The Chief Witness for the Prosecution.
Oh, while you live tell truth and shame the devil!
Henry iv.
MR. BYRD’S countenance after the departure of his companion was any thing but cheerful. The fact is, he was secretly uneasy. He dreaded the morrow. He dreaded the testimony of Miss Dare. He had not yet escaped so fully from under the dominion of her fascinations as to regard with equanimity this unhappy woman forcing herself to give testimony compromising to the man she loved.
Yet when the morrow came he was among the first to secure a seat in the court-room. Though the scene was likely to be harrowing to his feelings, he had no wish to lose it, and, indeed, chose such a position as would give him the best opportunity for observing the prisoner and surveying the witnesses.
He was not the only one on the look-out for the testimony of Miss Dare. The increased number of the spectators and the general air of expectation visible in more than one of the chief actors in this terrible drama gave suspicious proof of the fact; even if the deadly pallor of the lady herself had not revealed her own feelings in regard to the subject.
The entrance of the prisoner was more marked, too, than usual. His air and manner were emphasized, so to speak, and his face, when he turned it toward the jury, wore an iron look of resolution that would have made him conspicuous had he occupied a less prominent position than that of the dock.
Miss Dare, who had flashed her eyes toward him at the moment of his first appearance, dropped them again, contrary to her usual custom. Was it because she knew the moment was at hand when their glances would be obliged to meet?
Mr. Orcutt, whom no movement on the part of Miss Dare ever escaped, leaned over and spoke to the prisoner.
“Mr. Mansell,” said he, “are you prepared to submit with composure to the ordeal of confronting Miss Dare?”
“Yes,” was the stern reply.
“I would then advise you to look at her now,” proceeded his counsel. “She is not turned this way, and you can observe her without encountering her glance. A quick look at this moment may save you from betraying any undue emotion when you see her upon the stand.”
The accused smiled with a bitterness Mr. Orcutt thought perfectly natural, and slowly prepared to obey. As he raised his eyes and allowed them to traverse the room until they settled upon the countenance of the woman he loved, this other man who, out of a still more absorbing passion for Imogene, was at that very moment doing all that lay in his power for the saving of this his openly acknowledged rival, watched him with the closest and most breathless attention. It was another instance of that peculiar fascination which a successful rival has for an unsuccessful one. It was as if this great lawyer’s thoughts reverted to his love, and he asked himself: “What is there in this Mansell that she should prefer him to me?”
And Orcutt himself, though happily unaware of the fact, was at that same instant under a scrutiny as narrow as that he bestowed upon his client. Mr. Ferris, who knew his secret, felt a keen interest in watching how he would conduct himself at this juncture. Not an expression of the lawyer’s keen and puzzling eye but was seen by the District Attorney and noted, even if it was not understood.
Of the three, Mr. Ferris was the first to turn away, and his thoughts if they could have been put into words might have run something like this: “That man”— meaning Orcutt —“is doing the noblest work one human being can perform for another, and yet there is something in his face I do not comprehend. Can it be he hopes to win Miss Dare by his effort to save his rival?”
As for the thoughts of the person thus unconsciously subjected to the criticism of his dearest friend, let our knowledge of the springs that govern his action serve to interpret both the depth and bitterness of his curiosity; while the sentiments of Mansell —— But who can read what lurks behind the iron of that sternly composed countenance? Not Imogene, not Orcutt, not Ferris. His secret, if he owns one, he keeps well, and his lids scarcely quiver as he drops them over the eyes that but a moment before reflected the grand beauty of the unfortunate woman for whom he so lately protested the most fervent love.
The next moment the court was opened and Miss Dare’s name was called by the District Attorney.
With a last look at the unresponsive prisoner, Imogene rose, took her place on the witness stand and faced the jury.
It was a memorable moment. If the curious and impressible crowd of spectators about her had been ignorant of her true relations to the accused, the deadly stillness and immobility of her bearing would have convinced them that emotion of the deepest nature lay behind the still, white mask she had thought fit to assume. That she was beautiful and confronted them from that common stand as from a throne, did not serve to lessen the impression she made.
The officer held the Bible toward her. With a look that Mr. Byrd was fain to consider one of natural shrinking only, she laid her white hand upon it; but at the intimation from the officer, “The right hand, if you please, miss,” she started and made the exchange he suggested, while at the same moment there rang upon her ear the voice of the clerk as he administered the awful adjuration that she should, as she believed and hoped in Eternal mercy, tell the truth as between this man and the law and keep not one tittle back. The book was then lifted to her lips by the officer, and withdrawn.
“Take your seat, Miss Dare,” said the District Attorney. And the examination began.
“Your name, if you please?”
“Imogene Dare.”
“Are you married or single?”
“I am single.”
“Where were you born?”
Now this was a painful question to one of her history. Indeed, she showed it to be so by the flush which rose to her cheek and by the decided trembling of her proud lip. But she did not seek to evade it.
“Sir,” she said, “I cannot answer you. I never heard any of the particulars of my birth. I was a foundling.”
The mingled gentleness and dignity with which she made this acknowledgment won for her the instantaneous sympathy of all present. Mr. Orcutt saw this, and the flash of indignation that had involuntarily passed between him and the prisoner subsided as quickly as it arose.
Mr. Ferris went on.
“Where do you live?”
“In this town?”
“With whom do you live?”
“I am boarding at present with a woman of the name of Kennedy. I support myself by my needle,” she hurriedly added, as though anxious to forestall his next question.
Seeing the prisoner start at this, Imogene lifted her head still higher. Evidently this former lover of hers knew little of her movements since they parted so many weeks ago.
“And how long is it since you supported yourself in this way?” asked the District Attorney.
“For a few weeks only. Formerly,” she said, making a slight inclination in the direction of the prisoner’s counsel, “I lived in the household of Mr. Orcutt, where I occupied the position of assistant to the lady who looks after his domestic affairs.” And her eye met the lawyer’s with a look of pride that made him inwardly cringe, though not even the jealous glance of the prisoner could detect that an eyelash quivered or a flicker disturbed the studied serenity of his gaze.
The District Attorney opened his lips as if to pursue this topic, but, meeting his opponent’s eye, concluded to waive further preliminaries and proceed at once to the more serious part of the examination.
“Miss Dare,” said he, “will you look at the prisoner and tell us if you have any acquaintance with him?”
Slowly she prepared to reply; slowly she turned her head and let her glance traverse that vast crowd till it settled upon her former lover. The look which passed like lightning across her face as she encountered his gaze fixed for the first time steadily upon her own, no one in that assemblage ever forgot.
“Yes,” she returned, quietly, but in a tone that made Mansell quiver and look away, despite his iron self-command; “I know him.”
“Will you be kind enough to say how long you have known him and where it was you first made his acquaintance?”
“I met him first in Buffalo some four months since,” was the steady reply. “He was calling at a friend’s house where I was staying.”
“Did you at that time know of his relation to your townswoman, Mrs. Clemmens?”
“No, sir. It was not till I had seen him several times that I learned he had any connections in Sibley.”
“Miss Dare, you will excuse me, but it is highly desirable for the court to know if the prisoner ever paid his addresses to you?”
The deep, almost agonizing blush that colored her white cheek answered as truly as the slow “Yes,” that struggled painfully to her lips.
“And — excuse me again, Miss Dare — did he propose marriage to you?”
“He did.”
“Did you accept him?”
“I did not.”
“Did you refuse him?”
“I refused to engage myself to him.”
“Miss Dare, will you tell us when you left Buffalo?”
“On the nineteenth day of August last.”
“Did the prisoner accompany you?”
“He did not.”
“Upon what sort of terms did you part?”
“Good terms, sir.”
“Do you mean friendly terms, or such as are held by a man and a woman between whom an attachment exists which, under favorable circumstances, may culminate in marriage?”
“The latter, sir, I think.”
“Did you receive any letters from the prisoner after your return to Sibley?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And did you answer them?”
“I did.”
“Miss Dare, may I now ask what reasons you gave the prisoner for declining his offer — that is, if my friend does not object to the question?” added the District Attorney, turning with courtesy toward Mr. Orcutt.
The latter, who had started to his feet, bowed composedly and prepared to resume his seat.
“I desire to put nothing in the way of your eliciting the whole truth concerning this matter,” was his quiet, if somewhat constrained, response.
Mr. Ferris at once turned back to Miss Dare.
“You will, then, answer,” he said.
Imogene lifted her head and complied.
“I told him,” she declared, with thrilling distinctness, “that he was in no condition to marry. I am by nature an ambitious woman, and, not having suffered at that time, thought more of my position before the world than of what constitutes the worth and dignity of a man.”
No one who heard these words could doubt they were addressed to the prisoner. Haughtily as she held herself, there was a deprecatory humility in her tone that neither judge nor jury could have elicited from her. Naturally many eyes turned in the direction of the prisoner. They saw two white faces before them, that of the accused and that of his counsel, who sat near him. But the pallor of the one was of scorn, and that of the other —— Well, no one who knew the relations of Mr. Orcutt to the witness could wonder that the renowned lawyer shrank from hearing the woman he loved confess her partiality for another man.
Mr. Ferris, who understood the situation as well as any one, but who had passed the point where sympathy could interfere with his action, showed a disposition to press his advantage.
“Miss Dare,” he inquired, “in declining the proposals of the prisoner, did you state to him in so many words these objections you have here mentioned?”
“I did.”
“And what answer did he give you?”
“He replied that he was also ambitious, and hoped and intended to make a success in life.”
“And did he tell you how he hoped and intended to make a success?”
“He did.”
“Miss Dare, were these letters written by you?”
She looked at the packet he held toward her, started as she saw the broad black ribbon that encircled it, and bowed her head.
“I have no doubt these are my letters,” she rejoined, a little tremulously for her. And unbinding the packet, she examined its contents. “Yes,” she answered, “they are. These letters were all written by me.”
And she handed them back with such haste that the ribbon which bound them remained in her fingers, where consciously or unconsciously she held it clutched all through the remaining time of her examination.
“Now,” said the District Attorney, “I propose to read two of these letters. Does my friend wish to look at them before I offer them in evidence?” holding them out to Mr. Orcutt.
Every eye in the court-room was fixed upon the latter’s face, as the letters addressed to his rival by the woman he wished to make his wife, were tendered in this public manner to his inspection. Even the iron face of Mansell relaxed into an expression of commiseration as he turned and surveyed the man who, in despite of the anomalous position they held toward each other, was thus engaged in battling for his life before the eyes of the whole world. At that instant there was not a spectator who did not feel that Tremont Orcutt was the hero of the moment.
He slowly turned to the prisoner:
“Have you any objection to these letters being read?”
“No,” returned the other, in a low tone.
Mr. Orcutt turned firmly to the District Attorney:
“You may read them if you think proper,” said he.
Mr. Ferris bowed; the letters were marked as exhibits by the stenographic reporter who was taking the minutes of testimony, and handed back to Ferris, who proceeded to read the following in a clear voice to the jury:
“SIBLEY, N. Y., September 7, 1882.
“DEAR FRIEND — You show signs of impatience, and ask for a word to help you through this period of uncertainty and unrest. What can I say more than I have said? That I believe in you and in your invention, and proudly wait for the hour when you will come to claim me with the fruit of your labors in your hand. I am impatient myself, but I have more trust than you. Some one will see the value of your work before long, or else your aunt will interest herself in your success, and lend you that practical assistance which you need to start you in the way of fortune and fame. I cannot think you are going to fail. I will not allow myself to look forward to any thing less than success for you and happiness for myself. For the one involves the other, as you must know by this time, or else believe me to be the most heartless of coquettes.
“Wishing to see you, but of the opinion that further meetings between us would be unwise till our future looks more settled, I remain, hopefully yours,
“IMOGENE DARE.”
“The other letter I propose to read,” continued Mr. Ferris, “is dated September 23d, three days before the widow’s death.
“DEAR CRAIK — Since you insist upon seeing me, and say that you have reasons of your own for not visiting me openly, I will consent to meet you at the trysting spot you mention, though all such underhand dealings are as foreign to my nature as I believe them to be to yours.
“Trusting that fortune will so favor us as to make it unnecessary for us to meet in this way more than once, I wait in anxiety for your coming.
“IMOGENE DARE.”
These letters, unfolding relations that, up to this time, had been barely surmised by the persons congregated before her, created a great impression. To those especially who knew her and believed her to be engaged to Mr. Orcutt the surprise was wellnigh thrilling. The witness seemed to feel this, and bestowed a short, quick glance upon the lawyer, that may have partially recompensed him for the unpleasantness of the general curiosity.
The Prosecuting Attorney went on without pause:
“Miss Dare,” said he, “did you meet the prisoner as you promised?”
“I did.”
“Will you tell me when and where?”
“On the afternoon of Monday, September 27th, in the glade back of Mrs. Clemmens’ house.”
“Miss Dare, we fully realize the pain it must cost you to refer to these matters, but I must request you to tell us what passed between you at this interview?”
“If you will ask me questions, sir, I will answer them with the truth the subject demands.”
The sorrowful dignity with which this was said, called forth a bow from the Prosecuting Attorney.
“Very well,” he rejoined, “did the prisoner have any thing to say about his prospects?”
“He did.”
“How did he speak of them?”
“Despondingly.”
“And what reason did he give for this?”
“He said he had failed to interest any capitalist in his invention.”
“Any other reason?”
“Yes.”
“What was that?”
“That he had just come from his aunt whom he had tried to persuade to advance him a sum of money to carry out his wishes, but that she had refused.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did he also tell you what path he had taken to his aunt’s house?”
“No, sir.”
“Was there any thing said by him to show he did not take the secret path through the woods and across the bog to her back door?”
“No, sir.”
“Or that he did not return in the same way?”
“No, sir.”
“Miss Dare, did the prisoner express to you at this time irritation as well as regret at the result of his efforts to elicit money from his aunt?”
“Yes,” was the evidently forced reply.
“Can you remember any words that he used which would tend to show the condition of his mind?”
“I have no memory for words,” she began, but flushed as she met the eye of the Judge, and perhaps remembered her oath. “I do recollect, however, one expression he used. He said: ‘My life is worth nothing to me without success. If only to win you, I must put this matter through; and I will do it yet.’”
She repeated this quietly, giving it no emphasis and scarcely any inflection, as if she hoped by her mechanical way of uttering it to rob it of any special meaning. But she did not succeed, as was shown by the compassionate tone in which Mr. Ferris next addressed her.
“Miss Dare, did you express any anger yourself at the refusal of Mrs. Clemmens to assist the prisoner by lending him such moneys as he required?”
“Yes, sir; I fear I did. It seemed unreasonable to me then, and I was very anxious he should have that opportunity to make fame and fortune which I thought his genius merited.”
“Miss Dare,” inquired the District Attorney, calling to his aid such words as he had heard from old Sally in reference to this interview, “did you make use of any such expression as this: ‘I wish I knew Mrs. Clemmens’?”
“I believe I did.”
“And did this mean you had no acquaintance with the murdered woman at that time?” pursued Mr. Ferris, half-turning to the prisoner’s counsel, as if he anticipated the objection which that gentleman might very properly make to a question concerning the intention of a witness.
And Mr. Orcutt, yielding to professional instinct, did indeed make a slight movement as if to rise, but became instantly motionless. Nothing could be more painful to him than to wrangle before the crowded court-room over these dealings between the woman he loved and the man he was now defending.
Mr. Ferris turned back to the witness and awaited her answer. It came without hesitation.
“It meant that, sir.”
“And what did the prisoner say when you gave utterance to this wish?”
“He asked me why I desired to know her.”
“And what did you reply?”
“That if I knew her I might be able to persuade her to listen to his request.”
“And what answer had he for this?”
“None but a quick shake of his head.”
“Miss Dare; up to the time of this interview had you ever received any gift from the prisoner — jewelry, for instance — say, a ring!”
“No, sir.”
“Did he offer you such a gift then?”
“He did.”
“What was it?”
“A gold ring set with a diamond.”
“Did you receive it?”
“No, sir. I felt that in taking a ring from him I would be giving an irrevocable promise, and I was not ready to do that.”
“Did you allow him to put it on your finger?”
“I did.”
“And it remained there?” suggested Mr. Ferris, with a smile.
“A minute, may be.”
“Which of you, then, took it off?”
“I did.”
“And what did you say when you took it off?”
“I do not remember my words.”
Again recalling old Sally’s account of this interview, Mr. Ferris asked:
“Were they these: ‘I cannot. Wait till to-morrow’?”
“Yes, I believe they were.”
“And when he inquired: ‘Why to-morrow?’ did you reply: ‘A night has been known to change the whole current of one’s affairs’?”
“I did.”
“Miss Dare, what did you mean by those words?”
“I object!” cried Mr. Orcutt, rising. Unseen by any save himself, the prisoner had made him an eloquent gesture, slight, but peremptory.
“I think it is one I have a right to ask,” urged the District Attorney.
But Mr. Orcutt, who manifestly had the best of the argument, maintained his objection, and the Court instantly ruled in his favor.
Mr. Ferris prepared to modify his question. But before he could speak the voice of Miss Dare was heard.
“Gentlemen,” said she, “there was no need of all this talk. I intended to seek an interview with Mrs. Clemmens and try what the effect would be of confiding to her my interest in her nephew.”
The dignified simplicity with which she spoke, and the air of quiet candor that for that one moment surrounded her, gave to this voluntary explanation an unexpected force that carried it quite home to the hearts of the jury. Even Mr. Orcutt could not preserve the frown with which he had confronted her at the first movement of her lips, but turned toward the prisoner with a look almost congratulatory in its character. But Mr. Byrd, who for reasons of his own kept his eyes upon that prisoner, observed that it met with no other return than that shadow of a bitter smile which now and then visited his otherwise unmoved countenance.
Mr. Ferris, who, in his friendship for the witness, was secretly rejoiced in an explanation which separated her from the crime of her lover, bowed in acknowledgment of the answer she had been pleased to give him in face of the ruling of the Court, and calmly proceeded:
“And what reply did the prisoner make you when you uttered this remark in reference to the change that a single day sometimes makes in one’s affairs?”
“Something in the way of assent.”
“Cannot you give us his words?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, then, can you tell us whether or not he looked thoughtful when you said this?”
“He may have done so, sir.”
“Did it strike you at the time that he reflected on what you said?”
“I cannot say how it struck me at the time.”
“Did he look at you a few minutes before speaking, or in any way conduct himself as if he had been set thinking?”
“He did not speak for a few minutes.”
“And looked at you?”
“Yes, sir.”
The District Attorney paused a moment as if to let the results of his examination sink into the minds of the jury; then he went on:
“Miss Dare, you say you returned the ring to the prisoner?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You say positively the ring passed from you to him; that you saw it in his hand after it had left yours?”
“No, sir. The ring passed from me to him, but I did not see it in his hand, because I did not return it to him that way. I dropped it into his pocket.”
At this acknowledgment, which made both the prisoner and his counsel look up, Mr. Byrd felt himself nudged by Hickory.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered.
“Yes,” returned the other.
“And do you believe it?”
“Miss Dare is on oath,” was the reply.
“Pooh!” was Hickory’s whispered exclamation.
The District Attorney alone showed no surprise.
“You dropped it into his pocket?” he resumed. “How came you to do that?”
“I was weary of the strife which had followed my refusal to accept this token. He would not take it from me himself, so I restored it to him in the way I have said.”
“Miss Dare, will you tell us what pocket this was?”
“The outside pocket on the left side of his coat,” she returned, with a cold and careful exactness that caused the prisoner to drop his eyes from her face, with that faint but scornful twitch of the muscles about his mouth, which gave to his countenance now and then the proud look of disdain which both the detectives had noted.
“Miss Dare,” continued the Prosecuting Attorney, “did you see this ring again during the interview?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you detect the prisoner making any move to take it out of his pocket, or have you any reason to believe that it was taken out of the pocket on the left-hand side of his coat while you were with him?”
“No, sir.”
“So that, as far as you know, it was still in his pocket when you parted?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Miss Dare, have you ever seen that ring since?”
“I have.”
“When and where?”
“I saw it on the morning of the murder. It was lying on the floor of Mrs. Clemmens’ dining-room. I had gone to the house, in my surprise at hearing of the murderous assault which had been made upon her, and, while surveying the spot where she was struck, perceived this ring lying on the floor before me.”
“What made you think it was this ring which you had returned to the prisoner the day before?”
“Because of its setting, and the character of the gem, I suppose.”
“Could you see all this where it was lying on the floor?”
“It was brought nearer to my eyes, sir. A gentleman who was standing near, picked it up and offered it to me, supposing it was mine. As he held it out in his open palm I saw it plainly.”
“Miss Dare, will you tell us what you did when you first saw this ring lying on the floor?”
“I covered it with my foot.”
“Was that before you recognized it?”
“I cannot say. I placed my foot upon it instinctively.”
“How long did you keep it there?”
“Some few minutes.”
“What caused you to move at last?”
“I was surprised.”
“What surprised you?”
“A man came to the door.”
“What man.”
“I don’t know. A stranger to me. Some one who had been sent on an errand connected with this affair.”
“What did he say or do to surprise you?”
“Nothing. It was what you said yourself after the man had gone.”
“And what did I say, Miss Dare?”
She cast him a look of the faintest appeal, but answered quietly:
“Something about its not being the tramp who had committed this crime.”
“That surprised you?”
“That made me start.”
“Miss Dare, were you present in the house when the dying woman spoke the one or two exclamations which have been testified to in this trial?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What was the burden of the first speech you heard?”
“The words Hand, sir, and Ring. She repeated the two half a dozen times.”
“Miss Dare, what did you say to the gentleman who showed you the ring and asked if it were yours?”
“I told him it was mine, and took it and placed it on my finger.”
“But the ring was not yours?”
“My acceptance of it made it mine. In all but that regard it had been mine ever since Mr. Mansell offered it to me the day before.”
Mr. Ferris surveyed the witness for a moment before saying:
“Then you considered it damaging to your lover to have this ring found in that apartment?”
Mr. Orcutt instantly rose to object.
“I won’t press the question,” said the District Attorney, with a wave of his hand and a slight look at the jury.
“You ought never to have asked it?” exclaimed Mr. Orcutt, with the first appearance of heat he had shown.
“You are right,” Mr. Ferris coolly responded. “The jury could see the point without any assistance from you or me.”
“And the jury,” returned Mr. Orcutt, with equal coolness, “is scarcely obliged to you for the suggestion.”
“Well, we won’t quarrel about it,” declared Mr. Ferris.
“We won’t quarrel about any thing,” retorted Mr. Orcutt. “We will try the case in a legal manner.”
“Have you got through?” inquired Mr. Ferris, nettled.
Mr. Orcutt took his seat with the simple reply:
“Go on with the case.”
The District Attorney, after a momentary pause to regain the thread of his examination and recover his equanimity, turned to the witness.
“Miss Dare,” he asked, “how long did you keep that ring on your finger after you left the house?”
“A little while — five or ten minutes, perhaps.”
“Where were you when you took it off?”
Her voice sank just a trifle:
“On the bridge at Warren Street.”
“What did you do with it then?”
Her eyes which had been upon the Attorney’s face, fell slowly.
“I dropped it into the water,” she said.
And the character of her thoughts and suspicions at that time stood revealed.
The Prosecuting Attorney allowed himself a few more questions.
“When you parted with the prisoner in the woods, was it with any arrangement for meeting again before he returned to Buffalo?”
“No, sir.”
“Give us the final words of your conversation, if you please.”
“We were just parting, and I had turned to go, when he said: ‘Is it good-by, then, Imogene?’ and I answered, ‘That to-morrow must decide.’ ‘Shall I stay, then?’ he inquired; to which I replied, ‘Yes.’”
’Twas a short, seemingly literal, repetition of possibly innocent words, but the whisper into which her voice sank at the final “Yes” endowed it with a thrilling effect for which even she was not prepared. For she shuddered as she realized the deathly quiet that followed its utterance, and cast a quick look at Mr. Orcutt that was full of question, if not doubt.
“I was calculating upon the interview I intended to have with Mrs. Clemmens,” she explained, turning toward the Judge with indescribable dignity.
“We understand that,” remarked the Prosecuting Attorney, kindly, and then inquired:
“Was this the last you saw of the prisoner until to-day?”
“No, sir.”
“When did you see him again?”
“On the following Wednesday.”
“Where?”
“In the dep?t at Syracuse.”
“How came you to be in Syracuse the day after the murder?”
“I had started to go to Buffalo.”
“What purpose had you in going to Buffalo?”
“I wished to see Mr. Mansell.”
“Did he know you were coming?”
“No, sir.”
“Had no communication passed between you from the time you parted in the woods till you came upon each other in the dep?t you have just mentioned?”
“No, sir.”
“Had he no reason to expect to meet you there?”
“No, sir.”
“With what words did you accost each other?”
“I don’t know. I have no remembrance of saying any thing. I was utterly dumbfounded at seeing him in this place, and cannot say into what exclamation I may have been betrayed.”
“And he? Don’t you remember what he said?”
“No, sir. I only know he started back with a look of great surprise. Afterward he asked if I were on my way to see him.”
“And what did you answer?”
“I don’t think I made any answer. I was wondering if he was on his way to see me.”
“Did you put the question to him?”
“Perhaps. I cannot tell. It is all like a dream to me.”
If she had said horrible dream, every one there would have believed her.
“You can tell us, however, if you held any conversation?”
“We did not.”
“And you can tell us how the interview terminated?”
“Yes, sir. I turned away and took the train back home, which I saw standing on the track without.”
“And he?”
“Turned away also. Where he went I cannot say.”
“Miss Dare”— the District Attorney’s voice was very earnest —“can you tell us which of you made the first movement to go?”
“What does he mean by that?” whispered Hickory to Byrd.
“I think ——” she commenced and paused. Her eyes in wandering over the throng of spectators before her, had settled on these two detectives, and noting the breathless way in which they looked at her, she seemed to realize that more might lie in this question than at first appeared.
“I do not know,” she answered at last. “It was a simultaneous movement, I think.”
“Are you sure?” persisted Mr. Ferris. “You are on oath, Miss Dare? Is there no way in which you can make certain whether he or you took the initiatory step in this sudden parting after an event that so materially changed your mutual prospects?”
“No, sir. I can only say that in recalling the sensations of that hour, I am certain my own movement was not the result of any I saw him take. The instinct to leave the place had its birth in my own breast.”
“I told you so,” commented Hickory, in the ear of Byrd. “She is not going to give herself away, whatever happens.”
“But can you positively say he did not make the first motion to leave?”
“No, sir.”
Mr. Ferris bowed, turned toward the opposing counsel and said:
“The witness is yours.”
Mr. Ferris sat down perfectly satisfied. He had dexterously brought out Imogene’s suspicions of the prisoner’s guilt, and knew that the jury must be influenced in their convictions by those of the woman who, of all the world, ought to have believed, if she could, in the innocence of her lover. He did not even fear the cross-examination which he expected to follow. No amount of skill on the part of Orcutt could extract other than the truth, and the truth was that Imogene believed the prisoner to be the murderer of his aunt. He, therefore, surveyed the court-room with a smile, and awaited the somewhat slow proceedings of his opponent with equanimity.
But, to the surprise of every one, Mr. Orcutt, after a short consultation with the prisoner, rose and said he had no questions to put to the witness.
And Miss Dare was allowed to withdraw from the stand, to the great satisfaction of Mr. Ferris, who found himself by this move in a still better position than he had anticipated.
“Byrd,” whispered Hickory, as Miss Dare returned somewhat tremulously to her former seat among the witnesses —“Byrd, you could knock me over with a feather. I thought the defence would have no difficulty in riddling this woman’s testimony, and they have not even made the effort. Can it be that Orcutt has such an attachment for her that he is going to let his rival hang?”
“No. Orcutt isn’t the man to deliberately lose a case for any woman. He looks at Miss Dare’s testimony from a different standpoint than you do. He believes what she says to be true, and you do not.”
“Then, all I’ve got to say, ‘So much the worse for Mansell!’” was the whispered response. “He was a fool to trust his case to that man.”
The judge, the jury, and all the by-standers in court, it must be confessed, shared the opinion of Hickory — Mr. Orcutt was standing on slippery ground.
The Opening of the Defence.
Excellent! I smell a device.
Twelfth Night.
LATE that afternoon the prosecution rested. It had made out a case of great strength and seeming impregnability. Favorably as every one was disposed to regard the prisoner, the evidence against him was such that, to quote a man who was pretty free with his opinions in the lobby of the court-room: “Orcutt will have to wake up if he is going to clear his man in face of facts like these.”
The moment, therefore, when this famous lawyer and distinguished advocate rose to open the defence, was one of great interest to more than the immediate actors in the scene. It was felt that hitherto he had rather idled with his case, and curiosity was awake to his future course. Indeed, in the minds of many the counsel for the prisoner was on trial as well as his client.
He rose with more of self-possession, quiet and reserved strength, than could be hoped for, and his look toward the Court and then to the jury tended to gain for him the confidence which up to this moment he seemed to be losing. Never a handsome man or even an imposing one, he had the advantage of always rising to the occasion, and whether pleading with a jury or arguing with opposing counsel, flashed with that unmistakable glitter of keen and ready intellect which, once observed in a man, marks him off from his less gifted fellows and makes him the cynosure of all eyes, however insignificant his height, features, or ordinary expression.
To-day he was even cooler, more brilliant, and more confident in his bearing than usual. Feelings, if feelings he possessed — and we who have seen him at his hearth can have no doubt on this subject — had been set aside when he rose to his feet and turned his face upon the expectant crowd before him. To save his client seemed the one predominating impulse of his soul, and, as he drew himself up to speak, Mr. Byrd, who was watching him with the utmost eagerness and anticipation, felt that, despite appearances, despite evidence, despite probability itself, this man was going to win his case.
“May it please your Honor and Gentlemen of the Jury,” he began, and those who looked at him could not but notice how the prisoner at his side lifted his head at this address, till it seemed as if the words issued from his lips instead of from those of his counsel, “I stand before you to-day not to argue with my learned opponent in reference to the evidence which he has brought out with so much ingenuity. I have a simpler duty than that to perform. I have to show you how, in spite of this evidence, in face of all this accumulated testimony showing the prisoner to have been in possession of both motive and opportunities for committing this crime, he is guiltless of it; that a physical impossibility stands in the way of his being the assailant of the Widow Clemmens, and that to whomever or whatsoever her death may be due, it neither was nor could have been the result of any blow struck by the prisoner’s hand. In other words, we dispute, not the facts which have led the Prosecuting Attorney of this district, and perhaps others also, to infer guilt on the part of the prisoner,”— here Mr. Orcutt cast a significant glance at the bench where the witnesses sat — “but the inference itself. Something besides proof of motive and opportunity must be urged against this man in order to convict him of guilt. Nor is it sufficient to show he was on the scene of murder some time during the fatal morning when Mrs. Clemmens was attacked; you must prove he was there at the time the deadly blow was struck; for it is not with him as with so many against whom circumstantial evidence of guilt is brought. This man, gentlemen, has an answer for those who accuse him of crime — an answer, too, before which all the circumstantial evidence in the world cannot stand. Do you want to know what it is? Give me but a moment’s attention and you shall hear.”
Expectation, which had been rising through this exordium, now stood at fever-point. Byrd and Hickory held their breaths, and even Miss Dare showed feeling through the icy restraint which had hitherto governed her secret anguish and suspense. Mr. Orcutt went on:
“First, however, as I have already said, the prisoner desires it to be understood that he has no intention of disputing the various facts which have been presented before you at this trial. He does not deny that he was in great need of money at the time of his aunt’s death; that he came to Sibley to entreat her to advance to him certain sums he deemed necessary to the furtherance of his plans; that he came secretly and in the roundabout way you describe. Neither does he refuse to allow that his errand was also one of love, that he sought and obtained a private interview with the woman he wished to make his wife, in the place and at the time testified to; that the scraps of conversation which have been sworn to as having passed between them at this interview are true in as far as they go, and that he did place upon the finger of Miss Dare a diamond ring. Also, he admits that she took this ring off immediately upon receiving it, saying she could not accept it, at least not then, and that she entreated him to take it back, which he declined to do, though he cannot say she did not restore it in the manner she declares, for he remembers nothing of the ring after the moment he put her hand aside as she was offering it back to him. The prisoner also allows that he slept in the hut and remained in that especial region of the woods until near noon the next day; but, your Honor and Gentlemen of the Jury, what the prisoner does not allow and will not admit is that he struck the blow which eventually robbed Mrs. Clemmens of her life, and the proof which I propose to bring forward in support of this assertion is this:
“Mrs. Clemmens received the blow which led to her death at some time previously to three minutes past twelve o’clock on Tuesday, September 26th. This the prosecution has already proved. Now, what I propose to show is, that Mrs. Clemmens, however or whenever assailed, was still living and unhurt up to ten minutes before twelve on that same day. A witness, whom you must believe, saw her at that time and conversed with her, proving that the blow by which she came to her death must have occurred after that hour, that is, after ten minutes before noon. But, your Honor and Gentlemen of the Jury, the prosecution has already shown that the prisoner stepped on to the train at Monteith Quarry Station at twenty minutes past one of that same day, and has produced witnesses whose testimony positively proves that the road he took there from Mrs. Clemmens’ house was the same he had traversed in his secret approach to it the day before — viz., the path through the woods; the only path, I may here state, that connects those two points with any thing like directness.
“But, Sirs, what the prosecution has not shown you, and what it now devolves upon me to show, is that this path which the prisoner is allowed to have taken is one which no man could traverse without encountering great difficulties and many hindrances to speed. It is not only a narrow path filled with various encumbrances in the way of brambles and rolling stones, but it is so flanked by an impenetrable undergrowth in some places, and by low, swampy ground in others, that no deviation from its course is possible, while to keep within it and follow its many turns and windings till it finally emerges upon the highway that leads to the Quarry Station would require many more minutes than those which elapsed between the time of the murder and the hour the prisoner made his appearance at the Quarry Station. In other words, I propose to introduce before you as witnesses two gentlemen from New York, both of whom are experts in all feats of pedestrianism, and who, having been over the road themselves, are in position to testify that the time necessary for a man to pass by means of this path from Mrs. Clemmens’ house to the Quarry Station is, by a definite number of minutes, greater than that allowed to the prisoner by the evidence laid before you. If, therefore, you accept the testimony of the prosecution as true, and believe that the prisoner took the train for Buffalo, which he has been said to do, it follows, as a physical impossibility, for him to have been at Mrs. Clemmens’ cottage, or anywhere else except on the road to the station, at the moment when the fatal blow was dealt.
“Your Honor, this is our answer to the terrible charge which has been made against the prisoner; it is simple, but it is effective, and upon it, as upon a rock, we found our defence.”
And with a bow, Mr. Orcutt sat down, and, it being late in the day, the court adjourned.
Byrd Uses His Pencil Again.
Ay, sir, you shall find me reasonable; if it be so, I shall do that that is reason.
Merry Wives of Windsor.
“BYRD, you look dazed.”
“I am.”
Hickory paused till they were well clear of the crowd that was pouring from the court-room; then he said:
“Well, what do you think of this as a defence?”
“I am beginning to think it is good,” was the slow, almost hesitating, reply.
“Beginning to think?”
“Yes. At first it seemed puerile. I had such a steadfast belief in Mansell’s guilt, I could not give much credit to any argument tending to shake me loose from my convictions. But the longer I think of it the more vividly I remember the difficulties of the road he had to take in his flight. I have travelled it myself, you remember, and I don’t see how he could have got over the ground in ninety minutes.”
Hickory’s face assumed a somewhat quizzical expression.
“Byrd,” said he, “whom were you looking at during the time Mr. Orcutt was making his speech?”
“At the speaker, of course.”
“Bah!”
“Whom were you looking at?”
“At the person who would be likely to give me some return for my pains.”
“The prisoner?”
“No.”
“Whom, then?”
“Miss Dare.”
Byrd shifted uneasily to the other side of his companion.
“And what did you discover from her, Hickory?” he asked.
“Two things. First, that she knew no more than the rest of us what the defence was going to be. Secondly, that she regarded it as a piece of great cleverness on the part of Orcutt, but that she didn’t believe in it anymore — well, any more than I do.”
“Hickory!”
“Yes, sir! Miss Dare is a smart woman, and a resolute one, and could have baffled the penetration of all concerned if she had only remembered to try. But she forgot that others might be more interested in making out what was going on in her mind at this critical moment than in watching the speaker or noting the effect of his words upon the court. In fact, she was too eager herself to hear what he had to say to remember her r?le, I fancy.”
“But, I don’t see ——” began Byrd.
“Wait,” interrupted the other. “You believe Miss Dare loves Craik Mansell?”
“Most certainly,” was the gloomy response.
“Very well, then. If she had known what the defence was going to be she would have been acutely alive to the effect it was going to have upon the jury. That would have been her first thought and her only thought all the time Mr. Orcutt was speaking, and she would have sat with her eyes fixed upon the men upon whose acceptance or non-acceptance of the truth of this argument her lover’s life ultimately depended. But no; her gaze, like yours, remained fixed upon Mr. Orcutt, and she scarcely breathed or stirred till he had fully revealed what his argument was going to be. Then ——”
“Well, then?”
“Instead of flashing with the joy of relief which any devoted woman would experience who sees in this argument a proof of her lover’s innocence, she merely dropped her eyes and resumed her old mask of impassiveness.”
“From all of which you gather ——”
“That her feelings were not those of relief, but doubt. In other words, that the knowledge she possesses is of a character which laughs to scorn any such subterfuge of defence as Orcutt advances.”
“Hickory,” ventured Byrd, after a long silence, “it is time we understood each other. What is your secret thought in relation to Miss Dare?”
“My secret thought? Well,” drawled the other, looking away, “I think she knows more about this crime than she has yet chosen to reveal.”
“More than she evinced to-day in her testimony?”
“Yes.”
“I should like to know why you think so. What special reasons have you for drawing any such conclusions?”
“Well, one reason is, that she was no more shaken by the plausible argument advanced by Mr. Orcutt. If her knowledge of the crime was limited to what she acknowledged in her testimony, and her conclusions as to Mansell’s guilt were really founded upon such facts as she gave us in court to-day, why didn’t she grasp at the possibility of her lover’s innocence which was held out to her by his counsel? No facts that she had testified to, not even the fact of his ring having been found on the scene of murder, could stand before the proof that he left the region of Mrs. Clemmens’ house before the moment of assault; yet, while evincing interest in the argument, and some confidence in it, too, as one that would be likely to satisfy the jury, she gave no tokens of being surprised by it into a reconsideration of her own conclusions, as must have happened if she told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, when she was on the stand to-day.”
“I see,” remarked Byrd, “that you are presuming to understand Miss Dare after all.”
Hickory smiled.
“You call this woman a mystery,” proceeded Byrd; “hint at great possibilities of acting on her part, and yet in a moment, as it were, profess yourself the reader of her inmost thoughts, and the interpreter of looks and expressions she has manifestly assumed to hide those thoughts.”
Hickory’s smile broadened into a laugh.
“Just so,” he cried. “One’s imbecility has to stop somewhere.” Then, as he saw Byrd look grave, added: “I haven’t a single fact at my command that isn’t shared by you. My conclusions are different, that is all.”
Horace Byrd did not answer. Perhaps if Hickory could have sounded his thoughts he would have discovered that their conclusions were not so far apart as he imagined.
“Hickory,” Byrd at last demanded, “what do you propose to do with your conclusions?”
“I propose to wait and see if Mr. Orcutt proves his case. If he don’t, I have nothing more to say; but if he does, I think I shall call the attention of Mr. Ferris to one question he has omitted to ask Miss Dare.”
“And what is that?”
“Where she was on the morning of Mrs. Clemmens’ murder. You remember you took some interest in that question yourself a while ago.”
“But ——”
“Not that I think any thing will come of it, only my conscience will be set at rest.”
“Hickory,”— Byrd’s face had quite altered now —“where do you think Miss Dare was at that time?”
“Where do I think she was?” repeated Hickory.
“Well, I will tell you. I think she was not in Professor Darling’s observatory.”
“Do you think she was in the glade back of Widow Clemmens’ house?”
“Now you ask me conundrums.”
“Hickory!” Byrd spoke almost violently, “Mr. Orcutt shall not prove his case.”
“No?”
“I will make the run over the ground supposed to have been taken by Mansell in his flight, and show in my own proper person that it can be done in the time specified.”
Hickory’s eye, which had taken a rapid survey of his companion’s form during the utterance of the above, darkened, then he slowly shook his head.
“You couldn’t,” he rejoined laconically. “Too little staying power; you’d give out before you got clear of the woods. Better delegate the job to me.”
“To you?”
“Yes. I’m of the make to stand long runs; besides I am no novice at athletic sports of any kind. More than one race has owed its interest to the efforts of your humble servant. ’Tis my pet amusement, you see, as off-hand drawing is yours, and is likely to be of as much use to me, eh?”
“Hickory, you are chaffing me.”
“Think so? Do you see that five-barred gate over there? Well, now keep your eye on the top rail and see if I clear it without a graze or not.”
“Stop!” exclaimed Mr. Byrd, “don’t make a fool of yourself in the public street. I’ll believe you if you say you understand such things.”
“Well, I do, and what is more, I’m an adept at them. If I can’t make that run in the time requisite to show that Mansell could have committed the murder, and yet arrive at the station the moment he did, I don’t know of a chap who can.”
“Hickory, do you mean to say you will make this run?”
“Yes.”
“With a conscientious effort to prove that Orcutt’s scheme of defence is false?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“To-morrow.”
“While we are in court?”
“Yes.”
Byrd turned square around, gave Hickory a look and offered his hand.
“You are a good fellow,” he declared, “May luck go with you.”
Hickory suddenly became unusually thoughtful.
“A little while ago,” he reflected, “this fellow’s sympathies were all with Mansell; now he would risk my limbs and neck to have the man proved guilty. He does not wish Miss Dare to be questioned again, I see.”
“Hickory,” resumed Byrd, a few minutes later, “Orcutt has not rested the defence upon this one point without being very sure of its being unassailable.”
“I know that.”
“He has had more than one expert make that run during the weeks that have elapsed since the murder. It has been tested to the uttermost.”
“I know that.”
“If you succeed then in doing what none of these others have, it must be by dint of a better understanding of the route you have to take and the difficulties you will have to overcome. Now, do you understand the route?”
“I think so.”
“You will have to start from the widow’s door, you know?”
“Certain.”
“Cross the bog, enter the woods, skirt the hut — but I won’t go into details. The best way to prove you know exactly what you have to do is to see if you can describe the route yourself. Come into my room, old fellow, and let us see if you can give me a sufficiently exact account of the ground you will have to pass over, for me to draw up a chart by it. An hour spent with paper and pencil to-night may save you from an uncertainty to-morrow that would lose you a good ten minutes.”
“Good! that’s an idea; let’s try it,” rejoined Hickory.
And being by this time at the hotel, they went in. In another moment they were shut up in Mr. Byrd’s room, with a large sheet of foolscap before them.
“Now,” cried Horace, taking up a pencil, “begin with your description, and I will follow with my drawing.”
“Very well,” replied Hickory, setting himself forward in a way to watch his colleague’s pencil. “I leave the widow’s house by the dining-room door — a square for the house, Byrd, well down in the left-hand corner of the paper, and a dotted line for the path I take — run down the yard to the fence, leap it, cross the bog, and make straight for the woods.”
“Very good,” commented Byrd, sketching rapidly as the other spoke.
“Having taken care to enter where the trees are thinnest, I find a path along which I rush in a bee-line till I come to the glade — an ellipse for the glade, Byrd, with a dot in it for the hut. Merely stopping to dash into the hut and out again ——”
“Wait!” put in Byrd, pausing with his pencil in mid-air; “what did you want to go into the hut for?”
“To get the bag which I propose to leave there to-night.”
“Bag?”
“Yes; Mansell carried a bag, didn’t he? Don’t you remember what the station-master said about the curious portmanteau the fellow had in his hand when he came to the station?”
“Yes, but ——”
“Byrd, if I run that fellow to his death it must be fairly. A man with an awkward bag in his hand cannot run like a man without one. So I handicap myself in the same way he did, do you see?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, then; I rush into the hut, pick up the bag, carry it out, and dash immediately into the woods at the opening behind the hut. — What are you doing?”
“Just putting in a few landmarks,” explained Byrd, who had run his pencil off in an opposite direction. “See, that is the path to West Side which I followed in my first expedition through the woods — the path, too, which Miss Dare took when she came to the hut at the time of the fearful thunderstorm. And wait, let me put in Professor Darling’s house, too, and the ridge from which you can see Mrs. Clemmens’ cottage. It will help us to understand ——”
“What?” cried Hickory, with quick suspiciousness, as the other paused.
But Byrd, impatiently shaking his head, answered:
“The whole situation, of course.” Then, pointing hastily back to the hut, exclaimed: “So you have entered the woods again at this place? Very well; what then?”
“Well, then,” resumed Hickory, “I make my way along the path I find there — run it at right angles to the one leading up to the glade — till I come to a stony ledge covered with blackberry bushes. (A very cleverly drawn blackberry patch that, Byrd.) Here I fear I shall have to pause.”
“Why?”
“Because, deuce take me if I can remember where the path runs after that.”
“But I can. A big hemlock-tree stands just at the point where the woods open again. Make for that and you will be all right.”
“Good enough; but it’s mighty rough travelling over that ledge, and I shall have to go at a foot’s pace. The stones are slippery as glass, and a fall would scarcely be conducive to the final success of my scheme.”
“I will make the path serpentine.”
“That will be highly expressive.”
“And now, what next?”
“The Foresters’ Road, Byrd, upon which I ought to come about this time. Run it due east and west — not that I have surveyed the ground, but it looks more natural so — and let the dotted line traverse it toward the right, for that is the direction in which I shall go.”
“It’s done,” said Byrd.
“Well, description fails me now. All I know is, I come out on a hillside running straight down to the river-bank and that the highway is visible beyond, leading directly to the station; but the way to get to it ——”
“I will show you,” interposed Byrd, mapping out the station and the intervening river with a few quick strokes of his dexterous pencil. “You see this point where you issue from the woods? Very good; it is, as you say, on a hillside overlooking the river. Well, it seems unfortunate, but there is no way of crossing that river at this point. The falls above and below make it no place for boats, and you will have to go back along its banks for some little distance before you come to a bridge. But there is no use in hesitating or looking about for a shorter path. The woods just here are encumbered with a mass of tangled undergrowth which make them simply impassable except as you keep in the road, while the river curves so frequently and with so much abruptness — see, I will endeavor to give you some notion of it here — that you would only waste time in attempting to make any short cuts. But, once over the bridge ——”
“I have only to foot it,” burst in Hickory, taking up the sketch which the other had now completed, and glancing at it with a dubious eye. “Do you know, Byrd,” he remarked in another moment, “that it strikes me Mansell did not take this roundabout road to the station?”
“Why?”
“Because it is so roundabout, and he is such a clearheaded fellow. Couldn’t he have got there by some shorter cut?”
“No. Don’t you remember how Orcutt cross-examined the station-master about the appearance which Mansell presented when he came upon the platform, and how that person was forced to acknowledge that, although the prisoner looked heated and exhausted, his clothes were neither muddied nor torn? Now, I did not think of it at the time, but this was done by Orcutt to prove that Mansell did take the road I have jotted down here, since any other would have carried him through swamps knee-deep with mud, or amongst stones and briers which would have put him in a state of disorder totally unfitting him for travel.”
“That is so,” acquiesced Hickory, after a moment’s thought. “Mansell must be kept in the path. Well, well, we will see to-morrow if wit and a swift foot can make any thing out of this problem.”
“Wit? Hickory, it will be wit and not a swift foot. Or luck, maybe I should call it, or rather providence. If a wagon should be going along the highway, now ——”
“Let me alone for availing myself of it,” laughed Hickory. “Wagon! I would jump on the back of a mule sooner than lose the chance of gaining a minute on these experts whose testimony we are to hear to-morrow. Don’t lose confidence in old Hickory yet. He’s the boy for this job if he isn’t for any other.”
And so the matter was settled.
The Chief Witness for the Defence.
Your If is the only peace-maker; much virtue in If.
As You Like It.
THE crowd that congregated at the court-house the next morning was even greater than at any previous time. The opening speech of Mr. Orcutt had been telegraphed all over the country, and many who had not been specially interested in the case before felt an anxiety to hear how he would substantiate the defence he had so boldly and confidently put forth.
To the general eye, however, the appearance of the court-room was much the same as on the previous day. Only to the close observer was it evident that the countenances of the several actors in this exciting drama wore a different expression. Mr. Byrd, who by dint of the most energetic effort had succeeded in procuring his old seat, was one of these, and as he noted the significant change, wished that Hickory had been at his side to note it with him.
The first person he observed was, naturally, the Judge.
Judge Evans, who has been but barely introduced to the reader, was a man of great moral force and discretion. He had occupied his present position for many years, and possessed not only the confidence but the affections of those who came within the sphere of his jurisdiction. The reason for this undoubtedly lay in his sympathetic nature. While never accused of weakness, he so unmistakably retained the feeling heart under the official ermine that it was by no means an uncommon thing for him to show more emotion in uttering a sentence than the man he condemned did in listening to it.
His expression, then, upon this momentous morning was of great significance to Mr. Byrd. In its hopefulness and cheer was written the extent of the effect made upon the unprejudiced mind by the promised defence.
As for Mr. Orcutt himself, no advocate could display a more confident air or prepare to introduce his witnesses with more dignity or quiet assurance. His self-possession was so marked, indeed, that Mr. Byrd, who felt a sympathetic interest in what he knew to be seething in this man’s breast, was greatly surprised, and surveyed, with a feeling almost akin to awe, the lawyer who could so sink all personal considerations in the cause he was trying.
Miss Dare, on the contrary, was in a state of nervous agitation. Though no movement betrayed this, the very force of the restraint she put upon herself showed the extent of her inner excitement.
The prisoner alone remained unchanged. Nothing could shake his steady soul from its composure, not the possibility of death or the prospect of release. He was absolutely imposing in his quiet presence, and Mr. Byrd could not but admire the power of the man even while recoiling from his supposed guilt.
The opening of the defence carried the minds of many back to the inquest. The nice question of time was gone into, and the moment when Mrs. Clemmens was found lying bleeding and insensible at the foot of her dining-room clock, fixed at three or four minutes past noon. The next point to be ascertained was when she received the deadly blow.
And here the great surprise of the defence occurred. Mr. Orcutt rose, and in clear, firm tones said:
“Gouverneur Hildreth, take the stand.”
Instantly, and before the witness could comply, Mr. Ferris was on his feet.
“Who? what?” he cried.
“Gouverneur Hildreth,” repeated Mr. Orcutt.
“Did you know this gentleman has already been in custody upon suspicion of having committed the crime for which the prisoner is now being tried?”
“I do,” returned Mr. Orcutt, with imperturbable sang froid.
“And is it your intention to save your client from the gallows by putting the halter around the neck of the man you now propose to call as a witness?”
“No,” retorted Mr. Orcutt; “I do not propose to put the halter about any man’s neck. That is the proud privilege of my learned and respected opponent.”
With an impatient frown Mr. Ferris sat down, while Mr. Hildreth, who had taken advantage of this short passage of arms between the lawyers to retain his place in the remote corner where he was more or less shielded from the curiosity of the crowd, rose, and, with a slow and painful movement that at once attracted attention to his carefully bandaged throat and the general air of debility which surrounded him, came hesitatingly forward and took his stand in face of the judge and jury.
Necessarily a low murmur greeted him from the throng of interested spectators who saw in this appearance before them of the man who, by no more than a hair’s-breadth, had escaped occupying the position of the prisoner, another of those dramatic incidents with which this trial seemed fairly to bristle.
It was hushed by one look from the Judge, but not before it had awakened in Mr. Hildreth’s weak and sensitive nature those old emotions of shame and rage whose token was a flush so deep and profuse it unconsciously repelled the gaze of all who beheld it. Immediately Mr. Byrd, who sat with bated breath, as it were, so intense was his excitement over the unexpected turn of affairs, recognized the full meaning of the situation, and awarded to Mr. Orcutt all the admiration which his skill in bringing it about undoubtedly deserved. Indeed, as the detective’s quick glance flashed first at the witness, cringing in his old unfortunate way before the gaze of the crowd, and then at the prisoner sitting unmoved and quietly disdainful in his dignity and pride, he felt that, whether Mr. Orcutt succeeded in getting all he wished from his witness, the mere conjunction of these two men before the jury, with the opportunity for comparison between them which it inevitably offered, was the master-stroke of this eminent lawyer’s legal career.
Mr. Ferris seemed to feel the significance of the moment also, for his eyes fell and his brow contracted with a sudden doubt that convinced Mr. Byrd that, mentally, he was on the point of giving up his case.
The witness was at once sworn.
“Orcutt believes Hildreth to be the murderer, or, at least, is willing that others should be impressed with this belief,” was the comment of Byrd to himself at this juncture.
He had surprised a look which had passed between the lawyer and Miss Dare — a look of such piercing sarcasm and scornful inquiry that it might well arrest the detective’s attention and lead him to question the intentions of the man who could allow such an expression of his feelings to escape him.
But whether the detective was correct in his inferences, or whether Mr. Orcutt’s glance at Imogene meant no more than the natural emotion of a man who suddenly sees revealed to the woman he loves the face of him for whose welfare she has expressed the greatest concern and for whose sake, while unknown, she has consented to make the heaviest of sacrifices, the wary lawyer was careful to show neither scorn nor prejudice when he turned toward the witness and began his interrogations.
On the contrary, his manner was highly respectful, if not considerate, and his questions while put with such art as to keep the jury constantly alert to the anomalous position which the witness undoubtedly held, were of a nature mainly to call forth the one fact for which his testimony was presumably desired. This was, his presence in the widow’s house on the morning of the murder, and the fact that he saw her and conversed with her and could swear to her being alive and unhurt up to a few minutes before noon. To be sure, the precise minute of his leaving her in this condition Mr. Orcutt failed to gather from the witness, but, like the coroner at the inquest, he succeeded in eliciting enough to show that the visit had been completed prior to the appearance of the tramp at the widow’s kitchen-door, as it had been begun after the disappearance of the Danton children from the front of the widow’s house.
This fact being established and impressed upon the jury, Mr. Orcutt with admirable judgment cut short his own examination of the witness, and passed him over to the District Attorney, with a grim smile, suggestive of his late taunt, that to this gentleman belonged the special privilege of weaving halters for the necks of unhappy criminals.
Mr. Ferris who understood his adversary’s tactics only too well, but who in his anxiety for the truth could not afford to let such an opportunity for reaching it slip by, opened his cross-examination with great vigor.
The result could not but be favorable to the defence and damaging to the prosecution. The position which Mr. Hildreth must occupy if the prisoner was acquitted, was patent to all understandings, making each and every admission on his part tending to exculpate the latter, of a manifest force and significance.
Mr. Ferris, however, was careful not to exceed his duty or press his inquiries beyond due bounds. The man they were trying was not Gouverneur Hildreth but Craik Mansell, and to press the witness too close, was to urge him into admissions seemingly so damaging to himself as, in the present state of affairs, to incur the risk of distracting attention entirely from the prisoner.
Mr. Hildreth’s examination being at an end, Mr. Orcutt proceeded with his case, by furnishing proof calculated to fix the moment at which Mr. Hildreth had made his call. This was done in much the same way as it was at the inquest. Mrs. Clemmens’ next-door neighbor, Mrs. Danton, was summoned to the stand, and after her her two children, the testimony of the three, taken with Mr. Hildreth’s own acknowledgments, making it very evident to all who listened that he could not have gone into Mrs. Clemmens’ house before a quarter to twelve.
The natural inference followed. Allowing the least possible time for his interview with Mrs. Clemmens, the moment at which the witness swore to having seen her alive and unhurt must have been as late as ten minutes before noon.
Taking pains to impress this time upon the jury, Mr. Orcutt next proceeded to fix the moment at which the prisoner arrived at Monteith Quarry Station. As the fact of his having arrived in time to take the afternoon train to Buffalo had been already proved by the prosecution, it was manifestly necessary only to determine at what hour the train was due, and whether it had come in on time.
The hour was ascertained, by direct consultation with the road’s time-table, to be just twenty minutes past one, and the station-master having been called to the stand, gave it as his best knowledge and belief that the train had been on time.
This, however, not being deemed explicit enough for the purposes of the defence, there was submitted to the jury a telegram bearing the date of that same day, and distinctly stating that the train was on time. This was testified to by the conductor of the train as having been sent by him to the superintendent of the road who was awaiting the cars at Monteith; and was received as evidence and considered as conclusively fixing the hour at which the prisoner arrived at the Quarry Station as twenty minutes past one.
This settled, witnesses were called to testify as to the nature of the path by which he must have travelled from the widow’s house to the station. A chart similar to that Mr. Byrd had drawn, but more explicit and nice in its details, was submitted to the jury by an actual surveyor of the ground; after which, and the establishment of other minor details not necessary to enumerate here, a man of well-known proficiency in running and other athletic sports, was summoned to the stand.
Mr. Byrd, who up to this moment had shared in the interest every where displayed in the defence, now felt his attention wandering. The fact is, he had heard the whistle of the train on which Hickory had promised to return to Sibley, and interesting as was the testimony given by the witness, he could not prevent his eyes from continually turning toward the door by which he expected Hickory to enter.
Strange to say, Mr. Orcutt seemed to take a like interest in that same door, and was more than once detected by Byrd flashing a hurried glance in its direction, as if he, too, were on the look-out for some one.
Meantime the expert in running was saying:
“It took me one hundred and twenty minutes to go over the ground the first time, and one hundred and fifteen minutes the next. I gained five minutes the second time, you see,” he explained, “by knowing my ground better and by saving my strength where it was of no avail to attempt great speed. The last time I made the effort, however, I lost three minutes on my former time. The wood road which I had to take for some distance was deep with mud, and my feet sank with every step. The shortest time, then, which I was able to make in three attempts, was one hundred and fifteen minutes.”
Now, as the time between the striking of the fatal blow and the hour at which the prisoner arrived at the Quarry Station was only ninety minutes, a general murmur of satisfaction followed this announcement. It was only momentary, however, for Mr. Ferris, rising to cross-examine the witness, curiosity prevailed over all lesser emotions, and an immediate silence followed without the intervention of the Court.
“Did you make these three runs from Mrs. Clemmens’ house to Monteith Quarry Station entirely on foot?”
“I did, sir.”
“Was that necessary?”
“Yes, sir; as far as the highway, at least. The path through the woods is not wide enough for a horse, unless it be for that short distance where the Foresters’ Road intervenes.”
“And you ran there?”
“Yes, sir, twice at full speed; the third time I had the experience I have told you of.”
“And how long do you think it took you to go over that especial portion of ground?”
“Five minutes, maybe.”
“And, supposing you had had a horse?”
“Well, sir, if I had had a horse, and if he had been waiting there, all ready for me to jump on his back, and if he had been a good runner and used to the road, I think I could have gone over it in two minutes, if I had not first broken my neck on some of the jagged stones that roughen the road.”
“In other words, you could have saved three minutes if you had been furnished with a horse at that particular spot?”
“Yes, if.”
Mr. Orcutt, whose eye had been fixed upon the door at this particular juncture, now looked back at the witness and hurriedly rose to his feet.
“Has my esteemed friend any testimony on hand to prove that the prisoner had a horse at this place? if he has not, I object to these questions.”
“What testimony I have to produce will come in at its proper time,” retorted Mr. Ferris. “Meanwhile, I think I have a right to put this or any other kind of similar question to the witness.”
The Judge acquiescing with a nod, Mr. Orcutt sat down.
Mr. Ferris went on.
“Did you meet any one on the road during any of these three runs which you made?”
“No, sir. That is, I met no one in the woods. There were one or two persons on the highway the last time I ran over it.”
“Were they riding or walking?”
“Walking.”
Here Mr. Orcutt interposed.
“Did you say that in passing over the highway you ran?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why did you do this? Had you not been told that the prisoner was seen to be walking when he came down the road to the station?”
“Yes, sir. But I was in for time, you see.”
“And you did not make it even with that advantage?”
“No, sir.”
The second expert had the same story to tell, with a few variations. He had made one of his runs in five minutes less than the other had done, but it was by a great exertion that left him completely exhausted when he arrived at the station. It was during his cross-examination that Hickory at last came in.
Horace Byrd, who had been growing very impatient during the last few minutes, happened to be looking at the door when it opened to admit this late comer. So was Mr. Orcutt. But Byrd did not notice this, or Hickory either. If they had, perhaps Hickory would have been more careful to hide his feelings. As it was, he no sooner met his colleague’s eye than he gave a quick, despondent shake of the head in intimation that he had failed.
Mr. Byrd, who had anticipated a different result, was greatly disappointed. His countenance fell and he cast a glance of compassion at Miss Dare, now flushing with a secret but slowly growing hope. The defence, then, was good, and she ran the risk of being interrogated again. It was a prospect from which Mr. Byrd recoiled.
As soon as Hickory got the chance, he made his way to the side of Byrd.
“No go,” was his low but expressive salutation. “One hundred and five minutes is the shortest time in which I can get over the ground, and that by a deuced hard scramble of it too.”
“But that’s five minutes’ gain on the experts,” Byrd whispered.
“Is it? Hope I could gain something on them, but what’s five minutes’ gain in an affair like this? Fifteen is what’s wanted.”
“I know it.”
“And fifteen I cannot make, nor ten either, unless a pair of wings should be given me to carry me over the river.”
“Sure?”
“Sure!”
Here there was some commotion in their vicinity, owing to the withdrawal of the last witness from the stand. Hickory took advantage of the bustle to lean over and whisper in Byrd’s ear:
“Do you know I think I have been watched to-day. There was a fellow concealed in Mrs. Clemmens’ house, who saw me leave it, and who, I have no doubt, took express note of the time I started. And there was another chap hanging round the station at the quarries, whom I am almost sure had no business there unless it was to see at what moment I arrived. He came back to Sibley when I did, but he telegraphed first, and it is my opinion that Orcutt ——”
Here he was greatly startled by hearing his name spoken in a loud and commanding tone of voice. Stopping short, he glanced up, encountered the eye of Mr. Orcutt fixed upon him from the other side of the court-room, and realized he was being summoned to the witness stand.
“The deuce!” he murmured, with a look at Byrd to which none but an artist could do justice.
Hickory.
Hickory, dickory, dock!
The mouse ran up the clock!
The clock struck one,
And down he run!
Hickory, dickory, dock!
Mother Goose Melodies.
HICKORY’S face was no new one to the court. He had occupied a considerable portion of one day in giving testimony for the prosecution, and his rough manner and hardy face, twinkling, however, at times with an irrepressible humor that redeemed it and him from all charge of ugliness, were well known not only to the jury but to all the habitués of the trial. Yet, when he stepped upon the stand at the summons of Mr. Orcutt, every eye turned toward him with curiosity, so great was the surprise with which his name had been hailed, and so vivid the interest aroused in what a detective devoted to the cause of the prosecution might have to say in the way of supporting the defence.
The first question uttered by Mr. Orcutt served to put them upon the right track.
“Will you tell the court where you have been to-day, Mr. Hickory?”
“Well,” replied the witness in a slow and ruminating tone of voice, as he cast a look at Mr. Ferris, half apologetic and half reassuring, “I have been in a good many places ——”
“You know what I mean,” interrupted Mr. Orcutt. “Tell the court where you were between the hours of eleven and a quarter to one,” he added, with a quick glance at the paper he held in his hand.
“Oh, then,” cried Hickory, suddenly relaxing into his drollest self. “Well, then, I was all along the route from Sibley to Monteith Quarry Station. I don’t think I was stationary at any one minute of the time, sir.”
“In other words ——” suggested Mr. Orcutt, severely.
“I was trying to show myself smarter than my betters;” bowing with a great show of respect to the two experts who sat near. “Or, in other words still, I was trying to make the distance between Mrs. Clemmens’ house and the station I have mentioned, in time sufficient to upset the defence, sir.”
And the look he cast at Mr. Ferris was wholly apologetic now.
“Ah, I understand, and at whose suggestion did you undertake to do this, Mr. Hickory?”
“At the suggestion of a friend of mine, who is also somewhat of a detective.”
“And when was this suggestion given?”
“After your speech, sir, yesterday afternoon.”
“And where?”
“At the hotel, sir, where I and my friend put up.”
“Did not the counsel for the prosecution order you to make this attempt?”
“No, sir.”
“Did he not know you were going to make it?”
“No, sir.”
“Who did know it?”
“My friend.”
“No one else?”
“Well, sir, judging from my present position, I should say there seems to have been some one else,” the witness slyly retorted.
The calmness with which Mr. Orcutt carried on this examination suffered a momentary disturbance.
“You know what I mean,” he returned. “Did you tell any one but your friend that you were going to undertake this run?”
“No, sir.”
“Mr. Hickory,” the lawyer now pursued, “will you tell us why you considered yourself qualified to succeed in an attempt where you had already been told regular experts had failed?”
“Well, sir, I don’t know unless you find the solution in the slightly presumptive character of my disposition.”
“Had you ever run before or engaged in athletic sports of any kind?”
“Oh, yes, I have run before.”
“And engaged in athletic sports?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Hickory, have you ever run in a race with men of well-known reputation for speed?”
“Well, yes, I have.”
“Did you ever win in running such a race?”
“Once.”
“No more?”
“Well, then, twice.”
The dejection with which this last assent came forth roused the mirth of some light-hearted, feather-headed people, but the officers of the court soon put a stop to that.
“Mr. Hickory, will you tell us whether on account of having twice beaten in a race requiring the qualifications of a professional runner, you considered yourself qualified to judge of the feasibility of any other man’s making the distance from Mrs. Clemmens’ house to Monteith Quarry Station in ninety minutes by your own ability or non-ability to do so?”
“Yes, sir, I did; but a man’s judgment of his own qualifications don’t go very far, I’ve been told.”
“I did not ask you for any remarks, Mr. Hickory. This is a serious matter and demands serious treatment. I asked if in undertaking to make this run in ninety minutes you did not presume to judge of the feasibility of the prisoner having made it in that time, and you answered, ‘Yes.’ It was enough.”
The witness bowed with an air of great innocence.
“Now,” resumed the lawyer, “you say you made a run from Mrs. Clemmens’ house to Monteith Quarry Station to-day. Before telling us in what time you did it, will you be kind enough to say what route you took?”
“The one, sir, which has been pointed out by the prosecution as that which the prisoner undoubtedly took — the path through the woods and over the bridge to the highway. I knew no other.”
“Did you know this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How came you to know it?”
“I had been over it before.”
“The whole distance?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Hickory, were you well enough acquainted with the route not to be obliged to stop at any point during your journey to see if you were in the right path or taking the most direct road to your destination?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when you got to the river?”
“I turned straight to the right and made for the bridge.”
“Did you not pause long enough to see if you could not cross the stream in some way?”
“No, sir. I don’t know how to swim in my clothes and keep them dry, and as for my wings, I had unfortunately left them at home.”
Mr. Orcutt frowned.
“These attempts at humor,” said he, “are very mal à propos, Mr. Hickory.” Then, with a return to his usual tone: “Did you cross the bridge at a run?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And did you keep up your pace when you got to the highroad?”
“No, I did not.”
“You did not?”
“No, sir.”
“And why, may I ask?”
“I was tired.”
“Tired?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a droll demureness in the way Hickory said this which made Mr. Orcutt pause. But in another minute he went on.
“And what pace do you take when you are tired?”
“A horse’s pace when I can get it,” was the laughing reply. “A team was going by, sir, and I just jumped up with the driver.”
“Ah, you rode, then, part of the way? Was it a fast team, Mr. Hickory?”
“Well, it wasn’t one of Bonner’s.”
“Did they go faster than a man could run?”
“Yes, sir, I am obliged to say they did.”
“And how long did you ride behind them?”
“Till I got in sight of the station.”
“Why did you not go farther?”
“Because I had been told the prisoner was seen to walk up to the station, and I meant to be fair to him when I knew how.”
“Oh, you did; and do you think it was fair to him to steal a ride on the highway?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And why?”
“Because no one has ever told me he didn’t ride down the highway, at least till he came within sight of the station.”
“Mr. Hickory,” inquired the lawyer, severely, “are you in possession of any knowledge proving that he did?”
“No, sir.”
Mr. Byrd, who had been watching the prisoner breathlessly through all this, saw or thought he saw the faintest shadow of an odd, disdainful smile cross his sternly composed features at this moment. But he could not be sure. There was enough in the possibility, however, to make the detective thoughtful; but Mr. Orcutt proceeding rapidly with his examination, left him no time to formulate his sensations into words.
“So that by taking this wagon you are certain you lost no time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rather gained some?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Hickory, will you now state whether you put forth your full speed to-day in going from Mrs. Clemmens’ house to the Quarry Station?”
“I did not.”
“What?”
“I did not put forth any thing like my full speed, sir,” the witness repeated, with a twinkle in the direction of Byrd that fell just short of being a decided wink.
“And why, may I ask? What restrained you from running as fast as you could? Sympathy for the defence?”
The ironical suggestion conveyed in this last question gave Hickory an excuse for indulging in his peculiar humor.
“No, sir; sympathy for the prosecution. I feared the loss of one of its most humble but valuable assistants. In other words, I was afraid I should break my neck.”
“And why should you have any special fears of breaking your neck?”
“The path is so uneven, sir. No man could run for much of the way without endangering his life or at least his limbs.”
“Did you run when you could?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And in those places where you could not run, did you proceed as fast as you knew how?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well; now I think it is time you told the jury just how many minutes it took you to go from Mrs. Clemmens’ door to the Monteith Quarry Station.”
“Well, sir, according to my watch, it took one hundred and five minutes.”
Mr. Orcutt glanced impressively at the jury.
“One hundred and five minutes,” he repeated. He then turned to the witness with his concluding questions.
“Mr. Hickory, were you present in the court-room just now when the two experts whom I have employed to make the run gave their testimony?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you know in what time they made it?”
“I believe I do. I was told by the person whom I informed of my failure that I had gained five minutes upon them.”
“And what did you reply?”
“That I hoped I could make something on them; but that five minutes wasn’t much when a clean fifteen was wanted,” returned Hickory, with another droll look at the experts and an askance appeal at Byrd, which being translated might read: “How in the deuce could this man have known what I was whispering to you on the other side of the court-room? Is he a wizard, this Orcutt?”
He forgot that a successful lawyer is always more or less of a wizard.
A Late Discovery.
Oh, torture me no more, I will confess.
King Lear.
WITH the cross-examination of Hickory, the defence rested, and the day being far advanced, the court adjourned.
During the bustle occasioned by the departure of the prisoner, Mr. Byrd took occasion to glance at the faces of those most immediately concerned in the trial.
His first look naturally fell upon Mr. Orcutt. Ah! all was going well with the great lawyer. Hope, if not triumph, beamed in his eye and breathed in every movement of his alert and nervous form. He was looking across the court-room at Imogene Dare, and his features wore a faint smile that indelibly impressed itself upon Mr. Byrd’s memory. Perhaps because there was something really peculiar and remarkable in its expression, and perhaps because of the contrast it offered to his own feelings of secret doubt and dread.
His next look naturally followed that of Mr. Orcutt and rested upon Imogene Dare. Ah! she was under the spell of awakening hope also. It was visible in her lightened brow, her calmer and less studied aspect, her eager and eloquently speaking gaze yet lingering on the door through which the prisoner had departed. As Mr. Byrd marked this look of hers and noted all it revealed, he felt his emotions rise till they almost confounded him. But strong as they were, they deepened still further when, in another moment, he beheld her suddenly drop her eyes from the door and turn them slowly, reluctantly but gratefully, upon Mr. Orcutt. All the story of her life was in that change of look; all the story of her future, too, perhaps, if —— Mr. Byrd dared not trust himself to follow the contingency that lurked behind that if, and, to divert his mind, turned his attention to Mr. Ferris.
But he found small comfort there. For the District Attorney was not alone. Hickory stood at his side, and Hickory was whispering in his ear, and Mr. Byrd, who knew what was weighing on his colleague’s mind, found no difficulty in interpreting the mingled expression of perplexity and surprise that crossed the dark, aquiline features of the District Attorney as he listened with slightly bended head to what the detective had to say. That look and the deep, anxious frown which crossed his brow as he glanced up and encountered Imogene’s eye, remained in Mr. Byrd’s mind long after the court-room was empty and he had returned to his hotel. It mingled with the smile of strange satisfaction which he had detected on Mr. Orcutt’s face, and awakened such a turmoil of contradictory images in his mind that he was glad when Hickory at last came in to break the spell.
Their meeting was singular, and revealed, as by a flash, the difference between the two men. Byrd contented himself with giving Hickory a look and saying nothing, while Hickory bestowed upon Byrd a hearty “Well, old fellow!” and broke out into a loud and by no means unenjoyable laugh.
“You didn’t expect to see me mounting the rostrum in favor of the defence, did you?” he asked, after he had indulged himself as long as he saw fit in the display of this somewhat unseasonable mirth. “Well, it was a surprise. But I’ve done it for Orcutt now!”
“You have?”
“Yes, I have.”
“But the prosecution has closed its case?”
“Bah! what of that?” was the careless reply. “The District Attorney can get it reopened. No Court would refuse that.”
Horace surveyed his colleague for a moment in silence.
“So Mr. Ferris was struck with the point you gave him?” he ventured, at last.
“Well, sufficiently so to be uneasy,” was Hickory’s somewhat dry response.
The look with which Byrd answered him was eloquent. “And that makes you cheerful?” he inquired, with ill-concealed sarcasm.
“Well, it has a slight tendency that way,” drawled the other, seemingly careless of the other’s expression, if, indeed, he had noted it. “You see,” he went on, with a meaning wink and a smile of utter unconcern, “all my energies just now are concentrated on getting myself even with that somewhat too wide-awake lawyer.” And his smile broadened till it merged into a laugh that was rasping enough to Byrd’s more delicate and generous sensibilities.
“Sufficiently so to be uneasy!” Yes, that was it. From the minute Mr. Ferris listened to the suggestion that Miss Dare had not told all she knew about the murder, and that a question relative to where she had been at the time it was perpetrated would, in all probability, bring strange revelations to light, he had been awakened to a most uncomfortable sense of his position and the duty that was possibly required of him. To be sure, the time for presenting testimony to the court was passed, unless it was in the way of rebuttal; but how did he know but what Miss Dare had a fact at her command which would help the prosecution in overturning the strange, unexpected, yet simple theory of the defence? At all events, he felt he ought to know whether, in giving her testimony she had exhausted her knowledge on this subject, or whether, in her sympathy for the accused, she had kept back certain evidence which if presented might bring the crime more directly home to the prisoner. Accordingly, somewhere toward eight o’clock in the evening, he sought her out with the bold resolution of forcing her to satisfy him on this point.
He did not find his task so easy, however, when he came into direct contact with her stately and far from encouraging presence, and met the look of surprise not unmixed with alarm with which she greeted him. She looked very weary, too, and yet unnaturally excited, as if she had not slept for many nights, if indeed she had rested at all since the trial began. It struck him as cruel to further disturb this woman, and yet the longer he surveyed her, the more he studied her pale, haughty, inscrutable face, he became the more assured that he would never feel satisfied with himself if he did not give her an immediate opportunity to disperse at once and forever these freshly awakened doubts.
His attitude or possibly his expression must have betrayed something of his anxiety if not of his resolve, for her countenance fell as she watched him, and her voice sounded quite unnatural as she strove to ask to what she was indebted for this unexpected visit.
He did not keep her in suspense.
“Miss Dare,” said he, not without kindness, for he was very sorry for this woman, despite the inevitable prejudice which her relations to the accused had awakened, “I would have given much not to have been obliged to disturb you to-night, but my duty would not allow it. There is a question which I have hitherto omitted to ask ——”
He paused, shocked; she was swaying from side to side before his eyes, and seemed indeed about to fall. But at the outreaching of his hand she recovered herself and stood erect, the noblest spectacle of a woman triumphing over the weakness of her body by the mere force of her indomitable will, that he had ever beheld.
“Sit down,” he gently urged, pushing toward her a chair. “You have had a hard and dreary week of it; you are in need of rest.”
She did not refuse to avail herself of the chair, though, as he could not help but notice, she did not thereby relax one iota of the restraint she put upon herself.
“I do not understand,” she murmured; “what question?”
“Miss Dare, in all you have told the court, in all that you have told me, about this fatal and unhappy affair, you have never informed us how it was you first came to hear of it. You were ——”
“I heard it on the street corner,” she interrupted, with what seemed to him an almost feverish haste.
“First?”
“Yes, first.”
“Miss Dare, had you been in the street long? Were you in it at the time the murder happened, do you think?”
“I in the street?”
“Yes,” he repeated, conscious from the sudden strange alteration in her look that he had touched upon a point which, to her, was vital with some undefined interest, possibly that to which the surmises of Hickory had supplied a clue. “Were you in the street, or anywhere out-of-doors at the time the murder occurred? It strikes me that it would be well for me to know.”
“Sir,” she cried, rising in her sudden indignation, “I thought the time for questions had passed. What means this sudden inquiry into a matter we have all considered exhausted, certainly as far as I am concerned.”
“Shall I show you?” he cried, taking her by the hand and leading her toward the mirror near by, under one of those impulses which sometimes effect so much. “Look in there at your own face and you will see why I press this question upon you.”
Astonished, if not awed, she followed with her eyes the direction of his pointing finger, and anxiously surveyed her own image in the glass. Then, with a quick movement, her hands went up before her face — which till that moment had kept its counsel so well — and, tottering back against a table, she stood for a moment communing with herself, and possibly summoning up her courage for the conflict she evidently saw before her.
“What is it you wish to know?” she faintly inquired, after a long period of suspense and doubt.
“Where were you when the clock struck twelve on the day Mrs. Clemmens was murdered?”
Instantly dropping her hands, she turned toward him with a sudden lift of her majestic figure that was as imposing as it was unexpected.
“I was at Professor Darling’s house,” she declared, with great steadiness.
Mr. Ferris had not expected this reply, and looked at her for an instant almost as if he felt inclined to repeat his inquiry.
“Do you doubt my word?” she queried. “Is it possible you question my truth at a time like this?”
“No, Miss Dare,” he gravely assured her. “After the great sacrifice you have publicly made in the interests of justice, it would be worse than presumptuous in me to doubt your sincerity now.”
She drew a deep breath, and straightened herself still more proudly.
“Then am I to understand you are satisfied with the answer you have received?”
“Yes, if you will also add that you were in the observatory at Professor Darling’s house,” he responded quickly, convinced there was some mystery here, and seeing but one way to reach it.
“Very well, then, I was,” she averred, without hesitation.
“You were!” he echoed, advancing upon her with a slight flush on his middle-aged cheek, that evinced how difficult it was for him to pursue this conversation in face of the haughty and repellant bearing she had assumed. “You will, perhaps, tell me, then, why you did not see and respond to the girl who came into that room at this very time, with a message from a lady who waited below to see you?”
“Ah!” she cried, succumbing with a suppressed moan to the inexorable destiny that pursued her in this man, “you have woven a net for me!”
And she sank again into a chair, where she sat like one stunned, looking at him with a hollow gaze which filled his heart with compassion, but which had no power to shake his purpose as a District Attorney.
“Yes,” he acknowledged, after a moment, “I have woven a net for you, but only because I am anxious for the truth, and desirous of furthering the ends of justice. I am confident you know more about this crime than you have ever revealed, Miss Dare; that you are acquainted with some fact that makes you certain Mr. Mansell committed this murder, notwithstanding the defence advanced in his favor. What is this fact? It is my office to inquire. True,” he admitted, seeing her draw back with denial written on every line of her white face, “you have a right to refuse to answer me here, but you will have no right to refuse to answer me to-morrow when I put the same question to you in the presence of judge and jury.”
“And”— her voice was so husky he could but with difficulty distinguish her words —“do you intend to recall me to the stand to-morrow?”
“I am obliged to, Miss Dare.”
“But I thought the time for examination was over; that the witnesses had all testified, and that nothing remained now but for the lawyers to sum up.”
“When in a case like this the prisoner offers a defence not anticipated by the prosecution, the latter, of course, has the right to meet such defence with proof in rebuttal.”
“Proof in rebuttal? What is that?”
“Evidence to rebut or prove false the matters advanced in support of the defence.”
“Ah!”
“I must do it in this case — if I can, of course.”
She did not reply.
“And even if the testimony I desire to put in is not rebuttal in its character, no unbiassed judge would deny to counsel the privilege of reopening his case when any new or important fact has come to light.”
As if overwhelmed by a prospect she had not anticipated, she hurriedly arose and pointed down the room to a curtained recess.
“Give me five minutes,” she cried; “five minutes by myself where no one can look at me, and where I can think undisturbed upon what I had better do.”
“Very well,” he acquiesced; “you shall have them.”
She at once crossed to the small retreat.
“Five minutes,” she reiterated huskily, as she lifted the curtains aside; “when the clock strikes nine I will come out.”
“You will?” he repeated, doubtfully.
“I will.”
The curtains fell behind her, and for five long minutes Mr. Ferris paced the room alone. He was far from easy. All was so quiet behind that curtain — so preternaturally quiet. But he would not disturb her; no, he had promised, and she should be left to fight her battle alone. When nine o’clock struck, however, he started, and owned to himself some secret dread. Would she come forth or would he have to seek her in her place of seclusion? It seemed he would have to seek her, for the curtains did not stir, and by no sound from within was any token given that she had heard the summons. Yet he hesitated, and as he did so, a thought struck him. Could it be there was any outlet from the refuge she had sought? Had she taken advantage of his consideration to escape him? Moved by the fear, he hastily crossed the room. But before he could lay his hand upon the curtains, they parted, and disclosed the form of Imogene.
“I am coming,” she murmured, and stepped forth more like a faintly-breathing image than a living woman.
His first glance at her face convinced him she had taken her resolution. His second, that in taking it she had drifted into a state of feeling different from any he had observed in her before, and of a sort that to him was wholly inexplicable. Her words when she spoke only deepened this impression.
illustration
“The curtains parted and disclosed the form of Imogene. ‘I am coming,’ she murmured, and stepped forth.”
“Mr. Ferris,” said she, coming very near to him in evident dread of being overheard, “I have decided to tell you all. I hoped never to be obliged to do this. I thought enough had been revealed to answer your purpose. I— I believed Heaven would spare me this last trial, let me keep this last secret. It was of so strange a nature, so totally out of the reach of any man’s surmise. But the finger of God is on me. It has followed this crime from the beginning, and there is no escape. By some strange means, some instinct of penetration, perhaps, you have discovered that I know something concerning this murder of which I have never told you, and that the hour I spent at Professor Darling’s is accountable for this knowledge. Sir, I cannot struggle with Providence. I will tell you all I have hitherto hidden from the world if you will promise to let me know if my words will prove fatal, and if he — he who is on trial for his life — will be lost if I give to the court my last evidence against him?”
“But, Miss Dare,” remonstrated the District Attorney, “no man can tell ——” He did not finish his sentence. Something in the feverish gaze she fixed upon him stopped him. He felt that he could not palter with a woman in the grasp of an agony like this. So, starting again, he observed: “Let me hear what you have to say, and afterward we will consider what the effect of it may be; though a question of expediency should not come into your consideration, Miss Dare, in telling such truths as the law demands.”
“No?” she broke out, giving way for one instant to a low and terrible laugh which curdled Mr. Ferris’ blood and made him wish his duty had led him into the midst of any other scene than this.
But before he could remonstrate with her, this harrowing expression of misery had ceased, and she was saying in quiet and suppressed tones:
“The reason I did not see and respond to the girl who came into the observatory on the morning of Mrs. Clemmens’ murder is, that I was so absorbed in the discoveries I was making behind the high rack which shuts off one end of the room, that any appeal to me at that time must have passed unnoticed. I had come to Professor Darling’s house, according to my usual custom on Tuesday mornings, to study astronomy with his daughter Helen. I had come reluctantly, for my mind was full of the secret intention I had formed of visiting Mrs. Clemmens in the afternoon, and I had no heart for study. But finding Miss Darling out, I felt a drawing toward the seclusion I knew I should find in the observatory, and mounting to it, I sat down by myself to think. The rest and quiet of the place were soothing to me, and I sat still a long time, but suddenly becoming impressed with the idea that it was growing late, I went to the window to consult the town-clock. But though its face could be plainly seen from the observatory, its hands could not, and I was about to withdraw from the window when I remembered the telescope, which Miss Darling and I had, in a moment of caprice a few days before, so arranged as to command a view of the town. Going to it, I peered through it at the clock.” Stopping, she surveyed the District Attorney with breathless suspense. “It was just five minutes to twelve,” she impressively whispered.
Mr. Ferris felt a shock.
“A critical moment!” he exclaimed. Then, with a certain intuition of what she was going to say next, inquired: “And what then, Miss Dare?”
“I was struck by a desire to see if I could detect Mrs. Clemmens’ house from where I was, and shifting the telescope slightly, I looked through it again, and ——”
“What did you see, Miss Dare?”
“I saw her dining-room door standing ajar and a man leaping headlong over the fence toward the bog.”
The District Attorney started, looked at her with growing interest, and inquired:
“Did you recognize this man, Miss Dare?”
She nodded in great agitation.
“Who was he?”
“Craik Mansell.”
“Miss Dare,” ventured Mr. Ferris, after a moment, “you say this was five minutes to twelve?”
“Yes, sir,” was the faint reply.
“Five minutes later than the time designated by the defence as a period manifestly too late for the prisoner to have left Mrs. Clemmens’ house and arrived at the Quarry Station at twenty minutes past one?”
“Yes,” she repeated, below her breath.
The District Attorney surveyed her earnestly, perceiving she had not only spoken the truth, but realized all which that truth implied, and drew back a few steps muttering ironically to himself:
“Ah, Orcutt! Orcutt!”
Breathlessly she watched him, breathlessly she followed him step by step like some white and haunting spirit.
“You believe, then, this fact will cost him his life?” came from her lips at last.
“Don’t ask me that, Miss Dare. You and I have no concern with the consequences of this evidence.”
“No concern?” she repeated, wildly. “You and I no concern? Ah!” she went on, with heart-piercing sarcasm, “I forgot that the sentiments of the heart have no place in judicial investigation. A criminal is but lawful prey, and it is every good citizen’s duty to push him to his doom. No matter if one is bound to that criminal by the dearest ties which can unite two hearts; no matter if the trust he has bestowed upon you has been absolute and unquestioning, the law does not busy itself with that. The law says if you have a word at your command which can destroy this man, give utterance to it; and the law must be obeyed.”
“But, Miss Dare ——” the District Attorney hastily intervened, startled by the feverish gleam of her hitherto calm eye.
But she was not to be stopped, now that her misery had at last found words.
“You do not understand my position, perhaps,” she continued. “You do not see that it has been my hand, and mine only, which, from the first, has slowly, remorselessly pushed this man back from the point of safety, till now, now, I am called upon to drag from his hand the one poor bending twig to which he clings, and upon which he relies to support him above the terrible gulf that yawns at his feet. You do not see ——”
“Pardon me,” interposed Mr. Ferris again, anxious, if possible, to restore her to herself. “I see enough to pity you profoundly. But you must allow me to remark that your hand is not the only one which has been instrumental in hurrying this young man to his doom. The detectives ——”
“Sir,” she interrupted in her turn, “can you, dare you say, that without my testimony he would have stood at any time in a really critical position? — or that he would stand in jeopardy of his life even now, if it were not for this fact I have to tell?”
Mr. Ferris was silent.
“Oh, I knew it, I knew it!” she cried. “There will be no doubt concerning whose testimony it was that convicted him, if he is sentenced by the court for this crime. Ah, ah, what an enviable position is mine! What an honorable deed I am called upon to perform! To tell the truth at the expense of the life most dear to you. It is a Roman virtue! I shall be held up as a model to my sex. All the world must shower plaudits upon the woman who, sooner than rob justice of its due, delivered her own lover over to the hangman.”
Pausing in her passionate burst, she turned her hot, dry eyes in a sort of desperation upon his face.
“Do you know,” she gurgled in his ear, “some women would kill themselves before they would do this deed.”
Struck to his heart in spite of himself, Mr. Ferris looked at her in alarm — saw her standing there with her arms hanging down at her sides, but with her two hands clinched till they looked as if carved from marble — and drew near to her with the simple hurried question of:
“But you?”
“I?” she laughed again — a low, gurgling laugh, that yet had a tone in it that went to the other’s heart and awoke strange sensations there. “Oh, I shall live to respond to your questions. Do not fear that I shall not be in the court-room to-morrow.”
There was something in her look and manner that was new. It awed him, while it woke all his latent concern.
“Miss Dare,” he began, “you can believe how painful all this has been to me, and how I would have spared you this misery if I could. But the responsibilities resting upon me are such ——”
He did not go on; why should he? She was not listening. To be sure, she stood before him, seemingly attentive, but the eyes with which she met his were fixed upon other objects than any which could have been apparent to her in his face; and her form, which she had hitherto held upright, was shaking with long, uncontrollable shudders, which, to his excited imagination, threatened to lay her at his feet.
He at once started toward the door for help. But she was alive to his movements if not to his words. Stopping him with a gesture, she cried:
“No — no! do not call for any one; I wish to be alone; I have my duty to face, you know; my testimony to prepare.” And rousing herself she cast a peculiar look about the room, like one suddenly introduced into a strange place, and then moving slowly toward the window, threw back the curtain and gazed without. “Night!” she murmured, “night!” and after a moment added, in a deep, unearthly voice that thrilled irresistibly upon Mr. Ferris’ ear: “And a heaven full of stars!”
Her face, as she turned it upward, wore so strange a look, Mr. Ferris involuntarily left his position and crossed to her side. She was still murmuring to herself in seeming unconsciousness of his presence. “Stars!” she was repeating; “and above them God!” And the long shudders shook her frame again, and she dropped her head and seemed about to fall into her old abstraction when her eye encountered that of the District Attorney, and she hurriedly aroused herself.
“Pardon me,” she exclaimed, with an ill-concealed irony, particularly impressive after her tone of the moment before, “have you any thing further to exact of me?”
“No,” he made haste to reply; “only before I go I would entreat you to be calm ——”
“And say the word I have to say to-morrow without a balk and without an unnecessary display of feeling,” she coldly interpolated. “Thanks, Mr. Ferris, I understand you. But you need fear nothing from me. There will be no scene — at least on my part — when I rise before the court to give my testimony to-morrow. Since my hand must strike the fatal blow, it shall strike — firmly!” and her clenched fist fell heavily on her own breast, as if the blow she meditated must first strike there.
The District Attorney, more moved than he had deemed it possible for him to be, made her a low bow and withdrew slowly to the door.
“I leave you, then, till to-morrow,” he said.
“Till to-morrow.”
Long after he had passed out, the deep meaning which informed those two words haunted his memory and disturbed his heart. Till to-morrow! Alas, poor girl! and after to-morrow, what then?
What was Hid Behind Imogene’s Veil.
Mark now, how a plain tale shall put you down.
Henry iv.
THE few minutes that elapsed before the formal opening of court the next morning were marked by great cheerfulness. The crisp frosty air had put everybody in a good-humor. Even the prisoner looked less sombre than before, and for the first time since the beginning of his trial, deigned to turn his eyes toward the bench where Imogene sat, with a look that, while it was not exactly kind, had certainly less disdain in it than before he saw his way to a possible acquittal on the theory advanced by his counsel.
But this look, though his first, did not prove to be his last. Something in the attitude of the woman he gazed at — or was it the mystery of the heavy black veil that enveloped her features? — woke a strange doubt in his mind. Beckoning to Mr. Orcutt, he communicated with him in a low tone.
“Can it be possible,” asked he, “that any thing new could have transpired since last night to give encouragement to the prosecution?”
The lawyer, startled, glanced hastily about him and shook his head.
“No,” he cried; “impossible! What could have transpired?”
“Look at Mr. Ferris,” whispered the prisoner, “and then at the witness who wears a veil.”
With an unaccountable feeling of reluctance, Mr. Orcutt hastily complied. His first glance at the District Attorney made him thoughtful. He recognized the look which his opponent wore; he had seen it many a time before this, and knew what it indicated. As for Imogene, who could tell what went on in that determined breast? The close black veil revealed nothing. Mr. Orcutt impatiently turned back to his client.
“I think you alarm yourself unnecessarily,” he whispered. “Ferris means to fight, but what of that? He wouldn’t be fit for his position if he didn’t struggle to the last gasp even for a failing cause.”
Yet in saying this his lip took its sternest line, and from the glitter of his eye and the close contraction of his brow it looked as if he were polishing his own weapons for the conflict he thus unexpectedly saw before him.
Meantime, across the court-room, another whispered conference was going on.
“Hickory, where have you been ever since last night? I have not been able to find you anywhere.”
“I was on duty; I had a bird to look after.”
“A bird?”
“Yes, a wild bird; one who is none too fond of its cage; a desperate one who might find means to force aside its bars and fly away.”
“What do you mean, Hickory? What nonsense is this?”
“Look at Miss Dare and perhaps you will understand.”
“Miss Dare?”
“Yes.”
Horace’s eyes opened in secret alarm.
“Do you mean ——”
“I mean that I spent the whole night in tramping up and down in front of her window. And a dismal task it was too. Her lamp burned till daylight.”
Here the court was called to order and Byrd had only opportunity to ask:
“Why does she wear a veil?”
To which the other whisperingly retorted:
“Why did she spend the whole night in packing up her worldly goods and writing a letter to the Congregational minister to be sent after the adjournment of court to-day?”
“Did she do that?”
“She did.”
“Hickory, don’t you know — haven’t you been told what she is expected to say or do here to-day?”
“No.”
“You only guess?”
“No, I don’t guess.”
“You fear, then?”
“Fear! Well, that’s a big word to a fellow like me. I don’t know as I fear any thing; I’m curious, that is all.”
Mr. Byrd drew back, looked over at Imogene, and involuntarily shook his head. What was in the mind of this mysterious woman? What direful purpose or shadow of doom lay behind the veil that separated her from the curiosity and perhaps the sympathy of the surrounding crowd? It was in vain to question; he could only wait in secret anxiety for the revelations which the next few minutes might bring.
The defence having rested the night before, the first action of the Judge on the opening of the court was to demand whether the prosecution had any rebuttal testimony to offer.
Mr. Ferris instantly rose.
“Miss Dare, will you retake the stand,” said he.
Immediately Mr. Orcutt, who up to the last moment had felt his case as secure as if it had indeed been founded on a rock, bounded to his feet, white as the witness herself.
“I object!” he cried. “The witness thus recalled by the counsel of the prosecution has had ample opportunity to lay before the court all the evidence in her possession. I submit it to the court whether my learned opponent should not have exhausted his witness before he rested his case.”
“Mr. Ferris,” asked the Judge, turning to the District Attorney, “do you recall this witness for the purpose of introducing fresh testimony in support of your case or merely to disprove the defence?”
“Your honor,” was the District Attorney’s reply, “I ought to say in fairness to my adversary and to the court, that since the case was closed a fact has come to my knowledge of so startling and conclusive a nature that I feel bound to lay it before the jury. From this witness alone can we hope to glean this fact; and as I had no information on which to base a question concerning it in her former examination, I beg the privilege of reopening my case to that extent.”
“Then the evidence you desire to submit is not in rebuttal?” queried the Judge.
“I do not like to say that,” rejoined the District Attorney, adroitly. “I think it may bear directly upon the question whether the prisoner could catch the train at Monteith Quarry if he left the widow’s house after the murder. If the evidence I am about to offer be true, he certainly could.”
Thoroughly alarmed now and filled with the dismay which a mysterious threat is always calculated to produce, Mr. Orcutt darted a wild look of inquiry at Imogene, and finding her immovable behind her thick veil, turned about and confronted the District Attorney with a most sarcastic smile upon his blanched and trembling lips.
“Does my learned friend suppose the court will receive any such ambiguous explanation as this? If the testimony sought from this witness is by way of rebuttal, let him say so; but if it is not, let him be frank enough to admit it, that I may in turn present my objections to the introduction of any irrelevant evidence at this time.”
“The testimony I propose to present through this witness is in the way of rebuttal,” returned Mr Ferris, severely. “The argument advanced by the defence, that the prisoner could not have left Mrs. Clemmens’ house at ten minutes before twelve and arrived at Monteith Quarry Station at twenty minutes past one, is not a tenable one, and I purpose to prove it by this witness.”
Mr. Orcutt’s look of anxiety changed to one of mingled amazement and incredulity.
“By this witness! You have chosen a peculiar one for the purpose,” he ironically exclaimed, more and more shaken from his self-possession by the quiet bearing of his opponent, and the silent air of waiting which marked the stately figure of her whom, as he had hitherto believed, he thoroughly comprehended. “Your Honor,” he continued, “I withdraw my objections; I should really like to hear how Miss Dare or any lady can give evidence on this point.”
And he sank back into his seat with a look at his client in which professional bravado strangely struggled with something even deeper than alarm.
“This must be an exciting moment to the prisoner,” whispered Hickory to Byrd.
“So, so. But mark his control, will you? He is less cut up than Orcutt.”
“Look at his eyes, though. If any thing could pierce that veil of hers, you would think such a glance might.”
“Ah, he is trying his influence over her at last.”
“But it is too late.”
Meantime the District Attorney had signified again to Miss Dare his desire that she should take the stand. Slowly, and like a person in a dream, she arose, unloosed her veil, dragged it from before her set features, and stepped mechanically forward to the place assigned her. What was there in the face thus revealed that called down an instantaneous silence upon the court, and made the momentary pause that ensued memorable in the minds of all present? It was not that she was so pale, though her close-fitting black dress, totally unrelieved by any suspicion of white, was of a kind to bring out any startling change in her complexion; nor was there visible in her bearing any trace of the feverish excitement which had characterized it the evening before; yet of all the eyes that were fixed upon her — and there were many in that crowd whose only look a moment before had been one of heartless curiosity — there were none which were not filled with compassion and more or less dread.
Meanwhile, she remained like a statue on the spot where she had taken her stand, and her eyes, which in her former examination had met the court with the unflinching gaze of an automaton, were lowered till the lashes swept her cheek.
“Miss Dare,” asked the District Attorney, as soon as he could recover from his own secret emotions of pity and regret, “will you tell us where you were at the hour of noon on the morning Mrs. Clemmens was murdered?”
Before she could answer, before in fact her stiff and icy lips could part, Mr. Orcutt had risen impetuously to his feet, like a man bound to contend every step of the way with the unknown danger that menaced him.
“I object!” he cried, in the changed voice of a deeply disturbed man, while those who had an interest in the prisoner at this juncture, could not but notice that he, too, showed signs of suppressed feeling, and for the first time since the beginning of the trial, absolutely found his self-command insufficient to keep down the rush of color that swept up to his swarthy cheek.
“The question,” continued Mr. Orcutt, “is not to elicit testimony in rebuttal.”
“Will my learned friend allow the witness to give her answer, instead of assuming what it is to be?”
“I will not,” retorted his adversary. “A child could see that such a question is not admissible at this stage of the case.”
“I am sure my learned friend would not wish me to associate him with any such type of inexperience?” suggested Mr. Ferris, grimly.
But the sarcasm, which at one time would have called forth a stinging retort from Mr. Orcutt, passed unheeded. The great lawyer was fighting for his life, for his heart’s life, for the love and hand of Imogene — a recompense which at this moment her own unconsidered action, or the constraining power of a conscience of whose might he had already received such heart-rending manifestation, seemed about to snatch from his grasp forever. Turning to the Judge, he said:
“I will not delay the case by bandying words with my esteemed friend, but appeal at once to the Court as to whether the whereabouts of Miss Dare on that fatal morning can have any thing to do with the defence we have proved.”
“Your Honor,” commenced the District Attorney, calmly following the lead of his adversary, “I am ready to stake my reputation on the declaration that this witness is in possession of a fact that overturns the whole fabric of the defence. If the particular question I have made use of, in my endeavor to elicit this fact, is displeasing to my friend, I will venture upon another less ambiguous, if more direct and perhaps leading.” And turning again to the witness, Mr. Ferris calmly inquired:
“Did you or did you not see the prisoner on the morning of the assault, at a time distinctly known by you to be after ten minutes to twelve?”
It was out. The line of attack meditated by Mr. Ferris was patent to everybody. A murmur of surprise and interest swept through the court-room, while Mr. Orcutt, who in spite of his vague fears was any thing but prepared for a thrust of this vital nature, started and cast short demanding looks from Imogene to Mansell, as if he would ask them what fact this was which through ignorance or presumption they had conspired to keep from him. The startled look which he surprised on the stern face of the prisoner, showed him there was every thing to fear in her reply, and bounding again to his feet, he was about to make some further attempt to stave off the impending calamity, when the rich voice of Imogene was heard saying:
“Gentlemen, if you will allow me to tell my story unhindered, I think I shall soonest satisfy both the District Attorney and the counsel for the prisoner.”
And raising her eyes with a slow and heavy movement from the floor, she fixed them in a meaning way upon the latter.
At once convinced that he had been unnecessarily alarmed, Mr. Orcutt sank back into his seat, and Imogene slowly proceeded.
She commenced in a forced tone and with a sudden quick shudder that made her words come hesitatingly and with strange breaks: “I have been asked — two questions by Mr. Ferris — I prefer — to answer the first. He asked me — where I was at the hour Mrs. Clemmens was murdered.”
She paused so long one had time to count her breaths as they came in gasps to her white lips.
“I have no further desire to hide from you the truth. I was with Mrs. Clemmens in her own house.”
At this acknowledgment so astonishing, and besides so totally different from the one he had been led to expect, Mr. Ferris started as if a thunder-bolt had fallen at his feet.
“In Mrs. Clemmens’ house!” he repeated, amid the excited hum of a hundred murmuring voices. “Did you say, in Mrs. Clemmens’ house?”
“Yes,” she returned, with a wild, ironical smile that at once assured Mr. Ferris of his helplessness. “I am on oath now, and I assert that on the day and at the hour Mrs. Clemmens was murdered, I was in her house and in her dining-room. I had come there secretly,” she proceeded, with a sudden feverish fluency that robbed Mr. Ferris of speech, and in fact held all her auditors spell-bound. “I had been spending an hour or so at Professor Darling’s, whose house in West Side is, as many here know, at the very end of Summer Avenue, and close to the woods that run along back of Mrs. Clemmens’ cottage. I had been sitting alone in the observatory, which is at the top of one of the towers, but being suddenly seized with a desire to see the widow and make that promised attempt at persuading her to reconsider her decision in regard to the money her — her — the prisoner wanted, I came down, and unknown to any one in the house, stole away to the woods and so to the widow’s cottage. It was noon when I got there, or very near it, for her company, if she had had any, was gone, and she was engaged in setting the clock where ——”
Why did she pause? The District Attorney, utterly stupefied by his surprise, had made no sign; neither had Mr. Orcutt. Indeed, it looked as if the latter could not have moved, much less spoken, even if he had desired it. Thought, feeling, life itself, seemed to be at a standstill within him as he sat with a face like clay, waiting for words whose import he perhaps saw foreshadowed in her wild and terrible mien. But though his aspect was enough to stop her, it was not upon him she was gazing when the words tripped on her lips. It was upon the prisoner, on the man who up to this time had borne himself with such iron-like composure and reserve, but who now, with every sign of feeling and alarm, had started forward and stood surveying her, with his hand uplifted in the authoritative manner of a master.
The next instant he sank back, feeling the eye of the Judge upon him; but the signal had been made, and many in that court-room looked to see Imogene falter or break down. But she, although fascinated, perhaps moved, by this hint of feeling from one who had hitherto met all the exigencies of the hour with a steady and firm composure, did not continue silent at his bidding. On the contrary, her purpose, whatever it was, seemed to acquire new force, for turning from him with a strange, unearthly glare on her face, she fixed her glances on the jury and went steadily on.
“I have said,” she began, “that Mrs. Clemmens was winding her clock. When I came in she stepped down, and a short and angry colloquy commenced between us. She did not like my coming there. She did not appreciate my interest in her nephew. She made me furious, frenzied, mad. I— I turned away — then I came back. She was standing with her face lifted toward her clock, as though she no longer heeded or remembered my presence. I— I don’t know what came to me; whether it was hatred or love that maddened my brain — but ——”
She did not finish; she did not need to. The look she gave, the attitude she took, the appalling gesture which she made, supplied the place of language. In an instant Mr. Ferris, Mr. Orcutt, all the many and confused spectators who hung upon her words as if spell-bound, realized that instead of giving evidence inculpating the prisoner, she was giving evidence accusing herself; that, in other words, Imogene Dare, goaded to madness by the fearful alternative of either destroying her lover or sacrificing herself, had yielded to the claims of her love or her conscience, and in hearing of judge and jury, proclaimed herself to be the murderess of Mrs. Clemmens.
The moment that followed was frightful. The prisoner, who was probably the only man present who foresaw her intention when she began to speak, had sunk back into his seat and covered his face with his hands long before she reached the fatal declaration. But the spectacle presented by Mr. Orcutt was enough, as with eyes dilated and lips half parted in consternation, he stood before them a victim of overwhelming emotion; so overcome, indeed, as scarcely to be able to give vent to the one low and memorable cry that involuntarily left his lips as the full realization of what she had done smote home to his stricken breast.
As for Mr. Ferris, he stood dumb, absolutely robbed of speech by this ghastly confession he had unwillingly called from his witness’ lips; while slowly from end to end of that court-room the wave of horror spread, till Imogene, her cause, and that of the wretched prisoner himself, seemed swallowed up in one fearful tide of unreality and nightmare.
The first gleam of relief came from the Judge.
“Miss Dare,” said he, in his slow, kindly way that nothing could impair, “do you realize the nature of the evidence you have given to the court?”
Her slowly falling head and white face, from which all the fearful excitement was slowly ebbing in a dead despair, gave answer for her.
“I fear that you are not in a condition to realize the effect of your words,” the Judge went on. “Sympathy for the prisoner or the excitement of being recalled to the stand has unnerved or confused you. Take time, Miss Dare, the court will wait; reconsider your words, and then tell us the truth about this matter.”
But Imogene, with white lips and drooped head, answered hurriedly:
“I have nothing to consider. I have told, or attempted to tell, how Mrs. Clemmens came to her death. She was struck down by me; Craik Mansell there is innocent.”
At this repetition in words of what she had before merely intimated by a gesture, the Judge ceased his questions, and the horror of the multitude found vent in one long, low, but irrepressible murmur. Taking advantage of the momentary disturbance, Byrd turned to his colleague with the agitated inquiry:
“Hickory, is this what you have had in your mind for the last few days?”
“This,” repeated the other, with an air of careful consideration, assumed, as Byrd thought, to conceal any emotion which he might have felt; “no, no, not really. I— I don’t know what I thought. Not this though.” And he fixed his eyes upon Imogene’s fallen countenance, with an expression of mingled doubt and wonder, as baffling in its nature as the tone of voice he had used.
“But,” stammered Byrd, with an earnestness that almost partook of the nature of pleading, “she is not speaking the truth, of course. What we heard her say in the hut ——”
“Hush!” interposed the other, with a significant gesture and a sudden glance toward the prisoner and his counsel; “watching is better than talking just now. Besides, Orcutt is going to speak.”
It was so. After a short and violent conflict with the almost overwhelming emotions that had crushed upon him with the words and actions of Imogene, the great lawyer had summoned up sufficient control over himself to reassume the duties of his position and face once more the expectant crowd, and the startled, if not thoroughly benumbed, jury.
His first words had the well-known ring, and, like a puff of cool air through a heated atmosphere, at once restored the court-room to its usual condition of formality and restraint.
“This is not evidence, but the raving of frenzy,” he said, in impassioned tones. “The witness has been tortured by the demands of the prosecution, till she is no longer responsible for her words.” And turning toward the District Attorney, who, at the first sound of his adversary’s voice, had roused himself from the stupor into which he had been thrown by the fearful and unexpected turn which Imogene’s confession had taken, he continued: “If my learned friend is not lost to all feelings of humanity, he will withdraw from the stand a witness laboring under a mental aberration of so serious a nature.”
Mr. Ferris was an irritable man, but he was touched with sympathy for his friend, reeling under so heavy a blow. He therefore forbore to notice this taunt save by a low bow, but turned at once to the Judge.
“Your Honor,” said he, “I desire to be understood by the Court, that the statement which has just been made in your hearing by this witness, is as much of a surprise to me as to any one in this court-room. The fact which I proposed to elicit from her testimony was of an entirely different nature. In the conversation which we held last night ——”
But Mr. Orcutt, vacillating between his powerful concern for Imogene, and his duty to his client, would not allow the other to proceed.
“I object,” said he, “to any attempt at influencing the jury by the statement of any conversation which may have passed between the District Attorney and the witness. From its effects we may judge something of its nature, but with its details we have nothing to do.”
And raising his voice till it filled the room like a clarion, Mr. Orcutt said:
“The moment is too serious for wrangling. A spectacle, the most terrible that can be presented to the eyes of man, is before you. A young, beautiful, and hitherto honored woman, caught in the jaws of a cruel fate and urged on by the emotions of her sex, which turn ever toward self-sacrifice, has, in a moment of mistaken zeal or frantic terror, allowed herself to utter words which sound like a criminal confession. May it please your Honor and Gentlemen of the Jury, this is an act to awaken compassion in the breast of every true man. Neither my client nor myself can regard it in any other light. Though his case were ten times more critical than it is, and condemnation awaited him at your hands instead of a triumphant acquittal, he is not the man I believe him, if he would consent to accept a deliverance founded upon utterances so manifestly frenzied and devoid of truth. I therefore repeat the objection I have before urged. I ask your Honor now to strike out all this testimony as irrelevant in rebuttal, and I beg our learned friend to close an examination as unprofitable to his own cause as to mine.”
“I agree with my friend,” returned Mr. Ferris, “that the moment is one unfit for controversy. If it please the Court, therefore, I will withdraw the witness, though by so doing I am forced to yield all hope of eliciting the important fact I had relied upon to rebut the defence.”
And obedient to the bow of acquiescence he received from the Judge, the District Attorney turned to Miss Dare and considerately requested her to leave the stand.
But she, roused by the sound of her name perhaps, looked up, and meeting the eye of the Judge, said:
“Pardon me, your Honor, but I do not desire to leave the stand till I have made clear to all who hear me that it is I, not the prisoner, who am responsible for Mrs. Clemmens’ death. The agony which I have been forced to undergo in giving testimony against him, has earned me the right to say the words that prove his innocence and my own guilt.”
“But,” said the Judge, “we do not consider you in any condition to give testimony in court to-day, even against yourself. If what you say is true, you shall have ample opportunities hereafter to confirm and establish your statements, for you must know, Miss Dare, that no confession of this nature will be considered sufficient without testimony corroborative of its truth.”
“But, your Honor,” she returned, with a dreadful calmness, “I have corroborative testimony.” And amid the startled looks of all present, she raised her hand and pointed with steady forefinger at the astounded and by-no-means gratified Hickory. “Let that man be recalled,” she cried, “and asked to repeat the conversation he had with a young servant-girl called Roxana, in Professor Darling’s observatory some ten weeks ago.”
The suddenness of her action, the calm assurance with which it was made, together with the intention it evinced of summoning actual evidence to substantiate her confession, almost took away the breath of the assembled multitude. Even Mr. Orcutt seemed shaken by it, and stood looking from the outstretched hand of this woman he so adored, to the abashed countenance of the rough detective, with a wonder that for the first time betrayed the presence of alarm. Indeed, to him as to others, the moment was fuller of horror than when she made her first self-accusation, for what at that time partook of the vagueness of a dream, seemed to be acquiring the substance of an awful reality.
Imogene alone remained unmoved. Still with her eyes fixed on Hickory, she continued:
“He has not told you all he knows about this matter, any more than I. If my word needs corroboration, look to him.”
And taking advantage of the sensation which this last appeal occasioned, she waited where she was for the Judge to speak, with all the calmness of one who has nothing more to fear or hope for in this world.
But the Judge sat aghast at this spectacle of youth and beauty insisting upon its own guilt, and neither Mr. Ferris nor Mr. Orcutt having words for this emergency, a silence, deep as the feeling which had been aroused, gradually settled over the whole court. It was fast becoming oppressive, when suddenly a voice, low but firm, and endowed with a strange power to awake and hold the attention, was heard speaking in that quarter of the room whence Mr. Orcutt’s commanding tones had so often issued. It was an unknown voice, and for a minute a doubt seemed to rest upon the assembled crowd as to whom it belonged.
But the change that had come into Imogene’s face, as well as the character of the words that were uttered, soon convinced them it was the prisoner himself. With a start, every one turned in the direction of the dock. The sight that met their eyes seemed a fit culmination of the scene through which they had just passed. Erect, noble, as commanding in appearance and address as the woman who still held her place on the witness stand, Craik Mansell faced the judge and jury with a quiet, resolute, but courteous assurance, that seemed at once to rob him of the character of a criminal, and set him on a par with the able and honorable men by whom he was surrounded. Yet his words were not those of a belied man, nor was his plea one of innocence.
“I ask pardon,” he was saying, “for addressing the court directly; first of all, the pardon of my counsel, whose ability has never been so conspicuous as in this case, and whose just resentment, if he were less magnanimous and noble, I feel I am now about to incur.”
Mr. Orcutt turned to him a look of surprise and severity, but the prisoner saw nothing but the face of the Judge, and continued:
“I would have remained silent if the disposition which your Honor and the District Attorney proposed to make of this last testimony were not in danger of reconsideration from the appeal which the witness has just made. I believe, with you, that her testimony should be disregarded. I intend, if I have the power, that it shall be disregarded.”
The Judge held up his hand, as if to warn the prisoner and was about to speak.
“I entreat that I may be heard,” said Mansell, with the utmost calmness. “I beg the Court not to imagine that I am about to imitate the witness in any sudden or ill-considered attempt at a confession. All I intend is that her self-accusation shall not derive strength or importance from any doubts of my guilt which may spring from the defence which has been interposed in my behalf.”
Mr. Orcutt, who, from the moment the prisoner began to speak, had given evidences of a great indecision as to whether he should allow his client to continue or not, started at these words, so unmistakably pointing toward a demolishment of his whole case, and hurriedly rose. But a glance at Imogene seemed to awaken a new train of thought, and he as hurriedly reseated himself.
The prisoner, seeing he had nothing to fear from his counsel’s interference, and meeting with no rebuke from the Judge, went calmly on:
“Yesterday I felt differently in regard to this matter. If I could be saved from my fate by a defence seemingly so impregnable, I was willing to be so saved, but to-day I would be a coward and a disgrace to my sex if, in face of the generous action of this woman, I allowed a falsehood of whatever description to place her in peril, or to stand between me and the doom that probably awaits me. Sir,” he continued, turning for the first time to Mr. Orcutt, with a gesture of profound respect, “you had been told that the path from Mrs. Clemmens’ house to the bridge, and so on to Monteith Quarry Station, could not be traversed in ninety minutes, and you believed it. You were not wrong. It cannot be gone over in that time. But I now say to your Honor and to the jury, that the distance from my aunt’s house to the Quarry Station can be made in that number of minutes if a way can be found to cross the river without going around by the bridge. I know,” he proceeded, as a torrent of muttered exclamations rose on his ear, foremost among which was that of the much-discomfited Hickory, “that to many of you, to all of you, perhaps, all means for doing this seem to be lacking to the chance wayfarer, but if there were a lumberman here, he would tell you that the logs which are frequently floated down this stream to the station afford an easy means of passage to one accustomed to ride them, as I have been when a lad, during the year I spent in the Maine woods. At all events, it was upon a log that happened to be lodged against the banks, and which I pushed out into the stream by means of the ‘pivy’ or long spiked pole which I found lying in the grass at its side, that I crossed the river on that fatal day; and if the detective, who has already made such an effort to controvert the defence, will risk an attempt at this expedient for cutting short his route, I have no doubt he will be able to show you that a man can pass from Mrs. Clemmens’ house to the station at Monteith Quarry, not only in ninety minutes, but in less, if the exigencies of the case seem to demand it. I did it.”
And without a glance at Imogene, but with an air almost lofty in its pride and manly assertion, the prisoner sank back into his seat, and resumed once more his quiet and unshaken demeanor.
This last change in the kaleidoscope of events, that had been shifting before their eyes for the last half hour, was too much for the continued equanimity of a crowd already worked up into a state of feverish excitement. It had become apparent that by stripping away his defence, Mansell left himself naked to the law. In this excitement of the jury, consequent upon the self-accusation of Imogene, the prisoner’s admission might prove directly fatal to him. He was on trial for this crime; public justice demanded blood for blood, and public excitement clamored for a victim. It was dangerous to toy with a feeling but one degree removed from the sentiment of a mob. The jury might not stop to sympathize with the self-abnegation of these two persons willing to die for each other. They might say: “The way is clear as to the prisoner at least; he has confessed his defence is false; the guilty interpose false defences; we are acquit before God and men if we convict him out of his own mouth.”
The crowd in the court-room was saying all this and more, each man to his neighbor. A clamor of voices next to impossible to suppress rose over the whole room, and not even the efforts of the officers of the court, exerted to their full power in the maintenance of order, could have hushed the storm, had not the spectators become mute with expectation at seeing Mr. Ferris and Mr. Orcutt, summoned by a sign from the Judge, advance to the front of the bench and engage in an earnest conference with the Court. A few minutes afterward the Judge turned to the jury and announced that the disclosures of the morning demanded a careful consideration by the prosecution, that an adjournment was undoubtedly indispensable, and that the jury should refrain from any discussion of the case, even among themselves, until it was finally given them under the charge of the Court. The jury expressed their concurrence by an almost unanimous gesture of assent, and the crier proclaimed an adjournment until the next day at ten o’clock.
Imogene, still sitting in the witness chair, saw the prisoner led forth by the jailer without being able to gather, in the whirl of the moment, any indication that her dreadful sacrifice — for she had made wreck of her life in the eyes of the world whether her confession were true or false — had accomplished any thing save to drive the man she loved to the verge of that doom from which she had sought to deliver him.
Pro and Con.
Hamlet.— Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius.— By the mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.
Hamlet.— Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius.— It is back’d like a weasel.
Hamlet.
SHORTLY after the adjournment of court, Mr. Ferris summoned the two detectives to his office.
“We have a serious question before us to decide,” said he. “Are we to go on with the prosecution or are we to stop? I should like to hear your views on the subject.”
Hickory was, as usual, the first to speak.
“I should say, stop,” he cried. “This fresh applicant for the honor of having slain the Widow Clemmens deserves a hearing at least.”
“But,” hurriedly interposed Byrd, “you don’t give any credit to her story now, even if you did before the prisoner spoke? You know she did not commit the crime herself, whatever she may choose to declare in her anxiety to shield the prisoner. I hope, sir,” he proceeded, glancing at the District Attorney, “that you have no doubts as to Miss Dare’s innocence?”
But Mr. Ferris, instead of answering, turned to Hickory and said:
“Miss Dare, in summoning you to confirm her statement, relied, I suppose, upon the fact of your having been told by Professor Darling’s servant-maid that she — that is, Miss Dare — was gone from the observatory when the girl came for her on the morning of the murder?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A strong corroborative fact, if true?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But is it true? In the explanation which Miss Dare gave me last night of this affair, she uttered statements essentially different from those she made in court to-day. She then told me she was in the observatory when the girl came for her; that she was looking through a telescope which was behind a high rack filled with charts; and that —— Why do you start?”
“I didn’t start,” protested Hickory.
“I beg your pardon,” returned Mr. Ferris.
“Well, then, if I did make such a fool of myself, it was because so far her story is plausible enough. She was in that very position when I visited the observatory, you remember, and she was so effectually concealed I didn’t see her or know she was there, till I looked behind the rack.”
“Very good!” interjected Mr. Ferris. “And that,” he resumed, “she did not answer the girl or make known her presence, because at the moment the girl came in she was deeply interested in watching something that was going on in the town.”
“In the town!” repeated Byrd.
“Yes; the telescope was lowered so as to command a view of the town, and she had taken advantage of its position (as she assured me last night) to consult the church clock.”
“The church clock!” echoed Byrd once more. “And what time did she say it was?” breathlessly cried both detectives.
“Five minutes to twelve.”
“A critical moment,” ejaculated Byrd. “And what was it she saw going on in the town at that especial time?”
“I will tell you,” returned the District Attorney, impressively. “She said — and I believed her last night and so recalled her to the stand this morning — that she saw Craik Mansell fleeing toward the swamp from Mrs. Clemmens’ dining-room door.”
Both men looked up astonished.
“That was what she told me last night. To-day she comes into court with this contradictory story of herself being the assailant and sole cause of Mrs. Clemmens’ death.”
“But all that is frenzy,” protested Byrd. “She probably saw from your manner that the prisoner was lost if she gave this fact to the court, and her mind became disordered. She evidently loves this Mansell, and as for me, I pity her.”
“So do I,” assented the District Attorney; “still ——”
“Is it possible,” Byrd interrupted, with feeling, as Mr. Ferris hesitated, “that you do doubt her innocence? After the acknowledgments made by the prisoner too?”
Rising from his seat, Mr. Ferris began slowly to pace the floor.
“I should like each of you,” said he, without answering the appeal of Byrd, “to tell me why I should credit what she told me in conversation last night rather than what she uttered upon oath in the court-room to-day?”
“Let me speak first,” rejoined Byrd, glancing at Hickory. And, rising also, he took his stand against the mantel-shelf where he could partially hide his face from those he addressed. “Sir,” he proceeded, after a moment, “both Hickory and myself know Miss Dare to be innocent of this murder. A circumstance which we have hitherto kept secret, but which in justice to Miss Dare I think we are now bound to make known, has revealed to us the true criminal. Hickory, tell Mr. Ferris of the deception you practised upon Miss Dare in the hut.”
The surprised, but secretly gratified, detective at once complied. He saw no reason for keeping quiet about that day’s work. He told how, by means of a letter purporting to come from Mansell, he had decoyed Imogene to an interview in the hut, where, under the supposition she was addressing her lover, she had betrayed her conviction of his guilt, and advised him to confess it.
Mr. Ferris listened with surprise and great interest.
“That seems to settle the question,” he said.
But it was now Hickory’s turn to shake his head.
“I don’t know,” he remonstrated. “I have sometimes thought she saw through the trick and turned it to her own advantage.”
“How to her own advantage?”
“To talk in such a way as to make us think Mansell was guilty.”
“Stuff!” said Byrd; “that woman?”
“More unaccountable things have happened,” was the weak reply of Hickory, his habitual state of suspicion leading him more than once into similar freaks of folly.
“Sir,” said Mr. Byrd, confidingly, to the District Attorney, “let us run over this matter from the beginning. Starting with the supposition that the explanation she gave you last night was the true one, let us see if the whole affair does not hang together in a way to satisfy us all as to where the real guilt lies. To begin, then, with the meeting in the woods ——”
“Wait,” interrupted Hickory; “there is going to be an argument here; so suppose you give your summary of events from the lady’s standpoint, as that seems to be the one which interests you most.”
“I was about to do so,” Horace assured him, heedless of the rough fellow’s good-natured taunt. “To make my point, it is absolutely necessary for us to transfer ourselves into her position and view matters as they gradually unfolded themselves before her eyes. First, then, as I have before suggested, let us consider the interview held by this man and woman in the woods. Miss Dare, as we must remember, was not engaged to Mr. Mansell; she only loved him. Their engagement, to say nothing of their marriage, depended upon his success in life — a success which to them seemed to hang solely upon the decision of Mrs. Clemmens concerning the small capital he desired her to advance him. But in the interview which Mansell had held with his aunt previous to the meeting between the lovers, Mrs. Clemmens had refused to loan him this money, and Miss Dare, whose feelings we are endeavoring to follow, found herself beset by the entreaties of a man who, having failed in his plans for future fortune, feared the loss of her love as well. What was the natural consequence? Rebellion against the widow’s decision, of course — a rebellion which she showed by the violent gesture which she made — and then a determination to struggle for her happiness, as she evinced when, with most unhappy ambiguity of expression, she begged him to wait till the next day before pressing his ring upon her acceptance, because, as she said:
“‘A night has been known to change the whole current of a person’s affairs.’
“To her, engrossed with the one idea of making a personal effort to alter Mrs. Clemmens’ mind on the money question, these words seemed innocent enough. But the look with which he received them, and the pause that followed, undoubtedly impressed her, and prepared the way for the interest she manifested when, upon looking through the telescope the next day, she saw him flying in that extraordinary way from his aunt’s cottage toward the woods. Not that she then thought of his having committed a crime. As I trace her mental experience, she did not come to that conclusion till it was forced upon her. I do not know, and so cannot say, how she first heard of the murder ——”
“She was told of it on the street-corner,” interpolated Mr. Ferris.
“Ah, well, then, fresh from this vision of her lover hasting from his aunt’s door to hide himself in the woods beyond, she came into town and was greeted by the announcement that Mrs. Clemmens had just been assaulted by a tramp in her own house. I know this was the way in which the news was told her, from the expression of her face as she entered the house. I was standing at the gate, you remember, when she came up, and her look had in it determination and horror, but no special fear. In fact, the words she dropped show the character of her thoughts at that time. She distinctly murmured in my hearing: ‘No good can come of it, none.’ As if her mind were dwelling upon the advantages which might accrue to her lover from his aunt’s death, and weighing them against the foul means by which that person’s end had been hastened. Yet I will not say but she may have been influenced in the course which she took by some doubt or apprehension of her own. The fact that she came to the house at all, and, having come, insisted upon knowing all the details of the assault, seem to prove she was not without a desire to satisfy herself that suspicion rightfully attached itself to the tramp. But not until she saw her lover’s ring on the floor (the ring which she had with her own hand dropped into the pocket of his coat the day before) and heard that the tramp had justified himself and was no longer considered the assailant, did her true fear and horror come. Then, indeed, all the past rose up before her, and, believing her lover guilty of this crime, she laid claim to the jewel as the first and only alternative that offered by which she might stand between him and the consequences of his guilt. Her subsequent agitation when the dying woman made use of the exclamation that indissolubly connected the crime with a ring, speaks for itself. Nor was her departure from the house any too hurried or involuntary, when you consider that the vengeance invoked by the widow, was, in Miss Dare’s opinion, called down upon one to whom she had nearly plighted her troth. What is the next act in the drama? The scene in the Syracuse depot. Let me see if I cannot explain it. A woman who has once allowed herself to suspect the man she loves of a murderous deed, cannot rest till she has either convinced herself that her suspicions are false, or until she has gained such knowledge of the truth as makes her feel justified in her seeming treason. A woman of Miss Dare’s generous nature especially. What does she do, then? With the courage that characterizes all her movements, she determines upon seeing him, and from his own lips, perhaps, win a confession of guilt or innocence. Conceiving that his flight was directed toward the Quarry Station, and thence to Buffalo, she embraced the first opportunity to follow him to the latter place. As I have told you, her ticket was bought for Buffalo, and to Buffalo she evidently intended going. But chancing to leave the cars at Syracuse, she was startled by encountering in the depot the very man with whom she had been associating thoughts of guilt. Shocked and thrown off her guard by the unexpectedness of the occurrence, she betrays her shrinking and her horror. ‘Were you coming to see me?’ she asks, and recoils, while he, conscious at the first glimpse of her face that his guilt has cost him her love, starts back also, uttering, in his shame and despair, words that were similar to hers, ‘Were you coming to see me?’”
“Convinced without further speech, that her worst fears had foundation in fact, she turns back toward her home. The man she loved had committed a crime. That it was partly for her sake only increased her horror sevenfold. She felt as if she were guilty also, and, with sudden remorse, remembered how, instead of curbing his wrath the day before she had inflamed it by her words, if not given direction to it by her violent gestures. That fact, and the self-blame it produced, probably is the cause why her love did not vanish with her hopes. Though he was stained by guilt, she felt that it was the guilt of a strong nature driven from its bearings by the conjunction of two violent passions — ambition and love; and she being passionate and ambitious herself, remained attached to the man while she recoiled from his crime.
“This being so, she could not, as a woman, wish him to suffer the penalty of his wickedness. Though lost to her, he must not be lost to the world. So, with the heroism natural to such a nature, she shut the secret up in her own breast, and faced her friends with courage, wishing, if not hoping, that the matter would remain the mystery it promised to be when she stood with us in the presence of the dying woman.
“But this was not to be, for suddenly, in the midst of her complacency, fell the startling announcement that another man — an innocent man — one, too, of her lover’s own standing, if not hopes, had by a curious conjunction of events so laid himself open to the suspicion of the authorities as to be actually under arrest for this crime. ’Twas a danger she had not foreseen, a result for which she was not prepared.
“Startled and confounded she let a few days go by in struggle and indecision, possibly hoping, with the blind trust of her sex, that Mr. Hildreth would be released without her interference. But Mr. Hildreth was not released, and her anxiety was fast becoming unendurable, when that decoy letter sent by Hickory reached her, awakening in her breast for the first time, perhaps, the hope that Mansell would show himself to be a true man in this extremity, and by a public confession of guilt release her from the task of herself supplying the information which would lead to his commitment.
“And, perhaps, if it had really fallen to the lot of Mansell to confront her in the hut and listen to her words of adjuration and appeal, he might have been induced to consent to her wishes. But a detective sat there instead of her lover, and the poor woman lived to see the days go by without any movement being made to save Mr. Hildreth. At last — was it the result of the attempt made by this man upon his life? — she put an end to the struggle by acting for herself. Moved by a sense of duty, despite her love, she sent the letter which drew attention to her lover, and paved the way for that trial which has occupied our attention for so many days. But — mark this, for I think it is the only explanation of her whole conduct — the sense of justice that upheld her in this duty was mingled with the hope that her lover would escape conviction if he did not trial. The one fact which told the most against him — I allude to his flight from his aunt’s door on the morning of the murder, as observed by her through the telescope — was as yet a secret in her own breast, and there she meant it to remain unless it was drawn forth by actual question. But it was not a fact likely to be made the subject of question, and drawing hope from that consideration, she prepared herself for the ordeal before her, determined, as I actually believe, to answer with truth all the inquiries that were put to her.
“But in an unexpected hour she learned that the detectives were anxious to know where she was during the time of the murder. She heard Hickory question Professor Darling’s servant-girl, as to whether she was still in the observatory, and at once feared that her secret was discovered. Feared, I say — I conjecture this — but what I do not conjecture is that with the fear, or doubt, or whatever emotion it was she cherished, a revelation came of the story she might tell if worst came to worst, and she found herself forced to declare what she saw when the clock stood at five minutes to twelve on that fatal day. Think of your conversation with the girl Roxana,” he went on to Hickory, “and then think of that woman crouching behind the rack, listening to your words, and see if you can draw any other conclusion from the expression of her face than that of triumph at seeing a way to deliver her lover at the sacrifice of herself.”
As Byrd waited for a reply, Hickory reluctantly acknowledged:
“Her look was a puzzler, that I will allow. She seemed glad ——”
“There,” cried Byrd, “you say she seemed glad; that is enough. Had she had the weight of this crime upon her conscience, she would have betrayed a different emotion from that. I pray you to consider the situation,” he proceeded, turning to the District Attorney, “for on it hangs your conviction of her innocence. First, imagine her guilty. What would her feelings be, as, hiding unseen in that secret corner, she hears a detective’s voice inquiring where she was when the fatal blow was struck, and hears the answer given that she was not where she was supposed to be, but in the woods — the woods which she and every one know lead so directly to Mrs. Clemmens’ house, she could without the least difficulty hasten there and back in the hour she was observed to be missing? Would she show gladness or triumph even of a wild or delirious order? No, even Hickory cannot say she would. Now, on the contrary, see her as I do, crouched there in the very place before the telescope which she occupied when the girl came to the observatory before, but unseen now as she was unseen then, and watch the change that takes place in her countenance as she hears question and answer and realizes what confirmation she would receive from this girl if she ever thought fit to declare that she was not in the observatory when the girl sought her there on the day of the murder. That by this act she would bring execration if not death upon herself, she does not stop to consider. Her mind is full of what she can do for her lover, and she does not think of herself.
“But an enthusiasm like this is too frenzied to last. As time passes by and Craik Mansell is brought to trial, she begins to hope she may be spared this sacrifice. She therefore responds with perfect truth when summoned to the stand to give evidence, and does not waver, though question after question is asked her, whose answers cannot fail to show the state of her mind in regard to the prisoner’s guilt. Life and honor are sweet even to one in her condition; and if her lover could be saved without falsehood it was her natural instinct to avoid it.
“And it looked as if he would be saved. A defence both skilful and ingenious had been advanced for him by his counsel — a defence which only the one fact so securely locked in her bosom could controvert. You can imagine, then, the horror and alarm which must have seized her when, in the very hour of hope, you approached her with the demand which proved that her confidence in her power to keep silence had been premature, and that the alternative was yet to be submitted to her of destroying her lover or sacrificing herself. Yet, because a great nature does not succumb without a struggle, she tried even now the effect of the truth upon you, and told you the one fact she considered so detrimental to the safety of her lover.
“The result was fatal. Though I cannot presume to say what passed between you, I can imagine how the change in your countenance warned her of the doom she would bring upon Mansell if she went into court with the same story she told you. Nor do I find it difficult to imagine how, in one of her history and temperament, a night of continuous brooding over this one topic should have culminated in the act which startled us so profoundly in the court-room this morning. Love, misery, devotion are not mere names to her, and the greatness which sustained her through the ordeal of denouncing her lover in order that an innocent man might be relieved from suspicion, was the same that made it possible for her to denounce herself that she might redeem the life she had thus deliberately jeopardized.
“That she did this with a certain calmness and dignity proves it to have been the result of design. A murderess forced by conscience into confession would not have gone into the details of her crime, but blurted out her guilt, and left the details to be drawn from her by question. Only the woman anxious to tell her story with the plausibility necessary to insure its belief would have planned and carried on her confession as she did.
“The action of the prisoner, in face of this proof of devotion, though it might have been foreseen by a man, was evidently not foreseen by her. To me, who watched her closely at the time, her face wore a strange look of mingled satisfaction and despair — satisfaction in having awakened his manhood, despair at having failed in saving him. But it is not necessary for me to dilate on this point. If I have been successful in presenting before you the true condition of her mind during this struggle, you will see for yourself what her feelings must be now that her lover has himself confessed to a fact, to hide which she made the greatest sacrifice of which mortal is capable.”
Mr. Ferris, who, during this lengthy and exhaustive harangue, had sat with brooding countenance and an anxious mien, roused himself as the other ceased, and glanced with a smile at Hickory.
“Well,” said he, “that’s good reasoning; now let us hear how you will go to work to demolish it.”
The cleared brow, the playful tone of the District Attorney showed the relieved state of his mind. Byrd’s arguments had evidently convinced him of the innocence of Imogene Dare.
Hickory, seeing it, shook his head with a gloomy air.
“Sir,” said he, “I can’t demolish it. If I could tell why Mansell fled from Widow Clemmens’ house at five minutes to twelve I might be able to do so, but that fact stumps me. It is an act consistent with guilt. It may be consistent with innocence, but, as we don’t know all the facts, we can’t say so. But this I do know, that my convictions with regard to that man have undergone a change. I now as firmly believe in his innocence as I once did in his guilt.”
“What has produced the change?” asked Mr. Ferris.
“Well,” said Hickory, “it all lies in this. From the day I heard Miss Dare accuse him so confidently in the hut, I believed him guilty; from the moment he withdrew his defence, I believed him innocent.”
Mr. Ferris and Mr. Byrd looked at him astonished. He at once brought down his fist in vigorous assertion on the table.
“I tell you,” said he, “that Craik Mansell is innocent. The truth is, he believes Miss Dare guilty, and so stands his trial, hoping to save her.”
“And be hung for her crime?” asked Mr. Ferris.
“No; he thinks his innocence will save him, in spite of the evidence on which we got him indicted.”
But the District Attorney protested at this.
“That can’t be,” said he; “Mansell has withdrawn the only defence he had.”
“On the contrary,” asserted Hickory, “that very thing only proves my theory true. He is still determined to save Miss Dare by every thing short of a confession of his own guilt. He won’t lie. That man is innocent.”
“And Miss Dare is guilty?” said Byrd.
“Shall I make it clear to you in the way it has become clear to Mr. Mansell?”
As Byrd only answered by a toss of his head, Hickory put his elbows on the table, and checking off every sentence with the forefinger of his right hand, which he pointed at Mr. Ferris’ shirt-stud, as if to instil from its point conviction into that gentleman’s bosom, he proceeded with the utmost composure as follows:
“To commence, then, with the scene in the woods. He meets her. She is as angry at his aunt as he is. What does she do? She strikes the tree with her hand, and tells him to wait till to-morrow, since a night has been known to change the whole current of a person’s affairs. Now tell me what does that mean? Murder? If so, she was the one to originate it. He can’t forget that. It has stamped itself upon Mansell’s memory, and when, after the assassination of Mrs. Clemmens, he recalls those words, he is convinced that she has slain Mrs. Clemmens to help him.”
“But, Mr. Hickory,” objected Mr. Ferris, “this assumes that Mr. Mansell is innocent, whereas we have exceedingly cogent proof that he is the guilty party. There is the circumstance of his leaving Widow Clemmens’ house at five minutes to twelve.”
To which Hickory, with a twinkle in his eye, replied:
“I won’t discuss that; it hasn’t been proved, you know. Miss Dare told you she saw him do this, but she wouldn’t swear to it. Nothing is to be taken for granted against my man.”
“Then you think Miss Dare spoke falsely?”
“I don’t say that. I believe that whatever he did could be explained if we knew as much about it as he does. But I’m not called upon to explain any thing which has not appeared in the evidence against him.”
“Well, then, we’ll take the evidence. There is his ring, found on the scene of murder.”
“Exactly,” rejoined Hickory. “Dropped there, as he must suppose, by Miss Dare, because he didn’t know she had secretly restored it to his pocket.”
Mr. Ferris smiled.
“You don’t see the force of the evidence,” said he. “As she had restored it to his pocket, he must have been the one to drop it there.”
“I am willing to admit he dropped it there, not that he killed Mrs. Clemmens. I am now speaking of his suspicions as to the assassin. When the betrothal ring was found there, he suspects Miss Dare of the crime, and nothing has occurred to change his suspicions.”
“But,” said the District Attorney, “how does your client, Mr. Mansell, get over this difficulty; that Miss Dare, who has committed a murder to put five thousand dollars into his pocket, immediately afterward turns round and accuses him of the crime — nay more, furnishes evidence against him!”
“You can’t expect the same consistency from a woman as from a man. They can nerve themselves up one moment to any deed of desperation, and take every pains the next to conceal it by a lie.”
“Men will do the same; then why not Mansell?”
“I am showing you why I know that Mansell believes Miss Dare guilty of a murder. To continue, then. What does he do when he hears that his aunt has been murdered? He scratches out the face of Miss Dare in a photograph; he ties up her letters with a black ribbon as if she were dead and gone to him. Then the scene in the Syracuse depot! The rule of three works both ways, Mr. Byrd, and if she left her home to solve her doubts, what shall be said of him? The recoil, too — was it less on his part than hers? And, if she had cause to gather guilt from his manner, had he not as much cause to gather it from hers? If his mind was full of suspicion when he met her, it became conviction before he left; and, bearing that fact in your mind, watch how he henceforth conducted himself. He does not come to Sibley; the woman he fears to encounter is there. He hears of Mr. Hildreth’s arrest, reads of the discoveries which led to it, and keeps silent. So would any other man have done in his place, at least till he saw whether this arrest was likely to end in trial. But he cannot forget he had been in Sibley on the fatal day, or that there may be some one who saw his interview with Miss Dare. When Byrd comes to him, therefore, and tells him he is wanted in Sibley, his first question is, ‘Am I wanted as a witness?’ and, even you have acknowledged, Mr. Ferris, that he seemed surprised to find himself accused of the crime. But, accused, he takes his course and keeps to it. Brought to trial, he remembers the curious way in which he crossed the river, and thus cut short the road to the station; and, seeing in it great opportunities for a successful defence, chooses Mr. Orcutt for his counsel, and trusts the secret to him. The trial goes on; acquittal seems certain, when suddenly she is recalled to the stand, and he hears words which make him think she is going to betray him by some falsehood, when, instead of following the lead of the prosecution, she launches into a personal confession. What does he do? Why, rise and hold up his hand in a command for her to stop. But she does not heed, and the rest follows as a matter of course. The life she throws away he will not accept. He is innocent, but his defence is false! He says so, and leaves the jury to decide on the verdict. There can be no doubt,” Hickory finally concluded, “that some of these circumstances are consistent only with his belief that Miss Dare is a murderess: such, for instance, as his scratching out her face in the picture. Others favor the theory in a less degree, but this is what I want to impress upon both your minds,” he declared, turning first to Mr. Ferris and then to Mr. Byrd: “If any fact, no matter how slight, leads us to the conviction that Craik Mansell, at any time after the murder, entertained the belief that Miss Dare committed it, his innocence follows as a matter of course. For the guilty could never entertain a belief in the guilt of any other person.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Ferris, “I admit that, but we have got to see into Mr. Mansell’s mind before we can tell what his belief really was.”
“No,” was Hickory’s reply; “let us look at his actions. I say that that defaced picture is conclusive. One day he loves that woman and wants her to marry him; the next, he defaces her picture. Why? She had not offended him. Not a word, not a line, passes between them to cause him to commit this act. But he does hear of his aunt’s murder, and he does recall her sinister promise: ‘Wait; there is no telling what a day will bring forth.’ I say that no other cause for his act is shown except his conviction that she is a murderess.”
“But,” persisted Mr. Ferris, “his leaving the house, as he acknowledges he did, by this unfrequented and circuitous road?”
“I have said before that I cannot explain his presence there, or his flight. All I am now called upon to show is, some fact inconsistent with any thing except a belief in this young woman’s guilt. I claim I have shown it, and, as you admit, Mr. Ferris, if I show that, he is innocent.”
“Yes,” said Byrd, speaking for the first time; “but we have heard of people manufacturing evidence in their own behalf.”
“Come, Byrd,” replied Hickory, “you don’t seriously mean to attack my position with that suggestion. How could a man dream of manufacturing evidence of such a character? A murderer manufactures evidence to throw suspicion on other people. No fool could suppose that scratching out the face of a girl in a photograph and locking it up in his own desk, would tend to bring her to the scaffold, or save him from it.”
“And, yet,” rejoined Byrd, “that very act acquits him in your eyes. All that is necessary is to give him credit for being smart enough to foresee that it would have such a tendency in the eyes of any person who discovered the picture.”
“Then,” said Hickory, “he would also have to foresee that she would accuse herself of murder when he was on trial for it, and that he would thereupon withdraw his defence. Byrd, you are foreseeing too much. My friend Mansell possesses no such power of looking into the future as that.”
“Your friend Mansell!” repeated Mr. Ferris, with a smile. “If you were on his jury, I suppose your bias in his favor would lead you to acquit him of this crime?”
“I should declare him ‘Not guilty,’ and stick to it, if I had to be locked up for a year.”
Mr. Ferris sank into an attitude of profound thought. Horace Byrd, impressed by this, looked at him anxiously.
“Have your convictions been shaken by Hickory’s ingenious theory?” he ventured to inquire at last.
Mr. Ferris abstractedly replied:
“This is no time for me to state my convictions. It is enough that you comprehend my perplexity.” And, relapsing into his former condition, he remained for a moment wrapped in silence, then he said: “Byrd, how comes it that the humpback who excited so much attention on the day of the murder was never found?”
Byrd, astonished, surveyed the District Attorney with a doubtful look that gradually changed into one of quiet satisfaction as he realized the significance of this recurrence to old theories and suspicions. His answer, however, was slightly embarrassed in tone, though frank enough to remind one of Hickory’s blunt-spoken admissions.
“Well,” said he, “I suppose the main reason is that I made no attempt to find him.”
“Do you think that you were wise in that, Mr. Byrd?” inquired Mr. Ferris, with some severity.
Horace laughed.
“I can find him for you to-day, if you want him,” he declared.
“You can? You know him, then?”
“Very well. Mr. Ferris,” he courteously remarked, “I perhaps should have explained to you at the time, that I recognized this person and knew him to be an honest man; but the habits of secrecy in our profession are so fostered by the lives we lead, that we sometimes hold our tongue when it would be better for us to speak. The humpback who talked with us on the court-house steps the morning Mrs. Clemmens was murdered, was not what he seemed, sir. He was a detective; a detective in disguise; a man with whom I never presume to meddle — in other words, our famous Mr. Gryce.”
“Gryce! — that man!” exclaimed Mr. Ferris, astounded.
“Yes, sir. He was in disguise, probably for some purpose of his own, but I knew his eye. Gryce’s eye isn’t to be mistaken by any one who has much to do with him.”
“And that famous detective was actually on the spot at the time this murder was discovered, and you let him go without warning me of his presence?”
“Sir,” returned Mr. Byrd, “neither you nor I nor any one at that time could foresee what a serious and complicated case this was going to be. Besides, he did not linger in this vicinity, but took the cars only a few minutes after he parted from us. I did not think he wanted to be dragged into this affair unless it was necessary. He had important matters of his own to look after. However, if suspicion had continued to follow him, I should have notified him of the fact, and let him speak for himself. But it vanished so quickly in the light of other developments, I just let the matter drop.”
The impatient frown with which Mr. Ferris received this acknowledgment showed he was not pleased.
“I think you made a mistake,” said he. Then, after a minute’s thought, added: “You have seen Gryce since?”
“Yes, sir; several times.”
“And he acknowledged himself to have been the humpback?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You must have had some conversation with him, then, about this murder? He was too nearly concerned in it not to take some interest in the affair?”
“Yes, sir; Gryce takes an interest in all murder cases.”
“Well, then, what did he have to say about this one? He gave an opinion, I suppose?”
“No, sir. Gryce never gives an opinion without study, and we detectives have no time to study up an affair not our own. If you want to know what Gryce thinks about a crime, you have got to put the case into his hands.”
Mr. Ferris paused and seemed to ruminate. Seeing this, Mr. Byrd flushed and cast a side glance at Hickory, who returned him an expressive shrug.
“Mr. Ferris,” ventured the former, “if you wish to consult with Mr. Gryce on this matter, do not hesitate because of us. Both Hickory and myself acknowledge we are more or less baffled by this case, and Gryce’s judgment is a good thing to have in a perplexity.”
“You think so?” queried the District Attorney.
“I do,” said Byrd.
Mr. Ferris glanced at Hickory.
“Oh, have the old man here if you want him,” was that detective’s blunt reply. “I have nothing to say against your getting all the light you can on this affair.”
“Very good,” returned Mr. Ferris. “You may give me his address before you go.”
“His address for to-night is Utica,” observed Byrd. “He could be here before morning, if you wanted him.”
“I am in no such hurry as that,” returned Mr. Ferris, and he sank again into thought.
The detectives took advantage of his abstraction to utter a few private condolences in each other’s ears.
“So it seems we are to be laid on the shelf,” whispered Hickory.
“Yes, for which let us be thankful,” answered Byrd.
“Why? Are you getting tired of the affair?”
“Yes.”
A humorous twinkle shone for a minute in Hickory’s eye.
“Pooh!” said he, “it’s just getting interesting.”
“Opinions differ,” quoth Byrd.
“Not much,” retorted Hickory.
Something in the way he said this made Byrd look at him more intently. He instantly changed his tone.
“Old fellow,” said he, “you don’t believe Miss Dare committed this crime any more than I do.”
A sly twinkle answered him from the detective’s half-shut eye.
“All that talk of having seen through your disguise in the hut is just nonsense on your part to cover up your real notion about it. What is that notion, Hickory? Come, out with it; let us understand each other thoroughly at last.”
“Do I understand you?”
“You shall, when you tell me just what your convictions are in this matter.”
“Well, then,” replied Hickory, with a short glance at Mr. Ferris, “I believe (it’s hard as pulling teeth to own it) that neither of them did it: that she thought him guilty and he thought her so, but that in reality the crime lies at the door of some third party totally disconnected with either of them.”
“Such as Gouverneur Hildreth?” whispered Byrd.
“Such — as — Gouverneur Hildreth,” drawled Hickory.
The two detectives eyed each other, smiled, and turned with relieved countenances toward the District Attorney. He was looking at them with great earnestness.
“That is your joint opinion?” he remarked.
“It is mine,” cried Hickory, bringing his fist down on the table with a vim that made every individual article on it jump.
“It is and it is not mine,” acquiesced Byrd, as the eye of Mr. Ferris turned in his direction. “Mr. Mansell may be innocent — indeed, after hearing Hickory’s explanation of his conduct, I am ready to believe he is — but to say that Gouverneur Hildreth is guilty comes hard to me after the long struggle I have maintained in favor of his innocence. Yet, what other conclusion remains after an impartial view of the subject? None. Then why should I shrink from acknowledging I was at fault, or hesitate to admit a defeat where so many causes combined to mislead me?”
“Which means you agree with Hickory?” ventured the District Attorney.
Mr. Byrd slowly bowed.
Mr. Ferris continued for a moment looking alternately from one to the other; then he observed:
“When two such men unite in an opinion, it is at least worthy of consideration.” And, rising, he took on an aspect of sudden determination. “Whatever may be the truth in regard to this matter,” said he, “one duty is clear. Miss Dare, as you inform me, has been — with but little idea of the consequences, I am sure — allowed to remain under the impression that the interview which she held in the hut was with her lover. As her belief in the prisoner’s guilt doubtless rests upon the admissions which were at that time made in her hearing, it is palpable that a grave injustice has been done both to her and to him by leaving this mistake of hers uncorrected. I therefore consider it due to Miss Dare, as well as to the prisoner, to undeceive her on this score before another hour has passed over our heads. I must therefore request you, Mr. Byrd, to bring the lady here. You will find her still in the court-house, I think, as she requested leave to remain in the room below till the crowd had left the streets.”
Mr. Byrd, who, in the new light which had been thrown on the affair by his own and Hickory’s suppositions, could not but see the justice of this, rose with alacrity to obey.
“I will bring her if she is in the building,” he declared, hurriedly leaving the room.
“And if she is not,” Mr. Ferris remarked, with a glance at the consciously rebuked Hickory, “we shall have to follow her to her home, that is all. I am determined to see this woman’s mind cleared of all misapprehensions before I take another step in the way of my duty.”
A Mistake Rectified.
If circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid, indeed,
Within the centre.
Hamlet.
IF Mr. Ferris, in seeking this interview with Miss Dare, had been influenced by any hope of finding her in an unsettled and hesitating state of mind, he was effectually undeceived, when, after a few minutes’ absence, Mr. Byrd returned with her to his presence. Though her physical strength was nearly exhausted, and she looked quite pale and worn, there was a steady gleam in her eye, which spoke of an unshaken purpose.
Seeing it, and noting the forced humility with which she awaited his bidding at the threshold, the District Attorney, for the first time perhaps, realized the power of this great, if perverted, nature, and advancing with real kindness to the door, he greeted her with as much deference as he ever showed to ladies, and gravely pushed toward her a chair.
She did not take it. On the contrary, she drew back a step, and looked at him in some doubt, but a sudden glimpse of Hickory’s sturdy figure in the corner seemed to reassure her, and merely stopping to acknowledge Mr. Ferris’ courtesy by a bow, she glided forward and took her stand by the chair he had provided.
A short and, on his part, somewhat embarrassing pause followed. It was broken by her.
“You sent for me,” she suggested. “You perhaps want some explanation of my conduct, or some assurance that the confession I made before the court to-day was true?”
If Mr. Ferris had needed any further proof than he had already received that Imogene Dare, in presenting herself before the world as a criminal, had been actuated by a spirit of devotion to the prisoner, he would have found it in the fervor and unconscious dignity with which she uttered these few words. But he needed no such proof. Giving her, therefore, a look full of grave significance, he replied:
“No, Miss Dare. After my experience of the ease with which you can contradict yourself in matters of the most serious import, you will pardon me if I say that the truth or falsehood of your words must be arrived at by some other means than any you yourself can offer. My business with you at this time is of an entirely different nature. Instead of listening to further confessions from you, it has become my duty to offer one myself. Not on my own behalf,” he made haste to explain, as she looked up, startled, “but on account of these men, who, in their anxiety to find out who murdered Mrs. Clemmens, made use of means and resorted to deceptions which, if their superiors had been consulted, would not have been countenanced for a moment.”
“I do not understand,” she murmured, looking at the two detectives with a wonder that suddenly merged into alarm as she noticed the embarrassment of the one and the decided discomfiture of the other.
Mr. Ferris at once resumed:
“In the weeks that have elapsed since the commission of this crime, it has been my lot to subject you to much mental misery, Miss Dare. Provided by yourself with a possible clue to the murder, I have probed the matter with an unsparing hand. Heedless of the pain I was inflicting, or the desperation to which I was driving you, I asked you questions and pressed you for facts as long as there seemed questions to ask or facts to be gained. My duty and the claims of my position demanded this, and for it I can make no excuse, notwithstanding the unhappy results that have ensued. But, Miss Dare, whatever anxiety I may have shown in procuring the conviction of a man I believed to be a criminal, I have never wished to win my case at the expense of justice and right; and had I been told before you came to the stand that you had been made the victim of a deception calculated to influence your judgment, I should have hastened to set you right with the same anxiety as I do now.”
“Sir — sir ——” she began.
But Mr. Ferris would not listen.
“Miss Dare,” he proceeded with all the gravity of conviction, “you have uttered a deliberate perjury in the court-room to-day. You said that you alone were responsible for the murder of Mrs. Clemmens, whereas you not only did not commit the crime yourself but were not even an accessory to it. Wait!” he commanded, as she flashed upon him a look full of denial, “I would rather you did not speak. The motive for this calumny you uttered upon yourself lies in a fact which may be modified by what I have to reveal. Hear me, then, before you stain yourself still further by a falsehood you will not only be unable to maintain, but which you may no longer see reason for insisting upon. Hickory, turn around so Miss Dare can see your face. Miss Dare, when you saw fit to call upon this man to upbear you in the extraordinary statements you made to-day, did you realize that in doing this you appealed to the one person best qualified to prove the falsehood of what you had said? I see you did not; yet it is so. He if no other can testify that a few weeks ago, no idea of taking this crime upon your own shoulders had ever crossed your mind; that, on the contrary, your whole heart was filled with sorrow for the supposed guilt of another, and plans for inducing that other to make a confession of his guilt before the world.”
“This man!” was her startled exclamation. “It is not possible; I do not know him; he does not know me. I never talked with him but once in my life, and that was to say words I am not only willing but anxious for him to repeat.”
“Miss Dare,” the District Attorney pursued, “when you say this you show how completely you have been deceived. The conversation to which you allude is not the only one which has passed between you two. Though you did not know it, you held a talk with this man at a time in which you so completely discovered the secrets of your heart, you can never hope to deceive us or the world by any story of personal guilt which you may see fit to manufacture.”
“I reveal my heart to this man!” she repeated, in a maze of doubt and terror that left her almost unable to stand. “You are playing with my misery, Mr. Ferris.”
The District Attorney took a different tone.
“Miss Dare,” he asked, “do you remember a certain interview you held with a gentleman in the hut back of Mrs. Clemmens’ house, a short time after the murder?”
“Did this man overhear my words that day?” she murmured, reaching out her hand to steady herself by the back of the chair near which she was standing.
“Your words that day were addressed to this man.”
“To him!” she repeated, staggering back.
“Yes, to him, disguised as Craik Mansell. With an unjustifiable zeal to know the truth, he had taken this plan for surprising your secret thoughts, and he succeeded, Miss Dare, remember that, even if he did you and your lover the cruel wrong of leaving you undisturbed in the impression that Mr. Mansell had admitted his guilt in your presence.”
But Imogene, throwing out her hands, cried impetuously:
“It is not so; you are mocking me. This man never could deceive me like that!”
But even as she spoke she recoiled, for Hickory, with ready art, had thrown his arms and head forward on the table before which he sat, in the attitude and with much the same appearance he had preserved on the day she had come upon him in the hut. Though he had no assistance from disguise and all the accessories were lacking which had helped forward the illusion on the former occasion, there was still a sufficient resemblance between this bowed figure and the one that had so impressed itself upon her memory as that of her wretched and remorseful lover, that she stood rooted to the ground in her surprise and dismay.
“You see how it was done, do you not?” inquired Mr. Ferris. Then, as he saw she did not heed, added: “I hope you remember what passed between you two on that day?”
As if struck by a thought which altered the whole atmosphere of her hopes and feelings, she took a step forward with a power and vigor that recalled to mind the Imogene of old.
“Sir,” she exclaimed, “let that man turn around and face me!”
Hickory at once rose.
“Tell me,” she demanded, surveying him with a look it took all his well-known hardihood to sustain unmoved, “was it all false — all a trick from the beginning to the end? I received a letter — was that written by your hand too? Are you capable of forgery as well as of other deceptions?”
The detective, who knew no other way to escape from his embarrassment, uttered a short laugh. But finding a reply was expected of him, answered with well-simulated indifference:
“No, only the address on the envelope was mine; the letter was one which Mr. Mansell had written but never sent. I found it in his waste-paper basket in Buffalo.”
“Ah! and you could make use of that?”
“I know it was a mean trick,” he acknowledged, dropping his eyes from her face. “But things do look different when you are in the thick of ’em than when you take a stand and observe them from the outside. I— I was ashamed of it long ago, Miss Dare”— this was a lie; Hickory never was really ashamed of it —“and would have told you about it, but I thought ‘mum’ was the word after a scene like that.”
She did not seem to hear him.
“Then Mr. Mansell did not send me the letter inviting me to meet him in the hut on a certain day, some few weeks after Mrs. Clemmens was murdered?”
“No.”
“Nor know that such a letter had been sent?”
“No.”
“Nor come, as I supposed he did, to Sibley? nor admit what I supposed he admitted in my hearing? nor listen, as I supposed he did, to the insinuations I made use of in the hut?”
“No.”
Imbued with sudden purpose and energy, she turned upon the District Attorney.
“Oh, what a revelation to come to me now!” she murmured.
Mr. Ferris bowed.
“You are right,” he assented; “it should have come to you before. But I can only repeat what I have previously said, that if I had known of this deception myself, you would have been notified of it previous to going upon the stand. For your belief in the prisoner’s guilt has necessarily had its effect upon the jury, and I cannot but see how much that belief must have been strengthened, if it was not actually induced, by the interview which we have just been considering.”
Her eyes took on fresh light; she looked at Mr. Ferris as if she would read his soul.
“Can it be possible ——” she breathed, but stopped as suddenly as she began. The District Attorney was not the man from whom she could hope to obtain any opinion in reference to the prisoner’s innocence.
Mr. Ferris, noting her hesitation and understanding it too, perhaps, moved toward her with a certain kindly dignity, saying:
“I should be glad to utter words that would give you some comfort, Miss Dare, but in the present state of affairs I do not feel as if I could go farther than bid you trust in the justice and wisdom of those who have this matter in charge. As for your own wretched and uncalled-for action in court to-day, it was a madness which I hope will be speedily forgotten, or, if not forgotten, laid to a despair almost too heavy for mortal strength to endure.”
“Thank you,” she murmured; but her look, the poise of her head, the color that quivered through the pallor of her cheek, showed she was not thinking of herself. Doubt, the first which had visited her since she became convinced that Craik Mansell was the destroyer of his aunt’s life, had cast a momentary gleam over her thoughts, and she was conscious of but one wish, and that was to understand the feelings of the men before her.
But she soon saw the hopelessness of this, and, sinking back again into her old distress as she realized how much reason she still had for believing Craik Mansell guilty, she threw a hurried look toward the door as if anxious to escape from the eyes and ears of men interested, as she knew, in gleaning her every thought and sounding her every impulse.
Mr. Ferris at once comprehended her intention, and courteously advanced.
“Do you wish to return home?” he asked.
“If a carriage can be obtained.”
“There can be no difficulty about that,” he answered; and he gave Hickory a look, and whispered a word to Mr. Byrd, that sent them both speedily from the room.
When he was left alone with her, he said:
“Before you leave my presence, Miss Dare, I wish to urge upon you the necessity of patience. Any sudden or violent act on your part now would result in no good, and lead to much evil. Let me, then, pray you to remain quiet in your home, confident that Mr. Orcutt and myself will do all in our power to insure justice and make the truth evident.”
She bowed, but did not speak; while her impatient eye, resting feverishly on the door, told of her anxiety to depart.
“She will need watching,” commented Mr. Ferris to himself, and he, too, waited impatiently for the detectives’ return. When they came in he gave Imogene to their charge, but the look he cast Byrd contained a hint which led that gentleman to take his hat when he went below to put Miss Dare into her carriage.