Chapter IX: Book II: The Weaving of a Web (3)

"That is what I wish you to find out," declared the District Attorney.

Mr. Hickory at once took it in his hand.

"Wait," said he, "I have an idea." And he carried the letter to one side, where he stood examining it for several minutes. When he came back he looked tolerably excited and somewhat pleased. "I believe I can tell you who wrote it," said he.

"Who?" inquired the District Attorney.

For reply the detective placed his finger upon a name that was written in the letter.

"Imogene Dare?" exclaimed Mr. Ferris, astonished.

"She herself," proclaimed the self-satisfied detective.

"What makes you think that?" the District Attorney slowly asked.

"Because I have seen her writing, and studied her signature, and, ably as she has disguised her hand in the rest of the letter, it betrays itself in her name. See here." And Hickory took from his pocket-book a small slip of paper containing her autograph, and submitted it to the test of comparison.

The similarity between the two signatures was evident, and both Mr. Byrd and Mr. Ferris were obliged to allow the detective might be right, though the admission opened up suggestions of the most formidable character.

"It is a turn for which I am not prepared," declared the District Attorney.

"It is a turn for which _we_ are not prepared," repeated Mr. Byrd, with a controlling look at Hickory.

"Let us, then, defer further consideration of the matter till I have had an opportunity to see Miss Dare," suggested Mr. Ferris.

And the two detectives were very glad to acquiesce in this, for they were as much astonished as he at this action of Miss Dare, though, with their better knowledge of her feelings, they found it comparatively easy to understand how her remorse and the great anxiety she doubtless felt for Mr. Hildreth had sufficed to drive her to such an extreme and desperate measure.

XX.

A CRISIS.

_Queen._ Alas, how is it with you?
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with the incorporeal air do hold discourse?

* * * * *

Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up and stands on end.

* * * * *

Whereon do you look?

_Hamlet._ On him! On him! Look you how pale he glares!
His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable. Do not look upon me;
Lest, with this piteous action, you convert
My stern effects! then what I have to do
Will want true color; tears, perchance, for blood.--HAMLET.

THAT my readers may understand even better than Byrd and Hickory how it was that Imogene came to write this letter, I must ask them to consider certain incidents that had occurred in a quarter far removed from the eye of the detectives.

Mr. Orcutt's mind had never been at rest concerning the peculiar attitude assumed by Imogene Dare at the time of Mrs. Clemmens' murder. Time and thought had not made it any more possible for him to believe now than then that she knew any thing of the matter beyond what appeared to the general eye: but he could not forget the ring. It haunted him. Fifty times a day he asked himself what she had meant by claiming as her own a jewel which had been picked up from the floor of a strange house at a time so dreadful, and which, in despite of her explanations to him, he found it impossible to believe was hers or ever could have been hers? He was even tempted to ask her; but he never did. The words would not come. Though they faltered again and again upon his lips, he could not give utterance to them; no, though with every passing day he felt that the bond uniting her to him was growing weaker and weaker, and that if something did not soon intervene to establish confidence between them, he would presently lose all hope of the treasure for the possession of which he was now ready to barter away half the remaining years of his life.

Her increasing reticence, and the almost stony look of misery that now confronted him without let or hindrance from her wide gray eyes, were not calculated to reassure him or make his future prospects look any brighter. Her pain, if pain it were, or remorse, if remorse it could be, was not of a kind to feel the influence of time; and, struck with dismay, alarmed in spite of himself, if not for her reason at least for his own, he watched her from day to day, feeling that now he would give his life not merely to possess her, but to understand her and the secret that was gnawing at her heart.

At last there came a day when he could no longer restrain himself. She had been seated in his presence, and had been handed a letter which for the moment seemed to thoroughly overwhelm her. We know what that letter was. It was the note which had been sent as a decoy by the detective Hickory, but which she had no reason to doubt was a real communication from Craik Mansell, despite the strange handwriting on the envelope. It prayed her for an interview. It set the time and mentioned the place of meeting, and created for the instant such a turmoil in her usually steady brain that she could not hide it from the searching eyes that watched her.

"What is it, Imogene?" inquired Mr. Orcutt, drawing near her with a gesture of such uncontrollable anxiety, it looked as if he were about to snatch the letter from her hand.

For reply she rose, walked to the grate, in which a low wood fire was burning, and plunged the paper in among the coals. When it was all consumed she turned and faced Mr. Orcutt.

"You must excuse me," she murmured; "but the letter was one which I absolutely desired no one to see."

But he did not seem to hear her apology. He stood with his gaze fixed on the fire, and his hand clenched against his heart, as if something in the fate of that wretched sheet of paper reminded him of the love and hope that were shrivelling up before his eyes.

She saw his look and drooped her head with a sudden low moan of mingled shame and suffering.

"Am I killing _you_?" she faintly cried. "Are my strange, wild ways driving _you_ to despair? I had not thought of that. I am so selfish, I had not thought of that!"

This evidence of feeling, the first she had ever shown him, moved Mr. Orcutt deeply. Advancing toward her, with sudden passion, he took her by the hand.

"Killing me?" he repeated. "Yes, you are killing me. Don't you see how fast I am growing old? Don't you see how the dust lies thick upon the books that used to be my solace and delight? I do not understand you, Imogene. I love you and I do not understand your grief, or what it is that is affecting you in this terrible way. Tell me. Let me know the nature of the forces with which I have to contend, and I can bear all the rest."

This appeal, forced as it was from lips unused to prayer, seemed to strike her, absorbed though she was in her own suffering. Looking at him with real concern, she tried to speak, but the words faltered on her tongue. They came at last, however, and he heard her say:

"I wish I could weep, if only to show you I am not utterly devoid of womanly sympathy for an anguish I cannot cure. But the fountain of my tears is dried at its source. I do not think I can ever weep again. I am condemned to tread a path of misery and despair, and must traverse it to the end without weakness and without help. Do not ask me why, for I can never tell you. And do not detain me now, or try to make me talk, for I must go where I can be alone and silent."

She was slipping away, but he caught her by the wrist and drew her back. His pain and perplexity had reached their climax.

"You must speak," he cried. "I have paltered long enough with this matter. You must tell me what it is that is destroying your happiness and mine."

But her eyes, turning toward him, seemed to echo that _must_ in a look of disdain eloquent enough to scorn all help from words, and in the indomitable determination of her whole aspect he saw that he might slay her, but that he could never make her speak.

Loosing her with a gesture of despair, he turned away. When he glanced back again she was gone.

The result of this interview was naturally an increased doubt and anxiety on his part. He could not attend to his duties with any degree of precision, he was so haunted by uneasy surmises as to what might have been the contents of the letter which he had thus seen her destroy before his eyes. As for her words, they were like her conduct, an insolvable mystery, for which he had no key.

His failure to find her at home when he returned that night added to his alarm, especially as he remembered the vivid thunderstorm that had deluged the town in the afternoon. Nor, though she came in very soon and offered both excuses and explanations for her absence, did he experience any appreciable relief, or feel at all satisfied that he was not threatened with some secret and terrible catastrophe. Indeed, the air of vivid and feverish excitement which pervaded every look of hers from this time, making each morning and evening distinctive in his memory as a season of fresh fear and renewed suspense, was enough of itself to arouse this sense of an unknown, but surely approaching, danger. He saw she was on the look out for some event, he knew not what, and studied the papers as sedulously as she, in the hope of coming upon some revelation that should lay bare the secret of this new condition of hers. At last he thought he had found it. Coming home one day from the court, he called her into his presence, and, without pause or preamble, exclaimed, with almost cruel abruptness:

"An event of possible interest to you has just taken place. The murderer of Mrs. Clemmens has just cut his throat."

He saw before he had finished the first clause that he had struck at the very citadel of her terrors and her woe. At the end of the second sentence he knew, beyond all doubt now, what it was she had been fearing, if not expecting. Yet she said not a word, and by no movement betrayed that the steel had gone through and through her heart.

A demon--the maddening demon of jealousy--gripped him for the first time with relentless force.

"Ah, you have been looking for it?" he cried in a choked voice. "You know this man, then--knew him, perhaps, before the murder of Mrs. Clemmens; knew him, and--and, perhaps, loved him?"

She did not reply.

He struck his forehead with his hand, as if the moment was perfectly intolerable to him.

"Answer," he cried. "Did you know Gouverneur Hildreth or not?"

"_Gouverneur Hildreth?_" Oh, the sharp surprise, the wailing anguish of her tone! Mr. Orcutt stood amazed. "It is not he who has made this attempt upon his life!--not he!" she shrieked like one appalled.

Perhaps because all other expression or emotion failed him, Mr. Orcutt broke forth into a loud and harrowing laugh. "And who else should it be?" he cried. "What other man stands accused of having murdered Widow Clemmens? You are mad, Imogene; you don't know what you say or what you do."

"Yes, I am mad," she repeated--"mad!" and leaned her forehead forward on the back of a high chair beside which she had been standing, and hid her face and struggled with herself for a moment, while the clock went on ticking, and the wretched surveyer of her sorrow stood looking at her bended head like a man who does not know whether it is he or she who is in the most danger of losing his reason.

At last a word struggled forth from between her clasped hands.

"When did it happen?" she gasped, without lifting her head. "Tell me all about it. I think I can understand."

The noted lawyer smiled a bitter smile, and spoke for the first time, without pity and without mercy.

"He has been trying for some days to effect his death. His arrest and the little prospect there is of his escaping trial seem to have maddened his gentlemanly brain. Fire-arms were not procurable, neither was poison nor a rope, but a pewter plate is enough in the hands of a desperate man. He broke one in two last night, and----"

He paused, sick and horror-stricken. Her face had risen upon him from the back of the chair, and was staring upon him like that of a Medusa. Before that gaze the flesh crept on his bones and the breath of life refused to pass his lips. Gazing at her with rising horror, he saw her stony lips slowly part.

"Don't go on," she whispered. "I can see it all without the help of words." Then, in a tone that seemed to come from some far-off world of nightmare, she painfully gasped, "Is he dead?"

Mr. Orcutt was a man who, up to the last year, had never known what it was to experience a real and controlling emotion. Life with him had meant success in public affairs, and a certain social pre-eminence that made his presence in any place the signal of admiring looks and respectful attentions. But let no man think that, because his doom delays, it will never come. Passions such as he had deprecated in others, and desires such as he had believed impossible to himself, had seized upon him with ungovernable power, and in this moment especially he felt himself yielding to their sway with no more power of resistance than a puppet experiences in the grasp of a whirlwind. Meeting that terrible eye of hers, burning with an anxiety for a man he despised, and hearing that agonized question from lips whose touch he had never known, he experienced a sudden wild and almost demoniac temptation to hurl back the implacable "Yes" that he felt certain would strike her like a dead woman to the ground. But the horrid impulse passed, and, with a quick remembrance of the claims of honor upon one bearing his name and owning his history, he controlled himself with a giant resolution, and merely dropping his eyes from an anguish he dared no longer confront, answered, quietly:

"No; he has hurt himself severely and has disfigured his good looks for life, but he will not die; or so the physicians think."

A long, deep, shuddering sigh swept through the room.

"Thank God!" came from her lips, and then all was quiet again.

He looked up in haste; he could not bear the silence.

"Imogene----" he began, but instantly paused in surprise at the change which had taken place in her expression. "What do you intend to do?" was his quick demand. "You look as I have never seen you look before."

"Do not ask me!" she returned. "I have no words for what I am going to do. What _you_ must do is to see that Gouverneur Hildreth is released from prison. He is not guilty, mind you; he never committed this crime of which he is suspected, and in the shame of which suspicion he has this day attempted his life. If he is kept in the restraint which is so humiliating to him, and if he dies there, it will be murder--do you hear? murder! And he _will_ die there if he is not released; I know his feelings only too well."

"But, Imogene----"

"Hush! don't argue. 'Tis a matter of life and death, I tell you. He must be released! I know," she went on, hurriedly, "what it is you want to say. You think you cannot do this; that the evidence is all against him; that he went to prison of his own free will and cannot hope for release till his guilt or innocence has been properly inquired into. But I know you can effect his enlargement if you will. You are a lawyer, and understand all the crooks and turns by which a man can sometimes be made to evade the grasp of justice. Use your knowledge. Avail yourself of your influence with the authorities, and I----" she paused and gave him a long, long look.

He was at her side in an instant.

"You would--what?" he cried, taking her hand in his and pressing it impulsively.

"I would grant you whatever you ask," she murmured, in a weariful tone.

"Would you be my wife?" he passionately inquired.

"Yes," was the choked reply; "if I did not die first."

He caught her to his breast in rapture. He knelt at her side and threw his arms about her waist.

"You shall not die," he cried. "You shall live and be happy. Only marry me to-day."

"Not till Gouverneur Hildreth be released," she interposed, gently.

He started as if touched by a galvanic battery, and slowly rose up and coldly looked at her.

"Do you love him so madly you would sell yourself for his sake?" he sternly demanded.

With a quick gesture she threw back her head as though the indignant "No" that sprang to her lips would flash out whether she would or not. But she restrained herself in time.

"I cannot answer," she returned.

But he was master now--master of this dominating spirit that had held him in check for so long a time, and he was not to be put off.

"You must answer," he sternly commanded. "I have the right to know the extent of your feeling for this man, and I will. Do you _love_ him, Imogene Dare? Tell me, or I here swear that I will do nothing for him, either now or at a time when he may need my assistance more than you know."

This threat, uttered as he uttered it, could have but one effect. Turning aside, so that he should not see the shuddering revolt in her eyes, she mechanically whispered:

"And what if I did? Would it be so very strange? Youth admires youth, Mr. Orcutt, and Mr. Hildreth is very handsome and very unfortunate. Do not oblige me to say more."

Mr. Orcutt, across whose face a dozen different emotions had flitted during the utterance of these few words, drew back till half the distance of the room lay between them.

"Nor do I wish to hear any more," he rejoined, slowly. "You have said enough, quite enough. I understand now all the past--all your terrors and all your secret doubts and unaccountable behavior. The man you loved was in danger, and you did not know how to manage his release. Well, well, I am sorry for you, Imogene. I wish I could help you. I love you passionately, and would make you my wife in face of your affection for this man if I could do for you what you request. But it is impossible. Never during the whole course of my career has a blot rested upon my integrity as a lawyer. I am known as an honest man, and honest will I remain known to the last. Besides, I could do nothing to effect his enlargement if I tried. Nothing but the plainest proof that he is innocent, or that another man is guilty, would avail now to release him from the suspicion which his own admissions have aroused."

"Then there is no hope?" was her slow and despairing reply.

"None at present, Imogene," was his stern, almost as despairing, answer.

As Mr. Orcutt sat over his lonely hearth that evening, a servant brought to him the following letter:

DEAR FRIEND,--It is not fit that I should remain
any longer under your roof. I have a duty before
me which separates me forever from the friendship
and protection of honorable men and women. No home
but such as I can provide for myself by the work
of my own hands shall henceforth shelter the
disgraced head of Imogene Dare. Her fate, whatever
it may prove to be, she bears alone, and you, who
have been so kind, shall never suffer from any
association with one whose name must henceforth
become the sport of the crowd, if not the
execration of the virtuous. If your generous heart
rebels at this, choke it relentlessly down. I
shall be already gone when you read these lines,
and nothing you could do or say would make me come
back. Good-by, and may Heaven grant you
forgetfulness of one whose only return to your
benefactions has been to make you suffer almost as
much as she suffers herself.

As Mr. Orcutt read these last lines, District Attorney Ferris was unsealing the anonymous missive which has already been laid before my readers.

XXI.

HEART'S MARTYRDOM.

Oh that a man might know
The end of this day's business, ere it come;
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known!--JULIUS CAESAR.

MR. FERRIS' first impulse upon dismissing the detectives had been to carry the note he had received to Mr. Orcutt. But a night's careful consideration of the subject convinced him that the wisest course would be to follow the suggestions conveyed in the letter, and seek a direct interview with Imogene Dare.

It was not an agreeable task for him to undertake. Miss Dare was a young lady whom he had always held in the highest esteem. He had hoped to see her the wife of his friend, and would have given much from his own private stock of hope and happiness to have kept her name free from the contumely which any association with this dreadful crime must necessarily bring upon it. But his position as prosecuting attorney of the county would not allow him to consult his feelings any further in a case of such serious import. The condition of Mr. Hildreth was, to say the least, such as demanded the most impartial action on the part of the public officials, and if through any explanation of Miss Dare the one missing link in the chain of evidence against another could be supplied, it was certainly his duty to do all he could to insure it.

Accordingly at a favorable hour the next day, he made his appearance at Mr. Orcutt's house, and learning that Miss Dare had gone to Professor Darling's house for a few days, followed her to her new home and requested an interview.

She at once responded to his call. Little did he think as she came into the parlor where he sat, and with even more than her usual calm self-possession glided down the length of that elegant apartment to his side, that she had just come from a small room on the top floor, where, in the position of a hired seamstress, she had been engaged in cutting out the wedding garments of one of the daughters of the house.

Her greeting was that of a person attempting to feign a surprise she did not feel.

"Ah," said she, "Mr. Ferris! This is an unexpected pleasure."

But Mr. Ferris had no heart for courtesies.

"Miss Dare," he began, without any of the preliminaries which might be expected of him, "I have come upon a disagreeable errand. I have a favor to ask. You are in the possession of a piece of information which it is highly necessary for me to share."

"I?"

The surprise betrayed in this single word was no more than was to be expected from a lady thus addressed, neither did the face she turned so steadily toward him alter under his searching gaze.

"If I can tell you any thing that you wish to know," she quietly declared, "I am certainly ready to do so, sir."

Deceived by the steadiness of her tone and the straightforward look of her eyes, he proceeded, with a sudden releasement from his embarrassment, to say:

"I shall have to recall to your mind a most painful incident. You remember, on the morning when we met at Mrs. Clemmens' house, claiming as your own a diamond ring which was picked up from the floor at your feet?"

"I do."

"Miss Dare, was this ring really yours, or were you misled by its appearance into merely thinking it your property? My excuse for asking this is that the ring, if not yours, is likely to become an important factor in the case to which the murder of this unfortunate woman has led."

"Sir----" The pause which followed the utterance of this one word was but momentary, but in it what faint and final hope may have gone down into the depths of everlasting darkness God only knows. "Sir, since you ask me the question, I will say that in one sense of the term it was mine, and in another it was not. The ring was mine, because it had been offered to me as a gift the day before. The ring was not mine, because I had refused to take it when it was offered."

At these words, spoken with such quietness they seemed like the mechanical utterances of a woman in a trance, Mr. Ferris started to his feet. He could no longer doubt that evidence of an important nature lay before him.

"And may I ask," he inquired, without any idea of the martyrdom he caused, "what was the name of the person who offered you this ring, and from whom you refused to take it?"

"The name?" She quavered for a moment, and her eyes flashed up toward heaven with a look of wild appeal, as if the requirement of this moment was more than even she had strength to meet. Then a certain terrible calm settled upon her, blotting the last hint of feeling from her face, and, rising up in her turn, she met Mr. Ferris' inquiring eye, and slowly and distinctly replied:

"It was Craik Mansell, sir. He is a nephew of Mrs. Clemmens."

It was the name Mr. Ferris had come there to hear, yet it gave him a slight shock when it fell from her lips--perhaps because his mind was still running upon her supposed relations with Mr. Orcutt. But he did not show his feelings, however, and calmly asked:

"And was Mr. Mansell in this town the day before the assault upon his aunt?"

"He was."

"And you had a conversation with him?"

"I had."

"May I ask where?"

For the first time she flushed; womanly shame had not yet vanished entirely from her stricken breast; but she responded as steadily as before:

"In the woods, sir, back of Mrs. Clemmens' house. There were reasons"--she paused--"there were good reasons, which I do not feel obliged to state, why a meeting in such a place was not discreditable to us."

Mr. Ferris, who had received from other sources a full version of the interview to which she thus alluded, experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling against one he could not but consider as a detected coquette; and, drawing quickly back, made a gesture such as was not often witnessed in those elegant apartments.

"You mean," said he, with a sharp edge to his tone that passed over her dreary soul unheeded, "that you were lovers?"

"I mean," said she, like the automaton she surely was at that moment, "that he had paid me honorable addresses, and that I had no reason to doubt his motives or my own in seeking such a meeting."

"Miss Dare,"--all the District Attorney spoke in the manner of Mr. Ferris now,--"if you refused Mr. Mansell his ring, you must have returned it to him?"

She looked at him with an anguish that bespoke her full appreciation of all this question implied, but unequivocally bowed her head.

"It was in his possession, then," he continued, "when you left him on that day and returned to your home?"

"Yes," her lips seemed to say, though no distinct utterance came from them.

"And you did not see it again till you found it on the floor of Mrs. Clemmens' dining-room the morning of the murder?"

"No."

"Miss Dare," said he, with greater mildness, after a short pause, "you have answered my somewhat painful inquiries with a straightforwardness I cannot sufficiently commend. If you will now add to my gratitude by telling me whether you have informed any one else of the important facts you have just given me, I will distress you by no further questions."

"Sir," said she, and her attitude showed that she could endure but little more, "I have taken no one else into my confidence. Such knowledge as I had to impart was not matter for idle gossip."

And Mr. Ferris, being thus assured that his own surmises and that of Hickory were correct, bowed with the respect her pale face and rigid attitude seemed to demand, and considerately left the house.

XXII.

CRAIK MANSELL.

Bring me unto my trial when you will.--HENRY VI.

"HE is here."

Mr. Ferris threw aside his cigar, and looked up at Mr. Byrd, who was standing before him.

"You had no difficulty, then?"

"No, sir. He acted like a man in hourly expectation of some such summons. At the very first intimation of your desire to see him in Sibley, he rose from his desk, with what I thought was a meaning look at Mr. Goodman, and after a few preparations for departure, signified he was ready to take the next train."

"And did he ask no questions?"

"Only one. He wished to know if I were a detective. And when I responded 'Yes,' observed with an inquiring look: 'I am wanted as a witness, I suppose.' A suggestion to which I was careful to make no reply."

Mr. Ferris pushed aside his writing and glanced toward the door. "Show him in, Mr. Byrd," said he.

A moment after Mr. Mansell entered the room.

The District Attorney had never seen this man, and was struck at once by the force and manliness of his appearance. Half-rising from his seat to greet the visitor, he said:

"I have to beg your pardon, Mr. Mansell. Feeling it quite necessary to see you, I took the liberty of requesting you to take this journey, my own time being fully occupied at present."

Mr. Mansell bowed--a slow, self-possessed bow,--and advancing to the table before which the District Attorney sat, laid his hand firmly upon it and said:

"No apologies are needed." Then shortly, "What is it you want of me?"

The words were almost the same as those which had been used by Mr. Hildreth under similar circumstances, but how different was their effect! The one was the utterance of a weak man driven to bay, the other of a strong one. Mr. Ferris, who was by no means of an impressible organization, flashed a look of somewhat uneasy doubt at Mr. Byrd, and hesitated slightly before proceeding.

"We have sent for you in this friendly way," he remarked, at last, "in order to give you that opportunity for explaining certain matters connected with your aunt's sudden death which your well-known character and good position seem to warrant. We think you can do this. At all events I have accorded myself the privilege of so supposing; and any words you may have to say will meet with all due consideration. As Mrs. Clemmens' nephew, you, of course, desire to see her murderer brought to justice."

The slightly rising inflection given to the last few words made them to all intents and purposes a question, and Mr. Byrd, who stood near by, waited anxiously for the decided Yes which seemed the only possible reply under the circumstances, but it did not come.

Surprised, and possibly anxious, the District Attorney repeated himself.

"As her nephew," said he, "and the inheritor of the few savings she has left behind her, you can have but one wish on this subject, Mr. Mansell?"

But this attempt succeeded no better than the first. Beyond a slight compression of the lips, Mr. Mansell gave no manifestation of having heard this remark, and both Mr. Ferris and the detective found themselves forced to wonder at the rigid honesty of a man who, whatever death-giving blow he may have dealt, would not allow himself to escape the prejudice of his accusers by assenting to a supposition he and they knew to be false.

Mr. Ferris did not press the question.

"Mr. Mansell," he remarked instead, "a person by the name of Gouverneur Hildreth is, as you must know, under arrest at this time, charged with the crime of having given the blow that led to your aunt's death. The evidence against him is strong, and the public generally have no doubt that his arrest will lead to trial, if not to conviction. But, unfortunately for us, however fortunately for him, another person has lately been found, against whom an equal show of evidence can be raised, and it is for the purpose of satisfying ourselves that it is but a show, we have requested your presence here to-day."

A spasm, vivid as it was instantaneous, distorted for a moment the powerful features of Craik Mansell at the words, "another person," but it was gone before the sentence was completed; and when Mr. Ferris ceased, he looked up with the steady calmness which made his bearing so remarkable.

"I am waiting to hear the name of this freshly suspected person," he observed.

"Cannot you imagine?" asked the District Attorney, coldly, secretly disconcerted under a gaze that held his own with such steady persistence.

The eyeballs of the other flashed like coals of fire.

"I think it is my right to hear it spoken," he returned.

This display of feeling restored Mr. Ferris to himself.

"In a moment, sir," said he. "Meanwhile, have you any objections to answering a few questions I would like to put to you?"

"I will hear them," was the steady reply.

"You know," said the District Attorney, "you are at perfect liberty to answer or not, as you see fit. I have no desire to entrap you into any acknowledgments you may hereafter regret."

"Speak," was the sole response he received.

"Well, sir," said Mr. Ferris, "are you willing to tell me where you were when you first heard of the assault which had been made upon your aunt?"

"I was in my place at the mill."

"And--pardon me if I go too far--were you also there the morning she was murdered?"

"No, sir."

"Mr. Mansell, if you could tell us where you were at that time, it would be of great benefit to us, and possibly to yourself."

"To myself?"

Having shown his surprise, or, possibly, his alarm, by the repetition of the other's words, Craik Mansell paused and looked slowly around the room until he encountered Mr. Byrd's eye. There was a steady compassion in the look he met there that seemed to strike him with great force, for he at once replied that he was away from home, and stopped--his glance still fixed upon Mr. Byrd, as if, by the very power of his gaze, he would force the secrets of that detective's soul to the surface.

"Mr. Mansell," pursued the District Attorney, "a distinct avowal on your part of the place where you were at that time, would be best for us both, I am sure."

"Do you not already know?" inquired the other, his eye still upon Horace Byrd.

"We have reason to think you were in this town," averred Mr. Ferris, with an emphasis calculated to recall the attention of his visitor to himself.

"And may I ask," Craik Mansell quietly said, "what reason you can have for such a supposition? No one could have seen me here, for, till to-day I have not entered the streets of this place since my visit to my aunt three months ago."

"It was not necessary to enter the streets of this town to effect a visit to Mrs. Clemmens' house, Mr. Mansell."

"No?"

There was the faintest hint of emotion in the intonation he gave to that one word, but it vanished before he spoke his next sentence.

"And how," asked he, "can a person pass from Sibley Station to the door of my aunt's house without going through the streets?"

Instead of replying, Mr. Ferris inquired:

"Did you get out at Sibley Station, Mr. Mansell?"

But the other, with unmoved self-possession, returned:

"I have not said so."

"Mr. Mansell," the District Attorney now observed, "we have no motive in deceiving or even in misleading you. You were in this town on the morning of your aunt's murder, and you were even in her house. Evidence which you cannot dispute proves this, and the question that now arises, and of whose importance we leave you to judge, is whether you were there prior to the visit of Mr. Hildreth, or after. Any proof you may have to show that it was before will receive its due consideration."

A change, decided as it was involuntary, took place in the hitherto undisturbed countenance of Craik Mansell. Leaning forward, he surveyed Mr. Ferris with great earnestness.

"I asked that man," said he, pointing with a steady forefinger at the somewhat abashed detective, "if I were not wanted here simply as a witness, and he did not say No. Now, sir," he continued, turning back with a slight gesture of disdain to the District Attorney, "was the man right in allowing me to believe such a fact, or was he not? I would like an answer to my question before I proceed further, if you please."

"You shall have it, Mr. Mansell. If this man did not answer you, it was probably because he did not feel justified in so doing. He knew I had summoned you here in the hope of receiving such explanations of your late conduct as should satisfy me you had nothing to do with your aunt's murder. The claims upon my consideration, which are held by certain persons allied to you in this matter"--Mr. Ferris' look was eloquent of his real meaning here--"are my sole justification for this somewhat unusual method of dealing with a suspected man."

A smile, bitter, oh, how bitter in its irony! traversed the firm-set lips of Craik Mansell for a moment, then he bowed with a show of deference to the District Attorney, and settling into the attitude of a man willing to plead his own cause, responded:

"It would be more just, perhaps, if I first heard the reasons you have for suspecting me, before I attempt to advance arguments to prove the injustice of your suspicions."

"Well," said Mr. Ferris, "you shall have them. If frankness on my part can do aught to avert the terrible scandal which your arrest and its consequent developments would cause, I am willing to sacrifice thus much to my friendship for Mr. Orcutt. But if I do this, I shall expect an equal frankness in return. The matter is too serious for subterfuge."

The other merely waved his hand.

"The reasons," proceeded Mr. Ferris, "for considering you a party as much open to suspicion as Mr. Hildreth, are several. First, we have evidence to prove your great desire for a sum of money equal to your aunt's savings, in order to introduce an invention which you have just patented.

"Secondly, we can show that you left your home in Buffalo the day before the assault, came to Monteith, the next town to this, alighted at the remote station assigned to the use of the quarrymen, crossed the hills and threaded the woods till you came to a small hut back of your aunt's house, where you put up for the night.

"Thirdly, evidence is not lacking to prove that while there you visited your aunt's once, if not twice; the last time on the very morning she was killed, entering the house in a surreptitious way by the back door, and leaving it in the same suspicious manner.

"And fourthly, we can prove that you escaped from this place as you had come, secretly, and through a difficult and roundabout path over the hills.

"Mr. Mansell, these facts, taken with your reticence concerning a visit so manifestly of importance to the authorities to know, must strike even you as offering grounds for a suspicion as grave as that attaching to Mr. Hildreth."

With a restraint marked as it was impressive, Mr. Mansell looked at the District Attorney for a moment, and then said:

"You speak of proof. Now, what proof have you to give that I put up, as you call it, for a night, or even for an hour, in the hut which stands in the woods back of my aunt's house?"

"This," was Mr. Ferris' reply. "It is known you were in the woods the afternoon previous to the assault upon your aunt, because you were seen there in company with a young lady with whom you were holding a tryst. Did you speak, sir?"

"No!" was the violent, almost disdainful, rejoinder.

"You did not sleep at your aunt's, for her rooms contained not an evidence of having been opened for a guest, while the hut revealed more than one trace of having been used as a dormitory. I could even tell you where you cut the twigs of hemlock that served you for a pillow, and point to the place where you sat when you scribbled over the margin of the Buffalo _Courier_ with a blue pencil, such as that I now see projecting from your vest pocket."

"It is not necessary," replied the young man, heavily frowning. Then with another short glance at Mr. Ferris, he again demanded:

"What is your reason for stating I visited my aunt's house on the morning she was murdered? Did any one see me do it? or does the house, like the hut, exhibit traces of my presence there at that particular time?"

There was irony in his tone, and a disdain almost amounting to scorn in his wide-flashing blue eyes; but Mr. Ferris, glancing at the hand clutched about the railing of the desk, remarked quietly:

"You do not wear the diamond ring you carried away with you from the tryst I mentioned? Can it be that the one which was picked up after the assault, on the floor of Mrs. Clemmens' dining-room, could have fallen from your finger, Mr. Mansell?"

A start, the first this powerfully repressed man had given, showed that his armor of resistance had been pierced at last.

"How do you know," he quickly asked, "that I carried away a diamond ring from the tryst you speak of?"

"Circumstances," returned the District Attorney, "prove it beyond a doubt. Miss Dare----"

"Miss Dare!"

Oh, the indescribable tone of this exclamation! Mr. Byrd shuddered as he heard it, and looked at Mr. Mansell with a new feeling, for which he had no name.

"Miss Dare," repeated the District Attorney, without, apparently, regarding the interruption, "acknowledges she returned you the ring which you endeavored at that interview to bestow upon her."

"Ah!" The word came after a moment's pause. "I see the case has been well worked up, and it only remains for me to give you such explanations as I choose to make. Sir," declared he, stepping forward, and bringing his clenched hand down upon the desk at which Mr. Ferris was sitting, "I did not kill my aunt. I admit that I paid her a visit. I admit that I stayed in the woods back of her house, and even slept in the hut, as you have said; but that was on the day previous to her murder, and not after it. I went to see her for the purpose of again urging the claims of my invention upon her. I went secretly, and by the roundabout way you describe, because I had another purpose in visiting Sibley, which made it expedient for me to conceal my presence in the town. I failed in my efforts to enlist the sympathies of my aunt in regard to my plans, and I failed also in compassing that other desire of my heart of which the ring you mention was a token. Both failures unnerved me, and I lay in that hut all night. I even lay there most of the next morning; but I did not see my aunt again, and I did not lift my hand against her life."

There was indescribable quiet in the tone, but there was indescribable power also, and the look he levelled upon the District Attorney was unwaveringly solemn and hard.

"You deny, then, that you entered the widow's house on the morning of the murder?"

"I do."

"It is, then, a question of veracity between you and Miss Dare?"

Silence.

"She asserts she gave you back the ring you offered her. If this is so, and that ring was in your possession after you left her on Monday evening, how came it to be in the widow's dining-room the next morning, if you did not carry it there?"

"I can only repeat my words," rejoined Mr. Mansell.

The District Attorney replied impatiently. For various reasons he did not wish to believe this man guilty.

"You do not seem very anxious to assist me in my endeavors to reach the truth," he observed. "Cannot you tell me what you did with the ring after you left Miss Dare? Whether you put it on your finger, or thrust it into your pocket, or tossed it into the marsh? If you did not carry it to the house, some one else must have done so, and you ought to be able to help us in determining who."

But Mr. Mansell shortly responded:

"I have nothing to say about the ring. From the moment Miss Dare returned it to me, as you say, it was, so far as I am concerned, a thing forgotten. I do not know as I should ever have thought of it again, if you had not mentioned it to me to-day. How it vanished from my possession only to reappear upon the scene of murder, some more clever conjurer than myself must explain."

"And this is all you have to say, Mr. Mansell?"

"This is all I have to say."

"Byrd," suggested the District Attorney, after a long pause, during which the subject of his suspicions had stood before him as rigid and inscrutable as a statue in bronze, "Mr. Mansell would probably like to go to the hotel, unless, indeed, he desires to return immediately to Buffalo."

Craik Mansell at once started forward.

"Do you intend to allow me to return to Buffalo?" he asked.

"Yes," was the District Attorney's reply.

"You are a good man," broke involuntarily from the other's lips, and he impulsively reached out his hand, but as quickly drew it back with a flush of pride that greatly became him.

"I do not say," quoth Mr. Ferris, "that I exempt you from surveillance. As prosecuting attorney of this district, my duty is to seek out and discover the man who murdered Mrs. Clemmens, and your explanations have not been as full or as satisfactory as I could wish."

"Your men will always find me at my desk in the mill," said Mr. Mansell, coldly. And, with another short bow, he left the attorney's side and went quickly out.

"That man is innocent," declared Mr. Ferris, as Horace Byrd leaned above him in expectation of instructions to keep watch over the departing visitor.

"The way in which he held out his hand to me spoke volumes."

The detective cast a sad glance at Craik Mansell's retreating figure.

"You could not convince Hickory of that fact," said he.

XXIII.

MR. ORCUTT.

What is it she does now?--MACBETH.

My resolution's plac'd, and I have nothing
Of woman in me. Now, from head to foot
I am marble--constant.--ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

THESE words rang in the ears of Mr. Ferris. For he felt himself disturbed by them. Hickory did not believe Mr. Mansell innocent.

At last he sent for that detective.

"Hickory," he asked, "why do you think Mansell, rather than Hildreth, committed this crime?"

Now this query, on the part of the District Attorney, put Hickory into a quandary. He wished to keep his promise to Horace Byrd, and yet he greatly desired to answer his employer's question truthfully. Without any special sympathies of his own, he yet had an undeniable leaning toward justice, and justice certainly demanded the indictment of Mansell. He ended by compromising matters.

"Mr. Ferris," said he, "when you went to see Miss Dare the other day, what did you think of her state of mind?"

"That it was a very unhappy one."

"Didn't you think more than that, sir? Didn't you think she believed Mr. Mansell guilty of this crime?"

"Yes," admitted the other, with reluctance.

"If Miss Dare is attached to Mr. Mansell, she must feel certain of his guilt to _offer_ testimony against him. Her belief should go for something, sir; for much, it strikes me, when you consider what a woman she is."

This conversation increased Mr. Ferris' uneasiness. Much as he wished to spare the feelings of Miss Dare, and, through her, those of his friend, Mr. Orcutt, the conviction of Mansell's criminality was slowly gaining ground in his mind. He remembered the peculiar manner of the latter during the interview they had held together; his quiet acceptance of the position of a suspected man, and his marked reticence in regard to the ring. Though the delicate nature of the interests involved might be sufficient to explain his behavior in the latter regard, his whole conduct could not be said to be that of a disinterested man, even if it were not necessarily that of a guilty one. In whatever way Mr. Ferris looked at it, he could come to but one conclusion, and that was, that justice to Hildreth called for such official attention to the evidence which had been collected against Mansell as should secure the indictment of that man against whom could be brought the more convincing proof of guilt.

Not that Mr. Ferris meant, or in anywise considered it good policy, to have Mansell arrested at this time. As the friend of Mr. Orcutt, it was manifestly advisable for him to present whatever evidence he possessed against Mansell directly to the Grand Jury. For in this way he would not only save the lawyer from the pain and humiliation of seeing the woman he so much loved called up as a witness against the man who had successfully rivalled him in her affections, but would run the chance, at least, of eventually preserving from open knowledge, the various details, if not the actual facts, which had led to this person being suspected of crime. For the Grand Jury is a body whose business it is to make secret inquisition into criminal offences. Its members are bound by oath to the privacy of their deliberations. If, therefore, they should find the proofs presented to them by the District Attorney insufficient to authorize an indictment against Mansell, nothing of their proceedings would transpire. While, on the contrary, if they decided that the evidence was such as to oblige them to indict Mansell instead of Hildreth, neither Mr. Orcutt nor Miss Dare could hold the District Attorney accountable for the exposures that must follow.

The course, therefore, of Mr. Ferris was determined upon. All the evidence in his possession against both parties, together with the verdict of the coroner's jury, should go at once before the Grand Jury; Mansell, in the meantime, being so watched that a bench-warrant issuing upon the indictment would have him safely in custody at any moment.

But this plan for saving Mr. Orcutt's feelings did not succeed as fully as Mr. Ferris hoped. By some means or other the rumor got abroad that another man than Hildreth had fallen under the suspicion of the authorities, and one day Mr. Ferris found himself stopped on the street by the very person he had for a week been endeavoring to avoid.

"Mr. Orcutt!" he cried, "how do you do? I did not recognize you at first."

"No?" was the sharp rejoinder. "I'm not myself nowadays. I have a bad cold." With which impatient explanation he seized Mr. Ferris by the arm and said: "But what is this I hear? You have your eye on another party suspected of being Mrs. Clemmens' murderer?"

The District Attorney bowed uneasily. He had hoped to escape the discussion of this subject with Mr. Orcutt.

The lawyer observed the embarrassment his question had caused, and instantly turned pale, notwithstanding the hardihood which a long career at the bar had given him.

"Ferris," he pursued, in a voice he strove hard to keep steady, "we have always been good friends, in spite of the many tilts we have had together before the court. Will you be kind enough to inform me if your suspicions are founded upon evidence collected by yourself, or at the instigation of parties professing to know more about this murder than they have hitherto revealed?"