Chapter VII: Book TWO: Sweetwater to the Front (3)

“I say,” he cried, just loud enough to attract the attention of any one within ear-shot. “You’re a mighty fine woman and the boss of this here establishment; that’s evident. I’d like to see the man who could say no to you. He’s never sat in that ’ere cashier’s seat where you be; of that I’m dead sure. He wouldn’t care for fivers if you didn’t, nor for tens either.”

She was really a fine woman for her station, and a buxom, powerful one, too. But her glance wavered under these words and she showed a desire, with difficulty suppressed, to use the strength of her white but brawny arms, in shoving him out of the house. To aid her self-control, he, on his part, began to edge towards the door, always eyeing her and always speaking loudly in admirably acted tipsy unconsciousness of the fact.

“I’m a man who likes my own way as well as anybody,” were the words with which he sought to save the situation, and further his own purposes. “But I never quarrel with a woman. Her whims are sacred to me. I may not believe in them; they may cost me money and comfort; but I yield, I do, when they are as strong in their wishes as you be. I’m going, missus --I’m going--Oh!”

The exclamation burst from him. He could not help it. The door behind him had opened, and a man stepped in, causing him so much astonishment that he forgot himself. The woman was big, bigger than most women who rule the roost and do the work in haunts where work calls for muscle and a good head behind it. She was also rosy and of a make to draw the eye, if not the heart. But the man who now entered was small almost to the point of being a manikin, and more than that, he was weazen of face and ill-balanced on his two tiny, ridiculous legs. Yet she trembled at his presence, and turned a shade paler as she uttered the feeble protest:

“Jim!”

“Is she making a fool of herself?” asked the little man in a voice as shrill as it was weak. “Do your business with me. Women are no good.” And he stalked into the room as only little men can.

Sweetwater took out his ten; pointed to the snuggery, and tapped his breast-pocket. “Whiskey here,” he confided. “Bring me a glass. I don’t mind your farmers. They won’t bother me. What I want is a locked door and a still mouth in your head.”

The last he whispered in the husband’s ear as the wife crossed reluctantly back to her books.

The man turned the bill he had received, over and over in his hand; then scrutinised Sweetwater, with his first show of hesitation.

“You don’t want to kill yourself?” he asked.

Sweetwater laughed with a show of good humour that appeared to relieve the woman, if it did not the man.

“Oh, that’s it,” he cried. “That’s what the missus was afraid of, was it? Well, I vow! And ten thousand dollars to my credit in the bank! No, I don’t want to kill myself. I just want to booze to my heart’s content, with nobody by to count the glasses. You’ve known such fellers before, and that cosey, little room over there has known them, too. Just add me to the list; it won’t harm you.”

The man’s hand closed on the bill. Sweetwater noted the action out of the corner of his eye, but his direct glance was on the woman. Her back was to him, but she had started as he mentioned the snuggery and made as if to turn; but thought better of it, and bent lower over her books.

“I’ve struck the spot,” he murmured, exultantly to himself. “This is the place I want and here I’ll spend the night; but not to booze my wits away, oh, no.”

Nevertheless it was a night virtually wasted. He learned nothing more than what was revealed by that one slight movement on the part of the woman.

Though the man came in and sat with him for an hour, and they drank together out of the flask Sweetwater had brought with him, he was as impervious to all Sweetwater’s wiles and as blind to every bait he threw out, as any man the young detective had ever had to do with. When the door closed on him, and Sweetwater was left to sit out the tedious night alone, it was with small satisfaction to himself, and some regret for his sacrificed bill. The driving in of the farmers and the awakening of life in the market, and all the stir it occasioned inside the house and out, prevented sleep even if he had been inclined that way. He had to swallow his pill, and he did it with the best grace possible. Sooner than was expected of him, sooner than was wise, perhaps, he was on his feet and peering out of the one small window this most dismal day room contained. He had not mistaken the outlook. It gave on to the alley, and all that was visible from behind the curtains where he stood, was the high brick wall of the neighbouring house. This wall had not even a window in it; which in itself was a disappointment to one of his resources. He turned back into the room, disgusted; then crept to the window again, and, softly raising the sash, cast one of his lightning glances up and down the alley. Then he softly let the sash fall again and retreated to the centre of the room, where he stood for a moment with a growing smile of intelligence and hope on his face. He had detected close against the side of the wall, a box or hand-cart full of empty bottles. It gave him an idea. With an impetuosity he would have criticised in another man, he flung himself out of the room in which he had been for so many hours confined, and coming face to face with the landlady standing in unexpected watch before the door, found it a strain on his nerves to instantly assume the sullen, vaguely abused air with which he had decided to leave the house. Nevertheless, he made the attempt, and if he did not succeed to his own satisfaction, he evidently did to hers, for she made no effort to stop him as he stumbled out, and in her final look, which he managed with some address to intercept, he perceived nothing but relief. What had been in her mind? Fear for him or fear for themselves? He could not decide until he had rummaged that cart of bottles. But how was he to do this without attracting attention to himself in a way he still felt, to be undesirable. In his indecision, he paused on the sidewalk and let his glances wander vaguely over the busy scene before him. Before be knew it, his eye had left the market and travelled across the snow-covered fields to a building standing by itself in the far distance. Its appearance was not unfamiliar. Seizing hold of the first man who passed him, he pointed it out, crying:

“What building is that?”

“That? That’s The Whispering Pines, the country club-house, where--”

He didn’t wait for the end of the sentence, but plunged into the thickest group of people he could find, with a determination greater than ever to turn those bottles over before he ate.

His manner of going about this was characteristic. Lounging about the stalls until he found just the sort of old codger he wanted, he scraped up an acquaintance with him on the spot, and succeeded in making himself so agreeable that when the old fellow sauntered back to the stables to take a look at his horse, Sweetwater accompanied him. Hanging round the stable-door, he kept up his chatter, while sizing up the bottles heaped in the cart at his side. He even allowed himself to touch one or two in an absent way, and was meditating an accidental upset of the whole collection when a woman he had not seen before, thrust her head out of a rear window, shouting sharply:

“Leave those bottles alone. They’re waiting for the old clothes man. He pays us money for them.”

Sweetwater gaped and strolled away. He had used his eyes to purpose, and was quite assured that the bottle he wanted was not there. But the woman’s words had given him his cue, and when later in the day a certain old Jew peddler went his rounds through this portion of the city, a disreputable-looking fellow accompanied him, whom even the sharp landlady in Cuthbert Road would have failed to recognise as the same man who had occupied the snuggery the night before. He was many hours on the route and had many new experiences with human nature. But he gained little else, and was considering with what words he should acknowledge his defeat at police headquarters, when he found himself again at the markets and a minute later in the alley where the cart stood, with the contents of which he had busied himself earlier in the day.

He had followed the peddler here because he had followed him to every other back door and alley. But he was tired and had small interest in the cart which looked quite undisturbed and in exactly the same condition as when he turned his back upon it in the morning. But when he drew nearer and began to lend a hand in removing the bottles to the waggon, he discovered that a bottle had been added to the pile, and that this bottle bore the label which marked it as being one of the two which had been taken from the club-house on the night of the murder.

XVII

“MUST I TELL THESE THINGS?”

Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had liv’d a blessed time; for from this instant, There’s nothing serious in mortality: All is but toys; renown, and grace is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the lees Is left this vault to brag of.

_Macbeth_.

The lamp in the coroner’s room shone dully on the perturbed faces of three anxious men. They had been talking earnestly and long, but were now impatiently awaiting the appearance of a fourth party, as was shown by the glances which each threw from time to time towards the door leading into the main corridor.

The district attorney courted the light, and sat where he would be the first seen by any one entering. He had nothing to hide, being entirely engrossed in his duty.

Further back and rather behind the lamp than in front of it stood or sat, as his restlessness prompted, Coroner Perry, the old friend of Amasa Cumberland, with whose son he had now to do. Behind him, and still further in the shadow, could be seen the quiet figure of Sweetwater. All counted the minutes and all showed relief--the coroner by a loud sigh--when the door finally opened and an officer appeared, followed by the lounging form of Adelaide’s brother.

Arthur Cumberland had come unwillingly, and his dissatisfaction did not improve his naturally heavy countenance. However, he brightened a little at sight of the two men sitting at the table, and, advancing, broke into speech before either of the two officials had planned their questions.

“I call this hard,” he burst forth. “My place is at home and at the bedside of my suffering sister, and you drag me down here at nine o’clock at night to answer questions about things of which I am completely ignorant. I’ve said all I have to say about the trouble which has come into my family; but if another repetition of the same things will help to convict that scoundrel who has broken up my home and made me the wretchedest dog alive, then I’m ready to talk. So, fire ahead, Dr. Perry, and let’s be done with it.”

“Sit down,” replied the district attorney, gravely, with a gesture of dismissal to the officer. “Mr. Cumberland, we have spared you up to this time, for two very good reasons. You were in great trouble, and you appeared to be in the possession of no testimony which would materially help us. But matters have changed since you held conversation with Dr. Perry on the day following your sister’s decease. You have laid that sister away; the will which makes you an independent man for life has been read in your hearing; you are in as much ease of mind as you can be while your remaining sister’s life hangs trembling in the balance; and, more important still, discoveries not made before the funeral, have been made since, rendering it very desirable for you to enter into particulars at this present moment, which were not thought necessary then.”

“Particulars? What particulars? Don’t you know enough, as it is, to hang the fellow? Wasn’t he seen with his fingers on Adelaide’s throat? What can I tell you that is any more damaging than that? Particulars!” The word seemed to irritate him beyond endurance. Never had he looked more unprepossessing or a less likely subject for sympathy, than when he stumbled into the chair set for him by the district attorney.

“Arthur!”

The word had a subtle ring. The coroner, who uttered it, waited to watch its effect. Seemingly it had none, after the first sullen glance thrown him by the young man; and the coroner sighed again, but this time softly, and as a prelude to the following speech:

“We can understand,” said he, “why you should feel so strongly against one who has divided the hearts of your sisters, and played with one, if not with both. Few men could feel differently. You have reason for your enmity and we excuse it; but you must not carry it to the point of open denunciation before the full evidence is in and the fact of murder settled beyond all dispute. Whatever you may think, whatever we may think, it has not been so settled. There are missing links still to be supplied, and this is why we have summoned you here and ask you to be patient and give the district attorney a little clearer account of what went on in your own house, before you broke up that evening and you went to your debauch, and your sister Adelaide to her death at The Whispering Pines.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” He brought his fist down on the table with each word. “Nothing went on. That is,--”

“Something went on at dinner-time. It was not a usual meal,” put in the district attorney. “You and your sisters--”

“Stop!” He was at that point of passion which dulls the most self-controlled to all sense of propriety.

“Don’t talk to me about that dinner. I want to forget that dinner. I want to forget everything but the two things I live for--to see that fellow hanged, and to--” The words choked him, and he let his head fall, but presently threw it up again. “That dastard, whom may God confound, passed a letter across Adelaide into Carmel’s hand,” he panted out. “I saw him, but I didn’t take it in; I wasn’t thinking. I was--”

“Who broke the glasses?” urged his relentless inquisitor. “One at your plate, one at Carmel’s, and one at the head of the board where sat your sister Adelaide?”

“God! Must I tell these things?” He had started to his feet and his hand, violent in all it did, struck his forehead impulsively, as he uttered this exclamation. “Have it, then! Heaven knows I think of it enough not to be afraid to speak it out in words. Adelaide”--the name came with passion, but once uttered, produced its own calming effect, so that he went on with more restraint--“Adelaide never had much patience with me. She was a girl who only saw one way. ‘The right! the right!’ was what she dinned into my ears from the time I was a small boy and didn’t know but that all youngsters were brought up by sisters. I grew to hate what she called ‘the right,’ I wanted pleasure, a free time, and a good drink whenever the fancy took me. You know what I am, Dr. Perry, and everybody in town knows; but the impulse which has always ruled me was not a downright evil one; or if it was, I called it natural independence, and let it go at that. But Adelaide suffered. I didn’t understand it and I didn’t care a fig for it, but she _did_ suffer. God forgive me!”

He stopped and mopped his forehead. Sweetwater moved a trifle on his seat, but the others--men who had passed the meridian of life, who had known temptations, possibly had succumbed to them, from time to time--sat like two statues, one in full light and the other in as dark a shadow as he could find.

“That afternoon,” young Cumberland presently resumed, “she was keyed up more than usual. She loved Ranelagh,--damn him!--and he had played or was playing her false. She watched him with eyes that madden me, now, when I think of them. She saw him look at Carmel, and she saw Carmel look at him. Then her eyes fell on me. I was angry; angry at them all, and I wanted a drink. It was not her habit to have wine on the table; but sometimes, when Ranelagh was there, she did. She was a slave to Ranelagh, and he could make her do whatever he wished, just as he can make you and everybody else.”

Here he shot insolent glances at his two interlocutors, one of whom changed colour--which, happily, he did not see. “‘Ring the bell,’ I ordered, ‘and have in the champagne. I want to drink to your marriage and the happy days in prospect for us all,’ It was brutal and I knew it; but I was reckless and wild for the wine. So, I guess, was Ranelagh, for he smiled at her, and she rang for the champagne. When the glasses had been set beside each plate, she turned towards Carmel. ‘We will all drink,’ she said, ‘to my coming marriage,’ This made Carmel turn pale; for Adelaide had never been known to drink a drop of liquor in her life. I felt a little queer, myself; and not one of us spoke till the glasses were filled and the maid had left the dining-room and shut the door.

“Then Adelaide rose. ‘We will drink standing,’ said she, and never had I seen her look as she did then. I thought of my evil life when I should have been watching Ranelagh; and when she lifted the glass to her lips and looked at me, almost as earnestly as she did at Ranelagh,--but it was a different kind of earnestness,--I felt like--like--well, like the wretch I was and always had been; possibly, always will be. She drank;--we wouldn’t call it drinking, for she just touched the wine with her lips; but to her it was debauch. Then she stood waiting, with the strangest gleam in her eyes, while Ranelagh drained his glass and I drained mine. Ranelagh thought she wanted some sentiment, and started to say something appropriate; but his eye fell on Carmel, who had tried to drink and couldn’t, and he bungled over his words and at last came to a pause under the steady stare of Adelaide’s eyes.

“‘Never mind, Elwood,’ she said; ‘I know what you would like to say. But that’s not what I am thinking of now. I am thinking of my brother, the boy who will soon be left to find his way through life without even the unwelcome restraint of my presence. I want him to remember this day. I want him to remember me as I stand here before him with this glass in my hand. You see wine in it, Arthur; but I see poison--poison--nothing else, for one like you who cannot refuse a friend, cannot refuse your own longing. Never from this day on shall another bottle be opened under my roof. Carmel, you have grieved as well as I over what has passed for pleasure in this house. Do as I do, and may Arthur see and remember.’

“Her fingers opened; the glass fell from her hand, and lay in broken fragments beside her plate. Carmel followed suit, and, before I knew it, my own fingers had opened, and my own glass lay in pieces on the table-cloth beneath me. Only Ranelagh’s hand remained steady. He did not choose to please her, or he was planning his perfidy and had not caught her words or understood her action. She held her breath, watching that hand; and I can hear the gasp yet with which she saw him set his glass down quietly on the board. That’s the story of those three broken glasses. If she had not died that night, I should be laughing at them now; but she did die and I don’t laugh! I curse--curse her recreant lover, and sometimes myself! Do you want anything more of me? I’m eager to be gone, if you don’t.”

The district attorney sought out and lifted a paper from the others lying on the desk before him. It was the first movement he had made since Cumberland began his tale.

“I’m sorry,” said he, with a rapid examination of the paper in his hand, “but I shall have to detain you a few minutes longer. What happened after the dinner? Where did you go from the table?”

“I went to my room to smoke. I was upset and thirsty as a fish.”

“Have you liquor in your room?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did you have any that night?”

“Not a drop. I didn’t dare. I wanted that champagne bottle, but Adelaide had been too quick for me. It was thrown out--wasted--I do believe, wasted.”

“So you did not drink? You only smoked in your room?”

“Smoked one cigar. That was all. Then I went down town.”

His tone had grown sulky, the emotion which had buoyed him up till now, seemed suddenly to have left him. With it went the fire from his eye, the quiver from his lip, and it is necessary to add, everything else calculated to awaken sympathy. He was simply sullen now.

“May I ask by which door you left the house?”

“The side door--the one I always take.”

“What overcoat did you wear?”

“I don’t remember. The first one I came to, I suppose.”

“But you can surely tell what hat?”

They expected a violent reply, and they got it.

“No, I can’t. What has my hat got to do with the guilt of Elwood Ranelagh?”

“Nothing, we hope,” was the imperturbable answer. “But we find it necessary to establish absolutely just what overcoat and what hat you wore down street that night.”

“I’ve told you that I don’t remember.” The young man’s colour was rising.

“Are not these the ones?” queried the district attorney, making a sign to Sweetwater, who immediately stepped forward, with a shabby old ulster over his arm, and a battered derby in his hand.

The young man started, rose, then sat again, shouting out with angry emphasis:

“_No!_”

“Yet you recognise these?”

“Why shouldn’t I? They’re mine. Only I don’t wear them any more. They’re done for. You must have rooted them out from some closet.”

“We did; perhaps you can tell us what closet.”

“I? No. What do I know about my old clothes? I leave that to the women.”

The slight faltering observable in the latter word conveyed nothing to these men.

“Mr. Cumberland,”--the district attorney was very serious,--“this hat and this coat, old as they are, were worn into town from your house that night. This we know, absolutely. We can even trace them to the club-house.”

Mechanically, not spontaneously this time, the young man rose to his feet, staring first at the man who had uttered these words, then at the garments which Sweetwater still held in view. No anger now; he was too deeply shaken for that, too shaken to answer at once--too shaken to be quite the master of his own faculties. But he rallied after an interval during which these three men devoured his face, each under his own special anxiety, and read there possibly what each least wanted to see.

“I don’t know anything about it,” were the words with which Arthur Cumberland sought to escape from the net which had been thus deftly cast about him. “I didn’t wear the things. Anybody can tell you what clothes I came home in. Ranelagh may have borrowed--”

“Ranelagh wore his own coat and hat. We will let the subject of apparel drop, and come to a topic on which you may be better qualified to speak. Mr. Cumberland, you have told us that you didn’t know at the time, and can’t remember now, where you spent that night and most of the next morning. All you can remember is that it was in some place where they let you drink all you wished and leave when the fancy took you, and not before. It was none of your usual haunts. This seemed strange to your friends, at the time; but it is easier for us to understand, now that you have told us what had occurred at your home-table. You dreaded to have your sister know how soon you could escape the influence of that moment. You wished to drink your fill and leave your family none the wiser. Am I not right?”

“Yes; it’s plain enough, isn’t it? Why harp on that string? Don’t you see that it maddens me? Do you want to drive me to drink again?”

The coroner interposed. He had been very willing to leave the burden of this painful inquiry to the man who had no personal feelings to contend with; but at this indignant cry he started forward, and, with an air of fatherly persuasion, remarked kindly:

“You mustn’t mind the official tone, or the official persistence. There is reason for all that Mr. Fox says. Answer him frankly, and this inquiry will terminate speedily. We have no wish to harry you--only to get at the truth.”

“The truth? I thought you had that pat enough. The truth? The truth about what? Ranelagh or me? I should think it was about me, from the kind of questions you ask.”

“It is, just now,” resumed the district attorney, as his colleague drew back out of sight once more. “You cannot remember the saloon in which you drank. That’s possible enough; but perhaps you can remember what they gave you. Was it whiskey, rum, absinthe, or what?”

The question took his irritable listener by surprise. Arthur gasped, and tried to steal some comfort from Coroner Perry’s eye. But that old friend’s face was too much in shadow, and the young man was forced to meet the district attorney’s eye, instead, and answer the district attorney’s question.

“I drank--absinthe,” he cried, at last.

“From this bottle?” queried the other, motioning again to Sweetwater, who now brought forward the bottle he had picked up in Cuthbert Road.

Arthur Cumberland glanced at the bottle the detective held up, saw the label, saw the shape, and sank limply in his chair, his eyes starting, his jaw falling.

“Where did you get that?” he asked, pulling himself together with a sudden desperate self-possession that caused Sweetwater to cast a quick significant glance at the coroner, as he withdrew to his corner, leaving the bottle on the table.

“That,” answered the district attorney, “was picked up at a small hotel on Cuthbert Road, just back of the markets.”

“I don’t know the place.”

“It’s not far from The Whispering Pines. In fact, you can see the club-house from the front door of this hotel.”

“I don’t know the place, I tell you.”

“It’s not a high-class resort; not select enough by a long shot, to have this brand of liquor in its cellar. They tell me that this is of very choice quality. That very few private families, even, indulge in it. That there were only two bottles of it left in the club-house when the inventory was last taken, that those two bottles are now gone, and that--”

“This is one of them? Is that what you want to say? Well, it may be for all I know. I didn’t carry it there. I didn’t have the drinking of it.”

“We have seen the man and woman who keep that hotel. They will talk, if they have to.”

“They will?” His dogged self-possession rather astonished them. “Well, that ought to please you. I’ve nothing to do with the matter.”

A change had taken place in him. The irritability approaching to violence, which had attended every speech and infused itself into every movement since he came into the room, had left him. He spoke quietly, and with a touch of irony in his tone. He seemed more the man, but not a whit more prepossessing, and, if anything, less calculated to inspire confidence. The district attorney showed that he was baffled, and Dr. Perry moved uneasily in his seat, until Sweetwater, coming forward, took up the cue and spoke for the first time since young Cumberland entered the room.

“Then I have no doubt but you will do us this favour,” he volunteered, in his pleasantest manner. “It’s not a long walk from here. Will you go there in my company, with your coat-collar pulled up and your hat well down over your eyes, and ask for a seat in the snuggery and show them this bottle? They won’t know that it’s empty. The man is sharp and the woman intelligent. They will see that you are a stranger, and admit you readily. They are only shy of one man--the man who drank there on the night of your sister’s murder.”

“You ’re a--” he began, with a touch of his old violence; but realising, perhaps, that his fingers were in a trap, he modified his manner again, and continued more quietly. “This is an odd request to make. I begin to feel as if my word were doubted here; as if my failings and reckless confession of the beastly way in which I spent that night, were making you feel that I have no good in me and am at once a liar and a sneak. I’m not. I won’t go with you to that low drinking hell, unless you make me, but I’ll swear--”

“Don’t swear.” It is unnecessary to say who spoke. “We wouldn’t believe you, and it would be only adding perjury to the rest.”

“You wouldn’t believe me?”

“No; we have reasons, my boy. There were two bottles.”

“Well?”

“The other has been found nearer your home.”

“That’s a trick. You’re all up to tricks--”

“Not in this case, Arthur. Let me entreat you in memory of your father to be candid with us. We have arrested a man. He denies his guilt, but can produce no witnesses in support of his assertions. Yet such witnesses may exist. Indeed, we think that one such does exist. The man who took the bottles from the club-house’s wine-vault did so within a few minutes of the time when this crime was perpetrated on your sister. He should be able to give valuable testimony for or against Elwood Ranelagh. Now, you can see why we are in search of this witness and why we think you can serve us in this secret and extraordinary matter. If you can’t, say so; and we will desist from all further questions. But this will not help you. It will only show that, in our opinion, you have gained the rights of a man suspected of something more than shirking his duty as an unknown and hitherto unsuspected witness.”

“This is awful!” Young Cumberland had risen to his feet and was swaying to and fro before them like a man struck between the eyes by some maddening blow.

“God! if I had only died that night!” he muttered, with his eyes upon the floor and every muscle tense with the shock of this last calamity. “Dr. Perry,” he moaned suddenly, stretching out one hand in entreaty, and clutching at the table for support with the other, “let me go for to-night. Let me think. My brain is all in a whirl. I’ll try to answer to-morrow.” But even as he spoke he realised the futility of his request. His eye had fallen again on the bottle, and, in its shape and tell-tale label, he beheld a witness bound to testify against him if he kept silent himself.

“Don’t answer,” he went on, holding fast to the table, but letting his other hand fall. “I was always a fool. I’m nothing but a fool now. I may as well own the truth, and be done with it. I was in the clubhouse. I did rob the wine-vault; I did carry off the bottles to have a quiet spree, and it was to some place on Cuthbert Road I went. But, when I’ve admitted so much, I’ve admitted all. I saw nothing of my sister’s murder; saw nothing of what went on in the rooms upstairs. I crept in by the open window at the top of the kitchen stairs, and I came out by the same. I only wanted the liquor, and when I got it, I slid out as quickly as I could, and made my way over the golf-links to the Road.”

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he stood trembling. There was something in the silence surrounding him which seemed to go to his heart; for his free right hand rose unconsciously to his breast, and clung there. Sweetwater began to wish himself a million of miles away from this scene. This was not the enjoyable part of his work. This was the part from which he always shrunk with overpowering distaste.

The district attorney’s voice sounded thin, almost piercing, as he made this remark:

“You entered by an open window. Why didn’t you go in by the door?”

“I hadn’t the key. I had only abstracted the one which opens the wine-vault. The rest I left on the ring. It was the sight of this key, lying on our hall-table, which first gave me the idea. I feel like a cad when I think of it, but that’s of no account now. All I really care about is for you to believe what I tell you. I wasn’t mixed up in that matter of my sister’s death. I didn’t know about it--I wish I had. Adelaide might have been saved; we might all have been saved; _but it was not to be._”

Flushed, he slowly sank back into his seat. No complaint, now, of being in a hurry, or of his anxiety to regain his sick sister’s bedside. He seemed to have forgotten those fears in the perturbations of the moment. His mind and interest were here; everything else had grown dim with distance.

“Did you try the front door?”

“What was the use? I knew it to be locked.”

“What was the use of trying the window? Wasn’t it also, presumably, locked?”

The red mounted hot and feverish to his cheek.

“You’ll think me no better than a street urchin or something worse,” he exclaimed. “I knew that window; I had been through it before. You can move that lock with your knife-blade. I had calculated on entering that way.”

“Mr. Ranelagh’s story receives confirmation,” commented the district attorney, wheeling suddenly towards the coroner. “He says that he found this window unlocked, when he approached it with the idea of escaping that way.”

Arthur Cumberland remained unmoved.

The district attorney wheeled back.

“There were a number of bottles taken from the wine-vault; some half dozen were left on the kitchen table. Why did you trouble yourself to carry up so many?”

“Because my greed outran my convenience. I thought I could lug away an armful, but there are limits to one’s ability. I realised this when I remembered how far I had to go, and so left the greater part of them behind.”

“Why, when you had a team ready to carry you?”

“A--I had no team.” But the denial cost him something. His cheek lost its ruddiness, and took on a sickly white which did not leave it again as long as the interview lasted.

“You had no team? How then did you manage to reach home in time to make your way back to Cuthbert Road by half-past eleven?”

“I didn’t go home. I went straight across the golf-links. If fresh snow hadn’t fallen, you would have seen my tracks all the way to Cuthbert Road.”

“If fresh snow had not fallen, we should have known the whole story of that night before an hour had passed. How did you carry those bottles?”

“In my overcoat pockets. These pockets,” he blurted out, clapping his hands on either side of him.

“Had it begun to snow when you left the clubhouse?”

“No.”

“Was it dark?”

“I guess not; the links were bright as day, or I shouldn’t have got over them as quickly as I did.”

“Quickly? How quickly?” The district attorney stole a glance at the coroner, which made Sweetwater advance a step from his corner.

“I don’t know. I don’t understand these questions,” was the sullen reply.

“You walked quickly. Does that mean you didn’t look back?”

“How, look back?”

“Your sister lit a candle in the small room where her coat was found. This light should have been visible from the golf-links.”

“I didn’t see any light.”

He was almost rough in these answers. He was showing himself now at his very worst.

A few more questions followed, but they were of minor import, and aroused less violent feeling. The serious portion of the examination, if thus it might be called, was over, and all parties showed the reaction which follows all unnatural restraint or subdued excitement.

The coroner glanced meaningly at the district attorney, who, tapping with his fingers on the table, hesitated for a moment before he finally turned again upon Arthur Cumberland.

“You wish to return to your sister? You are at liberty to do so; I will trouble you no more to-night. Your sleigh is at the door, I presume.”

The young man nodded, then rising slowly, looked first at the district attorney, then at the coroner, with a glance of searching inquiry which did not escape the watchful eye of Sweetwater, lurking in the rear. There was no display of anger, scarcely of impatience, in him now. If he spoke, they did not hear him; and when he moved, it was heavily and with a drooping head. They watched him go, each as silent as he. The coroner tried to speak, but succeeded no better than the boy himself. When the door opened under his hand, they all showed relief, but were startled back into their former attention by his turning suddenly in the doorway with this final remark:

“What did you say about a bottle with a special label on it being found at our house? It never was, or, if it was, some fellow has been playing you a trick. I carried off those two bottles myself. One you see there; the other is--I can’t tell where; but I didn’t take it home. That you can bet on.”

One more look, followed by a heavy frown and a low growling sound in his throat--which may have been his way of saying good-bye--and he was gone.

Sweetwater came forward and shut the door; then the three men drew more closely together, and the district attorney remarked:

“He is better at the house. I hadn’t the heart on your account, Dr. Perry, to hurry matters faster than necessity compels. What a lout he is! Pardon me, but what a lout he is to have had two such uncommon and attractive sisters.”

“And such a father,” interposed the coroner.

“Just so--and such a father. Sweetwater? Hey! what’s the matter? You don’t look satisfied. Didn’t I cover the ground?”

“Fully, sir, so far as I see now, but--”

“Well, well--out with it.”

“I don’t know what to out with. It’s all right but--I guess I’m a fool, or tired, or something. Can I do anything more for you? If not, I should like to hunt up a bunk. A night’s sleep will make a man of me again.”

“Go then; that is, if Dr. Perry has no orders for you.”

“None. I want my sleep, too.” But Dr. Perry had not the aspect of one who expects to get it.

Sweetwater brightened. A few more words, some understanding as to the morrow, and he was gone. The district attorney and the coroner still sat, but very little passed between them. The clock overhead struck the hour; both looked up but neither moved. Another fifteen minutes, then the telephone rang. The coroner rose and lifted the receiver. The message could be heard by both gentlemen, in the extreme quiet of this midnight hour.

“Dr. Perry?”

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“He came in at a quarter to twelve, greatly agitated and very white. I ran upon him in the lower hall, and he looked angry enough to knock me down; but he simply let out a curse and passed straight up to his sister’s room. I waited till he came out; then I managed to get hold of the nurse and she told me this queer tale:

“He was all in a tremble when he came in, but she declares he had not been drinking. He went immediately to the bedside; but his sister was asleep, and he didn’t stay there, but went over where the nurse was, and began to hang about her till suddenly she felt a twitch at her side and, looking quickly, saw the little book she carries there, falling back into place. He had lifted it, and probably read what she had written in it during his absence.

“She was displeased, but he laughed when he saw that he had been caught and said boldly: ‘You are keeping a record of my sister’s ravings. Well, I think I’m as interested in them as you are, and have as much right to read as you to write. Thank God! they are innocent enough. Even you must acknowledge that,’ She made no answer, for they were innocent enough; but she’ll keep the book away from him after this--of that you may be sure.”

“And what is he doing now? Is he going into his own room to-night?”

“No. He went there but only to bring out his pillows. He will sleep in the alcove.”

“Drink?”

“No, not a drop. He has ordered the whiskey locked up. I hear him moaning sometimes to himself as if he missed it awfully, but not a thimbleful has left the decanter.”

“Goodnight, Hexford.”

“Good night.”

“You heard?” This to the district attorney.

“Every word.”

Both went for their overcoats. Only on leaving did they speak again, and then it was to say:

“At ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”

“At ten o’clock.”

XVIII

ON IT WAS WRITTEN--

Can this avail thee? Look to it!

_Prometheus Bound_.

The district attorney was right; Sweetwater was not happy. His night’s rest had not benefited him. He had seemed natural enough when he first appeared at the coroner’s office in the early morning, and equally natural all through the lengthy conference which followed; but a half hour later, any one who knew him well,--any of his fellow detectives in New York; especially Mr. Gryce, who had almost fathered him since he came among them, a raw and inexperienced recruit--would have seen at first glance that his spirits were no longer at par, and that the cheer he displayed in manner and look was entirely assumed, and likely to disappear as soon as he found himself alone.

And it did so disappear. When, at two o’clock, he entered the club-house grounds, it was without buoyancy or any of the natural animation with which he usually went about his work. Each step seemed weighted with thought, or, at least, heavy with inner dissatisfaction. But his eye was as keen as ever, and he began to use that eye from the moment he passed the gates. What was in his mind? Was he hunting for new clews, or was he merely seeking to establish the old?

The officers on guard knew him, by this time, and let him pass hither, thither, and where he would, unmolested. He walked up and down the driveways, peering continuously at the well-trodden snow. He studied the spaces between. He sauntered to the rear, and looked out over the golf-links. Then he began to study the ground in this direction, as he had already studied it in front. The few mutterings which left his lips continued to speak of discontent. “If I had only had Clarke’s chance, or even Hexford’s,” was among his complaints. “But what can I hope now? The snow has been trampled till it is one solid cake of ice, to the very edge of the golf-links. Beyond that, the distance is too great for minute inspection. Yet it will have to be gone over, inch by inch, before I shall feel satisfied. I must know how much of his story is to be believed, and how much of it we can safely set aside.”

He ended by wandering down on the golf-links. Taking out his watch, he satisfied himself that he had time for an experiment, and immediately started for Cuthbert Road. An hour later, he came wandering back, on a different line. He looked soured, disappointed. When near the building again, he cast his eye over its rear, and gazed long and earnestly at the window which had been pointed out to him as the one from which a possible light had shone forth that night. There were no trees on this side of the house--only vines. But the vines were bare of leaves and offered no obstruction to his view. “If there had been a light in that window, any one leaving this house by the rear would have seen it, unless he had been drunk or a fool,” muttered Sweetwater, in contemptuous comment to himself. “Arthur Cumberland’s story is one lie. I’ll take the district attorney’s suggestion and return to New York to-night. My work’s done here.”

Yet he hung about the links for a long time, and finally ended by entering the house, and taking up his stand beneath the long, narrow window of the closet overlooking the golf-links. With chin resting on his arms, he stared out over the sill and sought from the space before him, and from the intricacies of his own mind, the hint he lacked to make this present solution of the case satisfactory to all his instincts.

“Something is lacking.” Thus he blurted out after a look behind him into the adjoining room of death. “I can’t say what; nor can I explain my own unrest, or my disinclination to leave this spot. The district attorney is satisfied, and so, I’m afraid is the coroner; but I’m not, and I feel as guilty--”

Here he threw open the window for air, and, thrusting his head out, glanced over the links, then aside at the pines, showing beyond the line of the house on the southern end, and then out of mere idleness, down at the ground beneath him. “As guilty,” he went on, “as Ranelagh appears to be, and some one really is. I--”

Starting, he leaned farther out. What was that he saw in the vines--not on the snow of the ground, but half way up in the tangle of small branches clinging close to the stone of the lower story, just beneath this window? He would see. Something that glistened, something that could only have got there by falling from this window. Could he reach it? No; he would have to climb up from below to do that. Well, that was easy enough. With the thought, he rushed from the room. In another minute he was beneath that window; had climbed, pulled, pushed his way up; had found the little pocket of netted vines observable from above; had thrust in his fingers and worked a small object out; had looked at it, uttered an exclamation curious in its mixture of suppressed emotions, and let himself down again into the midst of the two or three men who had scented the adventure and hastened to be witnesses of its outcome.

“A phial!” he exclaimed, “An empty phial, but--” Holding the little bottle up between his thumb and forefinger, he turned it slowly about until the label faced them.

On it was written one word, but it was a word which invariably carries alarm with it.

That word was: _Poison_.

Sweetwater did not return to New York that night.

XIX

“IT’S NOT WHAT YOU WILL FIND”

I am not mad;--I would to heaven I were! For then, ’tis like I should forget myself: O, if I could, what grief should I forget!-- Preach some philosophy to make me mad, For being not mad, but sensible of grief, My reasonable part produces reason How I may be delivered of these woes.

_King John_.

“I regret to disturb you, Arthur; but my business is of great importance, and should be made known to you at once. This I say as a friend. I might have waited for the report to have reached you from hearsay, or through the evening papers; but I preferred to be the one to tell you. You can understand why.”

Sullen and unmollified, the young man thus addressed eyed, apprehensively, his father’s old friend, placed so unfortunately in his regard, and morosely exclaimed:

“Out with it! I’m a poor hand at guessing. What has happened now?”

“A discovery. A somewhat serious one I fear; at least, it will force the police to new action. Your sister may not have died entirely from strangulation; other causes may have been at work!”

“Now, what do you mean by that?” Arthur Cumberland was under his own roof and in presence of one who should have inspired his respect; but he made no effort to hide the fury which these words called up. “I should like to know what deviltry is in your minds now. Am I never to have peace?”

“Peace and tragedy do not often run together,” came in the mild tones of his would-be friend. “A great crime has taken place. All the members of this family are involved--to say nothing of the man who lies, now, under the odium of suspicion, in our common county jail. Peace can only come with the complete clearing up of this crime, and the punishment of the guilty. But the clearing up must antedate the punishment. Mr. Ranelagh’s assertion that he found Miss Cumberland dead when he approached her, may not be, as so many now believe, the reckless denial of a criminal, disturbed in his act. It may have had a basis in fact.”

“I don’t believe it. Nothing will make me believe it,” stormed the other, jumping up, and wildly pacing the drawing-room floor. “It is all a scheme for saving the most popular man in society. Society! That for society!” he shouted out, snapping his fingers. “He is president of the club; the pet of women; the admired of all the dolts and gawks who are taken with his style, his easy laughter, and his knack at getting at men’s hearts. He won’t laugh so easily when he’s up before a jury for murder; and he’ll never again fool women or bulldoze men, even if they are weak enough to acquit him of this crime. Enough of the smirch will stick to prevent that. If it doesn’t, I’ll--”

Again his hands went out in the horribly suggestive way they had done at his sister’s funeral. The coroner sat appalled,--confused, almost distracted between his doubts, his convictions, his sympathy for the man and his recoil from the passions he would be only too ready to pardon if he could feel quite sure of their real root and motive. Cumberland may have felt the other’s silence, or he may have realised the imprudence of his own fury; for he dropped his hands with an impatient sigh, and blurted out:

“But you haven’t told me your discovery. It seems to me it is a little late to make discoveries now.”

“This was brought about by the persistence of Sweetwater. He seems to have an instinct for things. He was leaning out of the window at the rear of the clubhouse--the window of that small room where your sister’s coat was found--and he saw, caught in the vines beneath, a--”

“Why don’t you speak out? I cannot tell what he found unless you name it.”

“A little bottle--an apothecary’s phial. It was labelled ‘Poison,’ and it came from this house.”

Arthur Cumberland reeled; then he caught himself up and stood, staring, with a very obvious intent of getting a grip on himself before he spoke.

The coroner waited, a slight flush deepening on his cheek.

“How do you know that phial came from this house?”