THE MYSTERY OF THE HASTY ARROW
by
ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
Author of "The Chief Legatee," "That Affair Next Door," "A StrangeDisappearance," Etc.
With Frontispiece by H. R. Ballinger
"Do not by any show of curiosity endanger her recovery.I would not have her body or mind sacrificed on any account."]
A. L. Burt CompanyPublishers New YorkPublished by Arrangement with Dodd, Mead & CompanyCopyright, 1917,By Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.Made in U.S.A.
CONTENTS
BOOK I--A PROBLEM OF THE FIRST ORDER
CHAPTER
I "Let Some One Speak!"
II In Room B
III "I Have Something to Show You"
IV A Strategic Move
V Three Where Two Should Be
VI The Man in the Gallery
VII "You Think that of Me!"
BOOK II--MR. X
VIII On the Search
IX While the City Slept
X "And He Stood Here?"
XI Footsteps
XII "Spare Nobody! I Say, Spare Nobody!"
XIII "Write Me His Name"
XIV A Loop of Silk
XV News from France
BOOK III--STORM IN THE MOUNTAINS
XVI Friends
XVII The Cuckoo-Clock
XVIII Mrs. Davis' Strange Lodger
XIX Mr. Gryce and the Timid Child
XX Mr. Gryce and the Unwary Woman
XXI Perplexed
XXII He Remembers
XXIII Girls, Girls! Nothing but Girls!
XXIV Flight
XXV Terror
XXVI The Face in the Window
BOOK IV--NEMESIS
XXVII From Lips Long Silent
XXVIII "Romantic! Too Romantic!"
XXIX A Strong Man
XXX The Creeping Shadow
XXXI Confronted
XXXII "Why Is that Here?"
XXXIII Again the Cuckoo-Clock
XXXIV The Bud--Then the Deadly Flower
BOOK I
A PROBLEM OF THE FIRST ORDER
I
"LET SOME ONE SPEAK!"
The hour of noon had just struck, and the few visitors still lingeringamong the curiosities of the great museum were suddenly startled by thesight of one of the attendants running down the broad, central staircase,loudly shouting:
"Close the doors! Let no one out! An accident has occurred, and nobody'sto leave the building."
There was but one person near either of the doors, and as he chanced tobe a man closely connected with the museum,--being, in fact, one of itsmost active directors,--he immediately turned about and in obedience to agesture made by the attendant, ran up the marble steps, followed by somedozen others.
At the top they all turned, as by common consent, toward the left-handgallery, where in the section marked II, a tableau greeted them which fewof them will ever forget.
I say "tableau" because the few persons concerned in it stood as in apicture, absolutely motionless and silent as the dead. Sense, if notfeeling, was benumbed in them all, as in another moment it was benumbedin the breasts of these new arrivals. Tragedy was there in its mostterrible, its most pathetic, aspect. The pathos was given by thevictim,--a young and pretty girl lying face upward on the tessellatedfloor with an arrow in her breast and death stamped unmistakably on everyfeature,--the terror by the look and attitude of the woman they sawkneeling over her--a remarkable woman, no longer young, but of a presenceto hold the attention, even if the circumstances had been of a far lesstragic nature. Her hand was on the arrow but she had made no movement towithdraw it, and her eyes, fixed upon space, showed depths of horrorhardly to be explained even by the suddenness and startling characterof the untoward fatality of which she had just been made the unhappywitness.
The director, whose name was Roberts, thought as he paused on the edge ofthe crowd that he had never seen a countenance upon which woe had stampedso deep a mark; and greatly moved by it, he was about to seek someexplanation of a scene to which appearances gave so little clue, when thetall but stooping figure of the Curator entered, and he found himselfrelieved from a task whose seriousness he had no difficulty in measuring.
To those who knew William Jewett well, it was evident that he had beencalled from some task which still occupied his thoughts and for themoment somewhat bewildered his understanding. But as he was aconscientious man and quite capable of taking the lead when once rousedto the exigencies of an occasion, Mr. Roberts felt a certain interest inwatching the slow awakening of this self-absorbed man to the awfulcircumstances which in one instant had clouded the museum in anatmosphere of mysterious horror.
When the full realization came,--which was not till a way had been madefor him to the side of the stricken woman crouching over the deadchild,--the energy which transformed his countenance and gave characterto his usually bent and inconspicuous figure was all if not more than theanxious director expected.
Finding that his attempts to meet the older woman's eye only prolongedthe suspense, the Curator addressed her quietly, and in sympathetic tonesinquired whose child this was and how so dreadful a thing had happened.
She did not answer. She did not even look his way. With a rapid glanceinto the faces about him, ending in one of deep compassion directedtoward herself, he repeated his question.
Still no response--still that heavy silence, that absolute immobility offace and limb. If her faculty of hearing was dulled, possibly she wouldyield to that of touch. Stooping, he laid his hand on her arm.
This roused her. Slowly her eyes lost their fixed stare and took on amore human light. A shudder shook her frame, and gazing down into thecountenance of the young girl lying at her feet, she broke into moans ofsuch fathomless despair as wrung the hearts of all about her.
It was a scene to test the nerve of any man. To one of the Curator'ssympathetic temperament it was well-nigh unendurable. Turning to thosenearest, he begged for an explanation of what they saw before them:
"Some one here must be able to tell me. Let that some one speak."
At this the quietest and least conspicuous person present, a young manheavily spectacled and of student-like appearance, advanced a step andsaid:
"I was the first person to come in here after this poor young lady fell.I was looking at coins just beyond the partition there, when I heard agasping cry. I had not heard her fall--I fear I was very much preoccupiedin my search for an especial coin I had been told I should find here--butI did hear the cry she gave, and startled by the sound, left the sectionwhere I was and entered this one, only to see just what you are seeingnow."
The Curator pointed at the two women.
"This? The one woman kneeling over the other with her hand on the arrow?"
"Yes, sir."
A change took place in the Curator's expression. Involuntarily his eyesrose to the walls hung closely with Indian relics, among which was aquiver in which all could see arrows similar to the one now in the breastof the young girl lying dead before them.
"This woman must be made to speak," he said in answer to the low murmurwhich followed this discovery. "If there is a doctor present----"
Waiting, but receiving no response, he withdrew his hand from the woman'sarm and laid it on the arrow.
This roused her completely. Loosing her own grasp upon the shaft, shecried, with sudden realization of the people pressing about her:
"I could not draw it. That causes death, they say. Wait! she may still bealive. She may have a word to speak."
r /> She was bending to listen. It was hardly a favorable moment for furtherquestioning, but the Curator in his anxiety could not refrain fromsaying:
"Who is she? What is her name and what is yours?"
"Her name?" repeated the woman, rising to face him again. "How should Iknow? I was passing through this gallery and had just stopped to take alook into the court when this young girl bounded by me from behind andflinging up her arms, fell with a deep sigh to the floor. I saw an arrowin her breast, and----"
Emotion choked her, and when some one asked if the girl was a stranger toher, she simply bowed her head; then, letting her gaze pass from face toface till it had completed the circle of those about her, she said in herformer mechanical way:
"My name is Ermentrude Taylor. I came to look at the bronzes. I shouldlike to go now."
But the crowd which had formed about her was too compact to allow her topass. Besides, the director, Mr. Roberts, had something to say first.Working his way forward, he waited till he had attracted her attentionand then remarked in his most considerate manner:
"You will pardon these importunities, Mrs. Taylor. I am a director ofthis museum, and if Mr. Jewett will excuse me,"--here he bowed to theCurator,--"I should like to inquire from what direction the arrow camewhich ended this young girl's life?"
For a moment she stood aghast, fixing him with her eye as though to askwhither this inquiry tended. Then with an air of intention which was notwithout some strange element of fear, she allowed her glance to travelacross the court till it rested upon the row of connected arches facingthem from the opposite gallery.
"Ah," said he, putting her look into words, "you think the arrow camefrom the other side of the building. Did you see anyone over there,--inthe gallery, I mean,--at or before the instant of this young girl'sfall?"
She shook her head.
"Did any of _you_?" he urged, with his eyes on the crowd. "Some one musthave been looking that way."
But no answer came, and the silence was fast becoming oppressive whenthese words, whispered by one woman to another, roused them anew andsent every glance again to the walls--even hers for whose benefit thisremark had possibly been made:
"But there are no arrows over there. All the arrows are here."
She was right. They were here, quiver after quiver of them; nor were theyall beyond reach. As the woman thus significantly assailed noted this andsaw with what suspicion others noted it also, a decided change took placein her aspect.
"I should like to sit down," she murmured. Possibly she was afraid shemight fall.
As some one brought a chair, she spoke, but very tremulously, to thedirector:
"Are there no arrows in the rooms over there?"
"I am quite sure not."
"And no bows?"
"None."
"If--if anyone had been seen in the gallery----"
"No one was."
"You are sure of that?"
"You heard the question asked. It brought no answer."
"But--but these galleries are visible from below. Some one may have beenlooking up from the court and----"
"If there was any such person in the building, he would have been here bythis time. People don't hold back such information."
"Then--then--" she stammered, her eyes taking on a hunted look, "youconclude--these people conclude _what_?"
"Madam,"--the word came coldly, stinging her into drawing herself to herfull height,--"it is not for me to conclude in a case like this. That isthe business of the police."
At this word, with its suggestion of crime, her air of conscious powervanished in sudden collapse. Possibly she had seen the significantgesture with which the Curator pointed out a quiver from which one of thearrows was missing. That this was so, was shown by her next question:
"But where is the bow? Look about on the floor. You will find none. Howcan an arrow be shot without a bow?"
"It cannot be," came from some one at her back. "But it can be drivenhome like a dagger if the hand wielding it is sufficiently powerful."
A cry left her lips; she seemed to listen as for some echo; then in awild abandonment which ignored person and place she flung herself againat the dead girl's side, and before the astonished people surrounding hercould intervene, she had caught up the body in her arms, and bending overit, whispered word after word into the poor child's closed ear.