Chapter V: Book I: The Gentleman From Toledo (4)

"And Gouverneur Hildreth? Any special gossip in regard to him?"

"No!"

There are some noes that are equivalent to affirmations. This was one of them. Naturally the coroner pressed the question.

"I must request you to think again," he persisted. Then, with a change of voice: "Are you sure you have never heard any thing specially derogatory to this young man, or that Mrs. Clemmens had not?"

"I have friends in Toledo who speak of him as the fastest man about town, if that could be called derogatory. As for Mrs. Clemmens, she may have heard as much, and she may have heard more, I cannot say. I know she always frowned when his father's name was mentioned."

"Miss Firman," proceeded the coroner, "in the long years in which you have been more or less separated from Mrs. Clemmens, you have, doubtless, kept up a continued if not frequent correspondence with her?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you think, from the commencement and general tone of this letter, which I found lying half finished on her desk, that it was written and intended for yourself?"

Taking the letter from his outstretched hand, she fumbled nervously for her glasses, put them on, and then glanced hurriedly at the sheet, saying as she did so:

"There can be no doubt of it. She had no other friend whom she would have been likely to address as 'Dear Emily.'"

"Gentlemen of the Jury, you have a right to hear the words written by the deceased but a few hours, if not a few minutes, previous to the brutal assault that has led to the present inquiry. Miss Firman, as the letter was intended for yourself, will you be kind enough to read it aloud, after which you will hand it over to the jury."

With a gloomy shake of her head, and a certain trembling in her voice, that was due, perhaps, as much to the sadness of her task as to any foreboding of the real nature of the words she had to read, she proceeded to comply:

"DEAR EMILY:--I don't know why I sit down to write
to you to-day. I have plenty to do, and morning is
no time for indulging in sentimentalities. But I
feel strangely lonely and strangely anxious.
Nothing goes just to my mind, and somehow the many
causes for secret fear which I have always had,
assume an undue prominence in my mind. It is
always so when I am not quite well. In vain I
reason with myself, saying that respectable people
do not lightly enter into crime. But there are so
many to whom my death would be more than welcome,
that I constantly see myself in the act of being----

"Good heavens!" ejaculated the spinster, dropping the paper from her hand and looking dismally around upon the assembled faces of the now deeply interested spectators.

Seeing her dismay, a man who stood at the right of the coroner, and who seemed to be an officer of the law, quietly advanced, and picking up the paper she had let fall, handed it to the jury. The coroner meanwhile recalled her attention to herself.

"Miss Firman," said he, "allow me to put to you one final question which, though it might not be called a strictly legal one, is surely justified by the gravity of the situation. If Mrs. Clemmens had finished this letter, and you in due course had received it, what conclusion would you have drawn from the words you have just read?"

"I could have drawn but one, sir. I should have considered that the solitary life led by my cousin was telling upon her mind."

"But these terrors of which she speaks? To what and whom would you have attributed them?"

"I don't like to say it, and I don't know as I am justified in saying it, but it would have been impossible for me, under the circumstances, to have thought of any other source for them than the one we have already mentioned."

"And that is?" inexorably pursued the coroner.

"Mr. Gouverneur Hildreth."

VIII.

THE THICK-SET MAN.

Springs to catch woodcocks.--HAMLET.

IN the pause that followed, Miss Firman stepped aside, and Mr. Byrd, finding his attention released, stole a glance toward the hall-way and its nearly concealed occupant. He found the elbow in agitated movement, and, as he looked at it, saw it disappear and a hand project into view, groping for the handkerchief which was, doubtless, hidden in the hat which he now perceived standing on the floor in the corner of the door-way. He looked at that hand well. It was large, white, and elegantly formed, and wore a seal ring of conspicuous size upon the little finger. He had scarcely noticed this ring, and wondered if others had seen it too, when the hand plunged into the hat, and drawing out the kerchief, vanished with it behind the jamb that had already hidden so much from his view.

"A fine gentleman's hand, and a fine gentleman's ring," was Mr. Byrd's mental comment; and he was about to glance aside, when, to his great astonishment, he saw the hand appear once more with the handkerchief in it, but without the ring which a moment since had made it such a conspicuous mark for his eyes.

"Our fine gentleman is becoming frightened," he thought, watching the hand until it dropped the handkerchief back into the hat. "One does not take off a ring in a company like this without a good reason." And he threw a quick glance at the man he considered his rival in the detective business.

But that worthy was busily engaged in stroking his chin in a feeling way, strongly suggestive of a Fledgerby-like interest in his absent whisker; and well versed as was Mr. Byrd in the ways of his fellow-detectives, he found it impossible to tell whether the significant action he had just remarked had escaped the attention of this man or not. Confused if not confounded, he turned back to the coroner, in a maze of new sensations, among which a growing hope that his own former suspicions had been of a wholly presumptuous character, rose predominant.

He found that functionary preparing to make a remark.

"Gentlemen," said he; "you have listened to the testimony of Mrs. Clemmens' most confidential friend, and heard such explanations as she had to give, of the special fears which Mrs. Clemmens acknowledges herself to have entertained in regard to her personal safety. Now, while duly impressing upon you the necessity of not laying too much stress upon the secret apprehensions of a woman living a life of loneliness and seclusion, I still consider it my duty to lay before you another bit of the widow's writing, in which----"

Here he was interrupted by the appearance at his side of a man with a telegram in his hand. In the pause which followed his reading of the same, Mr. Byrd, with that sudden impulse of interference which comes upon us all at certain junctures, tore out a leaf from his memorandum-book, and wrote upon it some half dozen or so words indicative of the advisability of examining the proprietor of the Eastern Hotel as to the name and quality of the several guests entertained by him on the day of the murder; and having signed this communication with his initial letters H. B., looked about for a messenger to carry it to the coroner. He found one in the person of a small boy, who was pressing with all his might against his back, and having despatched him with the note, regained his old position at the window, and proceeded to watch, with a growing interest in the drama before him, the result of his interference upon the coroner.

He had not long to wait. The boy had no sooner shown himself at the door with the note, than Dr. Tredwell laid down the telegram he was perusing and took this new communication. With a slight smile Mr. Byrd was not slow in attributing to its true source, he read the note through, then turned to the officer at his side and gave him some command that sent him from the room. He then took up the slip he was on the point of presenting to the jury at the time he was first interrupted, and continuing his remarks in reference to it, said quietly:

"Gentlemen, this paper which I here pass over to you, was found by me in the recess of Mrs. Clemmens' desk at the time I examined it for the address of Miss Firman. It was in an envelope that had never been sealed, and was, if I may use the expression, tucked away under a pile of old receipts. The writing is similar to that used in the letter you have just read, and the signature attached to it is 'Mary Ann Clemmens.' Will Mr. Black of the jury read aloud the words he will there find written?"

Mr. Black, in whose hand the paper then rested, looked up with a flush, and slowly, if not painfully, complied:

"I desire"--such was the language of the writing
before him--"that in case of any sudden or violent
death on my part, the authorities should inquire
into the possible culpability of a gentleman
living in Toledo, Ohio, known by the name of
Gouverneur Hildreth. He is a man of no principle,
and my distinct conviction is, that if such a
death should occur to me, it will be entirely due
to his efforts to gain possession of property
which cannot be at his full disposal until my
death.

"MARY ANN CLEMMENS, Sibley, N. Y."

"A serious charge!" quoth a juryman, breaking the universal silence occasioned by this communication from the dead.

"I should think so," echoed the burly man in front of Mr. Byrd.

But Mr. Byrd himself and the quiet man who leaned so stiffly and abstractedly against the wall, said nothing. Perhaps they found themselves sufficiently engaged in watching that half-seen elbow, which since the reading of this last slip of paper had ceased all movement and remained as stationary as though it had been paralyzed.

"A charge which, as yet, is nothing but a charge," observed the coroner. "But evidence is not wanting," he went on, "that Mr. Hildreth is not at home at this present time, but is somewhere in this region, as will be seen by the following telegram from the superintendent of the Toledo police." And he held up to view, not the telegram he had just received, but another which he had taken from among the papers on the table before him:

"Party mentioned not in Toledo. Left for the East
on midnight train of Wednesday the 27th inst. When
last heard from was in Albany. He has been living
fast, and is well known to be in pecuniary
difficulties, necessitating a large and immediate
amount of money. Further particulars by letter.

"That, gentlemen, I received last night. To-day," he continued, taking up the telegram that had just come in, "the following arrives:

"Fresh advices. Man you are in search of talked of
suicide at his club the other night. Seemed in a
desperate way, and said that if something did not
soon happen he should be a lost man. Horse-flesh
and unfortunate speculations have ruined him. They
say it will take all he will ultimately receive to
pay his debts.

"And below:

"Suspected that he has been in your town."

A crisis was approaching round the corner. This, to the skilled eyes of Mr. Byrd, was no longer doubtful. Even if he had not observed the wondering glances cast in that direction by persons who could see the owner of that now immovable elbow, he would have been assured that all was not right, by the alert expression which had now taken the place of the stolid and indifferent look which had hitherto characterized the face of the man he believed to be a detective.

A panther about to spring could not have looked more threatening, and the wonder was, that there were no more to observe this exciting by-play. Yet the panther did not spring, and the inquiry went on.

"The witness I now propose to call," announced the coroner, after a somewhat trying delay, "is the proprietor of the Eastern Hotel. Ah, here he is. Mr. Symonds, have you brought your register for the past week?"

"Yes, sir," answered the new-comer, with a good deal of flurry in his manner and an embarrassed look about him, which convinced Mr. Byrd that the words in regard to whose origin he had been so doubtful that morning, had been real words and no dream.

"Very well, then, submit it, if you please, to the jury, and tell us in the meantime whether you have entertained at your house this week any guest who professed to come from Toledo?"

"I don't know. I don't remember any such," began the witness, in a stammering sort of way. "We have always a great many men from the West stopping at our house, but I don't recollect any special one who registered himself as coming from Toledo."

"You, however, always expect your guests to put their names in your book?"

"Yes, sir."

There was something in the troubled look of the man which aroused the suspicion of the coroner, and he was about to address him with another question when one of the jury, who was looking over the register, spoke up and asked:

"Who is this Clement Smith who writes himself down here as coming from Toledo?"

"Smith?--Smith?" repeated Symonds, going up to the juryman and looking over his shoulder at the book. "Oh, yes, the gentleman who came yesterday. He----"

But at this moment a slight disturbance occurring in the other room, the witness paused and looked about him with that same embarrassed look before noted. "He is at the hotel now," he added, with an attempt at ease, transparent as it was futile.

The disturbance to which I have alluded was of a peculiar kind. It was occasioned by the thick-set man making the spring which, for some minutes, he had evidently been meditating. It was not a tragic leap, however, but a decidedly comic one, and had for its end and aim the recovery of a handkerchief which he had taken from his pocket at the moment when the witness uttered the name of Smith, and, by a useless flourish in opening it, flirted from his hand to the floor. At least, so the amused throng interpreted the sudden dive which he made, and the heedless haste that caused him to trip over the gentleman's hat that stood on the floor, causing it to fall and another handkerchief to tumble out. But Mr. Byrd, who had a detective's insight into the whole matter, saw something more than appeared in the profuse apologies which the thick-set man made, and the hurried manner in which he gathered up the handkerchiefs and stood looking at them before returning one to his pocket and the other to its place in the gentleman's hat. Nor was Mr. Byrd at all astonished to observe that the stand which his fellow-detective took, upon resettling himself, was much nearer the unseen gentleman than before, or that in replacing the hat, he had taken pains to put it so far to one side that the gentleman would be obliged to rise and come around the corner in order to obtain it. The drift of the questions propounded to the witness at this moment opened his eyes too clearly for him to fail any longer to understand the situation.

"Now at the hotel?" the coroner was repeating. "And came yesterday? Why, then, did you look so embarrassed when I mentioned his name?"

"Oh--well--ah," stammered the man, "because he was there once before, though his name is not registered but once in the book."

"He was? And on what day?"

"On Tuesday," asserted the man, with the sudden decision of one who sees it is useless to attempt to keep silence.

"The day of the murder?"

"Yes, sir."

"And why is his name not on the book at that time if he came to your house and put up?"

"Because he did not put up; he merely called in, as it were, and did not take a meal or hire a room."

"How did you know, then, that he was there? Did you see him or talk to him?"

"Yes, sir."

"And what did you say?"

"He asked me for directions to a certain house, and I gave them."

"Whose house?"

"The Widow Clemmens', sir."

Ah, light at last! The long-sought-for witness had been found! Coroner and jury brightened visibly, while the assembled crowd gave vent to a deep murmur, that must have sounded like a knell of doom--in one pair of ears, at least.

"He asked you for directions to the house of Widow Clemmens. At what time was this?"

"At about half-past eleven in the morning."

The very hour!

"And did he leave then?"

"Yes, sir; after taking a glass of brandy."

"And did you not see him again?"

"Not till yesterday, sir."

"Ah, and at what time did you see him yesterday?"

"At bedtime, sir. He came with other arrivals on the five o'clock train; but I was away all the afternoon and did not see him till I went into the bar-room in the evening."

"Well, and what passed between you then?"

"Not much, sir. I asked if he was going to stay with us, and when he said 'Yes,' I inquired if he had registered his name. He replied 'No.' At which I pointed to the book, and he wrote his name down and then went up-stairs with me to his room."

"And is that all? Did you say nothing beyond what you have mentioned? ask him no questions or make no allusions to the murder?"

"Well, sir, I did make some attempt that way, for I was curious to know what took him to the Widow Clemmens' house, but he snubbed me so quickly, I concluded to hold my tongue and not trouble myself any further about the matter."

"And do you mean to say you haven't told any one that an unknown man had been at your house on the morning of the murder inquiring after the widow?"

"Yes, sir. I am a poor man, and believe in keeping out of all sort of messes. Policy demands that much of me, gentlemen."

The look he received from the coroner may have convinced him that policy can be carried too far.

"And now," said Dr. Tredwell, "what sort of a man is this Clement Smith?"

"He is a gentleman, sir, and not at all the sort of person with whom you would be likely to connect any unpleasant suspicion."

The coroner surveyed the hotel-keeper somewhat sternly.

"We are not talking about suspicions!" he cried; then, in a different tone, repeated: "This gentleman, you say, is still at your house?"

"Yes, sir, or was at breakfast-time. I have not seen him since."

"We will have to call Mr. Smith as a witness," declared the coroner, turning to the officer at his side. "Go and see if you cannot bring him as soon as you did Mr. Symonds."

But here a voice spoke up full and loud from the other room.

"It is not necessary, sir. A witness you will consider more desirable than he is in the building." And the thick-set man showed himself for an instant to the coroner, then walking back, deliberately laid his hand on the elbow which for so long a time had been the centre of Mr. Byrd's wondering conjectures.

In an instant the fine, gentlemanly figure of the stranger, whom he had seen the night before in the bar-room, appeared with a bound from beyond the jamb, and pausing excitedly before the man, now fully discovered to all around as a detective, asked him, in shaking tones of suppressed terror or rage, what it was he meant.

"I will tell you," was the ready assurance, "if you will step out here in view of the coroner and jury."

With a glance that for some reason disturbed Mr. Byrd in his newly acquired complacency, the gentleman stalked hurriedly forward and took his stand in the door-way leading into the room occupied by the persons mentioned.

"Now," he cried, "what have you to say?"

But the detective, who had advanced behind him, still refrained from replying, though he gave a quick look at the coroner, which led that functionary to glance at the hotel-keeper and instantly ask:

"You know this gentleman?"

"It is Mr. Clement Smith."

A flush so violent and profuse, that even Mr. Byrd could see it from his stand outside the window, inundated for an instant the face and neck of the gentleman, but was followed by no words, though the detective at his side waited for an instant before saying:

"I think you are mistaken; I should call him now Mr. Gouverneur Hildreth!"

With a start and a face grown as suddenly white as it had but an instant before been red, the gentleman turned and surveyed the detective from head to foot, saying, in a tone of mock politeness:

"And why, if you please? I have never been introduced to you that I remember."

"No," rejoined the detective, taking from his pocket the handkerchief which he had previously put there, and presenting it to the other with a bow, "but I have read the monogram upon your handkerchief and it happens to be----"

"Enough!" interrupted the other, in a stern if not disdainful voice. "I see I have been the victim of espionage." And stepping into the other room, he walked haughtily up to the coroner and exclaimed: "I am Gouverneur Hildreth, and I come from Toledo. Now, what is it you have to say to me?"

IX.

CLOSE CALCULATIONS.

Truth alone,
Truth tangible and palpable; such truth
As may be weighed and measured; truth deduced
By logical conclusion--close, severe--
From premises incontrovertible.--MOULTRIE.

THE excitement induced by the foregoing announcement had, in a degree, subsided. The coroner, who appeared to be as much startled as any one at the result of the day's proceedings, had manifested his desire of putting certain questions to the young man, and had begun by such inquiries into his antecedents, and his connection with Mrs. Clemmens, as elicited the most complete corroboration of all Miss Firman's statements.

An investigation into his motives for coming East at this time next followed, in the course of which he acknowledged that he undertook the journey solely for the purpose of seeing Mrs. Clemmens. And when asked why he wished to see her at this time, admitted, with some manifestation of shame, that he desired to see for himself whether she was really in as strong and healthy a condition as he had always been told; his pecuniary embarrassments being such that he could not prevent his mind from dwelling upon possibilities which, under any other circumstances, he would have been ashamed to consider.

"And did you see Mrs. Clemmens?" the coroner inquired.

"Yes, sir; I did."

"When?"

"On Tuesday, sir; about noon."

The answer was given almost with bravado, and the silence among the various auditors became intense.

"You admit, then, that you were in the widow's house the morning she was murdered, and that you had an interview with her a few minutes before the fatal blow was struck?"

"I do."

There was doggedness in the tone, and doggedness in the look that accompanied it. The coroner moved a little forward in his chair and uttered his next question with deep gravity.

"Did you approach the widow's house by the road and enter into it by means of the front door overlooking the lane?"

"I did."

"And did you meet no one in the lane, or see no one at the windows of any of the houses as you came by?"

"No, sir."

"How long did you stay in this house, and what was the result of the interview which you had with Mrs. Clemmens?"

"I stayed, perhaps, ten minutes, and I learned nothing from Mrs. Clemmens, save that she was well and hearty, and likely to live out her threescore years and ten for all hint that her conversation or appearance gave me."

He spoke almost with a tone of resentment; his eyes glowed darkly, and a thrill of horror sped through the room as if they felt that the murderer himself stood before them.

"You will tell me what was said in this interview, if you please, and whether the widow knew who you were; and, if so, whether any words of anger passed between you?"

The face of the young man burned, and he looked at the coroner and then at the jurymen, as if he would like to challenge the whole crew, but the color that showed in his face was the flush of shame, or, so thought Mr. Byrd, and in his reply, when he gave it, there was a bitterness of self-scorn that reminded the detective more of the mortification of a gentleman caught in an act of meanness than the secret alarm of a man who had been beguiled into committing a dastardly crime.

"Mrs. Clemmens was evidently a woman of some spirit," said he, forcing out his words with sullen desperation. "She may have used sharp language; I believe indeed she did; but she did not know who I was, for--for I pretended to be a seller of patent medicine, warranted to cure all ills, and she told me she had no ills, and--and--Do you want a man to disgrace himself in your presence?" he suddenly flashed out, cringing under the gaze of the many curious and unsympathetic eyes fixed upon him.

But the coroner, with a sudden assumption of severity, pardonable, perhaps, in a man with a case of such importance on his hands, recommended the witness to be calm and not to allow any small feelings of personal mortification to interfere with a testimony of so much evident value. And without waiting for the witness to recover himself, asked again:

"What did the widow say, and with what words did you leave?"

"The widow said she abominated drugs, and never took them. I replied that she made a great mistake, if she had any ailments. Upon which she retorted that she had no ailment, and politely showed me the door. I do not remember that any thing else passed between us."

His tone, which had been shrill and high, dropped at the final sentence, and by the nervous workings of his lips, Mr. Byrd perceived that he dreaded the next question. The persons grouped around him evidently dreaded it too.

But it was less searching than they expected, and proved that the coroner preferred to approach his point by circuitous rather than direct means.

"In what room was the conversation held, and by what door did you come in and go out?"

"I came in by the front door, and we stood in that room"--pointing to the sitting-room from which he had just issued.

"Stood! Did you not sit down?"

"No."

"Stood all the time, and in that room to which you have just pointed?"

"Yes."

The coroner drew a deep breath, and looked at the witness long and searchingly. Mr. Hildreth's way of uttering this word had been any thing but pleasant, and consequently any thing but satisfactory. A low murmur began to eddy through the rooms.

"Gentlemen, silence!" commanded the coroner, venting in this injunction some of the uncomfortable emotion with which he was evidently surcharged; for his next words were spoken in a comparatively quiet voice, though the fixed severity of his eye could have given the witness but little encouragement.

"You say," he declared, "that in coming through the lane you encountered no one. Was this equally true of your return?"

"Yes, sir; I believe so. I don't remember. I was not looking up," was the slightly confused reply.

"You passed, however, through the lane, and entered the main street by the usual path?"

"Yes."

"And where did you go then?"

"To the depot."

"Ah!"

"I wished to leave the town. I had done with it."

"And did you do so, Mr. Hildreth?"

"I did."

"Where did you go?"

"To Albany, where I had left my traps."

"You took the noon train, then?"

"Yes, sir."

"Which leaves precisely five minutes after twelve?"

"I suppose so."

"Took it without stopping anywhere on the way?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you buy a ticket at the office?"

"No, sir."

"Why?"

"I did not have time."

"Ah, the train was at the station, then?"

Mr. Hildreth did not reply; he had evidently been driven almost to the end of his patience, or possibly of his courage, by this quick fire of small questions.

The coroner saw this and pressed his advantage.

"Was the train at the station or not when you arrived there, Mr. Hildreth?"

"I do not see why it can interest you to know," the witness retorted, with a flash of somewhat natural anger; "but since you insist, I will tell you that it was just going out, and that I had to run to reach it, and only got a foothold upon the platform of the rear car at the risk of my life."

He looked as if he wished it had been at the cost of his life, and compressed his lips and moved restlessly from side to side as if the battery of eyes levelled upon his face were so many points of red-hot steel burning into his brain.

But the coroner, intent upon his duty, released not one jot of the steady hold he had taken upon his victim.

"Mr. Hildreth," said he, "your position as the only person who acknowledges himself to have been in this house during the half-hour that preceded the assault, makes every thing you can tell us in reference to your visit of the highest importance. Was the widow alone, do you think, or did you see any thing--pause now and consider well--_any thing_ that would lead you to suppose there was any one beside her and yourself in the house?"

It was the suggestion of a just man, and Mr. Byrd looked to see the witness grasp with all the energy of despair at the prospect of release it held out. But Mr. Hildreth either felt his cause beyond the reach of any such assistance, or his understanding was so dulled by misery he could not see the advantage of acknowledging the presence of a third party in the cottage. Giving a dreary shake of the head, he slowly answered:

"There may have been somebody else in the house, I don't know; but if so, I didn't hear him or see him. I thought we were alone."

The frankness with which he made the admission was in his favor, but the quick and overpowering flush that rose to his face the moment he had given utterance to it, betrayed so unmistakable a consciousness of what the admission implied that the effect was immediately reversed. Seeing that he had lost rather than gained in the opinions of the merciless inquisitors about him, he went back to his old bravado, and haughtily lifted his head.

"One question more," resumed the coroner. "You have said that Mrs. Clemmens was a spirited woman. Now, what made you think so? Any expression of annoyance on her part at the interruption in her work which your errand had caused her, or merely the expression of her face and the general way she had of speaking?"

"The latter, I think, though she did use a harsh word or two when she showed me the door."

"And raised her voice?"

"Yes, yes."

"Mr. Hildreth," intimated the coroner, rising, "will you be kind enough to step with me into the adjoining room?"

With a look of wonder not unmixed with alarm, the young man prepared to comply.

"I should like the attention of the jury," Dr. Tredwell signified as he passed through the door.

There was no need to give them this hint. Not a man of them but was already on his feet in eager curiosity as to what their presiding officer was about to do.

"I wish you to tell me now," the coroner demanded of Mr. Hildreth, as they paused in the centre of the sitting-room, "where it was you stood during your interview with Mrs. Clemmens, and, if possible, take the very position now which you held at that time."

"There are too many persons here," the witness objected, visibly rebelling at a request of which he could not guess the full significance.

"The people present will step back," declared the coroner; "you will have no trouble in taking your stand on the spot you occupied the other day."

"Here, then!" exclaimed the young man, taking a position near the centre of the room.

"And the widow?"

"Stood there."

"Facing you?"

"Yes."

"I see," intimated the coroner, pointing toward the windows. "Her back was to the yard while you stood with your face toward it." Then with a quick motion, summoning the witness back into the other room, asked, amid the breathless attention of the crowd, whom this bit of by-play had wrought up to expectation: "Did you observe any one go around to the back door while you stood there, and go away again without attempting to knock?"

Mr. Hildreth knitted his brow and seemed to think.

"Answer," persisted the coroner; "it is not a question that requires thought."

"Well, then, I did not," cried the witness, looking the other directly in the eye, with the first gleam of real manly feeling which he had yet displayed.

"You did not see a tramp come into the yard, walk around to the kitchen door, wait a moment as if hesitating whether he would rap, and then turn and come back again without doing so?"

"No, sir."

The coroner drew a piece of paper before him and began figuring on it. Earnestly, almost wildly, the young man watched him, drawing a deep breath and turning quite pale as the other paused and looked up.

"Yet," affirmed the coroner, as if no delay had occurred since he received his last answer, "such a person did approach the house while you were in it, and if you had stood where you say, you must have seen him."

It was a vital thrust, a relentless presentation of fact, and as such shook the witness out of his lately acquired composure. Glancing hastily about, he sought the assistance of some one both capable and willing to advise him in this crisis, but seeing no one, he made a vigorous effort and called together his own faculties.

"Sir," he protested, a tremor of undisguised anxiety finding way into his voice, "I do not see how you make that all out. What proof have you that this tramp of which you speak came to the house while I was in it? Could he not have come before? Or, what was better, could he not have come after?"

The ringing tone with which the last question was put startled everybody. No such sounds had issued from his lips before. Had he caught a glimpse of hope, or was he driven to an extremity in his defence that forced him to assert himself? The eyes of Miss Firman and of a few other women began to soften, and even the face of Mr. Byrd betrayed that a change was on the verge of taking place in his feelings.

But the coroner's look and tone dashed cold water on this young and tender growth of sympathy. Passing over to the witness the paper on which he had been scribbling, he explained with dry significance:

"It is only a matter of subtraction and addition, Mr. Hildreth. You have said that upon quitting this house you went directly to the depot, where you arrived barely in time to jump on the train as it was leaving the station. Now, to walk from this place to the depot at any pace you would be likely to use, would occupy--well, let us say seven minutes. At two minutes before twelve, then, you were still in this house. Well!" he ejaculated, interrupting himself as the other opened his lips, "have you any thing to say?"

"No," was the dejected and hesitating reply.

The coroner at once resumed:

"But at five minutes before twelve, Mr. Hildreth, the tramp walked into the widow's yard. Now, allowing only two minutes for your interview with that lady, the conclusion remains that you were in the house when he came up to it. Yet you declare that, although you stood in full view of the yard, you did not see him."

"You figure closer than an astronomer calculating an eclipse," burst from the young man's lips in a flash of that resolution which had for the last few minutes animated him. "How do you know your witnesses have been so exact to a second when they say this and that of the goings and comings you are pleased to put into an arithmetical problem. A minute or two one way or the other would make a sad discrepancy in your calculations, Mr. Coroner."

"I know it," assented Dr. Tredwell, quietly ignoring the other's heat; "but if the jury will remember, there were four witnesses, at least, who testified to the striking of the town clock just as the tramp finally issued from the lane, and one witness, of well-known accuracy in matters of detail, who declared on oath that she had just dropped her eyes from that same clock when she observed the tramp go into the widow's gate, and that it was five minutes to twelve exactly. But, lest I do seem too nice in my calculations," the coroner inexorably pursued, "I will take the trouble of putting it another way. At what time did you leave the hotel, Mr. Hildreth?"

"I don't know," was the testy response.

"Well, I can tell you," the coroner assured him. "It was about twenty minutes to twelve, or possibly earlier, but no later. My reason for saying this," he went on, drawing once more before him the fatal sheet of paper, "is that Mrs. Dayton's children next door were out playing in front of this house for some few minutes previous to the time the tramp came into the lane. As you did not see them you must have arrived here before they began their game, and that, at the least calculation, would make the time as early as a quarter to twelve."

"Well," the fierce looks of the other seemed to say, "and what if it was?"

"Mr. Hildreth," continued the coroner, "if you were in this house at a quarter to twelve and did not leave it till two minutes before, and the interview was as you say a mere interchange of a dozen words or so, that could not possibly have occupied more than three minutes; _where were you during all the rest of the time_ that must have elapsed after you finished your interview and the moment you left the house?"

It was a knock-down question. This aristocratic-looking young gentleman who had hitherto held himself erect before them, notwithstanding the humiliating nature of the inquiries which had been propounded to him, cringed visibly and bowed his head as if a stroke of vital force had descended upon it. Bringing his fist down on the table near which he stood, he seemed to utter a muttered curse, while the veins swelled on his forehead so powerfully that more than one person present dropped their eyes from a spectacle which bore so distinctly the stamp of guilt.

"You have not answered," intimated the coroner, after a moment of silent waiting.

"No!" was the loud reply, uttered with a force that startled all present, and made the more timid gaze with some apprehension at his suddenly antagonistic attitude. "It is not pleasant for a gentleman"--he emphasized the word bitterly--"for a _gentleman_ to acknowledge himself caught at a time like this in a decided equivocation. But you have cornered me fairly and squarely, and I am bound to tell the truth. Gentlemen, I did not leave the widow's house as immediately as I said. I stayed for fully five minutes or so alone in the small hall that leads to the front door. In all probability I was there when the tramp passed by on his way to the kitchen-door, and there when he came back again." And Mr. Hildreth fixed his eyes on the coroner as if he dared him to push him further.

But Dr. Tredwell had been in his present seat before. Merely confronting the other with that cold official gaze which seems to act like a wall of ice between a witness and the coroner, he said the two words: "What doing?"

The effect was satisfactory. Paling suddenly, Mr. Hildreth dropped his eyes and replied humbly, though with equal laconism, "I was thinking." But scarcely had the words left his lips, than a fresh flame of feeling started up within him, and looking from juryman to juryman he passionately exclaimed: "You consider that acknowledgment suspicious. You wonder why a man should give a few minutes to thought after the conclusion of an interview that terminated all hope. I wonder at it now myself. I wonder I did not go straight out of the house and rush headlong into any danger that promised an immediate extinction of my life."

No language could have more forcibly betrayed the real desperation of his mind at the critical moment when the widow's life hung in the balance. He saw this, perhaps, when it was too late, for the sweat started on his brow, and he drew himself up like a man nerving himself to meet a blow he no longer hoped to avert. One further remark, however, left his lips.

"Whatever I did or of whatever I was thinking, one thing I here declare to be true, and that is, that I did not see the widow again after she left my side and went back to her kitchen in the rear of the house. The hand that struck her may have been lifted while I stood in the hall, but if so, I did not know it, nor can I tell you now who it was that killed her."

It was the first attempt at direct disavowal which he had made, and it had its effect. The coroner softened a trifle of his austerity, and the jurymen glanced at each other relieved. But the weight of suspicion against this young man was too heavy, and his manner had been too unfortunate, for this effect to last long. Gladly as many would have been to credit this denial, if only for the name he bore and a certain fine aspect of gentlemanhood that surrounded him in spite of his present humiliation, it was no longer possible to do so without question, and he seemed to feel this and do his best to accept the situation with patience.

An inquiry which was put to him at this time by a juryman showed the existent state of feeling against him.

"May I ask," that individual dryly interrogated, "why you came back to Sibley, after having left it?"

The response came clear and full. Evidently the gravity of his position had at last awakened the latent resources of Mr. Hildreth's mind.

"I heard of the death of this woman, and my surprise caused me to return."

"How did you hear of it?"

"Through the newspapers."

"And you were surprised?"

"I was astounded; I felt as if I had received a blow myself, and could not rest till I had come back where I could learn the full particulars."

"So, then, it was curiosity that brought you to the inquest to-day?"

"It was."

The juryman looked at him astonished; so did all the rest. His manner was so changed, his answers so prompt and ringing.

"And what was it," broke in the coroner, "that led you to register yourself at the hotel under a false name?"

"I scarcely know," was the answer, given with less fire and some show of embarrassment. "Perhaps I thought that, under the circumstances, it would be better for me not to use my own."

"In other words, you were afraid?" exclaimed the coroner, with the full impressiveness of his somewhat weighty voice and manner.

It was a word to make the weakest of men start. Mr. Hildreth, who was conspicuous in his own neighborhood for personal if not for moral courage, flushed till it looked as if the veins would burst on his forehead, but he made no other reply than a proud and angry look and a short:

"I was not aware of fear; though, to be sure, I had no premonition of the treatment I should be called upon to suffer here to-day."

The flash told, the coroner sat as if doubtful, and looked from man to man of the jury as if he would question their feelings on this vital subject. Meantime the full shame of his position settled heavier and heavier upon Mr. Hildreth; his head fell slowly forward, and he seemed to be asking himself how he was to meet the possibly impending ignominy of a direct accusation. Suddenly he drew himself erect, and a gleam shot from his eyes that, for the first time, revealed him as a man of latent pluck and courage.

"Gentlemen," he began, looking first at the coroner and then at the jury, "you have not said you consider me guilty of this crime, but you evidently harbor the suspicion. I do not wonder; my own words have given me away, and any man would find it difficult to believe in my innocence after what has been testified to in this place. Do not hesitate, then. The shock of finding myself suspected of a horrible murder is passed. I am willing to be arrested. Indeed, after what has here taken place, I not only am willing but even anxious. I want to be tried, if only to prove to the world my complete and entire innocence."

The effect of this speech, uttered at a moment so critical, may be easily imagined. All the impressible people present at once signified their belief in his honesty, and gave him looks of sympathy, if not approval; while the cooler and possibly the more judicious of his auditors calmly weighed these assertions against the evidence that had been advanced, and finding the result unsatisfactory, shook their heads as if unconvinced, and awaited further developments.

They did not come. The inquiry had reached its climax, and little, if any thing, more was left to be said. Mr. Hildreth was examined more fully, and some few of the witnesses who had been heard in the early part of the day were recalled, but no new facts came to light, and no fresh inquiries were started.

Mr. Byrd, who from the attitude of the coroner could not fail to see Mr. Hildreth was looked upon with a suspicion that would ultimately end in arrest, decided that his interest in the inquest was at an end, and being greatly fatigued, gave up his position at the window and quietly stole away.

X.

THE FINAL TEST.

Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue,
in order that they should see twice as much as
they say.--COLTON.

THE fact was, he wanted to think. Detective though he was and accustomed to the bravado with which every sort of criminal will turn to meet their fate when fully driven to bay, there had been something in the final manner of this desperate but evidently cultured gentleman, which had impressed him against his own will, and made him question whether the suspected man was not rather the victim of a series of extraordinary circumstances, than the selfish and brutal criminal which the evidence given seemed to suggest.

Not that Mr. Byrd ever allowed his generous heart to blind him to the plain language of facts. His secret and not to be smothered doubts in another direction were proof enough of this; and had it not been for those very doubts, the probabilities are that he would have agreed with the cooler-headed portion of the crowd, which listened unmoved to that last indignant burst of desperate manhood.

But with those doubts still holding possession of his mind, he could not feel so sure of Mr. Hildreth's guilt; and the struggle that was likely to ensue between his personal feelings on the one side and his sense of duty on the other did not promise to be so light as to make it possible for him to remain within eye and earshot of an unsympathetic crowd.

"If only the superintendent had not left it to my judgment to interfere," thought he, pacing the streets with ever-increasing uneasiness, "the responsibility would have been shifted from my shoulders, and I would have left the young man to his fate in peace. But now I would be criminally at fault if I were to let him drift hopelessly to his doom, when by a lift of my finger I might possibly turn the attention of justice toward the real culprit."

Yet the making up of his mind to interfere was a torture to Horace Byrd. If he was not conscious of any love for Imogene Dare, he was sufficiently under the dominion of her extraordinary fascinations to feel that any movement on his part toward the unravelling of the mystery that enveloped her, would be like subjecting his own self to the rack of public inquiry and suspicion.

Nor, though he walked the streets for hours, each moment growing more and more settled in his conviction of Mr. Hildreth's innocence, could he bring himself to the point of embracing the duty presented to him, till he had subjected Miss Dare to a new test, and won for himself absolute certainty as to the fact of her possessing a clue to the crime, which had not been discovered in the coroner's inquiry.

"The possibility of innocence on her part is even greater than on that of Mr. Hildreth," he considered, "and nothing, not even the peril of those dearest to me, could justify me in shifting the weight of suspicion from a guiltless man to an equally guiltless woman."

It was, therefore, for the purpose of solving this doubt, that he finally sought Mr. Ferris, and after learning that Mr. Hildreth was under surveillance, and would in all probability be subjected to arrest on the morrow, asked for some errand that would take him to Mr. Orcutt's house.

"I have a great admiration for that gentleman and would like to make his acquaintance," he remarked carelessly, hiding his true purpose under his usual nonchalant tones. "But I do not want to seem to be pushing myself forward; so if you could give me some papers to carry to him, or some message requiring an introduction to his presence, I should feel very much obliged."

Mr. Ferris, who had no suspicions of his own to assist him in understanding the motives that led to this request, easily provided the detective with the errand he sought. Mr. Byrd at once started for the lawyer's house.

It was fully two miles away, but once arrived there, he was thankful that the walk had been so long, as the fatigue, following upon the activity of the afternoon, had succeeded in quieting his pulses and calming down the fierce excitement which had held him under its control ever since he had taken the determination to satisfy his doubts by an interview with Miss Dare.

Ringing the bell of the rambling old mansion that spread out its wide extensions through the vines and bushes of an old-fashioned and most luxuriant garden, he waited the issue with beating heart. A respectable-looking negro servant came to the door.

"Is Mr. Orcutt in?" he asked; "or, if not, Miss Dare? I have a message from Mr. Ferris and would be glad to see one of them."

This, in order to ascertain at a word if the lady was at home.

"Miss Dare is not in," was the civil response, "and Mr. Orcutt is very busily engaged; but if you will step into the parlor I will tell him you are here."

"No," returned the disappointed detective, handing her the note he held in his hand. "If your master is busy I will not disturb him." And, turning away, he went slowly down the steps.

"If I only knew where she was gone!" he muttered, bitterly.

But he did not consider himself in a position to ask.

Inwardly chafing over his ill-luck, Mr. Byrd proceeded with reluctant pace to regain the street, when, hearing the gate suddenly click, he looked up, and saw advancing toward him a young gentleman of a peculiarly spruce and elegant appearance.

"Ha! another visitor for Miss Dare," was the detective's natural inference. And with a sudden movement he withdrew from the path, and paused as if to light his cigar in the shadow of the thick bushes that grew against the house.

In an instant the young stranger was on the stoop. Another, and he had rung the bell, which was answered almost as soon as his hand dropped from the knob.

"Is Miss Dare in?" was the inquiry, uttered in loud and cheery tones.