awakened.

But to continue the summary of events.

Seeing Leighton withdraw upstairs, followed by an officer in plain clothes, who had appeared on the scene as if by magic, I could not refrain from asking why he was allowed to separate himself from the others, and was much moved at being informed that he had gone up to sit by his child's bed, that child who of all in the house had found her wonted rest.

That he could calm himself down to such a task under the eye of one who could have little sympathy with his feelings, whether they were those of outraged innocence or self-accusing guilt, struck me as the most pathetic exhibition of self-control I had ever known; and more than once during the busy hour that followed, I was visited by fleeting visions of this silent man, sitting out the night under the watchful eye of one who moved if he so much as lowered his head to kiss the only cheek likely to smile upon him on the morrow as it had smiled upon him to-day.

That the search for the missing phial was likely to be a long-continued one soon became apparent to everyone. Two men who had carried the investigation into the room where the servants had been shut up since early evening, came back with the report that nothing had come to light in that quarter. At the same time two more returned from above with a similar report in regard to the sleeping-rooms of the three brothers. Sweetwater and Gryce, who had spent the last half-hour in the dining-room, appeared to have an equally unsatisfactory tale to tell, and I was wondering what move would now be made, when I intercepted a glance from the coroner cast in the direction of the drawing-room, and realised that the law was no respecter of persons and that she, she too, might be called upon to give proof of not having this tell-tale article upon her person.

The prospect of such an indignity offered to one I regarded with more than passing admiration unnerved me to such an extent that I was hardly myself when Dr. Frisbie advanced upon me with this remark:

"I regret the necessity, Mr. Outhwaite; but the emergencies of the case demand the same compliance on your part as on that of the other gentlemen found upon this scene of crime. It is needless to say that we have the utmost confidence in your integrity, but you were here when Mr. Gillespie died, and have been close to a certain member of this family many times since--and, in short, it is a form which you as a lawyer will recognise and----"

"No apologies," I prayed, recalling the one son of Mr. Gillespie who had not been on the scene of crime at the time of his father's death.

An intelligent glance from the coroner convinced me that he was thinking of him too. Indeed, he seemed to be more than willing to have me understand that he exacted this thorough search in order to fix the crime on Leighton. For if the phial was not to be found anywhere in the house, the necessary conclusion must be that it had been carried out of it by the one person known to have left it during the critical half-hour preceding Mr. Gillespie's death.

"I understand your thoughts," quoth the coroner, who seemed to read my face like an open book. "The phial may have been smashed on the sidewalk or thrown into some refuse barrel. But that would be the unwisest thing a guilty man could do. For its odour is unmistakable, and once it is found by the men I will set looking for it at daybreak--Well, what now?"

Sweetwater was whispering in his ear.

"The child? Do I remember that the father suggested she should be put to bed undressed? Oh, I cannot have you disturb the child. Used as I am to the subterfuges of criminals I find it impossible to believe that a father could make use of his child as a medium for his own safety."

"Or Miss Meredith?" the insidious whisperer went on.

"Or Miss Meredith. She may have the bottle on her own person, but she would never pass it over to the child. No, no! curb your extravagances and confine your attention to Mr. Outhwaite, who is kind enough to allow us to inspect his pockets----"

Here the curtain at the drawing-room door was disturbed and a pallid face looked forth.

"I pray you," came in entreaty from Hope's set lips, "spare this stranger, whose only crime has been to show kindness to a man he did not know, in an extremity he did not understand. Search me; search Claire; but do not subject this gentleman to an act so injurious. I swear that the phial is not on him! I swear----"

She hardly knew what she was saying. The heaped-up excitements of the last two hours were fast unsettling her reason.

She held out her hands imploringly. "I don't know why I care so much," she murmured in fresh expostulation, "but I feel as if I could not bear it."

From that moment I loved her, though I knew this interposition in my behalf sprang from her womanly instinct rather than from the spontaneous impulse of a freshly awakened heart. I must have shown how deeply I was moved, for the coroner looked distressed, though he gave no signs of modifying his intention, and I was beginning to empty my pockets before his eyes, when Sweetwater's expressive countenance showed a sudden change, and he rushed again to the rear. Here he stood a moment before the dining-room door, striking his forehead in wrathful indecision; then he disappeared within, only to shout aloud in another instant:

"Fool! fool! And I noticed when I first came in that the clock had stopped. See! see!"

We were at his side in an instant. He was standing by the mantelpiece, with the heavy French clock tilted up before our eyes. Under it, tucked away in the space allowed to the pendulum, we saw a small homoeopathic bottle. There was one drop of liquid at the bottom, which even before Mr. Gryce lifted the bottle to his nose we recognised by its smell to be prussic acid.

The phial which had held the deadly dose was found.

X

THE PENCIL

Under Sweetwater's careful guidance, the clock fell slowly back into place. It was one of those solid time-pieces which seem to form part of the shelf on which they stand. When it was again quite level, he pointed to its face. The hands stood at half-past nine, just ten minutes previous to the time of my entering the house.

"At what hour did Mr. Leighton Gillespie go out to-night?" he asked.

No one answered.

"Before half-past nine or after it?" urged the coroner, consulting the faces about him for the answer he probably had no expectation of receiving from anyone's lips.

"Leighton's all right," cried out a voice from the library. "I hate his puritanical ways, but there's no harm in him."

It sounded like Alfred, but the impression made by this interruption was not good.

"Will you allow me to state a fact," ventured Miss Meredith, coming impulsively forward. "If you hope to establish the guilt or innocence of anyone by the time marked by these hands, you will make a mistake. The clock has been out of order for some days. Yesterday it ran down. I heard my uncle say that it would have to go back to Tiffany's for repairs."

"Fetch in the butler or whoever has charge of this room," ordered Dr. Frisbie. "Let none of you attempt to speak while he is present. I wish to interrogate him myself and will have no interruptions."

We all drew back, and silence reigned in the spacious apartment which, lit up as for a dinner party, was yet in such a state of disorder that the orderly old butler groaned as his eyes fell upon the heaped-up rugs, the overturned chairs, and the great table stacked with fine china and cut-glass taken from the buffet and closets.

"Oh, what shall I do here?" he grumbled. "What would master----"

He did not finish; but we all understood him. The coroner pointed to the clock.

"When was this wound last?"

The old man stared at the time-piece, mumbled, and shook his head. Then his eyes fell on Miss Meredith.

"I don't remember," he protested. "It has not been running for days; has it, Miss? I have had to use my watch in order to be on time with the meals. Why do you ask, sir?"

He was not answered. This repeated closing up of every avenue of inquiry was beginning to tell upon the police.

"Mr. Gillespie looked very sober, very sober indeed, when he found he had to drink his wine alone," continued the butler, with a melancholy emphasis calculated to draw our attention back to the scene which had manifestly made such an impression upon him. "He lifted up his glass and held it out a long while before he drank it. I think he looked at each one of the young gentlemen in turn, but I didn't care to watch him too closely, for there was something solemn about him which made me feel queer, living so long as I have in the family and with every one of these young gentlemen babies in arms when I came here. He drank it finally, standing. But there was no harm in that glass, sirs, for I finished the bottle myself afterwards, and I am well, as you see. More's the pity!"

"Shut up!" shouted an angry voice from across the hall. "You are making a ---- mess of the whole affair with your confounded drivel."

The coroner motioned the butler away.

The atmosphere of the house had now become oppressive even to me, and for the first time I experienced a desire to be quit of it, and would certainly have made some movement towards departure had it not been for my dread of leaving Miss Meredith alone with her own thoughts.

Meanwhile the coroner was issuing his orders.

"Dakin, request the gentlemen upstairs to come down again for a few minutes. Dr. Bennett, the body of your patient can now be moved."

"Ah, here we are again," he exclaimed, as Leighton was heard descending the stairs.

"Now, if the two other sons of the deceased will attend to my words for a moment I will state that under the existing circumstances I feel it my duty to call a jury and hold an inquest over Mr. Gillespie's remains. The phial smelling of prussic acid having been found in the dining-room, I shall only require restraint put upon the movements of the two sons of Mr. Gillespie who are known to have entered this room during the hour when this fatal dose was administered. The one called Alfred, having remained above, is for the present free from suspicion. I would be glad to show the same consideration to the others; but the facts demand a severity which I hope future developments will allow us to confine to the guilty party. Mr. Outhwaite, I must request you to hold yourself subject to my summons. Miss Meredith, I advise you to hold no communication with your cousins till this matter shows a clearer aspect."

He was moving off, when Alfred, who had been shifting uneasily under George's eye, stepped up to him and said:

"I don't want any discrimination made between my brothers and myself. I may be quite conscious of my own innocence, but I cannot accept any show of favours founded on a misconception. If George and Leighton are to be subjected to surveillance on account of entering the dining-room this evening, then I want to be put under surveillance too. For I was in that room as well as they, searching for a small gold pencil which I had dropped from my pocket at dinner-time."

This acknowledgment made under such circumstances and against such odds was calculated to enlist sympathy, and my heart warmed towards the man who in the heat of anger could strike a brother to the ground, but scorned at a less angry moment to take refuge in a misunderstanding which left that brother at a disadvantage.

But the imperturbability of the elderly detective, who at that moment found something to interest him in the chasing on a Chinese gong hanging from a bracket in the hall, warned me not to be too quick with my sympathies. Kindly as he beamed upon this favoured object of his attention, I saw that he took little stock in the generous attitude assumed by Mr. Gillespie's youngest son; and my attention being attracted to his movements, I was happily glancing his way when he suddenly approached Alfred with what looked like an empty tumbler in his hand.

"Is this the article you refer to?" he asked.

And then we saw that the tumbler was not empty,--that it held a small object standing upright in it, and that this object was a gold pencil.

"Yes, that is my pencil," Alfred acknowledged. "But----"

"Oh, I am accountable for putting it into the tumbler," the old man admitted. "The tumbler was a clean one, Mr. Gillespie. I assure you I examined it closely before making it a receptacle for this pencil. But the pencil itself--Let me ask you to put your nose to it, Mr. Gillespie."

It was a suggestion capable of but one interpretation. Alfred started back, his eyes staring, his features convulsed. Then he bent impulsively forward and put his nose to the object Mr. Gryce held out. With what result was evident from the sudden damp which broke out on his forehead.

XI

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

"Fatality!" exclaimed Alfred. And, raising his head, he strode impetuously towards Miss Meredith. "You have enjoined a confession of guilt and forbidden us to assert our innocence," he cried. "But I shall assert mine now and always, whatever happens and whoever suffers. I should not be worthy of the happiness I aim at, if I did not declare my guiltlessness in the face of facts which seem to militate against me."

"I believe you--" she began, her hand trembling towards his. But the confiding impulse was stayed--by what thought? by what dread? and her hand fell and her lips closed before she had completed the sentence.

"I am innocent," he repeated, drawing himself up in proud assertion, nobly borne out by the clear regard of the eye which now turned alternately on George and Leighton, who were standing upon either side of him.

"What is the use of repeating a phrase you cannot back up with proof?" called out George, who was still gnawing his own special grievance. "I am as innocent as you are, but I scorn to take advantage of each and every opportunity to assert it."

Leighton neither spoke nor moved. The melancholy in which he was now completely lost repelled all attempt to break it. Nor did this expression of complete wretchedness alter during the hubbub that followed. When it did--but I must make clear the circumstances of this change. I was engaged in making my adieux to Miss Meredith, when Sweetwater, after a marked effort to meet my eye, motioned me to join him in the doorway of the den where Mr. Gillespie's body still lay. Not enjoying the summons, yet feeling it impossible to slight them, I ventured, for the last time, or so I hoped, down the hall.

The young detective was looking into the room which had already played so conspicuous a part in the events of the night, and as I drew up beside him, I perceived that his eyes were fixed not upon the out-stretched figure of its late occupant, but on the face and form of Leighton Gillespie, who was bending above it.

For all the humiliation I felt at thus sharing the professional surveillance entered into by this able young detective, I could not resist following his glance, which seemed to find something remarkable in the attitude or expression of the man before me.

The result was a similar interest on my part and a score of new surmises. The melancholy which up till now had been the predominating characteristic of this inscrutable face had yielded to what could not be called a smile and yet was strangely like one; and this smile or shadow of a smile, had in it just that tinge of sarcasm which made it the one look of all others least to be expected from a son who in common with his brothers laboured under a suspicion of having been the direct cause of his father's death.

With the memory of it fixed indelibly in my mind, I moved away, and in another moment was quit of the house in which I had spent four hours of extraordinary suspense and exciting adventure. As I passed down the stoop, I met a young man coming up. He was the first of the army of reporters destined to besiege that house before daybreak.

XII

GOSSIP