In which a Book Plays a Leading Part
When Mr. Brotherson came in that night, he noticed that the door of the room adjoining his own stood open. He did not hesitate. Making immediately for it, he took a glance inside, then spoke up with a ringing intonation:
“Halloo! coming to live in this hole?”
The occupant a young man, evidently a workman and somewhat sickly if one could judge from his complexion — turned around from some tinkering he was engaged in and met the intruder fairly, face to face. If his jaw fell, it seemed to be from admiration. No other emotion would have so lighted his eye as he took in the others proportions and commanding features. No dress — Brotherson was never seen in any other than the homeliest garb in these days — could make him look common or akin to his surroundings. Whether seen near or far, his presence always caused surprise, and surprise was what the young man showed, as he answered briskly:
“Yes, this is to be my castle. Are you the owner of the buildings? If so —”
“I am not the owner. I live next door. Haven’t I seen you before, young man?”
Never was there a more penetrating eye than Orlando Brotherson’s. As he asked this question it took some effort on the part of the other to hold his own and laugh with perfect naturalness as he replied:
“If you ever go up Henry Street it’s likely enough that you’ve seen me not once, but many times. I’m the fellow who works at the bench next the window in Schuper’s repairing shop. Everybody knows me.”
Audacity often carries the day when subtler means would fail. Brotherson stared at the youth, then ventured another question:
“A carpenter, eh?”
“Yes, and I’m an A1 man at my job. Excuse my brag. It’s my one card of introduction.”
“I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you somewhere else than in Schuper’s shop. Do you remember me?”
“No, sir; I’m sorry to be imperlite but I don’t remember you at all. Won’t you sit down? It’s not very cheerful, but I’m so glad to get out of the room I was in last night that this looks all right to me. Back there, other building,” he whispered. “I didn’t know, and took the room which had a window in it; but —” The stop was significant; so was his smile which had a touch of sickliness in it, as well as humour.
But Brotherson was not to be caught.
“You slept in the building last night? In the other half, I mean?”
“Yes, I— slept.”
The strong lip of the other man curled disdainfully.
“I saw you,” said he. “You were standing in the window overlooking the court. You were not sleeping then. I suppose you know that a woman died in that room?”
“Yes; they told me so this morning.”
“Was that the first you’d heard of it?”
“Sure!” The word almost jumped at the questioner. “Do you suppose I’d have taken the room if —”
But here the intruder, with a disdainful grunt, turned and went out, disgust in every feature,— plain, unmistakable, downright disgust, and nothing more!
This was what gave Sweetwater his second bad night; this and a certain discovery he made. He had counted on hearing what went on in the neighbouring room through the partition running back of his own closet. But he could hear nothing, unless it was the shutting down of a window, a loud sneeze, or the rattling of coals as they were put on the fire. And these possessed no significance. What he wanted was to catch the secret sigh, the muttered word, the involuntary movement. He was too far removed from this man still.
How should he manage to get nearer him — at the door of his mind — of his heart? Sweetwater stared all night from his miserable cot into the darkness of that separating closet, and with no result. His task looked hopeless; no wonder that he could get no rest.
Next morning he felt ill, but he rose all the same, and tried to get his own breakfast. He had but partially succeeded and was sitting on the edge of his bed in wretched discomfort, when the very man he was thinking of appeared at his door.
“I’ve come to see how you are,” said Brotherson. “I noticed that you did not look well last night. Won’t you come in and share my pot of coffee?”
“I— I can’t eat,” mumbled Sweetwater, for once in his life thrown completely off his balance. “You’re very kind, but I’ll manage all right. I’d rather. I’m not quite dressed, you see, and I must get to the shop.” Then he thought —“What an opportunity I’m losing. Have I any right to turn tail because he plays his game from the outset with trumps? No, I’ve a small trump somewhere about me to lay on this trick. It isn’t an ace, but it’ll show I’m not chicane.” And smiling, though not with his usual cheerfulness, Sweetwater added, “Is the coffee all made? I might take a drop of that. But you mustn’t ask me to eat — I just couldn’t.”
“Yes, the coffee is made and it isn’t bad either. You’d better put on your coat; the hall’s draughty.” And waiting till Sweetwater did so, he led the way back to his own room. Brotherson’s manner expressed perfect ease, Sweetwater’s not. He knew himself changed in looks, in bearing, in feeling, even; but was he changed enough to deceive this man on the very spot where they had confronted each other a few days before in a keen moral struggle? The looking-glass he passed on his way to the table where the simple breakfast was spread out, showed him a figure so unlike the alert, business-like chap he had been that night, that he felt his old assurance revive in time to ease a situation which had no counterpart in his experience.
“I’m going out myself to-day, so we’ll have to hurry a bit,” was Brotherson’s first remark as they seated themselves at table. “Do you like your coffee plain or with milk in it?”
“Plain. Gosh! what pictures! Where do you get ’em? You must have a lot of coin.” Sweetwater was staring at the row of photographs, mostly of a very high order, tacked along the wall separating the two rooms. They were unframed, but they were mostly copies of great pictures, and the effect was rather imposing in contrast to the shabby furniture and the otherwise homely fittings.
“Yes, I’ve enough for that kind of thing,” was his host’s reply. But the tone was reserved, and Sweetwater did not presume again along this line. Instead, he looked well at the books piled upon the shelves under these photographs, and wondered aloud at their number and at the man who could waste such a lot of time in reading them. But he made no more direct remarks. Was he cowed by the penetrating eye he encountered whenever he yielded to the fascination exerted by Mr. Brotherson’s personality and looked his way? He hated to think so, yet something held him in check and made him listen, open-mouthed, when the other chose to speak.
Yet there was one cheerful moment. It was when he noticed the careless way in which those books were arranged upon their shelves. An idea had come to him. He hid his relief in his cup, as he drained the last drops of the coffee which really tasted better than he had expected.
When he returned from work that afternoon it was with an auger under his coat and a conviction which led him to empty out the contents of a small phial which he took down from a shelf. He had told Mr. Gryce that he was eager for the business because of its difficulties, but that was when he was feeling fine and up to any game which might come his way. Now he felt weak and easily discouraged. This would not do. He must regain his health at all hazards, so he poured out the mixture which had given him such a sickly air. This done and a rude supper eaten, he took up his auger. He had heard Mr. Brotherson’s step go by. But next minute he laid it down again in great haste and flung a newspaper over it. Mr. Brotherson was coming back, had stopped at his door, had knocked and must be let in.
“You’re better this evening,” he heard in those kindly tones which so confused and irritated him.
“Yes,” was the surly admission. “But it’s stifling here. If I have to live long in this hole I’ll dry up from want of air. It’s near the shop or I wouldn’t stay out the week.” Twice this day he had seen Brotherson’s tall figure stop before the window of this shop and look in at him at his bench. But he said nothing about that.
“Yes,” agreed the other, “it’s no way to live. But you’re alone. Upstairs there’s a whole family huddled into a room just like this. Two of the kids sleep in the closet. It’s things like that which have made me the friend of the poor, and the mortal enemy of men and women who spread themselves over a dozen big rooms and think themselves ill-used if the gas burns poorly or a fireplace smokes. I’m off for the evening; anything I can do for you?”
“Show me how I can win my way into such rooms as you’ve just talked about. Nothing less will make me look up. I’d like to sleep in one to-night. In the best bedroom, sir. I’m ambitious; I am.”
A poor joke, though they both laughed. There Mr. Brotherson passed on, and Sweetwater listened till he was sure that his too attentive neighbour had really gone down the three flights between him and the street. Then he took up his auger again and shut himself up in his closet.
There was nothing peculiar about this closet. It was just an ordinary one with drawers and shelves on one side, and an open space on the other for the hanging up of clothes. Very few clothes hung there at present; but it was in this portion of the closet that he stopped and began to try the wall of Brotherson’s room, with the butt end of the tool he carried.
The sound seemed to satisfy him, for very soon he was boring a hole at a point exactly level with his ear; but not without frequent pauses and much attention given to the possible return of those departed foot-steps. He remembered that Mr. Brotherson had a way of coming back on unexpected errands after giving out his intention of being absent for hours.
Sweetwater did not want to be caught in any such trap as that; so he carefully followed every sound that reached him from the noisy halls. But he did not forsake his post; he did not have to. Mr. Brotherson had been sincere in his good-bye, and the auger finished its job and was withdrawn without any interruption from the man whose premises had been thus audaciously invaded.
“Neat as well as useful,” was the gay comment with which Sweetwater surveyed his work, then laid his ear to the hole. Whereas previously he could barely hear the rattling of coals from the coal-scuttle, he was now able to catch the sound of an ash falling into the ash-pit.
His next move was to test the depth of the partition by inserting his finger in the hole he had made. He found it stopped by some obstacle before it had reached half its length, and anxious to satisfy himself of the nature of this obstacle, he gently moved the tip of his finger to and fro over what was certainly the edge of a book.
This proved that his calculations had been correct and that the opening so accessible on his side, was completely veiled on the other by the books he had seen packed on the shelves. As these shelves had no other backing than the wall, he had feared striking a spot not covered by a book. But he had not undertaken so risky a piece of work without first noting how nearly the tops of the books approached the line of the shelf above them, and the consequent unlikelihood of his striking the space between, at the height he planned the hole. He had even been careful to assure himself that all the volumes at this exact point stood far enough forward to afford room behind them for the chips and plaster he must necessarily push through with his auger, and also — important consideration — for the free passage of the sounds by which he hoped to profit.
As he listened for a moment longer, and then stooped to gather up the debris which had fallen on his own side of the partition, he muttered, in his old self-congratulatory way:
“If the devil don’t interfere in some way best known to himself, this opportunity I have made for myself of listening to this arrogant fellow’s very heartbeats should give me some clew to his secret. As soon as I can stand it, I’ll spend my evenings at this hole.”
But it was days before he could trust himself so far. Meanwhile their acquaintance ripened, though with no very satisfactory results. The detective found himself led into telling stories of his early home-life to keep pace with the man who always had something of moment and solid interest to impart. This was undesirable, for instead of calling out a corresponding confidence from Brotherson, it only seemed to make his conversation more coldly impersonal.
In consequence, Sweetwater suddenly found himself quite well and one evening, when he was sure that his neighbour was at home, he slid softly into his closet and laid his ear to the opening he had made there. The result was unexpected. Mr. Brotherson was pacing the floor, and talking softly to himself.
At first, the cadence and full music of the tones conveyed nothing to our far from literary detective. The victim of his secret machinations was expressing himself in words, words;— that was the point which counted with him. But as he listened longer and gradually took in the sense of these words, his heart went down lower and lower till it reached his boots. His inscrutable and ever disappointing neighbour was not indulging in self-communings of any kind. He was reciting poetry, and what was worse, poetry which he only half remembered and was trying to recall;— an incredible occupation for a man weighted with a criminal secret.
Sweetwater was disgusted, and was withdrawing in high indignation from his vantage-point when something occurred of a startling enough nature to hold him where he was in almost breathless expectation.
The hole which in the darkness of the closet was always faintly visible, even when the light was not very strong in the adjoining room, had suddenly become a bright and shining loop-hole, with a suggestion of movement in the space beyond. The book which had hid this hole on Brotherson’s side had been taken down — the one book in all those hundreds whose removal threatened Sweetwater’s schemes, if not himself.
For an instant the thwarted detective listened for the angry shout or the smothered oath which would naturally follow the discovery by Brotherson of this attempted interference with his privacy.
But all was still on his side of the wall. A rustling of leaves could be heard, as the inventor searched for the poem he wanted, but nothing more. In withdrawing the book, he had failed to notice the hole in the plaster back of it. But he could hardly fail to see it when he came to put the book back. Meantime, suspense for Sweetwater.
It was several minutes before he heard Mr. Brotherson’s voice again, then it was in triumphant repetition of the lines which had escaped his memory. They were great words surely and Sweetwater never forgot them, but the impression which they made upon his mind, an impression so forcible that he was able to repeat them, months afterward to Mr. Gryce, did not prevent him from noting the tone in which they were uttered, nor the thud which followed as the book was thrown down upon the floor.
“Fool!” The word rang out in bitter irony from his irate neighbour’s lips. “What does he know of woman! Woman! Let him court a rich one and see — but that’s all over and done with. No more harping on that string, and no more reading of poetry. I’ll never,—” The rest was lost in his throat and was quite unintelligible to the anxious listener.
Self-revealing words, which an instant before would have aroused Sweetwater’s deepest interest! But they had suddenly lost all force for the unhappy listener. The sight of that hole still shining brightly before his eyes had distracted his thoughts and roused his liveliest apprehensions. If that book should be allowed to lie where it had fallen, then he was in for a period of uncertainty he shrank from contemplating. Any moment his neighbour might look up and catch sight of this hole bored in the backing of the shelves before him. Could the man who had been guilty of submitting him to this outrage stand the strain of waiting indefinitely for the moment of discovery? He doubted it, if the suspense lasted too long.
Shifting his position, he placed his eye where his ear had been. He could see very little. The space before him, limited as it was to the width of the one volume withdrawn, precluded his seeing aught but what lay directly before him. Happily, it was in this narrow line of vision that Mr. Brotherson stood. He had resumed work upon his model and was so placed that while his face was not visible, his hands were, and as Sweetwater watched these hands and noticed the delicacy of their manipulation, he was enough of a workman to realise that work so fine called for an undivided attention. He need not fear the gaze shifting, while those hands moved as warily as they did now.
Relieved for the moment, he left his post and, sitting down on the edge of his cot, gave himself up to thought.
He deserved this mischance. Had he profited properly by Mr. Gryce’s teachings, he would not have been caught like this; he would have calculated not upon the nine hundred and ninety-nine chances of that book being left alone, but upon the thousandth one of its being the very one to be singled out and removed. Had he done this,— had he taken pains to so roughen and discolour the opening he had made, that it would look like an ancient rat hole instead of showing a clean bore, he would have some answer to give Brotherson when he came to question him in regard to it. But now the whole thing seemed up! He had shown himself a fool and by good rights ought to acknowledge his defeat and return to Headquarters. But he had too much spirit for that. He would rather — yes, he would rather face the pistol he had once seen in his enemy’s hand. Yet it was hard to sit here waiting, waiting — Suddenly he started upright. He would go meet his fate — be present in the room itself when the discovery was made which threatened to upset all his plans. He was not ashamed of his calling, and Brotherson would think twice before attacking him when once convinced that he had the Department behind him.
“Excuse me, comrade,” were the words with which he endeavoured to account for his presence at Brotherson’s door. “My lamp smells so, and I’ve made such a mess of my work to-day that I’ve just stepped in for a chat. If I’m not wanted, say so. I don’t want to bother you, but you do look pleasant here. I hope the thing I’m turning over in my head — every man has his schemes for making a fortune, you know — will be a success some day. I’d like a big room like this, and a lot of books, and — and pictures.”
Craning his neck, he took a peep at the shelves, with an air of open admiration which effectually concealed his real purpose. What he wanted was to catch one glimpse of that empty space from his present standpoint, and he was both astonished and relieved to note how narrow and inconspicuous it looked. Certainly, he had less to fear than he supposed, and when, upon Mr. Brotherson’s invitation, he stepped into the room, it was with a dash of his former audacity, which gave him, unfortunately, perhaps, a quick, strong and unexpected likeness to his old self.
But if Brotherson noticed this, nothing in his manner gave proof of the fact. Though usually averse to visitors, especially when employed as at present on his precious model, he quite warmed towards his unexpected guest, and even led the way to where it stood uncovered on the table.
“You find me at work,” he remarked. “I don’t suppose you understand any but your own?”
“If you mean to ask if I understand what you’re trying to do there, I’m free to say that I don’t. I couldn’t tell now, off-hand, whether it’s an air-ship you’re planning, a hydraulic machine or — or —” He stopped, with a laugh and turned towards the book-shelves. “Now here’s what I like. These books just take my eye.”
“Look at them, then. I like to see a man interested in books. Only, I thought if you knew how to handle wire, I would get you to hold this end while I work with the other.”
“I guess I know enough for that,” was Sweetwater’s gay rejoinder. But when he felt that communicating wire in his hand and experienced for the first time the full influence of the other’s eye, it took all his hardihood to hide the hypnotic thrill it gave him. Though he smiled and chatted, he could not help asking himself between whiles, what had killed the poor washerwoman across the court, and what had killed Miss Challoner. Something visible or something invisible? Something which gave warning of attack, or something which struck in silence. He found himself gazing long and earnestly at this man’s hand, and wondering if death lay under it. It was a strong hand, a deft, clean-cut member, formed to respond to the slightest hint from the powerful brain controlling it. But was this its whole story. Had he said all when he had said this?
Fascinated by the question, Sweetwater died a hundred deaths in his awakened fancy, as he followed the sharp short instructions which fell with cool precision from the other’s lips. A hundred deaths, I say, but with no betrayal of his folly. The anxiety he showed was that of one eager to please, which may explain why on the conclusion of his task, Mr. Brotherson gave him one of his infrequent smiles and remarked, as he buried the model under its cover, “You’re handy and you’re quiet at your job. Who knows but that I shall want you again. Will you come if I call you?”
“Won’t I?” was the gay retort, as the detective thus released, stooped for the book still lying on the floor. “Paolo and Francesca,” he read, from the back, as he laid it on the table. “Poetry?” he queried.
“Rot,” scornfully returned the other, as he moved to take down a bottle and some glasses from a cupboard let into another portion of the wall.
Sweetwater taking advantage of the moment, sidled towards the shelf where that empty space still gaped with the tell-tale hole at the back. He could easily have replaced the missing book before Mr. Brotherson turned. But the issue was too doubtful. He was dealing with no absent-minded fool, and it behooved him to avoid above all things calling attention to the book or to the place on the shelf where it belonged.
But there was one thing he could do and did. Reaching out a finger as deft as Brotherson’s own, he pushed a second volume into the place of the one that was gone. This veiled the auger-hole completely; a fact which so entirely relieved his mind that his old smile came back like sunshine to his lips, and it was only by a distinct effort that he kept the dancing humour from his eyes as he prepared to refuse the glass which Brotherson now brought forward:
“None of that!” said he. “You mustn’t tempt me. The doctor has shut down on all kinds of spirits for two months more, at least. But don’t let me hinder you. I can bear to smell the stuff. My turn will come again some day.”
But Brotherson did not drink. Setting down the glass he carried, he took up the book lying near, weighed it in his hand and laid it down again, with an air of thoughtful inquiry. Then he suddenly pushed it towards Sweetwater. “Do you want it?” he asked.
Sweetwater was too taken aback to answer immediately. This was a move he did not understand. Want it, he? What he wanted was to see it put back in its place on the shelf. Did Brotherson suspect this? The supposition was incredible; yet who could read a mind so mysterious?
Sweetwater, debating the subject, decided that the risk of adding to any such possible suspicion was less to be dreaded than the continued threat offered by that unoccupied space so near the hole which testified so unmistakably of the means he had taken to spy upon this suspected man’s privacy. So, after a moment of awkward silence, not out of keeping with the character he had assumed, he calmly refused the present as he had the glass.
Unhappily he was not rewarded by seeing the despised volume restored to its shelf. It still lay where its owner had pushed it, when, with some awkwardly muttered thanks, the discomfited detective withdrew to his own room.
What Am I to Do Now
Early morning saw Sweetwater peering into the depths of his closet. The hole was hardly visible. This meant that the book he had pushed across it from the other side had not been removed.
Greatly re-assured by the sight, he awaited his opportunity, and as soon as a suitable one presented itself, prepared the hole for inspection by breaking away its edges and begriming it well with plaster and old dirt. This done, he left matters to arrange themselves; which they did, after this manner.
Mr. Brotherson suddenly developed a great need of him, and it became a common thing for him to spend the half and, sometimes, the whole of the evening in the neighbouring room. This was just what he had worked for, and his constant intercourse with the man whose secret he sought to surprise should have borne fruit. But it did not. Nothing in the eager but painstaking inventor showed a distracted mind or a heavily-burdened soul. Indeed, he was so calm in all his ways, so precise and so self-contained, that Sweetwater often wondered what had become of the fiery agitator and eloquent propagandist of new and startling doctrines.
Then, he thought he understood the riddle. The model was reaching its completion, and Brotherson’s extreme interest in it and the confidence he had in its success swallowed up all lesser emotions. Were the invention to prove a failure — but there was small hope of this. The man was of too well-poised a mind to over-estimate his work or miscalculate its place among modern improvements. Soon he would reach the goal of his desires, be praised, feted, made much of by the very people he now professedly scorned. There was no thoroughfare for Sweetwater here. Another road must be found; some secret, strange and unforeseen method of reaching a soul inaccessible to all ordinary or even extraordinary impressions.
Would a night of thought reveal such a method? Night! the very word brought inspiration. A man is not his full self at night. Secrets which, under the ordinary circumstances of everyday life, lie too deep for surprise, creep from their hiding-places in the dismal hours of universal quiet, and lips which are dumb to the most subtle of questioners break into strange and self-revealing mutterings when sleep lies heavy on ear and eye and the forces of life and death are released to play with the rudderless spirit.
It was in different words from these that Sweetwater reasoned, no doubt, but his conclusions were the same, and as he continued to brood over them, he saw a chance — a fool’s chance, possibly, (but fools sometimes win where wise men fail) of reaching those depths he still believed in, notwithstanding his failure to sound them.
Addressing a letter to his friend in Twenty-ninth Street, he awaited reply in the shape of a small package he had ordered sent to the corner drug-store. When it came, he carried it home in a state of mingled hope and misgiving. Was he about to cap his fortnight of disappointment by another signal failure; end the matter by disclosing his hand; lose all, or win all by an experiment as daring and possibly as fanciful as were his continued suspicions of this seemingly upright and undoubtedly busy man?
He made no attempt to argue the question. The event called for the exercise of the most dogged elements in his character and upon these he must rely. He would make the effort he contemplated, simply because he was minded to do so. That was all there was to it. But any one noting him well that night, would have seen that he ate little and consulted his watch continually. Sweetwater had not yet passed the line where work becomes routine and the feelings remain totally under control.
Brotherson was unusually active and alert that evening. He was anxious to fit one delicate bit of mechanism into another, and he was continually interrupted by visitors. Some big event was on in the socialistic world, and his presence was eagerly demanded by one brotherhood after another. Sweetwater, posted at his loop-hole, heard the arguments advanced by each separate spokesman, followed by Brotherson’s unvarying reply: that when his work was done and he had proved his right to approach them with a message, they might look to hear from him again; but not before. His patience was inexhaustible, but he showed himself relieved when the hour grew too late for further interruption. He began to whistle — a token that all was going well with him, and Sweetwater, who had come to understand some of his moods, looked forward to an hour or two of continuous work on Brotherson’s part and of dreary and impatient waiting on his own. But, as so many times before, he misread the man. Earlier than common — much earlier, in fact, Mr. Brotherson laid down his tools and gave himself up to a restless pacing of the floor. This was not usual with him. Nor did he often indulge himself in playing on the piano as he did to-night, beginning with a few heavenly strains and ending with a bang that made the key-board jump. Certainly something was amiss in the quarter where peace had hitherto reigned undisturbed. Had the depths begun to heave, or were physical causes alone responsible for these unwonted ebullitions of feeling?
The question was immaterial. Either would form an excellent preparation for the coup planned by Sweetwater; and when, after another hour of uncertainty, perfect silence greeted him from his neighbour’s room, hope had soared again on exultant wing, far above all former discouragements.
Mr. Brotherson’s bed was in a remote corner from the loop-hole made by Sweetwater; but in the stillness now pervading the whole building, the latter could hear his even breathing very distinctly. He was in a deep sleep.
The young detective’s moment had come.
Taking from his breast a small box, he placed it on a shelf close against the partition. An instant of quiet listening, then he touched a spring in the side of the box and laid his ear, in haste, to his loop-hole.
A strain of well-known music broke softly, from the box and sent its vibrations through the wall.
It was answered instantly by a stir within; then, as the noble air continued, awakening memories of that fatal instant when it crashed through the corridors of the Hotel Clermont, drowning Miss Challoner’s cry if not the sound of her fall, a word burst from the sleeping man’s lips which carried its own message to the listening detective.
It was Edith! Miss Challoner’s first name, and the tone bespoke a shaken soul.
Sweetwater, gasping with excitement, caught the box from the shelf and silenced it. It had done its work and it was no part of Sweetwater’s plan to have this strain located, or even to be thought real. But its echo still lingered in Brotherson’s otherwise unconscious ears; for another “Edith!” escaped his lips, followed by a smothered but forceful utterance of these five words, “You know I promised you —”
Promised her what? He did not say. Would he have done so had the music lasted a trifle longer? Would he yet complete his sentence? Sweetwater trembled with eagerness and listened breathlessly for the next sound. Brotherson was awake. He was tossing in his bed. Now he has leaped to the floor. Sweetwater hears him groan, then comes another silence, broken at last by the sound of his body falling back upon the bed and the troubled ejaculation of “Good God!” wrung from lips no torture could have forced into complaint under any daytime conditions.
Sweetwater continued to listen, but he had heard all, and after some few minutes longer of fruitless waiting, he withdrew from his post. The episode was over. He would hear no more that night.
Was he satisfied? Certainly the event, puerile as it might seem to some, had opened up strange vistas to his aroused imagination. The words “Edith, you know I promised you —” were in themselves provocative of strange and doubtful conjectures. Had the sleeper under the influence of a strain of music indissolubly associated with the death of Miss Challoner, been so completely forced back into the circumstances and environment of that moment that his mind had taken up and his lips repeated the thoughts with which that moment of horror was charged? Sweetwater imagined the scene — saw the figure of Brotherson hesitating at the top of the stairs — saw hers advancing from the writing-room, with startled and uplifted hand — heard the music — the crash of that great finale — and decided, without hesitation, that the words he had just heard were indeed the thoughts of that moment. “Edith, you know I promised you —” What had he promised? What she received was death! Had this been in his mind? Would this have been the termination of the sentence had he wakened less soon to consciousness and caution?
Sweetwater dared to believe it. He was no nearer comprehending the mystery it involved than he had been before, but he felt sure that he had been given one true and positive glimpse into this harassed soul which showed its deeply hidden secret to be both deadly and fearsome; and happy to have won his way so far into the mystic labyrinth he had sworn to pierce, he rested in happy unconsciousness till morning when —
Could it be? Was it he who was dreaming now, or was the event of the night a mere farce of his own imagining? Mr. Brotherson was whistling in his room, gaily and with ever increasing verve, and the tune which filled the whole floor with music was the same grand finale from William Tell which had seemed to work such magic in the night. As Sweetwater caught the mellow but indifferent notes sounding from those lips of brass, he dragged forth the music-box he held hidden in his coat pocket, and flinging it on the floor stamped upon it.
“The man is too strong for me,” he cried. “His heart is granite; he meets my every move. What am I to do now?”
The Danger Moment
For a day Sweetwater acknowledged himself to be mentally crushed, disillusioned and defeated. Then his spirits regained their poise. It would take a heavy weight indeed to keep them down permanently.
His opinion was not changed in regard to his neighbour’s secret guilt. A demeanour of this sort suggested bravado rather than bravery to the ever suspicious detective. But he saw, very plainly by this time, that he would have to employ more subtle methods yet ere his hand would touch the goal which so tantalisingly eluded him.
His work at the bench suffered that week; he made two mistakes. But by Saturday night he had satisfied himself that he had reached the point where he would be justified in making use of Miss Challoner’s letters. So he telephoned his wishes to New York, and awaited the promised developments with an anxiety we can only understand by realising how much greater were his chances of failure than of success. To ensure the latter, every factor in his scheme must work to perfection. The medium of communication (a young, untried girl) must do her part with all the skill of artist and author combined. Would she disappoint them? He did not think so. Women possess a marvellous adaptability for this kind of work and this one was French, which made the case still more hopeful.
But Brotherson! In what spirit would he meet the proposed advances? Would he even admit the girl, and, if he did, would the interview bear any such fruit as Sweetwater hoped for? The man who could mock the terrors of the night by a careless repetition of a strain instinct with the most sacred memories, was not to be depended upon to show much feeling at sight of a departed woman’s writing. But no other hope remained, and Sweetwater faced the attempt with heroic determination.
The day was Sunday, which ensured Brotherson’s being at home. Nothing would have lured Sweetwater out for a moment, though he had no reason to expect that the affair he was anticipating would come off till early evening.
But it did. Late in the afternoon he heard the expected steps go by his door — a woman’s steps. But they were not alone. A man’s accompanied them. What man? Sweetwater hastened to satisfy himself on this point by laying his ear to the partition.
Instantly the whole conversation became audible. “An errand? Oh, yes, I have an errand!” explained the evidently unwelcome intruder, in her broken English. “This is my brother Pierre. My name is Celeste; Celeste Ledru. I understand English ver well. I have worked much in families. But he understands nothing. He is all French. He accompanies me for — for the — what you call it? les convenances. He knows nothing of the beesiness.”
Sweetwater in the darkness of his closet laughed in his gleeful appreciation.
“Great!” was his comment. “Just great! She has thought of everything — or Mr. Gryce has.”
Meanwhile, the girl was proceeding with increased volubility.
“What is this beesiness, monsieur? I have something to sell — so you Americans speak. Something you will want much — ver sacred, ver precious. A souvenir from the tomb, monsieur. Will you give ten — no, that is too leetle — fifteen dollars for it? It is worth — Oh, more, much more to the true lover. Pierre, tu es bete. Teins-tu droit sur ta chaise. M. Brotherson est un monsieur comme il faut.”
This adjuration, uttered in sharp reprimand and with but little of the French grace, may or may not have been understood by the unsympathetic man they were meant to impress. But the name which accompanied them — his own name, never heard but once before in this house, undoubtedly caused the silence which almost reached the point of embarrassment, before he broke it with the harsh remark:
“Your French may be good, but it does not go with me. Yet is it more intelligible than your English. What do you want here? What have you in that bag you wish to open; and what do you mean by the sentimental trash with which you offer it?”
“Ah, monsieur has not memory of me,” came in the sweetest tones of a really seductive voice. “You astonish me, monsieur. I thought you knew — everybody else does — Oh, tout le monde, monsieur, that I was Miss Challoner’s maid — near her when other people were not — near her the very day she died.”
A pause; then an angry exclamation from some one. Sweetwater thought from the brother, who may have misinterpreted some look or gesture on Brotherson’s part. Brotherson himself would not be apt to show surprise in any such noisy way.
“I saw many things — Oh many things —” the girl proceeded with an admirable mixture of suggestion and reserve. “That day and other days too. She did not talk — Oh, no, she did not talk, but I saw — Oh, yes, I saw that she — that you — I’ll have to say it, monsieur, that you were tres bons amis after that week in Lenox.”
“Well?” His utterance of this word was vigorous, but not tender. “What are you coming to? What can you have to show me in this connection that I will believe in for a moment?”
“I have these — is monsieur certaine that no one can hear? I wouldn’t have anybody hear what I have to tell you, for the world — for all the world.”
“No one can overhear.”
For the first time that day Sweetwater breathed a full, deep breath. This assurance had sounded heartfelt. “Blessings on her cunning young head. She thinks of everything.”
“You are unhappy. You have thought Miss Challoner cold;— that she had no response for your ver ardent passion. But —” these words were uttered sotto voce and with telling pauses “— but — I— know — ver much better than that. She was ver proud. She had a right; she was no poor girl like me — but she spend hours — hours in writing letters she — nevaire send. I saw one, just once, for a leetle minute; while you could breathe so short as that; and began with Cheri, or your English for that, and ended with words — Oh, ver much like these: You may nevaire see these lines, which was ver interesting, veree so, and made one want to see what she did with letters she wrote and nevaire mail; so I watch and look, and one day I see them. She had a leetle ivory box — Oh, ver nice, ver pretty. I thought it was jewels she kept locked up so tight. But, non, non, non. It was letters — these letters. I heard them rattle, rattle, not once but many times. You believe me, monsieur?
“I believe you to have taken every advantage posible to spy upon your mistress. I believe that, yes.”
“From interest, monsieur, from great interest.”
“Self-interest.”
“As monsieur pleases. But it was strange, ver strange for a grande dame like that to write letters — sheets on sheets — and then not send them, nevaire. I dreamed of those letters — I could not help it, no; and when she died so quick — with no word for any one, no word at all, I thought of those writings so secret, so of the heart, and when no one noticed — or thought about this box, or — or the key she kept shut tight, oh, always tight in her leetle gold purse, I— Monsieur, do you want to see those letters?” asked the girl, with a gulp. Evidently his appearance frightened her — or had her acting reached this point of extreme finish? “I had nevaire the chance to put them back. And — and they belong to monsieur. They are his — all his — and so beautiful! Ah, just like poetry.”
“I don’t consider them mine. I haven’t a particle of confidence in you or in your story. You are a thief — self-convicted; or you’re an agent of the police whose motives I neither understand nor care to investigate. Take up your bag and go. I haven’t a cent’s worth of interest in its contents.”
She started to her feet. Sweetwater heard her chair grate on the painted floor, as she pushed it back in rising. The brother rose too, but more calmly. Brotherson did not stir. Sweetwater felt his hopes rapidly dying down — down into ashes, when suddenly her voice broke forth in pants:
“And Marie said — everybody said — that you loved our great lady; that you, of the people, common, common, working with the hands, living with men and women working with the hands, that you had soul, sentiment — what you will of the good and the great, and that you would give your eyes for her words, si fines, si spirituelles, so like des vers de poete. False! false! all false! She was an angel. You are — read that!” she vehemently broke in, opening her bag and whisking a paper down before him. “Read and understand my proud and lovely lady. She did right to die. You are hard — hard. You would have killed her if she had not —”
“Silence, woman! I will read nothing!” came hissing from the strong man’s teeth, set in almost ungovernable anger. “Take back this letter, as you call it, and leave my room.”
“Nevaire! You will not read? But you shall, you shall. Behold another! One, two, three, four!” Madly they flew from her hand. Madly she continued her vituperative attack. “Beast! beast! That she should pour out her innocent heart to you, you! I do not want your money, Monsieur of the common street, of the common house. It would be dirt. Pierre, it would be dirt. Ah, bah! je m’oublie tout a fait. Pierre, il est bete. Il refuse de les toucher. Mais il faut qu’il les touche, si je les laisse sur le plancher. Va-t’en! Je me moque de lui. Canaille! L’homme du peuple, tout a fait du peuple!”
A loud slam — the skurrying of feet through the hall, accompanied by the slower and heavier tread of the so-called brother, then silence, and such silence that Sweetwater fancied he could catch the sound of Brotherson’s heavy breathing. His own was silenced to a gasp. What a treasure of a girl! How natural her indignation! What an instinct she showed and what comprehension! This high and mighty handling of a most difficult situation and a most difficult man, had imposed on Brotherson, had almost imposed upon himself. Those letters so beautiful, so spirituelle! Yet, the odds were that she had never read them, much less abstracted them. The minx! the ready, resourceful, wily, daring minx!
But had she imposed on Brotherson? As the silence continued, Sweetwater began to doubt. He understood quite well the importance of his neighbour’s first movement. Were he to tear those letters into shreds! He might be thus tempted. All depended on the strength of his present mood and the real nature of the secret which lay buried in his heart.
Was that heart as flinty as it seemed? Was there no place for doubt or even for curiosity, in its impenetrable depths? Seemingly, he had not moved foot or hand since his unwelcome visitors had left. He was doubtless still staring at the scattered sheets lying before him; possibly battling with unaccustomed impulses; possibly weighing deeds and consequences in those slow moving scales of his in which no man could cast a weight with any certainty how far its even balance would be disturbed.
There was a sound as of settling coal. Only at night would one expect to hear so slight a sound as that in a tenement full of noisy children. But the moment chanced to be propitious, and it not only attracted the attention of Sweetwater on his side of the wall, but it struck the ear of Brotherson also. With an ejaculation as bitter as it was impatient, he roused himself and gathered up the letters. Sweetwater could hear the successive rustlings as he bundled them up in his hand. Then came another silence — then the lifting of a stove lid.
Sweetwater had not been wrong in his secret apprehension. His identification with his unimpressionable neighbour’s mood had shown him what to expect. These letters — these innocent and precious outpourings of a rare and womanly soul — the only conceivable open sesame to the hard-locked nature he found himself pitted against, would soon be resolved into a vanishing puff of smoke.
But the lid was thrust back, and the letters remained in hand. Mortal strength has its limits. Even Brotherson could not shut down that lid on words which might have been meant for him, harshly as he had repelled the idea.
The pause which followed told little; but when Sweetwater heard the man within move with characteristic energy to the door, turn the key and step back again to his place at the table, he knew that the danger moment had passed and that those letters were about to be read, not casually, but seriously, as indeed their contents merited.
This caused Sweetwater to feel serious himself. Upon what result might he calculate? What would happen to this hardy soul, when the fact he so scornfully repudiated, was borne in upon him, and he saw that the disdain which had antagonised him was a mere device — a cloak to hide the secret heart of love and eager womanly devotion? Her death — little as Brotherson would believe it up till now — had been his personal loss the greatest which can befall a man. When he came to see this — when the modest fervour of her unusual nature began to dawn upon him in these self-revelations, would the result be remorse, or just the deadening and final extinction of whatever tenderness he may have retained for her memory?
Impossible to tell. The balance of probability hung even. Sweetwater recognised this, and clung, breathless, to his loop-hole. Fain would he have seen, as well as heard.
Mr. Brotherson read the first letter, standing. As it soon became public property, I will give it here, just as it afterwards appeared in the columns of the greedy journals:
“Beloved:
“When I sit, as I often do, in perfect quiet under the stars, and dream that you are looking at them too, not for hours as I do, but for one full moment in which your thoughts are with me as wholly as mine are with you, I feel that the bond between us, unseen by the world, and possibly not wholly recognised by ourselves, is instinct with the same power which links together the eternities.
“It seems to have always been; to have known no beginning, only a budding, an efflorescence, the visible product of a hidden but always present reality. A month ago and I was ignorant, even, of your name. Now, you seem the best known to me, the best understood, of God’s creatures. One afternoon of perfect companionship — one flash of strong emotion, with its deep, true insight into each other’s soul, and the miracle was wrought. We had met, and henceforth, parting would mean separation only, and not the severing of a mutual bond. One hand, and one only, could do that now. I will not name that hand. For us there is nought ahead but life.
“Thus do I ease my heart in the silence which conditions impose upon us. Some day I shall hear your voice again, and then-”
The paper dropped from the reader’s hand. It was several minutes before he took up another.
This one, as it happened, antedated the other, as will appear on reading it:
“My friend:
“I said that I could not write to you — that we must wait. You were willing; but there is much to be accomplished, and the silence may be long. My father is not an easy man to please, but he desires my happiness and will listen to my plea when the right hour comes. When you have won your place — when you have shown yourself to be the man I feel you to be, then my father will recognise your worth, and the way will be cleared, despite the obstacles which now intervene.
“But meantime! Ah, you will not know it, but words will rise — the heart must find utterance. What the lip cannot utter, nor the looks reveal, these pages shall hold in sacred trust for you till the day when my father will place my hand in yours, with heart-felt approval.
“Is it a folly? A woman’s weak evasion of the strong silence of man? You may say so some day; but somehow, I doubt it — I doubt it.”
The creaking of a chair;— the man within had seated himself. There was no other sound; a soul in turmoil wakens no echoes. Sweetwater envied the walls surrounding the unsympathetic reader. They could see. He could only listen.
A little while; then that slight rustling again of the unfolding sheet. The following was read, and then the fourth and last:
“Dearest:
“Did you think I had never seen you till that day we met in Lenox? I am going to tell you a secret — a great, great secret — such a one as a woman hardly whispers to her own heart.
“One day, in early summer, I was sitting in St. Bartholomew’s Church on Fifth Avenue, waiting for the services to begin. It was early and the congregation was assembling. While idly watching the people coming in, I saw a gentleman pass by me up the aisle, who made me forget all the others. He had not the air of a New Yorker; he was not even dressed in city style, but as I noted his face and expression, I said way down in my heart, ‘That is the kind of man I could love; the only man I have ever seen who could make me forget my own world and my own people.’ It was a passing thought, soon forgotten. But when in that hour of embarrassment and peril on Greylock Mountain, I looked up into the face of my rescuer and saw again that countenance which so short a time before had called into life impulses till then utterly unknown, I knew that my hour was come. And that was why my confidence was so spontaneous and my belief in the future so absolute.
“I trust your love which will work wonders; and I trust my own, which sprang at a look but only gathered strength and permanence when I found that the soul of the man I loved bettered his outward attractions, making the ideal of my foolish girlhood seem as unsubstantial and evanescent as a dream in the glowing noontide.”
“My Own:
“I can say so now; for you have written to me, and I have the dancing words with which to silence any unsought doubt which might subdue the exuberance of these secret outpourings.
“I did not expect this. I thought that you would remain as silent as myself. But men’s ways are not our ways. They cannot exhaust longing in purposeless words on scraps of soulless paper, and I am glad that they cannot. I love you for your impatience; for your purpose, and for the manliness which will win for you yet all that you covet of fame, accomplishment and love. You expect no reply, but there are ways in which one can keep silent and yet speak. Won’t you be surprised when your answer comes in a manner you have never thought of?”
Confusion
In his interest in what was going on on the other side of the wall, Sweetwater had forgotten himself. Daylight had declined, but in the darkness of the closet this change had passed unheeded. Night itself might come, but that should not force him to leave his post so long as his neighbour remained behind his locked door, brooding over the words of love and devotion which had come to him, as it were from the other world.
But was he brooding? That sound of iron clattering upon iron! That smothered exclamation and the laugh which ended it! Anger and determination rang in that laugh. It had a hideous sound which prepared Sweetwater for the smell which now reached his nostrils. The letters were burning; this time the lid had been lifted from the stove with unrelenting purpose. Poor Edith Challoner’s touching words had met, a different fate from any which she, in her ignorance of this man’s nature,— a nature to which she had ascribed untold perfections — could possibly have conceived.
As Sweetwater thought of this, he stirred nervously in the darkness, and broke into silent invective against the man who could so insult the memory of one who had perished under the blight of his own coldness and misunderstanding. Then he suddenly started back surprised and apprehensive. Brotherson had unlocked his door, and was coming rapidly his way. Sweetwater heard his step in the hall and had hardly time to bound from his closet, when he saw his own door burst in and found himself face to face with his redoubtable neighbour, in a state of such rage as few men could meet without quailing, even were they of his own stature, physical vigour and prowess; and Sweetwater was a small man.
However, disappointment such as he had just experienced brings with it a desperation which often outdoes courage, and the detective, smiling with an air of gay surprise, shouted out:
“Well, what’s the matter now? Has the machine busted, or tumbled into the fire or sailed away to lands unknown out of your open window?”
“You were coming out of that closet,” was the fierce rejoinder. “What have you got there? Something which concerns me, or why should your face go pale at my presence and your forehead drip with sweat? Don’t think that you’ve deceived me for a moment as to your business here. I recognised you immediately. You’ve played the stranger well, but you’ve a nose and an eye nobody could forget. I have known all along that I had a police spy for a neighbour; but it didn’t faze me. I’ve nothing to conceal, and wouldn’t mind a regiment of you fellows if you’d only play a straight game. But when it comes to foisting upon me a parcel of letters to which I have no right, and then setting a fellow like you to count my groans or whatever else they expected to hear, I have a right to defend myself, and defend myself I will, by God! But first, let me be sure that my accusations will stand. Come into this closet with me. It abuts on the wall of my room and has its own secret, I know. What is it? I have you at an advantage now, and you shall tell.”
He did have Sweetwater at an advantage, and the detective knew it and disdained a struggle which would have only called up a crowd, friendly to the other but inimical to himself. Allowing Brotherson to drag him into the closet, he stood quiescent, while the determined man who held him with one hand, felt about with the other over the shelves and along the partitions till he came to the hole which had offered such a happy means of communication between the two rooms. Then, with a laugh almost as bitter in tone as that which rang from Brotherson’s lips, he acknowledged that business had its necessities and that apologies from him were in order; adding, as they both stepped out into the rapidly darkening room:
“We’ve played a bout, we two; and you’ve come out ahead. Allow me to congratulate you, Mr. Brotherson. You’ve cleared yourself so far as I am concerned. I leave this ranch to-night.”
The frown had come back to the forehead of the indignant man who confronted him.
“So you listened,” he cried; “listened when you weren’t sneaking under my eye! A fine occupation for a man who can dove-tail a corner like an adept. I wish I had let you join the brotherhood you were good enough to mention. They would know how to appreciate your double gifts and how to reward your excellence in the one, if not in the other. What did the police expect to learn about me that they should consider it necessary to call into exercise such extraordinary talents?
“I’m not good at conundrums. I was given a task to perform, and I performed it,” was Sweetwater’s sturdy reply. Then slowly, with his eye fixed directly upon his antagonist, “I guess they thought you a man. And so did I until I heard you burn those letters. Fortunately we have copies.”
“Letters!” Fury thickened the speaker’s voice, and lent a savage gleam to his eye. “Forgeries! Make believes! Miss Challoner never wrote the drivel you dare to designate as letters. It was concocted at Police Headquarters. They made me tell my story and then they found some one who could wield the poetic pen. I’m obliged to them for the confidence they show in my credulity. I credit Miss Challoner with such words as have been given me to read here to-day? I knew the lady, and I know myself. Nothing that passed between us, not an event in which we were both concerned, has been forgotten by me, and no feature of our intercourse fits the language you have ascribed to her. On the contrary, there is a lamentable contradiction between facts as they were and the fancies you have made her indulge in. And this, as you must acknowledge, not only proves their falsity, but exonerates Miss Challoner from all possible charge of sentimentality.”
“Yet she certainly wrote those letters. We had them from Mr. Challoner. The woman who brought them was really her maid. We have not deceived you in this.”
“I do not believe you.”
It was not offensively said; but the conviction it expressed was absolute. Sweetwater recognised the tone, as one of truth, and inwardly laid down his arms. He could never like the man; there was too much iron in his fibre; but he had to acknowledge that as a foe he was invulnerable and therefore admirable to one who had the good sense to appreciate him.
“I do not want to believe you.” Thus did Brotherson supplement his former sentence. “For if I were to attribute those letters to her, I should have to acknowledge that they were written to another man than myself. And this would be anything but agreeable to me. Now I am going to my room and to my work. You may spend the rest of the evening or the whole night, if you will, listening at that hole. As heretofore, the labour will be all yours, and the indifference mine.”
With a satirical play of feature which could hardly be called a smile, he nodded and left the room.
O. B. Again
“What’s happened? Something very important. I ought to hope so after this confounded failure.”
“Failure? Didn’t he read the letters?”
“Yes, he read them. Had to, but —”
“Didn’t weaken? Eh?”
“No, he didn’t weaken. You can’t get water out of a millstone. You may squeeze and squeeze; but it’s your fingers which suffer, not it. He thinks we manufactured those letters ourselves on purpose draw him.”
“Humph! I knew we had a reputation for finesse, but I didn’t know that it ran that high.”
“He denies everything. Said she would never have written such letters to him; even goes so far to declare that if she did write them —(he must be strangely ignorant of her handwriting) they were meant for some other man than himself. All rot, but —” A hitch of the shoulder conveyed Sweetwater’s disgust. His uniform good nature was strangely disturbed.
But Mr. Gryce’s was not. The faint smile with which he smoothed with an easy, circling movement, the already polished top of his ever present cane conveyed a secret complacency which called up a flash of discomfiture to his greatly irritated companion.
“He says that, does he? You found him on the whole tolerably straightforward, eh? A hard nut; but hard nuts are usually sound ones. Come, now! prejudice aside, what’s your honest opinion of the man you’ve had under your eye and ear for three solid weeks? Hasn’t there been the best of reasons for your failure? Speak up, my boy. Squarely, now.”
“I can’t. I hate the fellow. I hate any one who makes me look ridiculous. He — well, well, if you’ll have it, sir, I will say this much. If it weren’t for that blasted coincidence of the two deaths equally mysterious, equally under his eye, I’d stake my life on his honesty. But that coincidence stumps me and — and a sort of feeling I have here.”
It is to be hoped that the slap he gave his breast, at this point, carried off some of his superfluous emotion. “You can’t account for a feeling, Mr. Gryce. The man has no heart. He’s as hard as rocks.”
“A not uncommon lack where the head plays so big a part. We can’t hang him on any such argument as that. You’ve found no evidence against him?”
“N— no.” The hesitating admission was only a proof of Sweetwater’s obstinacy.
“Then listen to this. The test with the letters failed, because what he said about them was true. They were not meant for him. Miss Challoner had another lover.”
“Only another? I thought there were a half-dozen, at least.”
“Another whom she favoured. The letters found in her possession — not the ones she wrote herself, but those which were written to her over the signature O. B. were not all from the same hand. Experts have been busy with them for a week, and their reports are unanimous. The O. B. who wrote the threatening lines acknowledged to by Orlando Brotherson, was not the O. B. who penned all of those love letters. The similarity in the writing misled us at first, but once the doubt was raised by Mr. Challoner’s discovery of an allusion in one of them which pointed to another writer than Mr. Brotherson, and experts had no difficulty in reaching the decision I have mentioned.”
“Two O. B.s! Isn’t that incredible, Mr. Gryce?”
Yes, it is incredible; but the incredible is not the impossible. The man you’ve been shadowing denies that these expressive effusions of Miss Challoner were meant for him. Let us see, then, if we can find the man they were meant for.”
“The second O. B.?”
“Yes.”
Sweetwater’s face instantly lit up.
“Do you mean that I— after my egregious failure — am not to be kept on the dunce’s seat? That you will give me this new job?”
“Yes. We don’t know of a better man. It isn’t your fault, you said it yourself, that water couldn’t be squeezed out of a millstone.”
“The Superintendent — how does he feel about it?”
“He was the first one to mention you.”
“And the Inspector?”
“Is glad to see us on a new tack.”
A pause, during which the eager light in the young detective’s eye clouded over. Presently he remarked:
“How will the finding of another O. B. alter Mr. Brotherson’s position? He still will be the one person on the spot, known to have cherished a grievance against the victim of this mysterious killing. To my mind, this discovery of a more favoured rival, brings in an element of motive which may rob our self-reliant friend of some of his complacency. We may further, rather than destroy, our case against Brotherson by locating a second O.B.”
Mr. Gryce’s eyes twinkled.
“That won’t make your task any more irksome,” he smiled. “The loop we thus throw out is as likely to catch Brotherson as his rival. It all depends upon the sort of man we find in this second O. B.; and whether, in some way unknown to us, he gave her cause for the sudden and overwhelming rush of despair which alone supports this general theory of suicide.”
“The prospect grows pleasing. Where am I to look for my man?”
“Your ticket is bought to Derby, Pennsylvania. If he is not employed in the great factories there, we do not know where to find him. We have no other clew.”
“I see. It’s a short journey I have before me.”
“It’ll bring the colour to your cheeks.”
“Oh, I’m not kicking.”
“You will start to-morrow.”
“Wish it were to-day.”
“And you will first inquire, not for O. B., that’s too indefinite; but for a young girl by the name of Doris Scott. She holds the clew; or rather she is the clew to this second O. B.”
“Another woman!”
“No, a child;— well, I won’t say child exactly; she must be sixteen.”
“Doris Scott.”
“She lives in Derby. Derby is a small place. You will have no trouble in finding this child. It was to her Miss Challoner’s last letter was addressed. The one —”
“I begin to see.”
“No, you don’t, Sweetwater. The affair is as blind as your hat; nobody sees. We’re just feeling along a thread. O. B.’s letters — the real O. B., I mean, are the manliest effusions possible. He’s no more of a milksop than this Brotherson; and unlike your indomitable friend he seems to have some heart. I only wish he’d given us some facts; they would have been serviceable. But the letters reveal nothing except that he knew Doris. He writes in one of them: ‘Doris is learning to embroider. It’s like a fairy weaving a cobweb!’ Doris isn’t a very common name. She must be the same little girl to whom Miss Challoner wrote from time to time.”
“Was this letter signed O. B.?”
“Yes; they all are. The only difference between his letters and Brotherson’s is this: Brotherson’s retain the date and address; the second O. B.’s do not.”
“How not? Torn off, do you mean?”
“Yes, or rather, neatly cut away; and as none of the envelopes were kept, the only means by which we can locate the writer is through this girl Doris.”
“If I remember rightly Miss Challoner’s letter to this child was free from all mystery.”
“Quite so. It is as open as the day. That is why it has been mentioned as showing the freedom of Miss Challoner’s mind five minutes before that fatal thrust.”
Sweetwater took up the sheet Mr. Gryce pushed towards him and re-read these lines:
“Dear Little Doris:
“It is a snowy night, but it is all bright inside and I feel no chill in mind or body. I hope it is so in the little cottage in Derby; that my little friend is as happy with harsh winds blowing from the mountains as she was on the summer day she came to see me at this hotel. I like to think of her as cheerful and beaming, rejoicing in tasks which make her so womanly and sweet. She is often, often in my mind.
“Affectionately your friend,
“EDITH A. CHALLONER.”
“That to a child of sixteen!”
“Just so.”
“D-o-r-i-s spells something besides Doris.”
“Yet there is a Doris. Remember that O. B. says in one of his letters, ‘Doris is learning to embroider.’”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“So you must first find Doris.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And as Miss Challoner’s letter was directed to Derby, Pennsylvania, you will go to Derby.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anything more?”
“I’ve been reading this letter again.”
“It’s worth it.”
“The last sentence expresses a hope.”
“That has been noted.”
Sweetwater’s eyes slowly rose till they rested on Mr. Gryce’s face: “I’ll cling to the thread you’ve given me. I’ll work myself through the labyrinth before us till I reach HIM.”
Mr. Gryce smiled; but there was more age, wisdom and sympathy for youthful enthusiasm in that smile than there was confidence or hope.
Doris
“A young girl named Doris Scott?”
The station-master looked somewhat sharply at the man he was addressing, and decided to give the direction asked.
“There is but one young girl in town of that name,” he declared, “and she lives in that little house you see just beyond the works. But let me tell you, stranger,” he went on with some precipitation —
But here he was called off, and Sweetwater lost the conclusion of his warning, if warning it was meant to be. This did not trouble the detective. He stood a moment, taking in the prospect; decided that the Works and the Works alone made the town, and started for the house which had been pointed out to him. His way lay through the chief business street, and greatly preoccupied by his errand, he gave but a passing glance to the rows on rows of workmen’s dwellings stretching away to the left in seemingly endless perspective. Yet in that glance he certainly took in the fact hat the sidewalks were blocked with people and wondered if it were a holiday. If so, it must be an enforced one, for the faces showed little joy. Possibly a strike was on. The anxiety he everywhere saw pictured on young faces and old, argued some trouble; but if the trouble was that, why were all heads turned indifferently from the Works, and why were the Works themselves in full blast?
These questions he may have asked himself and he may not. His attention was entirely centred on the house he saw before him and on the possible developments awaiting him there. Nothing else mattered. Briskly he stepped out along the sandy road, and after a turn or two which led him quite away from the Works and its surrounding buildings, he came out upon the highway and this house.
It was a low and unpretentious one, and had but one distinguishing feature. The porch which hung well over the doorstep was unique in shape and gave an air of picturesqueness to an otherwise simple exterior; a picturesqueness which was much enhanced in its effect by the background of illimitable forest, which united the foreground of this pleasing picture with the great chain of hills which held the Works and town in its ample basin.
As he approached the doorstep, his mind involuntarily formed an anticipatory image of the child whose first stitches in embroidery were like a fairy’s weaving to the strong man who worked in ore and possibly figured out bridges. That she would prove to be of the anemic type, common among working girls gifted with an imagination they have but scant opportunity to exercise, he had little doubt.
He was therefore greatly taken aback, when at his first step upon the porch, the door before him flew open and he beheld in the dark recess beyond a young woman of such bright and blooming beauty that he hardly noticed her expression of extreme anxiety, till she lifted her hand and laid an admonitory finger softly on her lip:
“Hush!” she whispered, with an earnestness which roused him from his absorption and restored him to the full meaning of this encounter. “There is sickness in the house and we are very anxious. Is your errand an important one? If not —” The faltering break in the fresh, young voice, the look she cast behind her into the darkened interior, were eloquent with the hope that he would recognise her impatience and pass on.
And so he might have done,— so he would have done under all ordinary circumstances. But if this was Doris — and he did not doubt the fact after the first moment of startled surprise — how dare he forego this opportunity of settling the question which had brought him here.
With a slight stammer but otherwise giving no evidence of the effect made upon him by the passionate intensity with which she had urged this plea, he assured her that his errand was important, but one so quickly told that it would delay her but a moment. “But first,” said he, with very natural caution, “let me make sure that it is to Miss Doris Scott I am speaking. My errand is to her and her only.
Without showing any surprise, perhaps too engrossed in her own thoughts to feel any, she answered with simple directness, “Yes, I am Doris Scott. Whereupon he became his most persuasive self, and pulling out a folded paper from his pocket, opened it and held it before her, with these words:
“Then will you be so good as to glance at this letter and tell me if the person whose initials you will find at the bottom happens to be in town at the present moment?”
In some astonishment now, she glanced down at the sheet thus boldly thrust before her, and recognising the O and the B of a well-known signature, she flashed a look back at Sweetwater in which he read a confusion of emotions for which he was hardly prepared.
“Ah,” thought he, “it’s coming. In another moment I shall hear what will repay me for the trials and disappointments of all these months.”
But the moment passed and he had heard nothing. Instead, she dropped her hands from the door-jamb and gave such unmistakable evidences of intended flight, that but one alternative remained to him; he became abrupt.
Thrusting the paper still nearer, he said, with an emphasis which could not fail of making an impression, “Read it. Read the whole letter. You will find your name there. This communication was addressed to Miss Challoner, but —”
Oh, now she found words! With a low cry, she put out her hand in quick entreaty, begging him to desist and not speak that name on any pretext or for any purpose. “He may rouse and hear,” she explained, with another quick look behind her. “The doctor says that this is the critical day. He may become conscious any minute. If he should and were to hear that name, it might kill him.”
“He!” Sweetwater perked up his ears. “Who do you mean by he?”
“Mr. Brotherson, my patient, he whose letter —” But here her impatience rose above every other consideration. Without attempting to finish her sentence, or yielding in the least to her curiosity or interest in this man’s errand, she cried out with smothered intensity, “Go! go! I cannot stay another moment from his bedside.”
But a thunderbolt could not have moved Sweetwater after the hearing of that name. “Mr. Brotherson!” he echoed. “Brotherson! Not Orlando?”
“No, no; his name is Oswald. He’s the manager of these Works. He’s sick with typhoid. We are caring for him. If you belonged here you would know that much. There! that’s his voice you hear. Go, if you have any mercy.” And she began to push to the door.
But Sweetwater was impervious to all hint. With eager eyes straining into the shadowy depths just visible over her shoulder, he listened eagerly for the disjointed words now plainly to be heard in some near-by but unseen chamber.
“The second O. B.!” he inwardly declared. “And he’s a Brotherson also, and — sick! Miss Scott,” he whisperingly entreated as her hand fell in manifest despair from the door, “don’t send me away yet. I’ve a question of the greatest importance to put you, and one minute more cannot make any difference to him. Listen! those cries are the cries of delirium; he cannot miss you; he’s not even conscious.”
“He’s calling out in his sleep. He’s calling her, just as he has called for the last two weeks. But he will wake conscious — or he will not wake at all.”
The anguish trembling in that latter phrase would have attracted Sweetwater’s earnest, if not pitiful, attention at any other time, but now he had ears only for the cry which at that moment came ringing shrilly from within —
“Edith! Edith!”
The living shouting for the dead! A heart still warm sending forth its longing to the pierced and pulseless one, hidden in a far-off tomb! To Sweetwater, who had seen Miss Challoner buried, this summons of distracted love came with weird force.
Then the present regained its sway. He heard her name again, and this time it sounded less like a call and more like the welcoming cry of meeting spirits. Was death to end this separation? Had he found the true O. B., only to behold another and final seal fall upon this closely folded mystery? In his fear of this possibility, he caught at Doris’ hand as she was about to bound away, and eagerly asked:
“When was Mr. Brotherson taken ill? Tell me, I entreat you; the exact day and, if you can, the exact hour. More depends upon this than you can readily realise.”
She wrenched her hand from his, panting with impatience and a vague alarm. But she answered him distinctly:
“On the Twenty-fifth of last month, just an hour after he was made manager. He fell in a faint at the Works.”
The day — the very day of Miss Challoner’s death!
“Had he heard — did you tell him then or afterwards what happened in New York on that very date?”
“No, no, we have not told him. It would have killed him — and may yet.”
“Edith! Edith!” came again through the hush, a hush so deep that Sweetwater received the impression that the house was empty save for patient and nurse.
This discovery had its effects upon him. Why should he subject this young and loving girl to further pain? He had already learned more than he had expected to. The rest would come with time. But at the first intimation he gave of leaving, she lost her abstracted air and turned with absolute eagerness towards him.
“One moment,” said she. “You are a stranger and I do not know your name or your purpose here. But I cannot let you go without begging you not to mention to any one in this town that Mr. Brotherson has any interest in the lady whose name we must not speak. Do not repeat that delirious cry you have heard or betray in any way our intense and fearful interest in this young lady’s strange death. You have shown me a letter. Do not speak of that letter, I entreat you. Help us to retain our secret a little longer. Only the doctor and myself know what awaits Mr. Brotherson if he lives. I had to tell the doctor, but a doctor reveals nothing. Promise that you will not either, at least till this crisis is passed. It will help my father and it will help me; and we need all the help we can get.”
Sweetwater allowed himself one minute of thought, then he earnestly replied:
“I will keep your secret for to-day, and longer, if possible.”
“Thank you,” she cried; “thank you. I thought I saw kindness in your face.” And she again prepared to close the door.
But Sweetwater had one more question to ask. “Pardon me,” said he, as he stepped down on the walk, “you say that this is a critical day with your patient. Is that why every one whom I have seen so far wears such a look of anxiety?”
“Yes, yes,” she cried, giving him one other glimpse of her lovely, agitated face. “There’s but one feeling in town to-day, but one hope, and, as I believe, but one prayer. That the man whom every one loves and every one trusts may live to run these Works.”
“Edith! Edith!” rose in ceaseless reiteration from within.
But it rang but faintly now in the ears of our detective. The door had fallen to, and Sweetwater’s share in the anxieties of that household was over.
Slowly he moved away. He was in a confused yet elated condition of mind. Here was food for a thousand new thoughts and conjectures. An Orlando Brotherson and an Oswald Brotherson — relatives possibly, strangers possibly; but whether relatives or strangers, both given to signing their letters with their initials simply; and both the acknowledged admirers of the deceased Miss Challoner. But she had loved only one, and that one, Oswald. It not difficult to recognise the object of this high hearted woman’s affections in this man whose struggle with the master-destroyer had awakened the solicitude of a whole town.
Suspense
Ten minutes after Sweetwater’s arrival in the village streets, he was at home with the people he found there. His conversation with Doris in the doorway of her home had been observed by the curious and far-sighted, and the questions asked and answered had made him friends at once. Of course, he could tell them nothing, but that did not matter, he had seen and talked with Doris and their idolised young manager was no worse and might possibly soon be better.
Of his own affairs — of his business with Doris and the manager, they asked nothing. All ordinary interests were lost in the stress of their great suspense.
It was the same in the bar-room of the one hotel. Without resorting to more than a question or two, he readily learned all that was generally known of Oswald Brotherson. Every one was talking about him, and each had some story to tell illustrative of his kindness, his courage and his quick mind. The Works had never produced a man of such varied capabilities and all round sympathies. To have him for manager meant the greatest good which could befall this little community.
His rise had been rapid. He had come from the east three years before, new to the work. Now, he was the one man there. Of his relationships east, family or otherwise, nothing was said. For them his life began and ended in Derby, and Sweetwater could see, though no actual expression was given to the feeling, that there was but one expectation in regard to him and Doris, to whose uncommon beauty and sweetness they all seemed fully alive. And Sweetwater wondered, as many of us have wondered, at the gulf frequently existing between fancy and fact.
Later there came a small excitement. The doctor was seen riding by on his way to the sick man. From the window where he sat, Sweetwater watched him pass up the street and take the road he had himself so lately traversed. It was so straight a one and led so directly northward that he could follow with his eye the doctor’s whole course, and even get a glimpse of his figure as he stepped from the buggy and proceeded to tie up the horse. There was an energy about him pleasing to Sweetwater. He might have much to do with this doctor. If Oswald Brotherson died — but he was not willing to consider this possibility — yet. His personal sympathies, to say nothing of his professional interest in the mystery to which this man — and this man only — possibly held the key, alike forbade. He would hope, as these others were hoping, and if he did not count the minutes, he at least saw every move of the old horse waiting with drooping head and the resignation of long custom for the re-appearance of his master with his news of life or death.
And so an hour — two hours passed. Others were watching the old horse now. The street showed many an eager figure with head turned northward. From the open door-ways women stepped, looked in the direction of their anxiety and retreated to their work again. Suspense was everywhere; the moments dragged like hours; it became so keen at last that some impatient hearts could no longer stand it. A woman put her baby into another woman’s arms and hurried up the road; another followed, then another; then an old man, bowed with years and of tottering steps, began to go that way, halting a dozen times before he reached the group now collected in the dusty highway, near but not too near that house. As Sweetwater’s own enthusiasm swelled at this sight, he thought of the other Brotherson with his theories and active advocacy for reform, and wondered if men and women would forego their meals and stand for hours in the keen spring wind just to be the first to hear if he were to live or die. He knew that he himself would not. But he had suffered much both in his pride and his purse at the hands of the Brooklyn inventor; and such despoliation is not a reliable basis for sympathy. He was questioning his own judgment in this matter and losing himself in the mazes of past doubts and conjectures when a sudden change took place in the aspect of the street; he saw people running, and in another moment saw why. The doctor had shown himself on the porch which all were watching. Was he coming out? No, he stands quite still, runs his eye over the people waiting quietly in the road, and beckons to one of the smaller boys. The child, with upturned face, stands listening to what he has to say, then starts on a run for the village. He is stopped, pulled about, questioned, and allowed to run on. Many rush forth to meet him. He is panting, but gleeful. Mr. Brotherson has waked up conscious, and the doctor says, HE WILL LIVE.
The Oval Hut
That night Dr. Fenton had a visitor. We know that visitor and we almost know what his questions were, if not the answers of the good doctor. Nevertheless, it may be better to listen to a part at least of their conversation. Sweetwater, who knew when to be frank and open, as well as when to be reserved and ambiguous, made no effort to disguise the nature of his business or his chief cause of interest in Oswald Brotherson. The eye which met his was too penetrating not to detect the smallest attempt at subterfuge; besides, Sweetwater had no need to hide his errand; it was one of peace, and it threatened nobody —“the more’s the pity,” thought he in uneasy comment to himself, as he realised the hopelessness of the whole situation.
His first word, therefore, was a plain announcement.
“Dr. Fenton, my name is Sweetwater. I am from New York, and represent for the nonce, Mr. Challoner, whose name I have simply to mention, for you to understand that my business is with Mr. Brotherson whom I am sorry to find seriously, if not dangerously, ill. Will you tell me how long you think it will be before I can have a talk with him on a subject which I will not disguise from you may prove a very exciting one?
“Weeks, weeks,” returned the doctor. “Mr. Brotherson has been a very sick man and the only hope I have of his recovery is the fact that he is ignorant of his trouble or that he has any cause for doubt or dread. Were this happy condition of things to be disturbed, — were the faintest rumour of sorrow or disaster to reach him in his present weakened state, I should fear a relapse, with all its attendant dangers. What then, if any intimation should be given him of the horrible tragedy suggested by the name you have mentioned? The man would die before your eyes. Mr. Challoner’s business will have to wait.
“That I see; but if I knew when I might speak —”
“I can give you no date. Typhoid is a treacherous complaint; he has the best of nurses and the chances are in favour of a quick recovery; but we never can be sure. You had better return to New York. Later, you can write me if you wish, or Mr. Challoner can. You may have confidence in my reply; it will not mislead you.”
Sweetwater muttered his thanks and rose. Then he slowly sat down again.
“Dr. Fenton,” he began, “you are a man to be trusted. I’m in a devil of a fix, and there is just a possibility that you may be able to help me out. It is the general opinion in New York, as you may know, that Miss Challoner committed suicide. But the circumstances do not fully bear out this theory, nor can Mr. Challoner be made to accept it. Indeed, he is so convinced of its falsehood, that he stands ready to do anything, pay anything, suffer anything, to have this distressing blight removed from his daughter’s good name. Mr. Brotherson was her dearest friend, and as such may have the clew to this mystery, but Mr. Brotherson may not be in a condition to speak for several weeks. Meanwhile, Mr. Challoner must suffer from great suspense unless —” a pause during which he searched the doctor’s face with a perfectly frank and inquiring expression —“unless some one else can help us out. Dr. Fenton, can you?”
The doctor did not need to speak; his expression conveyed his answer.
“No more than another,” said he. “Except for what Doris felt compelled to tell me, I know as little as yourself. Mr. Brotherson’s delirium took the form of calling continually upon one name. I did not know this name, but Doris did, also the danger lurking in the fact that he had yet to hear of the tragedy which had robbed him of this woman to whom he was so deeply attached. So she told me just this much. That the Edith whose name rung so continuously in our ears was no other than the Miss Challoner of New York of whose death and its tragic circumstances the papers have been full; that their engagement was a secret one unshared so far as she knew by any one but herself. That she begged me to preserve this secret and to give her all the help I could when the time came for him to ask questions. Especially did she entreat me to be with her at the crisis. I was, but his waking was quite natural. He did not ask for Miss Challoner; he only inquired how long he had been ill and whether Doris had received a letter during that time. She had not received one, a fact which seemed to disappoint him; but she carried it off so gaily (she is a wonderful girl, Mr. Sweetwater — the darling of all our hearts), saying that he must not be so egotistical as to think that the news of his illness had gone beyond Derby, that he soon recovered his spirits and became a very promising convalescent. That is all I know about the matter; little more, I take it, than you know yourself.”
Sweetwater nodded; he had expected nothing from the doctor, and was not disappointed at his failure. There were two strings to his bow, and the one proving valueless, he proceeded to test the other.
“You have mentioned Miss Scott, as the confidante — and only confidante of this unhappy pair,” said he. “Would it be possible — can you make it possible for me to see her?
It was a daring proposition; he understood this at once from the doctor’s expression; and, fearing a hasty rebuff, he proceeded to supplement his request with a few added arguments, urged with such unexpected address and show of reason that Dr. Fenton’s aspect visibly softened and in the end he found himself ready to promise that he would do what he could to secure his visitor the interview he desired if he would come to the house the next day at the time of his own morning visit.
This was as much as the young detective could expect, and having expressed his thanks, he took his leave in anything but a discontented frame of mind. With so powerful an advocate as the doctor, he felt confident that he should soon be able to conquer this young girl’s reticence and learn all that was to be learned from any one but Mr. Brotherson himself. In the time which must elapse between that happy hour and the present, he would circulate and learn what he could about the prospective manager. But he soon found that he could not enter the Works without a permit, and this he was hardly in a position to demand; so he strolled about the village instead, and later wandered away into the forest.
Struck by the inviting aspect of a narrow and little used road opening from the highway shortly above the house where his interests were just then centred, he strolled into the heart of the spring woods till he came to a depression where a surprise awaited him, in the shape of a peculiar structure rising from its midst where it just fitted, or so nearly fitted that one could hardly walk about it without brushing the surrounding tree trunks. Of an oval shape, with its door facing the approach, it nestled there, a wonder to the eye and the occasion of considerable speculation to his inquiring mind. It had not been long built, as was shown very plainly by the fresh appearance of the unpainted boards of which it was constructed; and while it boasted of a door, as I’ve already said, there were no evidences visible of any other break in the smooth, neatly finished walls. A wooden ellipse with a roof but no windows; such it appeared and such it proved to be. A mystery to Sweetwater’s eyes, and like all mysteries, interesting. For what purpose had it been built and why this isolation? It was too flimsy for a reservoir and too expensive for the wild freak of a crank.
A nearer view increased his curiosity, In the projection of the roof over the curving sides he found fresh food for inquiry. As he examined it in the walk he made around the whole structure, he came to a place where something like a hinge became visible and further on another. The roof was not simply a roof; it was also a lid capable of being raised for the air and light which the lack of windows necessitated. This was an odd discovery indeed, giving to the uncanny structure the appearance of a huge box, the cover of which could be raised or lowered at pleasure. And again he asked himself for what it could be intended? What enterprise, even of the great Works, could demand a secrecy so absolute that such pains as these should be taken to shut out all possibility of a prying eye. Nothing in his experience supplied him with an answer.
He was still looking up at these hinges, with glance which took in at the same time the nearness and extreme height of the trees by which this sylvan mystery was surrounded, when a sound from the road on the opposite side of the hollow brought his conjectures to a standstill and sent him hurrying on to the nearest point from which that road became visible.
A team was approaching. He could hear the heavy tread of horses working their laborious way through trees whose obstructing branches swished before and behind them. They were bringing in a load for this shed, whose uses he would consequently soon understand. Grateful for his good luck — for his was a curiosity which could not stand defeat — he took a few steps into the wood, and from the vantage point of a concealing cluster of bushes, fixed his eyes upon the spot where the road opened into the hollow.
Something blue moved there, and in another moment, to his great amazement, there stepped into view the spirited form of Doris Scott, who if he had given the matter a thought he would have supposed to be sitting just then by the bedside of her patient, a half mile back on the road.
She was dressed for the woods in a blue skirt and jacket and moved like a leader in front of a heavily laden wagon now coming to a standstill before the closely shut shed — if such we may call it.
“I have a key,” so she called out to the driver who had paused for orders. “When I swing the doors wide, drive straight in.”
Sweetwater took a look at the wagon. It was piled high with large wooden boxes on more than one of which he could see scrawled the words: O. Brotherson, Derby, Pa.
This explained her presence, but the boxes told nothing. They were of all sizes and shapes, and some of them so large that the assistance of another man was needed to handle them. Sweetwater was about to offer his services when a second man appeared from somewhere in the rear, and the detective’s attention being thus released from the load out of which he could make nothing, he allowed it to concentrate upon the young girl who had it in charge and who, for many reasons, was the one person of supreme importance to him.
She had swung open the two wide doors, and now stood waiting for horse and wagon to enter. With locks flying free — she wore no bonnet — she presented a picture of ever increasing interest to Sweetwater. Truly she was a very beautiful girl, buoyant, healthy and sweet; as unlike as possible his preconceived notions of Miss Challoner’s humble little protegee. Her brown hair of a rich chestnut hue, was in itself a wonder. On no head, even in the great city he had just left, had he seen such abundance, held in such modest restraint. Nature had been partial to this little working girl and given her the chevelure of a queen.
But this was nothing. No one saw this aureole when once the eye had rested on her features and caught the full nobility of their expression and the lurking sweetness underlying her every look. She herself made the charm and whether placed high or placed low, must ever attract the eye and afterwards lure the heart, by an individuality which hardly needed perfect features in which to express itself.
Young yet, but gifted, as girls of her class often are, with the nicest instincts and purest aspirations, she showed the elevation of her thoughts both in her glance and the poise with which she awaited events. Sweetwater watched her with admiration as she superintended the unloading of the wagon and the disposal of the various boxes on the floor within; but as nothing she said during the process was calculated to afford the least enlightenment in regard to their contents, he presently wearied of his inaction and turned back towards the highway, comforting himself with the reflection that in a few short hours he would have her to himself when nothing but a blunder on his part should hinder him from sounding her young mind and getting such answers to his questions as the affair in which he was so deeply interested, demanded.