The Circular Study

  CHAPTER XII.

  THOMAS EXPLAINS.

  Mr. Gryce was not above employing a little finesse. He had expressed hisintention of following Mr. Adams, and he did follow him, but soimmediately that he not only took the same train, but sat in the samecar. He wished to note at his leisure the bearing of this young man, whointerested him in quite a different way from what he had anticipated, away that vaguely touched his own conscience and made him feel his yearsas he had no right to feel them when he had just brought to an end anintricate and difficult pursuit.

  Seated at a distance, he watched with increasing interest the changeswhich passed over his prisoner's handsome countenance. He noted thecalmness which now marked the features he had so lately seen writhing indeepest agony, and wondered from what source the strength came whichenabled this young man to sit so stoically under the eyes of people fromwhose regard, an hour before, he had shrunk with such apparentsuffering. Was it that courage comes with despair? Or was he tooabsorbed in his own misery to note the shadow it cast about him? Hisbrooding brow and vacant eye spoke of a mind withdrawn from presentsurroundings. Into what depths of remorse, who could say? Certainly notthis old detective, seasoned though he was by lifelong contact withcriminals, some of them of the same social standing and cultured aspectas this young man.

  At the station in Brooklyn he rejoined his prisoner, who scarcely lookedup as he approached. In another hour they were at Police Headquartersand the serious questioning of Mr. Adams had begun.

  He did not attempt to shirk it. Indeed, he seemed anxious to talk. Hehad a burden on his mind, and longed to throw it off. But the burden wasnot of the exact nature anticipated by the police. He did notacknowledge having killed his brother, but confessed to having been theincidental cause of that brother's death. The story he told was this:

  "My name is Cadwalader, not Adams. My father, a Scotchman by birth, wasa naturalized citizen of Pennsylvania, having settled in a place calledMontgomery when a young married man. He had two children then, one ofwhom died in early life; the other was my brother Felix, whose violentdeath under the name of Adams you have called me here to explain. I amthe fruit of a later marriage, entered into by my father some yearsafter leaving Montgomery. When I was born he was living in Harrisburg,but, as he left there shortly after I had reached my third year, I haveno remembrances connected with that city. Indeed, my recollections areall of very different scenes than this country affords. My mother havingdied while I was still an infant, I was sent very early in life to theOld World, from which my father had originally come. When I returned,which was not till this very year, I found my father dying, and mybrother a grown man with money--a great deal of money--which I had beenled to think he was ready to share with me. But after my father was laidaway, Felix" (with what effort he uttered that name!) "Felix came to NewYork, and I was left to wander about without settled hopes or anydefinite promise of means upon which to base a future or start a career.While wandering, I came upon the town where my father had lived in earlyyouth, and, hunting up his old friends, I met in the house of one whohad come over from Scotland with my father a young lady" (how his voiceshook, and with what a poignant accent he uttered that beloved name) "inwhom I speedily became interested to the point of wishing to marry her.But I had no money, no business, no home to give her, and, as I was fainto acknowledge, no prospects. Still I could not give up the hope ofmaking her my wife. So I wrote to my brother, Felix Cadwalader, or,rather, Felix Adams, as he preferred to be called in later years forfamily reasons entirely disconnected with the matter of his suddendemise, and, telling him I had become interested in a young girl of goodfamily and some wealth, asked him to settle upon me a certain sum whichwould enable me to marry her with some feeling of self-respect. My onlyanswer was a repetition of the vague promise he had thrown out before.But youth is hopeful, even to daring, and I decided to make her minewithout further parley, in the hope that her beauty and endearingqualities would win from him, at first view, the definite concession hehad so persistently denied me.

  "This I did, and the fault with which I have most to reproach myself isthat I entered into this alliance without taking her or her father intomy confidence. They thought me well off, possibly rich, and while Mr.Poindexter is a man of means, I am sure, if he had known I had nothingbut the clothes I wore and the merest trifle in the way of pocket money,he would have cried halt to the marriage, for he is a very ambitious manand considers his daughter well worth a millionaire's devotion--as sheis.

  "Felix (you must pardon me if I show no affection for my brother--he wasa very strange man) was notified of my marriage, but did not choose towitness it, neither did he choose to prohibit it; so it was conductedquietly, with strangers for witnesses, in a hotel parlor. Then, withvague hopes, as well as certain vague fears, I prepared to take my youngbride into the presence of my brother, who, hardened as he was by yearsof bachelorhood, could not be so entirely impervious to feminine charmsas not to recognize my wife as a woman deserving of every consideration.

  "But I had counted without my host. When, two days after the ceremonywhich had made us one, I took her to the house which has since become sounhappily notorious, I found that my brother had but shown me one facet,and that the least obdurate, of his many-sided nature.

  "Brilliant as steel, he was as hard, and not only professed himselfunmoved by my wife's many charms, but also as totally out of sympathywith such follies as love and marriage, which were, he said, the fruitof unoccupied minds and a pastime wholly unworthy of men boasting ofsuch talents and attainments as ourselves. Then he turned his back uponus, and I, moved by an anger little short of frenzy, began an abuse forwhich he was so little prepared that he crouched like a man under blows,and, losing minute by minute his self-control, finally caught up adagger lying close at hand, and crying, 'You want my money? Well, then,take it!' stabbed himself to the heart with one desperate blow.

  "I fear I shall not be believed, but that is the story of this crime,gentlemen."