XXXVI. GATHERED THREADS
“This is the short and the long of it.” --Merry Wives of Windsor.
PROMPTLY at the hour named, I made my appearance at Mr. Gryce’s door. Ifound him awaiting me on the threshold.
“I have met you,” said he gravely, “for the purpose of requesting younot to speak during the coming interview. I am to do the talking; youthe listening. Neither are you to be surprised at anything I may do orsay. I am in a facetious mood”--he did not look so--“and may take itinto my head to address you by another name than your own. If I do,don’t mind it. Above all, don’t talk: remember that.” And withoutwaiting to meet my look of doubtful astonishment, he led me softlyup-stairs.
The room in which I had been accustomed to meet him was at the top ofthe first flight, but he took me past that into what appeared to be thegarret story, where, after many cautionary signs, he ushered me intoa room of singularly strange and unpromising appearance. In the firstplace, it was darkly gloomy, being lighted simply by a very dim anddirty skylight. Next, it was hideously empty; a pine table and twohard-backed chairs, set face to face at each end of it, being the onlyarticles in the room. Lastly, it was surrounded by several closed doorswith blurred and ghostly ventilators over their tops which, being round,looked like the blank eyes of a row of staring mummies. Altogether itwas a lugubrious spot, and in the present state of my mind made mefeel as if something unearthly and threatening lay crouched in the veryatmosphere. Nor, sitting there cold and desolate, could I imagine thatthe sunshine glowed without, or that life, beauty, and pleasure paradedthe streets below.
Mr. Gryce’s expression, as he took a seat and beckoned me to do thesame, may have had something to do with this strange sensation, it wasso mysteriously and sombrely expectant.
“You’ll not mind the room,” said he, in so muffled a tone I scarcelyheard him. “It’s an awful lonesome spot, I know; but folks with suchmatters before them mustn’t be too particular as to the places in whichthey hold their consultations, if they don’t want all the world to knowas much as they do. Smith,” and he gave me an admonitory shake of hisfinger, while his voice took a more distinct tone, “I have done thebusiness; the reward is mine; the assassin of Mr. Leavenworth is found,and in two hours will be in custody. Do you want to know who itis?” leaning forward with every appearance of eagerness in tone andexpression.
I stared at him in great amazement. Had anything new come to light? anygreat change taken place in his conclusions? All this preparation couldnot be for the purpose of acquainting me with what I already knew, yet--
He cut short my conjectures with a low, expressive chuckle. “It was along chase, I tell you,” raising his voice still more; “a tight go; awoman in the business too; but all the women in the world can’t pullthe wool over the eyes of Ebenezer Gryce when he is on a trail; and theassassin of Mr. Leavenworth and”--here his voice became actually shrillin his excitement--“and of Hannah Chester is found.
“Hush!” he went on, though I had neither spoken nor made any move; “youdidn’t know Hannah Chester was murdered. Well, she wasn’t in one senseof the word, but in another she was, and by the same hand that killedthe old gentleman. How do I know this? look here! This scrap of paperwas found on the floor of her room; it had a few particles of whitepowder sticking to it; those particles were tested last night and foundto be poison. But you say the girl took it herself, that she was asuicide. You are right, she did take it herself, and it was a suicide;but who terrified her into this act of self-destruction? Why, the onewho had the most reason to fear her testimony, of course. But the proof,you say. Well, sir, this girl left a confession behind her, throwing theonus of the whole crime on a certain party believed to be innocent; thisconfession was a forged one, known from three facts; first, that thepaper upon which it was written was unobtainable by the girl in theplace where she was; secondly, that the words used therein were printedin coarse, awkward characters, whereas Hannah, thanks to the teaching ofthe woman under whose care she has been since the murder, had learned towrite very well; thirdly, that the story told in the confession does notagree with the one related by the girl herself. Now the fact of a forgedconfession throwing the guilt upon an innocent party having been foundin the keeping of this ignorant girl, killed by a dose of poison, takenwith the fact here stated, that on the morning of the day on which shekilled herself the girl received from some one manifestly acquaintedwith the customs of the Leavenworth family a letter large enough andthick enough to contain the confession folded, as it was when found,makes it almost certain to my mind that the murderer of Mr. Leavenworthsent this powder and this so-called confession to the girl, meaningher to use them precisely as she did: for the purpose of throwing offsuspicion from the right track and of destroying herself at the sametime; for, as you know, dead men tell no tales.”
He paused and looked at the dingy skylight above us. Why did theair seem to grow heavier and heavier? Why did I shudder in vagueapprehension? I knew all this before; why did it strike me, then, assomething new?
“But who was this? you ask. Ah, that is the secret; that is the bit ofknowledge which is to bring me fame and fortune. But, secret or not,I don’t mind telling you”; lowering his voice and rapidly raising itagain. “The fact is, _I_ can’t keep it to myself; it burns like a newdollar in my pocket. Smith, my boy, the murderer of Mr. Leavenworth--butstay, who does the world say it is? Whom do the papers point at andshake their heads over? A woman! a young, beautiful, bewitching woman!Ha, ha, ha! The papers are right; it is a woman; young, beautiful, andbewitching too. But what one? Ah, that’s the question. There is morethan one woman in this affair. Since Hannah’s death I have heard itopenly advanced that she was the guilty party in the crime: bah! Otherscry it is the niece who was so unequally dealt with by her uncle in hiswill: bah! again. But folks are not without some justification for thislatter assertion. Eleanore Leavenworth did know more of this matter thanappeared. Worse than that, Eleanore Leavenworth stands in a position ofpositive peril to-day. If you don’t think so, let me show you what thedetectives have against her.
“First, there is the fact that a handkerchief, with her name on it, wasfound stained with pistol grease upon the scene of murder; a place whichshe explicitly denies having entered for twenty-four hours previous tothe discovery of the dead body.
“Secondly, the fact that she not only evinced terror when confrontedwith this bit of circumstantial evidence, but manifested a decideddisposition, both at this time and others, to mislead inquiry, shirkinga direct answer to some questions and refusing all answer to others.
“Thirdly, that an attempt was made by her to destroy a certain letterevidently relating to this crime.
“Fourthly, that the key to the library door was seen in her possession.
“All this, taken with the fact that the fragments of the letter whichthis same lady attempted to destroy within an hour after the inquestwere afterwards put together, and were found to contain a bitterdenunciation of one of Mr. Leavenworth’s nieces, by a gentleman we willcall _X_ in other words, an unknown quantity--makes out a dark caseagainst _you,_ especially as after investigations revealed the fact thata secret underlay the history of the Leavenworth family. That, unknownto the world at large, and Mr. Leavenworth in particular, a marriageceremony had been performed a year before in a little town called F----between a Miss Leavenworth and this same _X._ That, in other words, theunknown gentleman who, in the letter partly destroyed by Miss EleanoreLeavenworth, complained to Mr. Leavenworth of the treatment receivedby him from one of his nieces, was in fact the secret husband of thatniece. And that, moreover, this same gentleman, under an assumed name,called on the night of the murder at the house of Mr. Leavenworth andasked for Miss Eleanore.
“Now you see, with all this against her, Eleanore Leavenworth is lostif it cannot be proved, first that the articles testifying against her,viz.: the handkerchief, letter, and key, passed after the murder throughother hands, before reaching hers; and secondly, that some
one else hadeven a stronger reason than she for desiring Mr. Leavenworth’s death atthis time.
“Smith, my boy, both of these hypotheses have been established by me.By dint of moleing into old secrets, and following unpromising clues, Ihave finally come to the conclusion that not Eleanore Leavenworth, darkas are the appearances against her, but another woman, beautiful asshe, and fully as interesting, is the true criminal. In short, that hercousin, the exquisite Mary, is the murderer of Mr. Leavenworth, and byinference of Hannah Chester also.”
He brought this out with such force, and with such a look of triumphand appearance of having led up to it, that I was for the momentdumbfounded, and started as if I had not known what he was going to say.The stir I made seemed to awake an echo. Something like a suppressedcry was in the air about me. All the room appeared to breathe horror anddismay. Yet when, in the excitement of this fancy, I half turned roundto look, I found nothing but the blank eyes of those dull ventilatorsstaring upon me.
“You are taken aback!” Mr. Gryce went on. “I don’t wonder. Every oneelse is engaged in watching the movements of Eleanore Leavenworth; Ionly know where to put my hand upon the real culprit. You shake yourhead!” (Another fiction.) “You don’t believe me! Think I am deceived.Ha, ha! Ebenezer Gryce deceived after a month of hard work! You are asbad as Miss Leavenworth herself, who has so little faith in my sagacitythat she offered me, of all men, an enormous reward if I would find forher the assassin of her uncle! But that is neither here nor there;you have your doubts, and you are waiting for me to solve them. Well,nothing is easier. Know first that on the morning of the inquest I madeone or two discoveries not to be found in the records, viz.: that thehandkerchief picked up, as I have said, in Mr. Leavenworth’s library,had notwithstanding its stains of pistol grease, a decided perfumelingering about it. Going to the dressing-table of the two ladies, Isought for that perfume, and found it in Mary’s room, not Eleanore’s.This led me to examine the pockets of the dresses respectively worn bythem the evening before. In that of Eleanore I found a handkerchief,presumably the one she had carried at that time. But in Mary’s there wasnone, nor did I see any lying about her room as if tossed down onher retiring. The conclusion I drew from this was, that she, andnot Eleanore, had carried the handkerchief into her uncle’s room, aconclusion emphasized by the fact privately communicated to me by one ofthe servants, that Mary was in Eleanore’s room when the basket of cleanclothes was brought up with this handkerchief lying on top.
“But knowing the liability we are to mistake in such matters as these,I made another search in the library, and came across a very curiousthing. Lying on the table was a penknife, and scattered on the floorbeneath, in close proximity to the chair, were two or three minuteportions of wood freshly chipped off from the leg of the table; all ofwhich looked as if some one of a nervous disposition had been sittingthere, whose hand in a moment of self-forgetfulness had caught up theknife and unconsciously whittled the table. A little thing, you say;but when the question is, which of two ladies, one of a calm andself-possessed nature, the other restless in her ways and excitable inher disposition, was in a certain spot at a certain time, it is theselittle things that become almost deadly in their significance. No onewho has been with these two women an hour can hesitate as to whosedelicate hand made that cut in Mr. Leavenworth’s library table.
“But we are not done. I distinctly overheard Eleanore accuse her cousinof this deed. Now such a woman as Eleanore Leavenworth has provedherself to be never would accuse a relative of crime without thestrongest and most substantial reasons. First, she must have been sureher cousin stood in a position of such emergency that nothing butthe death of her uncle could release her from it; secondly, that hercousin’s character was of such a nature she would not hesitate torelieve herself from a desperate emergency by the most desperate ofmeans; and lastly, been in possession of some circumstantial evidenceagainst her cousin, seriously corroborative of her suspicions. Smith,all this was true of Eleanore Leavenworth. As to the character of hercousin, she has had ample proof of her ambition, love of money, capriceand deceit, it having been Mary Leavenworth, and not Eleanore, as wasfirst supposed, who had contracted the secret marriage already spokenof. Of the critical position in which she stood, let the threat oncemade by Mr. Leavenworth to substitute her cousin’s name for hers inhis will in case she had married this _x_ be remembered, as well as thetenacity with which Mary clung to her hopes of future fortune; while forthe corroborative testimony of her guilt which Eleanore is supposedto have had, remember that previous to the key having been found inEleanore’s possession, she had spent some time in her cousin’s room; andthat it was at Mary’s fireplace the half-burned fragments of that letterwere found,--and you have the outline of a report which in an hour’stime from this will lead to the arrest of Mary Leavenworth as theassassin of her uncle and benefactor.”
A silence ensued which, like the darkness of Egypt, could be felt;then a great and terrible cry rang through the room, and a man’s form,rushing from I knew not where, shot by me and fell at Mr. Gryce’s feetshrieking out:
“It is a lie! a lie! Mary Leavenworth is innocent as a babe unborn. I amthe murderer of Mr. Leavenworth. I! I! I!”
It was Trueman Harwell.