 Chapter 5 Superstition I had gone upstairs for my raps, my uncle having insisted on my way of throwing from a scene where my very presence seemed in some degree to compromise me. Soon prepared for my departure I was crossing the halls of the small door communicating with the side staircase where my uncle had promised to await me when I felt myself seized by a desire to have another look below before leaving the place in which were centered all my deepest interests. A wide landing breaking up the main flight of stairs some few feet from the top offered me an admirable point of view. With but little thought of possible consequences and no thought at all of my poor patient uncle I slipped down to this landing and protected by the unusual height of its balustrade allowed myself a parting glance at the scene with which my most poignant memories were henceforth to be connected. Before we laid the large square of the central hall opening out from this was the corridor leading to the front door and incidentally to the library. As my glance ran down this corridor I beheld approaching from the room just mentioned the tall figure of the Englishman. He halted as he reached the main hall and stood gazing eagerly at a group of men and women clustered near the fireplace a group in which I no sooner cast my own eye than my attention also became fixed. The inspector had come from the room where I had left him with Mr. Durand and was showing to these people thanks to ordinary diamond which he had just recovered under such remarkable if not suspicious circumstances. Young heads and old were meeting over it and I was straining my ears to hear such comments as were audible above the general hubbub when Mr. Gray made a quick move and I looked this way again and timed to mark his care of concern and the uncertainty he showed whether to advance or retreat. Unconscious of my watchful eye and noting no doubt that most of the persons in the group in which his own eye was leveled stood with their backs toward him. He made no effort to disguise his profound interest in the stone. His eye followed its passage from hand to hand with a covetous eagerness of which he may not have been aware and I was not at all surprised when, after a short interval of trouble and decision, he impulsively stepped forward and begged the privilege of handling the gem himself. Our host who stood not far from the inspector said something to that gentleman which led to this request being complied with. The stone was passed over to Mr. Gray and I saw possibly because my heart was in my eyes that the great man's hand trembled as it touched his palm. Indeed, his whole frame trembled and I was looking eagerly for the result of his inspection when, honest turning to hold the jewel up to the light, something happened so abnormal and so strange that no one who was fortunate or unfortunate enough to be present in the house at that instant will ever forget it. This something was a cry coming from no one knew where, which unearthly in its shrillness and the power it had on the imagination reverberated to the house and died away in a wail so weird, so thrilling and so prolonged that it gripped not only my own nervous and weakened heart but those of the ten strong men congregated below me. The diamond dropped on Mr. Gray's hand and neither he nor anyone else moved to pick it up. Not till silence had come again, a silence almost as unendurable to the sensitive ear as the cry which had preceded it, did anyone stir or think of the gem? Then one gentleman after another bent to look for it, but with no success, to one of the waiters who possibly had followed it with his eye or caught sight of its sparkle on the edge of the rug, whether it had rolled, sprang and picked it up and handed it back to Mr. Gray. Instinctively the Englishman's hand closed on it, but it was very evident to me and I think to all, that his interest in it was gone. If he looked at it, he did not see it, for he stood like one stunned, all the time that agitated men and women were running hither and tither in unveiling efforts to locate the sound yet ringing in their ears. Not till these very searches had all come together again, in terror of a mystery they could not solve, did he let his hand fall and himself awake to the scene about him. The words he had once gave utterance to were as remarkable as all the rest. Gentlemen, said he, he must pardon my agitation. This cry, he did not seek the source, is one to which I'm only too well accustomed. I've been the happy father of six children, father I have buried, and before the death of each this same cry is echoed in my ears. I've but one child left, a daughter. She is ill at the hotel. Do you wonder that I shrink from this note of warning and show myself something less than a man under its influence? I'm going home, but first one word about the stone. Here he lifted it and bestowed, or appeared to bestow on it an anxious scrutiny, putting on his glasses and examining it carefully before passing it back to the inspector. I have heard, said he, with a change of tone which must have been noticeable to everyone, that this tone was a very superior one, and quite worthy of the fame it wore here in America. But gentlemen, you've all been greatly deceived in it. No one more than he was willing to commit murder for its possession. The stone which you have just been good enough to allow me to inspect is no diamond, but a carefully manufactured bit of paste not worth the rich and elaborate setting which has been given to it. I am sorry to be the one to say this, but I have made a study of precious stones, and I cannot let this bare-faced imitation pass through my hands without a protest. Mr. Ramstill, this to our host, I beg you to allow me to utter my excuses and depart at once. My daughter is worse. This I know, as certainly is that I'm standing here. The choir you have heard is the one superstition of our family. Pray God that I find her alive. After this, what could be said? So no one who had heard him, not even my own romantic self, showed any belief in this interpretation of the remarkable sound that had just gone thrilling through the house, yet, in face of his declared acceptance of it as a warning, and the fact that all efforts had failed to locate the sound, or even to determine its source, no other choir seemed open but to let this distinguished man depart with the suddenness his superstitious fears demanded. So this was in opposition to the inspector's wishes, was evident enough. Naturally he would have preferred Mr. Gray to remain, if only to make clear his surprising conclusions in regard to a diamond, but should pass through the hands of some of the best judges in the country, without a doubt having been raised as to its genuineness. With his departure, the inspector's manner changed. He glanced at the stone in his hand, and slowly shook his head. I doubt if Mr. Gray's judgment can be depended on tonight, said he, and pocketed the jam as carefully as if his belief in its real value had been but little disturbed by the assertions of this renowned foreigner. I've no distinct remembrance of how I finally left the house, or of what passed between my uncle and myself on our way home. I was numb with the shock, and neither my intelligence nor my feelings were any longer active. I recall but one impression, and that was the effect made on me by my old home, on our arrival there. I saw something new and strange. So much had happened, and such changes had taken place in myself, since leaving it five hours before. But nothing else is vivid in my remembrance, till that early hour of that very morning, when on waking to the world with a cry, I beheld my uncle's anxious figure venting over me from the footboard. Instantly I found tongue, and question after question leaped from my lips. He did not answer them. He could not. But when I grew feverish and insistent, he drew the morning paper from behind his back, and knitted quietly down within my reach. I felt calm in an instant, and when, after a few affectionate words, he left me to myself, I seized on the sheet, and read what so many others were reading at that moment throughout the city. I sprained the account so far as it coincides with what I had myself seen and heard the night before. A few particulars which had not reached my ears will interest you. The instrument of death found in the place designated by Mr. Durand was one of no to such a set any taste or knowledge of curious. It was a stiletto of the most delicate type, long, keen, and slender. Not an American product, not even of this century's manufacture, but a relic of the days when deadly thrusts were given in the corners and by-ways of medieval streets. This made the first mystery. The second was the as yet unexplainable presence on the alcove floor of two broken coffee-cups, which no waiter on any other person, in fact, admitted having carried there. The tray which had fallen from Vitrimoni's hand, the waiter who had been the first to give the alarm of murder, had held no cups, owned the ices. This was of fact proved. But the handles of two cups had been found among the debris. Cups which must have been full, from the size of the coffee stain left on the rug where they had fallen. In reading this I remembered that Mr. Durand had mentioned stepping on some broken pieces of china in its escape from the fatal scene, and struck with this confirmation of a theory which was slowly taking form in my own mind, I had passed on to the next paragraph, with a sense of expectation. The result was a surprise. Others may have been told, I was not. The Mrs. Fairbrother had received a communication from outside, only a few minutes previous to her death. A Mr. Fullerton, who had preceded Mr. Durand in his visit to the alcove, owned to having opened the window for her, at some caller's signal from outside, and taken in a small piece of paper, which he saw lifted up from below, on the end of a whip handle. He could not see who held the whip. But at Mrs. Fairbrother's entreaty he unpinned the note and gave it to her. While she was fussing over it, for it was apparently far from legible, he took another look out in time to mark a figure rushed from below toward the carriage-drive. I did not recognize the figure, nor would he know it again. As to the nature of the communication itself, he could say nothing, say that Mrs. Fairbrother did not seem to be affected favorably by it. She frowned and was looking very gloomy, when he left the alcove. Asked if he had pulled the curtains together after closing the window, he said that he had not, that she had not requested him to do so. This story, which was certainly a strange one, had been confirmed by the testimony of the coachman, who had learned his whip for the purpose. This coachman, who was known to be a man of extreme good nature, had seen no harm in lending his whip to a poor devil, who had wished to give a telegram or some such hasty message to the lady sitting just above them in a lighted window. The wind was fierce and the snow blinding, and it was natural that the man should duck his head. But he remembered his appearance well enough to say that he was either very cold or very much done up, and that he wore a great coat, with a collar pulled up about his ears. When he came back with a whip, he seemed more cheerful than when he asked for it, but had no thank you for the favor done him, or if he had, it was lost in his throat and the piercing gale. The communication which was regarded by the police as a matter of the highest importance had been found in her hand by the coroner. It was a mirror scroll written in pencil on a small scrap of paper. The following facsimile of this scroll was given to the public in the hope that someone would recognize the handwriting. The first two lines overlapped and were confused, but the last one was clear enough. Expect trouble if. If what? Hundreds were asking the question at this very moment. I should soon be asking it too, but first I must make an effort to understand the situation. A situation which up to now appeared to involve Mr. Durant, and Mr. Durant only, as the suspected party. This was no more than I expected, and it came with a shock under this broad glare of this wintry morning. So impossible did it seem, in the light of everyday life, that Kil could be associated in anyone's mind with a man of such unblemished record and excellent standing. But the evidence adduced against him was of a kind to appeal to the common mind. We all know that the evidence, nor could I say after reading the full account, that I was myself unaffected by its seeming weight. Not that my fate in this innocence was shaken. I had met his look of love and tender gratitude, and my confidence in him had been restored. But I saw, with all the clearness of a mind trained by continuous study, how difficult it was going to be to counteract the prejudice induced, first by some inconsiderate acts, especially by that unfortunate attempt of his, to secrete Mrs. Farrow Brothers' gloves in another woman's bag, and secondly, by his peculiar explanations, explanations which to many must seem force and unnatural. I saw and felt nerve to a superhuman task. I believed him innocent, and if others failed to prove him so, I would undertake to clear him myself. I, the little Rita, with no experience of law or courts or crime, was with simply an unbounded faith in the man suspected and in the keenness of my own insight, an insight which had already served me so well and would serve me yet better, once I had mastered the details which must be the prelude to all intelligent action. The morning's report stopped with explanations given by Mr. Durand, of the appearances against him. Consequently, no word appeared of the after-events, which had made such an impression at the time on all the persons present. Mr. Gray was mentioned, but simply as one of the guests, and to no one reading this early morning issue, would any doubt come so the genuineness of the diamond which, to all appearance, had been the leading motive in the commission of this great crime. The effect on my own mind of this suppression was a curious one. I began to wonder if the whole event had not been a chimera of my disturbed brain, a nightmare which had visited me, and me alone, and not a fact to be reckoned with. But a moment's further thought served to clear my mind of all such doubts. And I perceived that the police had only exercised common prudence in withholding Mr. Gray's sensational opinion of the stone, till it could be verified by experts. The two columns of gossip devoted to the family differences which had led to the separation of Mr. and Mrs. Fairbrother, I shall compress into a few lines. They had been married three years before in the city of Baltimore. He was a rich man then, but not at the multi-millionaire he is today. Plain featured, and without manner, he was no mate for this sparkling coquette, whose charm was of the kind which grows with exercise. Thono actual scandal was ever associated with her name. He grew tired of her caprices and the conquest which she had made no endeavour to hide, either from him or from the world at large. And at some time during the previous year they had come to a friendly understanding which led to their living apart, each in grand style, and with a certain deference to the proprieties which retained them their friends in an unviable place in society. He was too tough and invited where she was, and she never appeared in any assemblage where he was expected. But with this exception little feeling was shown. Matters progressed smoothly, and to their credit let it be said, no one ever heard either of them speak otherwise, some considerably of the other. He was at present out of town, having started some three weeks before for the Southwest, but would probably return on receipt of the telegram which had been sent him. The comments made on the murder were not necessarily hurried. It was called a mystery, but it was evident enough that Mr. Durand's detention was looked on as the almost certain prelude to his arrest on the charge of murder. I had had some discipline in life, although a favourite of my wealthy uncle, I had given up three early the prospects he held out to me of a continued enjoyment of his bounty, and entered on duties which required self-denial and hard work. I did this because I enjoyed having both my mind and heart occupied, to be necessary to someone as a nurse is to a patient, sim to me an unviable fate, till I came under the influence of Anson Durand. Then the craving of all women for the common lot of their sex became my craving also. Hey, craving, however, to which I failed at first to yield, for I felt that it wasn't shared, and thus a token of weakness. Fighting my battle, I succeeded in winning it, as I thought, just as the nurse's diploma was put in my hands. Then came the great surprise of my life. Anson Durand expressed his love for me, and I awoke to the fact that all my preparation had been for home joys and a woman's true existence. One hour of ecstasy in the light of this new hope, then tragedy, and something approaching chaos, truly had been the way schooling, but was it one to make me useful in the only way I could be useful now? I did not know. I did not care. I was determined on my course, fit or unfit, and in the relief brought by this appeal to my energy, I rose and dressed, and went about the duties of the day. One of these was so determined while the Mr. Grey on his return to his hotel had found his daughter as ill as his fears had foreboded. A telephone message or two satisfied me on this point. Miss Grey was very ill, but not considered dangerously so. Indeed, if anything, her condition was improved, and if nothing happened in the way of fresh complications, the prospects for that she would be out in a fortnight. I was not surprised. It was smaller than I expected. The cry of the Banshee in an American house was past belief, even in an atmosphere so charged with fear, and all the horror surrounding a great crime. And in the secret reckoning I was smacking against a person, I will not even name a disjuncture. I added it as another suspicious circumstance. narrative, with unnecessary detail. I did not see Mr. Durant again. My uncle, some minimal in most matters, proved inexorable in this point. Told Mr. Durant's good name should be restored by the coroner's verdict, or such evidence brought to light, I should effectively place him beyond all suspicion. I was to hold no communication with him of any sort, whatever. I remember the very words with which my uncle ended the one exhaustive conversation we had on the subject. They were these. You have fully expressed to Mr. Durant your entire confidence in his innocence. That must suffice him for the present. If he is the honest gentleman you think him, it will. As uncle seldom asserted himself, and asses very much in earnest when he does, I made no attempt to combat this resolution, especially if it met the approval of my better judgment. But though my power to convey sympathy fell thus under a yoke, my thoughts and feelings remained free, and these were all consecrated to the man, struggling under an imputation, the disgrace and humiliation of which he was but poorly prepared by his former easy life of social and business prosperity to meet. For Mr. Durant, in spite of the few facts which came up from time to time in confirmation of his story, continued to be almost universally regarded as a suspect. This seemed to me very unjust. But if no other clue offered, no other clue, I mean, recognized as such by police or public, will see not to have the benefit of whatever through a doubt on its own culpability? For instance, that splash of blood on his shirt front, which I had seen and the shape of which I knew. Why did not the fact that it was a splash or not a spatter, and spatter it would have been at its part to there, instead of falling from above as he stated, count for more in the minds of those whose business it was to probe into the very heart of this crime? To me it told such a tale of innocence that I wondered how a man like the inspector could pass over it. But later I understood. A single word enlightened me. The stain it was true was seen the form of a splash and not a spurt, but a splash would have been the result of a drop falling from the ricking end of the stiletto, whether it dislodged itself early or late. And what was there to prove that this drop had not fallen at the instant, the stiletto was being thrust into the lantern, instead of after the escape of the criminal, and the entrance of another man? But the mystery of the broken coffee-cups? For that no explanation seemed to be forthcoming, and the still unsolved one of the written warning found in the murdered woman's hand, a warning which had been deciphered to read. Be warned, he means to be at the ball. Expect trouble if. Was that to be looked upon as directed against a man, who from the nature of his projected attempt would take no one into his confidence? Then the stiletto, a photographic reproduction of which was in all the papers, was set the kind of instrument which the plain New York gentleman would be likely to use in the crime of this nature. It was a marked and unique article, capable, as one would think, of being easily traced to its owner. Had it been claimed by Mr. Ramsdale, had it been recognized as one of the many works of art scattered about the highly decorated alcove, its employment as a means of death would have gone only to prove the possibly unpremeditated nature of the crime, and so been valueless as the basis of an argument in favor of Mr. Durand's innocence. But Mr. Ramsdale had disclaimed from the first all knowledge of it. Consequently one could but feel justified in asking whether a man of Mr. Durand's judgment would choose such an extraordinary weapon in meditating so starting a crime which from its nature and circumstance could not fail to attract the attention of the whole civilized world. Another argument, advanced by himself, and subscribed to by all his friends was this, that a dealer in precious stones would be the last man to seek by any unlawful means to possess so conspicuous a jewel. For he better than anyone else would know the impossibility of disposing of a gem of this distinction in any market short of the Orient, to which the unanswerable reply was made, that no one attributed to him any such folly, that if he had planned to possess himself of this great diamond, it was for the purpose of eliminating it from competition with the one he had procured for Mr. Smythe, an argument certainly which drove us back to the only plea we had at our command, his hitherto unblemished reputation, and the confidence which was felt in him by those who knew him. But the one circumstance which affected me most at the time, and which undoubtedly was the source of the greatest confusion to all minds, whether official or otherwise, was the unexpected confirmation by experts of Mr. Gray's opinion and regard to the diamond. His name was not used. Indeed it had been kept out of the papers with the greatest unanimity, but the hint he had given the inspector at Mr. Ramstall's ball had been acted upon, and the proper test having been made. The stone, for which so many believed alive to have been risked and another taken, was declared to be an imitation, fine and successful beyond all parallel, but still an imitation, of the great and renowned gem which had passed through Tiffany's hands a twelve months before, a decision which fell like a thunderbolt, and all such as had seen the diamond blazing and unapproachable brillancy on the breast of the unhappy Mrs. Fairbrother only an hour or two before her death. On me the effect was such that for days I lived in a dream. I conditioned that nevertheless do not prevent me from starting a certain inquiry of my own, of which more hereafter. Here let me say that I did not share the general confusion on this topic. I had my own theory, both as to the cost of this substitution and the moment when it was made, but the time had not yet come for me to advance it. I could only stand back and listen to the suppositions erred by the press, suppositions which fomented so much private discussion that ere long the one question most frequently heard in this connection was not who struck the blow which killed Mrs. Fairbrother. This was a question which some seem to think settled, but whose juggling hand had palmed off the pace for the diamond, and how and when and where had the jugglery taken place. Opinions on this point were, as I have said, many and various. Some fixed upon the moment of exchange, as said very critical and hardly appreciable one, elapsing between the murder and Mr. Durand's appearance upon the scene. This theory, I did not say, was advanced by such as believed that while he was not guilty of Mrs. Fairbrother's murder, he had been guilty of taking advantage of the same to rob the body of what, in the terror and excitement of the moment, he evidently took to be her great gem. To others among whom were many eyewitnesses of the event, it appeared to be a conceded fact that this substitution had been made prior to the ball and with Mrs. Fairbrother's full cognizance. The factual way in which she had wielded her fan between the glittering ornament on her breast and the inquisitive glances constantly leveled upon it might at the time have been due to coquetry, but to them it looked much more like an expression of fear, less a deception in which she was indulging should be discovered. No one fixed the time or I did, but then no one but myself had watched the scene with the eyes of love. Besides, and this must be remembered, most people among whom I ventured to count the police officials were mainly interested in proving Mr. Durand guilty, while I, with contrary mind, was bent on establishing such facts as confirmed the explanations she had been pleased to give us. Explanations which necessitated a conviction on Mrs. Fairbrother's part of the great value of the jewel she wore and the consequent advisability of putting herself a bit temporarily, if, as so many believed, the full letter of the warning should read, be warned, he means to be at the ball, expect trouble if you are found wearing the great diamond. True, she may herself have been deceived concerning it. Unconsciously to herself, she may have been the victim of a daring fraud on the part of some hanger on, who had access to her jewels, but as no such evidence that he had come to life, as she had no recognized, or so far as could be learned, secret lover or dishonest dependent, and more over, as no gem of such unusual value was known to have been offered within the year, here or abroad, in public or private market, I could not bring myself to credit this assumption, possibly because I was so ignorant as to credit another, and a different one, one which you have already seen growing in my mind, and which, sumptuous as it was, cut my courage from failing through all those dreadful days of enforced waiting and suspense. For I was determined not to intrude my suggestions, valuable as I considered them, till all hope was gone of us being righted by the judgment of those who would not likely endure the interference of such an insignificant moat in the great scheme of justice as myself. The inquest which might be trusted to bring out all these doubtful points, had been delayed in anticipation of Mr. Fairbrothers' return. His testimony could not but prove valuable, if not in fixing the criminal, at least in settling the moot point, as to whether the stone, which the estranged wife had carried away with her, and leaving the house, had been the genuine one returned to him from Tiffany's, or the well-known imitation now in the hands of the police. He had been located somewhere in the mountains of Laura, Colorado. What strange to say, it had been found impossible to enter into direct communication with him, nor was it known whether he was aware as yet of his wife's tragic death. So affairs went slowly in New York, and the case seemed to come to a standstill, when public opinion was suddenly reawakened, and a more definite turn given to the whole matter by a dispatch from Santa Fe, the Associated Press. This dispatch was to the effect that Abner, your brother, had passed to the city some three days before, on his way to his new mining camp, the Placide, that he then showed symptoms of pneumonia, and from advices since received, might be regarded as a very sick man. Ill! Well, that explained matters. His silence, which many had taken for indifference, was that of a man physically disabled, an unfit for exertion of any kind. Ill! A tragic circumstance, which roused endless conjecture. Was he aware, or was he not aware, of his wife's death? Had he been taken ill before or after he left Colorado for New Mexico? Was he suffering mainly from shock, or as would appear from his complaint, from a too rapid change of climate? Was the whole country seethe with excitement? And my poor little un-thought-of insignificant self, burned with impatience, which only those who have been subjected to a lack suspense, can properly estimate. Would the proceedings which were awaited with so much anxiety be further delayed? Would Mr. Durand remain indefinitely endurance, and not as such a cloud of disgrace, as would kill some man and might kill him? Would I be called upon to endure still longer the suffering which disentailed upon me, when I thought I knew? But fortune was less obdurate than I feared. Next morning a telegraphic statement from Santa Fe settled one of the points of this great dispute. A statement which she will find detailed at more length, in the following communication which appeared a few days later in one of our most enterprising journals. It was from a resident correspondent in New Mexico, and was written, as the editor was careful to say, for his own eyes and not for the public. He adventured, however, to give it in full, knowing the great interest which this whole subject had for his readers. CHAPTER VII Not to be outdone by the editor, I insert the article here with all its details, the importance of which I trust I have anticipated. Santa Fe, New Mexico, April Blank Arrived in Santa Fe, I inquired where Abner Fairbrother could be found. I was told that he was at his mine, sick. Upon inquiring as to the location of the placid, I was informed that it was fifteen miles or so distant in the mountains, and upon my expressing an intention of going there immediately, I was given what I thought very unnecessary advice, and then directed to a certain livery stable, where I was told I could get the right kind of a horse and such equipment as I stood in need of. I thought I was equipped all right as it was, but I said nothing and went on to the livery stable. Here I was shown a horse which I took to it once, and was about to mount, when a pair of leggings was brought to me. You will need these for your journey, said the man. Journey, I repeated, fifteen miles. The livery stablekeeper, a half-breed with a peculiarly pleasant smile, cocked up his shoulders with the remark. Three men as willing, but as inexperienced as yourself, have attempted the same journey during the last week, and they all came back before they reached the divide. You will probably come back, too, but I shall give you as fair a start as if I knew you were going straight through. What a woman has done it, said I. A nurse from the hospital went up that very road last week. Oh, women, they can do anything. Women who are nurses. But they don't start off alone. You are going alone. Yes, I remarked grimly. Newspaper correspondents make their journey singly when they can. Oh, you're a newspaper correspondent. Why do so many men from the papers want to see that sick old man? Because he's so rich. Don't you know, I asked. He did not seem to. I wondered at his ignorance, but did not enlighten him. Follow the trail and ask your way from time to time. All the goat herds know where the placid mine is. Such were his simple instructions as he headed my horse toward the canyon. But as I drew off, he shouted, if you get stuck, leave it to the horse. He knows more about it than you do. With a vague gesture toward the northwest, he turned away, leaving me in contemplation of the grandest scenery I had yet come upon in all my travels. Fifteen miles. But those miles lay through the very heart of the mountains, ranging anywhere from six to seven thousand feet high. In ten minutes the city and all signs of city life were out of sight. Five more I was seemingly as far removed from all civilization as if I had gone a hundred miles into the wilderness. As my horse settled down to work, picking his way, now here and now there, sometimes over the brown earth, hard and baked as in a thousand furnaces, and sometimes over the stunted grass whose needle-like stalks seemed never to have known moisture, I let my eyes roam to such peaks as were not cut off from view by the nearer hillsides, and wondered whether the snow which capped them was whiter than any other, or the blue of the sky bluer, that the two together had the effect upon me of cameo work on a huge and unapproachable scale. Certainly the effect of these grand mountains into which you leap without any preparation from the streets and marketplaces of America's oldest city is such as is not easily described. We struck water now and then, narrow water, courses which my horse followed in midstream and, more interesting yet, goat herds with their flocks, Mexicans all, who seemed to understand no English, but were picturesque enough to look at at a welcome break in the extreme lonesomeness of the way. I had been told that they would serve me as guides if I felt at all doubtful of the trail, and in one or two instances they proved to be of decided help. They could gesticulate if they could not speak English, and when I tried them with the one word placide they would nod and point out which of the many side canyons I was to follow, but they always looked up as they did so, up, up, till I took to looking up too, and when, after miles, multiplied indefinitely by the winding of the trail, I came out upon a ledge from which a full view of the opposite range could be had, and saw fronting me from the side of one of its tremendous peaks, the gap of a vast hole, not two hundred feet from the snowline. I knew that, inaccessible as it looked, I was gazing up at the opening of Avner Fairbrothers new mine, the placide. The experience was a strange one. The two ranges approached so nearly that it seemed as if a ball might be tossed from one to the other. But the chasm between was stupendous. I grew dizzy as I looked downward and saw the endless zigzags yet to be traversed step by step before the bottom of the canyon could be reached, and then the equally interminable zigzags up the eclivity beyond, all of which I must trace still step by step. Before I could hope to arrive at the camp which, from where I stood, looked to be almost within hail of my voice. I have described the mine as a hole. That was all I saw at first, a great black hole in the dark brown earth of the mountainside, from which ran down a still darker streak into the waste places far below it. But as I looked longer I saw that it was faced by a ledge cut out of the friable soil, on which I was now able to describe the pronounced white of two or three tent tops and some other signs of life, encouraging enough to the eye of one whose lot it was to crawl like a fly up that tremendous mountainside. Truly I could understand why those three men, probably newspaper correspondents like myself, had turned back to Santa Fe after a glance from my present outlook, but though I understood, I did not mean to duplicate their retreat. The sight of those tents, the thought of what one of them contained, inspired me with new courage, and releasing my grip upon the rain I allowed my patient horse to proceed. Shortly after this I passed the divide. That is where the water sheds both ways. Then the descent began. It was zigzag, just as the climb had been, but I preferred the climb. I did not have the unfathomable spaces so constantly before me, nor was my imagination so active. It was fixed on heights to be attained, rather than on valleys to roll into. However, I did not roll. The Mexican saddle held me securely at whatever angle I was poised, and once the bottom was reached I found that I could face with considerable equanimity the corresponding ascent. Only as I saw how steep the climb bade fair to be, I did not see how I was ever to come down again. Going up was possible but the descent. However, as what goes up must in the course of nature come down, I put this question aside, and gave my horse his head after encouraging him with a few blades of grass, which he seemed to find edible enough, though they had the look and something of the feel of spun glass. How we got there you must ask this good animal, who took all the responsibility and did all the work. I merely clung and balanced, and at times when he rounded the end of a zigzag, for instance, I even shut my eyes, though the prospect was magnificent. At last even his patients seemed to give out, and he stopped and trembled. But before I could open my eyes on the abyss beneath he made another effort. I felt the brush of tree branches across my face, and looking up, saw before me the ledge or platform dotted with tents, at which I had looked with such longing from the opposite hillsides. Simultaneously I heard voices, and saw approaching a bronzed and bearded man with strongly marked scotch features, and a determined air. The doctor, I involuntarily exclaimed, with a glance at the small and curious tent before which he stood guard. Yes, the doctor, he answered in unexpectedly good English. And who are you? Have you brought the mail and those medicines I sent for? No, I replied with his propitiatorious smile as I could muster up in face of his brusque forbidding expression. I came on my own errand. I am a representative of the New York Blank, and I hope you will not deny me a word with Mr. Fairbrother. With a gesture I hardly knew how to interpret he took my horse by the rain, and led us on a few steps toward another large tent where he motioned me to descend. Then he laid his hand on my shoulder, and forcing me to meet his eye said, You have made this journey, I believe you said from New York, to see Mr. Fairbrother. Why? Because Mr. Fairbrother is at present the most sought-for man in America, I returned boldly. His wife, you know about his wife. No, how should I know about his wife? I know what his temperature is, and what his respiration is. But his wife? What about his wife? He don't know anything about her now himself. He is not allowed to read letters. But you read the papers, you must have known before you left Santa Fe of Mrs. Fairbrother's foul and most mysterious murder in New York. It has been the theme of two continents for the last ten days. He shrugged his shoulders, which might mean anything, and confined his reply to a repetition of my own words. Mrs. Fairbrother murdered, he exclaimed, but in a suppressed voice, to which point was given by the cautious look he cast behind him at the tent which had drawn my attention. He must not know it, man. I could not answer for his life if he received the least shock in his present critical condition. Murdered when? Ten days ago, at a ball in New York, it was after Mr. Fairbrother left the city. He was expected to return after hearing the news, but he seems to have kept straight on to his destination. He was not very fond of his wife, that is, they have not been living together for the last year. But he could not help feeling the shock of her death, which he must have heard of somewhere along the route. He has said nothing in his delirium to show that he knew it. It is possible, just possible, that he didn't read the papers. He could not have been well for days before he reached Santa Fe. When were you called in to attend him? The very night after he reached this place, it was thought he wouldn't live to reach the camp. But he is a man of great pluck. He held up till his foot touched this platform, and he succumbed. If he was as sick as that, I wonder, why did he leave Santa Fe? He must have known what it would mean to be sick here. I don't think he did. This is his first visit to the mine. He evidently knew nothing of the difficulties of the road. But he would not stop. He was determined to reach the camp, even after he had been given a sight of it from the opposite mountain. He told him that he had once crossed the Sierras in midwinter, but he wasn't a sick man then. Doctor, they don't know who killed his wife. He didn't. I know, but under such circumstances every fact bearing on the event is of immense importance. There is one which Mr. Fairbrother only can make clear. It can be said in a word. The grim doctor's eye flashed angrily, and I stopped. Where you, a detective from the district attorney's office in New York, sent on with special powers to examine him, I should still say what I am going to say now. While Mr. Fairbrother's temperature and pulse remain where they now are, no one shall see him, and no one shall talk to him save myself and this nurse. I turned with a sick look of disappointment toward the road up which I had so lately come. Have I panted, sweltered, trembled for three mortal hours on the worst trail a man ever traversed to go back with nothing for my journey? That seems to me hard lines. Where is the manager of this mine? The doctor pointed toward a man bending over the edge of the great hole from which at that moment a line of Mexicans was issuing, each with a sack on his back, which he flung down before what looked like a furnace built of clay. That's he, Mr. Haines of Philadelphia. What do you want of him? Mr. Fairbrother may be better tomorrow. I won't allow it, and I am master here so far as my patient is concerned. You couldn't stay here without talking, and talking makes excitement, and excitement is just what he cannot stand. A week from now I will see about it. That is, if my patient continues to improve. I am not sure that he will. Let me spend that week here. I'll not talk any more than the dead. Maybe the manager will let me carry sacks. Look here, said the doctor, edging me farther and farther away from the tent he hardly let out of his sight for a moment. You're a canny lad, and shall have your bite and something to drink before you take your way back. But back you go, before sunset, and with this message, no man from any paper north or south will be received here till I hang out a blue flag. I say blue, for that is the color of my bandana. When my patient is in a condition to discuss murder, I'll hoist it from his tent top. It can be seen from the divide, and if you want to camp there on the lookout, well and good. As for the police, that's another matter. I will see them if they come, but they need not expect to talk to my patient. You may say so down there. We'll save scrambling up this trail to no purpose. You may count on me, said I. Trust a New York correspondent to do the right thing at the right time to head off the boys. But I doubt if they will believe me. In that case I shall have a barricade thrown up 50 feet down the mountainside, said he. But the mail in your supplies? Oh, the boroughs can make their way up. We shan't suffer. You are certainly a master, I remarked. All this time I had been using my eyes. There was not much to see, but what there was was romantically interesting. Aside from the furnace and what was going on there, there was little else but a sleeping tent, a cooking tent, and the small one I had come on first, which without the least doubt contained the sick man. This last tent was of a peculiar construction, and showed the primitive nature of everything at this height. It consisted simply of a cloth thrown over a thing like a trapeze. This cloth did not even come to the ground on either side, but stopped short a foot or so from the flat mound of Adobe which serves as a base or floor for hut or tent in New Mexico. The rear of the simple tent abutted on the mountainside. The opening was toward the valley. I felt an intense desire to look into this opening, so intense that I thought I would venture on an attempt to gratify it, scrutinizing the resolute face of the man before me, and flattering myself that I had detected signs of humor underlying his professional brusqueness. I asked, somewhat mournfully, if he would let me go away without so much as a glance at the man I had come so far to see. A glimpse would satisfy me, I assured him, as the hint of a twinkle flashed in his eye. Surely there will be no harm in that. I'll take it instead of supper. He smiled, but not encouragingly, and I was feeling very despondent indeed, when the canvas on which our eyes were fixed suddenly shook, and the calm figure of a woman stepped out before us. Glad in the simplest garb, but showing in every line of face and form a character of mingled kindness and shrewdness. She was evidently on the lookout for the doctor, for she made a sign as she saw him, and returned instantly into the tent. Mr. Fairbrother has just fallen asleep, he explained. It isn't discipline, and I shall have to apologize to Miss Sarah. But if you will promise not to speak, nor make the least disturbance, I will let you take the one peep you prefer to suffer. I promise, said I. Leading the way to the opening he whispered a word to the nurse, then motioned me to look in. The sight was a simple one, but to me very impressive. The owner of the palaces, a man to whom millions were as thousands to such poor devils as myself, lay on an improvised bed of evergreens, wrapped in a horse blanket, and with nothing better than another of these rolled up under his head. At his sides at his nurse on what looked like the uneven stomp of a tree. Close to her hand was a tolerably flat stone, on which I saw arranged a number of bottles and other such comforts as were absolutely necessary to a proper care of the sufferer. That was all. In these few words I have told the whole story. To be sure this simple tent perched seven thousand feet and more above sea level had one advantage which even his great house in New York could not offer. This was the outlook. Saying as he did facing the valley, he had only to open his eyes to catch a full view of the panorama of sky and mountain stretched out before him. It was glorious, whether seen at morning, noon, or night, glorious. But I doubt if he would not gladly have exchanged it for a sight of his home walls. As I started to go, a stir took place and the blanket wrapped about his chin, and I caught a glimpse of the iron gray head and hollow cheeks of the great financier. He was a very sick man, even I could see that. Had I obtained the permission I sought and been allowed to ask him one of the many questions burning on my tongue, I should have received only delirium for reply. There was no reaching that clouded intelligence now, and I felt grateful to the doctor for convincing me of it. I told him so and thanked him quite warmly when we were well away from the tent, and his answer was almost kindly, though he made no effort to hide his impatience and anxiety to see me go. The looks he cast at the sun were significant, and having no wish to antagonize him and every wish to visit the spot again, I moved toward my horse with the intention of untying him. To my surprise, the doctor held me back. You can't go to-night, said he. Your horse has hurt himself. It was true. There was something of matter with the animals left forefoot. As the doctor lifted it, the manager came up. He agreed with the doctor. I could not make the descent to Santa Fe on that horse that night. Did I feel elated? Rather, I had no wish to descend. Yet I was far from foreseeing what the night was to bring me. I was turned over to the manager, but not without a final injunction from the doctor. Not a word to anyone about your errand. Not a word about the New York tragedy, as you value Mr. Fairbrothers' life. Not a word, said I. Then he left me. To see the sun go down and the moon come up from a ledge hung as it were in mid-air. The experience was novel, but I refrain. I have more important matters to relate. I was given a bunk at the extreme end of the long sleeping tent, and turned in with the rest. I expected to sleep, but on finding that I could catch a sight of the sick tent from under my canvas, I experienced such fascination in watching this forbidden spot that midnight came before I had closed my eyes. Then all desire to sleep left me, for the patient began to moan and presently to talk, and the stillness of the solitary height being something abnormal. I could sometimes catch the very words. Devoid as they were of all rational meaning, they excited my curiosity to the burning point. For who could tell if he might not say something bearing on the mystery? But that fevered mind had recurred to early scenes, and the babble which came to my ears was all of mining camps in the rockies and the dicker of horses. Perhaps the uneasy movement of my horse pulling at the end of his tether had disturbed him. Perhaps, but at the inner utterance of the second perhaps, I found myself up on my elbow listening with all my ears, and staring with wide stretched eyes at the thicket of stunted trees where the road debouched on the platform. Something was a stir there besides my horse. I could catch sounds of an unmistakable nature. A rider was coming up the trail. Slipping back into my place, I turned toward the doctor, who lay some two or three bunks nearer the opening. He had started up two, and in a moment was out of the tent. I do not think he had observed my action, for it was very dark where I lay, and his back had been turned toward me. As for the others, they slipped like the dead, only they made more noise. Interested, everything is interesting at such a height, I brought my eye to bear on the ledge, and soon saw by the limpid light of a full moon the stiff, short branches of the trees on which my gaze was fixed giving way to an advancing horse and rider. Hello! saluted the doctor in a whisper, which was in itself a warning. Easy there, we have sickness in this camp, and it's a late hour for visitors. I know. The answer was subdued, but earnest. I'm the magistrate of this district. I have a question to ask this sick man. On behalf of the New York Chief of Police, who is a personal friend of mine, it is connected with hush! The doctor had seized him by the arm and turned his face away from the sick tent. Then the two heads came together and an argument began. I could not hear a word of it, but their motions were eloquent. My sympathy was with the magistrate, of course, and I watched eagerly while he passed a letter over to the doctor, who vainly strove to read it by the light of the moon. Finding this impossible he was about to return it, when the other struck a match and lit a lantern hanging from the horn of his saddle. The two heads came together again, but as quickly separated with every appearance of your inconsolence, and I was settling back with sensations of great disappointment, when a sound fell on the night so unexpected to all concern that with a common impulse each eye sought the sick tent. Water! Will someone give me water? A voice had cried quietly and with none of the delirium which had hitherto rendered it unnatural. The doctor started for the tent. There was the quickness of surprise in his movement, and the gesture he made to the magistrate as he passed in reawakened an expectation in my breast which made me doubly watchful. Providence was intervening in our favor, and I was not surprised to see him presently reissued with the nurse when we drew into the shadow of the trees where they had a short conference. If she returned alone into the tent after this conference I should know that the matter was at an end, and that the doctor had decided to maintain his authority against that of the magistrate. But she remained outside and the magistrate was invited to join their council. When they again left the shadow of the trees it was to approach the tent. The magistrate who was in the rear could not have more than passed the opening, but I thought him far enough inside not to detect any movement on my part, so I took advantage of the situation to worm myself out of my corner and across the ledge to where the tent made a shadow in the moonlight. Crouching close and laying my ear against the canvas I listened. The nurse was speaking in a gently persuasive tone. I imagined her kneeling by the head of the patient and breathing words into his ear. These were what I heard. You love diamonds. I have often noticed that. You look so long at the ring on your hand. That is why I have let it stay there, though at times I feared it would drop off and roll away over the adobe down the mountainside. Was I right? Yes, yes. The words came with difficulty, but they were clear enough. It's of small value. I like it because he appeared to be too weak to finish. A pause during which she seemed to edge nearer to him. We all have some pet keepsakes, said she, but I should never have supposed this stone of yours an inexpensive one. But I forget that you were the owner of a very large and remarkable diamond, a diamond that is spoken of sometimes in the papers. Of course, if you have a gem like that, this one must appear very small and valueless to you. Yes, this is nothing, nothing. And he appeared to turn away his head. Mr. Fairbrother, pardon me, but I want to tell you something about that big diamond of yours. You have been in and have not been able to read your letters, so do not know that your wife has had some trouble with that diamond. People have said that it is not a real stone, but a well executed imitation. May I write to her that this is a mistake, that it is all you have ever claimed for it, that is an unusually large diamond of the first water? I listened in amazement. Surely this was an insidious way to get at the truth, a woman's way, but who would say that it was not a wise one, the wisest perhaps, which could be taken under the circumstances? What would his reply be? Would it show that he was as ignorant of his wife's death as was generally believed, both by those about him here and those who knew him well in New York? Or would the question convey nothing further to him than the doubt, in itself an insult of the genuineness of that great stone which had been his pride? A murmur, that was all that could be called, broke from his fever-dried lips and died away in an inarticulate gasp. Then, suddenly, sharply, a cry broke from him, an intelligible cry, and we heard him say, no imitation, no imitation. It was a sun, a glory, no other like it. It lit the air, it blazed, burned. I see it now, I see. There the passion succumbed, the strength failed. Another murmur, another, and the great void of night which stretched over, I might almost say, under us, was no more quiet or seemingly impenetrable than the silence of that moon-enveloped tent. Would he speak again? I did not think so. Would she even try to make him? I did not think this either, but I did not know the woman. Softly her voice rose again. There was a dominating insistence in her tones, gentle as they were, the insistence of a healthy mind which seeks to control a weakened one. You do not know of any imitation, then? It was the real stone you gave her. You're sure of it. You would be ready to swear to it if? Say just yes or no. She finished in gentle urgency. Evidently he was sinking again into unconsciousness, and she was just holding him back long enough for the necessary word. It came slowly and with a dragging intonation, but there was no mistaking the ring of truth with which he spoke. Yes, said he. When I heard the doctor's voice and felt a movement in the canvas against which I leaned, I took the warning and stole back hurriedly to my quarters. I was scarcely settled when the same group of three I had before watched silhouetted itself again against the moonlight. There was some talk, a mingling and separating of shadows. Then the nurse glided back to her duties, and the two men went toward the clump of trees where the horse had been tethered. Ten minutes and the doctor was back in his bunk. Was it imagination, or did I feel his hand on my shoulder before he finally lay down and composed himself to sleep? I cannot say. I only know that I gave no sign, and that soon all stirr ceased in his direction, and I was left to enjoy my triumph, and to listen with anxious interest to the strange and unintelligible sounds which accompanied the descent of the horseman down the face of the cliff. And finally to watch with a fascination which drew me to my knees, the passage of that sparkling star of light hanging from his saddle. It crept to and fro across the side of the opposite mountain as he threaded his endless zig-zags and finally disappeared over the brow into the invisible canyons beyond. With the disappearance of this beacon came lassitude and sleep through which hazy atmosphere floated wild sentences from the sick tent, which showed that the patient was back again in Nevada, quarreling over the price of a horse which was to carry him beyond the reach of some threatening avalanche. The next morning I came to depart. The doctor took me by both hands and looked me straight in the eyes. You heard, he said. How do you know, I asked. I can tell a satisfied man when I see him, he growled, throwing down my hands with that same humorous twinkle in his eyes which had encouraged me from the first. I made no answer, but I shall remember the lesson. One detail more. When I started on my own descent I found why the leggings with which I had been provided were so indispensable. I was not allowed to ride, indeed, riding down those deep declivities was impossible. No horse could preserve his balance with a rider on his back. I slid, so did my horse, and only in the valley beneath we come together again. Chapter 8 of The Woman in the Elkove This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Woman in the Elkove by Anna Catherine Green Chapter 8, Arrest The success of this interview provoked other attempts on the part of the reporters who now flocked into the South West. Air-long particulars began to pour in of Mr. Fairbrothers' painful journey south after his illness set in. The cloak of the hotel in Elmorrow, where the great mine owner's name was found, registered at the time of the murder, told a story which made very good reading for those who were more interested in the suffering and experiences of the millenia husband of the murdered lady then and those of the unhappy but comparatively insignificant man upon whom public opinion had cast the odium of her death. It seems that when the first news came of the great crime which had taken place in New York, Mr. Fairbrother was absent from the hotel on a prospecting tour through the adjacent mountains. Couriers had been sent after him and it was one of these who finally brought him into town. He had been found wandering alone on horseback among the defiles of an untraveled region, sick and almost incoherent from fever. Indeed, his condition was such that neither the courier nor such others as saw him had the heart to tell him the dreadful news from New York or even to show him the papers. To their great relief, he portrayed no curiosity in them. All he wanted was a birth in the first train going south and this was an easy way for them out of a great responsibility. They listened to his wishes and saw him safely aboard with such electricity and so many precautions against his being disturbed that they have never doubted that he left Elmorrow in total ignorance, not only of the circumstances of his great bereavement, but of the bereavement itself. This ignorance which he appeared to have carried with him to the placidae was regarded by those who knew him best as proving the truth of the affirmation elicited from him in the pauses of his delirium, of the genuineness of the stone which had passed from his hands to those of his wife at the time of their separation and further dispatches coming in, some private and some official, but all insisting upon the fact that it would be weeks before he would be in a condition to submit to any sort of examination on a subject so painful. The authorities in New York decided to wait no longer for his testimony but to proceed at once with the inquest. Great is the temptation to give a detailed account of proceedings which were of such moment to myself and to every word of which I listened with the eagerness of a novice and the anguish of a woman who sees her lover's reputation at the mercy of a verdict which may stigmatize him as a possible criminal. I see no reason for encumbering my narrative with what, for the most part, would be mere repetition of the facts already known to you. Mr. Durin's intimate and suggestive connection with this crime, the explanations he had to give of this connection, frequently bizarre and I must acknowledge not always convincing, nothing could alter these nor change the fact of the undoubted cowardice he displayed in hiding Mrs. Fairbrothers gloves in my unfortunate little bag. As for the mystery of the warning, it remained as much of a mystery as ever, nor did any better success follow an attempt to fix the ownership of the stiletto, though half a day was exhausted in an endeavour to show that the latter might have come into Mr. Durin's position in some of the many visits he was shown to have made of late to various courier shops in and out of New York City. Mr. Durin's visits to the courier shops, as explained by him, were made with the view of finding a basket in which to place his diamond. This explanation was looked upon with as much doubt as the others had offered, where the situation seemed to be of a compromising character. I had expected all this, just as I had expected Mr. Gray to be absent from the proceedings and his testimony ignored, but this expectation did not make the ordeal any easier, and when I noticed the effect of witness after witness leaving the stand, without having improved Mr. Durin's position by jot or offering any new clue capable of turning suspicion into other directions, I felt my spirit hardened and my purpose strengthened till I hardly knew myself. I must have frightened my uncle, for his hand was always on my arm and his childing voice in my ear bidding me be aware, not only for my own sake and his but for that of Mr. Durand, whose eye was seldom away from my face. The verdict, however, was not the one I had so deeply dreaded, while it did not exonerate Mr. Durand, it did not openly accuse him, and I was on the point of giving him a smile of congratulation and renewed hope when I saw my little detective, the one who had spied the gloves and my dag at the ball, advance and place his hand upon his arm. The police had gone a step further than the coroner's jury Mr. Durand was arrested before my eyes on a charge of murder. The next day, saw me at police headquarters, begging an interview from the inspector, with the intention of confiding to him a theory which must either cost me his sympathy or open the way to a new inquiry, which I felt sure would lead to Mr. Durand's complete exoneration. I chose this gentleman for my confidant, from among all those with whom I had been brought in contact, by my position as a witness in a case of this magnitude, first because he had been present at the most tragic moment of my life, and secondly because I was conscious of a sympathetic bond between us, which would ensure me a kind hearing. However ridiculous my idea might appear to him, I was assured that he would treat me with consideration and not visit whatever folly I might be guilty of, on the head of him, for whom I risked my reputation for good sense. Nor was I disappointed in this, inspected as he was there was fatherly, and his tone altogether gentle, as in reply to my excuses for troubling him with my opinions, he told me that in a case of such importance, he was glad to receive the impressions of even such a prejudice, little partisan as myself, the word fired me and I spoke. You considered Mr. Durand guilty, and so do many others. I fear, in spite of his long record for honesty and uprightness, and why, because you will not admit the possibility of another person sculpt, a person standing so high in private and public estimation, that the very idea sends preposterous, and a little short of insulting to the country, of which he is an acknowledged ornament, my dear, the inspector had actually risen. His expression and whole attitude showed shock, but I did not quail, I only subdued my manner and spoke with quiet a conviction. I am aware, I said. How words so daring must impress you, but listen sir, listen to what I have to say before you utterly condemn me. I acknowledge that it is the frightful position into which I threw Mr. Durand by my officious attempt to write him which has driven me to make this second effort, to fix the crime on the only other man who had possible access to Mrs. Fairbrother at the fatal moment. How could I live in an action? How could you expect me to waive for a moment this foreigner's reputation against that of my own lover, if I have reasons, reasons, which would appeal to all, if instead of this person's having an international reputation at his back, he had been the simple gentleman like Mr. Durand. Would you not consider me entitled to speak? Certainly, but... You have no confidence in my reasons, inspector. They may not weigh against that splash of blood on Mr. Durand's shirt front, but such as they are, I must give them. But first it will be necessary for you to accept for the nonce, Mr. Durand's statement says true. Are you willing to do this? I will try. Then, a harder thing yet, to put some confidence in my judgement, I saw the man and did not like him long before any intimation of the evening's tragedy had turned suspicion on anyone. I watched him as I watched others. I saw that he had not come to the board to please Mr. Ransdale, or, for any pleasure, he himself hoped to reap from social intercourse, but for some purpose much more important, and that this purpose was connected with Mrs. Fairbrothers' diamond. Indifferent, almost merose before she came upon the scene, he brightened to a surprising extent the moment he found himself in her presence, not because she was a beautiful woman, for he scarcely honored her face or even her superb figure with a look. All his glances were centred on her large fan, which, in swaying to and fro, alternately hid and revealed the splendour on her breast. And when by chance had Hunk suspended for a moment in her forgetful hand, and he caught a full glimpse of the great gem, I perceived such a change in his face that if nothing more had occurred that night to give prominence to this woman and her diamond, I should have carried home the conviction that interests of no common import lay behind a feeling so extraordinarily displayed. Fanciful, my dear Ms. Van Arsdale, interesting, but fanciful. I know, I have not yet touched on fact, but facts are coming, Inspector, he's dead. Evidently, he was not accustomed to hear the law laid down in this fashion by a midget of my proportions. Go on, he said, happily I have no clerk here to listen. I would not speak if you had. These are words but for one eras yet. Not even my uncle suspects the direction of my thoughts. Proceed, he again enjoined, upon which I plunged into my subject. Mrs. Fairbrother wore the real diamond in no imitation to the ball of this, I feel sure. The bit of glass or paste displayed to the coroner's jury was bright enough, but it was not the start of light I saw burning on her breast as she passed me on her way to the alcove. Ms. Van Arsdale. The interest which Mr. Durand displayed in it, the marked excitement into which he was thrown by his first view of its size and splendor, confirm in my mind the evidence which he gave on oath. And he is a well-known diamond expert, you know, and must have been very well aware that he would injure rather than help his course by this admission, that at the time he believed this time to be real and of immense value, wherein such as Jim then, she entered the fatal alcove and with a smile on her face, prepared to employ her fascinations on whoever chance to come within their reach, but now something happened. Please let me tell it my own way. A shout from the driveway or a bit of snow thrown against the window drew her attention to a man standing below, holding up a note fastened at the end of a whip handle. I do not know whether or not you have found that man if you have. The inspector made no sign. I judge that you have not, so I may go on with my suppositions. Mrs. Fairbrother took in this note. She may have expected it and for this reason chose the alcove to sit in. Or it may have been a surprise to her. Probably we shall never know the whole truth about it, but what we can know and do, if you are still holding to our compact and viewing this crime in the light of Mr. Duran's explanations, is that it made a change in her and made her anxious to rid herself of the diamond. It has been decided that the hurried scrawl should read, take warning, he means to be at the ball, expect trouble if you do not have given the diamond, or something to that effect. But why was it passed up to her unfinished? Was the haste too great? I hardly think so. I believe in another explanation which points with startling directness to the possibility that the person referred to in this broken communication was not Mr. Duran, but one whom I need not name, and that the reason you have failed to find the messenger of his appearance you have received definite information, is that you have not looked among the servants of a certain distinguished visitor in town. Oh, I burst forth with feverish volubility. As I saw the inspector's lips open and what could not fail to be a sarcastic utterance, I know what you feel tempted to reply. Why should a servant deliver a warning against his own master? If you will be patient with me, you will soon see. But first I wish to make it clear that Mrs. Fairbrother, having received this warning just before Mr. Duran appeared in that, Alcove, reckless, scheming woman that she was, sought to rid herself of the object against which it was directed in the way we have temporarily accepted as true. Relying on her arts and possibly misconceiving the nature of Mr. Duran's interest in her, she hands over the diamond hidden in her rolled up gloves, which he, without suspicion, carries away with him, thus linking himself indissolubly to a great crime of which another was a perpetrator. That other, or so I believe from my very heart of hearts, was the man I saw leaning against the wall at the foot of the Alcove a few minutes before I passed into the supper room. I stopped with a gasp, hardly able to meet the stern and forbidding look, with which the inspector sought to restrain what he evidently considered the senseless ravings of a child. But I had come there to speak, and I hastily proceeded before the rebuke, thus expressed, could formulate itself into words. I have some excuse for a declaration so monstrous. Perhaps I am the only person who can satisfy you in regard to a certain fact about which you have expressed some curiosity. Inspector, have you ever solved the mystery of the two broken coffee cups found amongst the debris at Mrs. Fairbrothers feet? It did not come out in the inquest I noticed. Not yet, he cried. But you cannot tell me anything about them. Possibly not. But I can tell you this. When I reached the supper room that evening, I looked back and providentially or otherwise only the future can determine that. Detected Mr. Gray in the act of lifting two cups from a tray left by some waiter on a table standing just outside the reception room door. I did not see where he carried them. I only saw his face turned toward the Elkove and there was no other lady there or anywhere near there I have dared to think. Here then, Inspector, found speech. You saw Mr. Gray lift two cups and turned toward the Elkove at a moment we all know to have been critical. You should have told me this before. He may be a possible witness. I scarcely listened. I was too full of my own argument. There were other people in the room especially at the end of it. A perfect throng was coming from the billiard room where the dancing had been and might easily be that he could both enter and leave that secluded spot without attracting attention. He had shown too early and much too unmistakably his lack of interest in the general company for his every movement to be watched as at his first arrival. But this is simple conjecture. What I have to say next is evidence. The stiletto, have you studied it sir? I have from the pictures. It is very quaint and among the devices on the handle is one that especially attracted my attention see this is what I mean. And I handed him a drawing which I had made with some care and expectation of this very interview. He surveyed it with some astonishment. I understand. I pursued in trembling times for I was much affected by my own daring that no one has so far succeeded in tracing this weapon to its owner. Why didn't your expert study heraldry and the devices of great houses? They would have found that this one is not unknown in England and I can tell you in whose blaze in it can be often seen and so could Mr Gray. End of chapter nine recording by Mary Ann Coleman Hibkins www.thisvoiceforyou.com Chapter 10 of The Woman in the Elkove This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Mary Ann Coleman Hibkins. The Woman in the Elkove by Anna Catherine Green. Chapter 10 I astonish the inspector. I was not the only one to tremble now. This man of infinite experience in daily contact with crime had to turn his pearl as ever I myself had done in the face of a threatening calamity. I shall see about this. He muttered crumpling the paper in his hand. But this is a very terrible business you are plunging me into. I sincerely hope that you are not heedlessly misleading me. I am correct in my facts if that is what you mean said I. Pistoletto is an English heirloom and bears on its blade among other devices that of Mr Gray's family on the female side. But that is not all I want to say. If the blow was struck to obtain the diamond, the shock of not finding it on his victim must have been terrible. Now, Mr Gray's heart, if my whole theory is not utterly false, was set upon obtaining this stone. Your eye was not on him as mine was when you made your parents in the hall with the recovered jewel. He showed astonishment, eagerness, and a determination which finally led him forward as you know with the request to take the diamond in his hand. Why did he want to take it in his hand? And why, having taken it, did he drop it? A diamond supposed to be with an ordinary man's fortune. Because he was startled by a cry he chose to consider the traditional one of his family proclaiming death. Is it likely, sir? Is it conceivable even that any such cry as we heard could in this day and generation wring through such an assemblage unless it came with ventricle power from his own lips? You observed that he turned his back that his face was hidden from us discreet and reticent as we all have been and careful in our criticisms of so bizarre an event there still must be many to question the reality of such superstitious fears and some to ask if such a sound could be without a human agency and a very guilty agency too. Inspector, I am but a child in your estimation and I feel my position in this matter much more keenly than you do but I would not be true to the man whom I have unwittingly helped to place in his present unenviable position if I did not tell you that in my judgment this cry was a spurious one employed by the gentleman himself as an excuse for dropping the stone and why would he wish to drop the stone? Because of the fraud he meditated because it offered him an opportunity for substituting a false stone for the real did you not notice the change in the aspect of this dual dating from this very moment? Did it shine with as much brilliancy in your hand when you received it back as when you passed it over? Nonsense. I do not know. It is all too absurd for an argument. Yet he did stop to argue sane in the next breath. You forget that the stone has a setting would you claim that this gentleman of family, place and political distinction had planned this hideous crime with sufficient pre-meditation to have provided himself with exact counterpart of a brooch which is highly improbable he ever saw? You would make him out of kagliostro or something worse. Ms. Van Arsdale, I fear your theory will topple over of its own weight. He was very patient with me. He did not show me the door. Yet such a substitution took place and took place that evening, I insisted. The bit of paste shown us that the inquest was never the gem Mrs. Fairbrother wore on entering the alcove. Besides, we're all a sensation. Why careful at one more improvability. Mr. Gray may have come over to America for no other reason. He is known as a collector and when a man has a passion for diamond-getting, he is known as a collector in his own country. I was not told that. Nor I, but I found it out. How, my dear child, how? By a cable-gram or so. You cabled his name to England? No, Inspector. Uncle has a code and I made use of it to ask a friend in London for a list of the most noted diamond fanciers in the country. Mr. Gray's name was third on the list. He gave me a look in which admiration was strangely blended with doubt and apprehension. You are making a brave struggle, said he. But it is a hopeless one. I have one more confidence to repose in you. The news whose charge of Miss Gray was in my class in the hospital. We love each other and to her I dared appeal on one point, Inspector. Hear my voice unconsciously fell as he impetuously drew nearer. A note was sent from that sick chamber on the night of the ball. A note serotypically written by Miss Gray while the nurse was in an adjoining room. The messenger was Mr. Gray's valet and its destination the house in which her father was enjoying his position as chief guest. She says that it was meant for him but I have dared to think that the valet would tell a different story. My friend did not see what her patient wrote but she acknowledged that if her patient wrote more than two words the result must have been an unintelligible score since she was too weak to hold a pencil firmly and so nearly blind she would have had to feel her way over the paper. The inspector started and rising hastily went to his desk from which he presently brought the scrap of paper. Which had already figured in the inquest as the mysterious communication taken from Mrs. Fairbrother's hand by the coroner. Pressing it out flat he took another look at it then glanced up invisible, discomposure. It has always looked to us as if written in the dark by an agitated hand but I said nothing. The broken and unfinished score was sufficiently eloquent. Did your friend declare Miss Gray to have written with a pencil and on a small piece unrolled paper? Yes. The pencil was at her bedside. The paper was torn from a book which lay there. She did not put the note when written in an envelope but gave it to the valet just as it was. He is an old man and had come to her room for some final orders. The nurse saw all this. Has she that book? No. It went out next morning with the scraps. It was some pamphlet I believe. The inspector turned the morsel of paper over and over in his hand. What is this nurse's name? Henrietta Pearson. Does she share your doubts? I cannot say. Have you seen her often? No. Only the one time. Is she discreet? Theory. On this subject she will be like the grave unless forced by you to speak. And Miss Gray? She is still ill. Too ill to be disturbed by questions especially on so delicate a topic. But she is getting more fast. Her father's fears, as we heard them expressed on one memorable occasion, were ill-founded, sir. Slowly the inspector inserted this scrap of paper between the folds of his pocketbook. He did not give me another look, though I stood trembling before him. Was he in any way convinced or was he simply seeking the most considerate way in which to dismiss me and my abominable theory? I could not gather his intentions from his expression and was feeling very faint and out-sequent. Suddenly he turned upon me with a remark. A girl as ill as you see Miss Gray was must have had some very pressing matter on her mind to attempt to write and send a message under such difficulties. According to your idea she had some notion of her father's designs in which to warn Mrs Fairbrother against them. But don't you see that such conduct as this would be preposterous, nay unparalleled in persons of their distinction. You must find some other explanation for Miss Gray's seemingly mysterious action and I am an agent of crime other than one of England's most reputable statesmen. So that Mr Durand has shown the same consideration, I am content, said I. It is the truth and the truth only I desire. I am willing to trust my course with you. He looked none too grateful for this confidence. Indeed, now that I look back on the scene I do not wonder that he shrank from the responsibility thus foisted upon him. What do you want me to do? He asked. Prove something. Prove that I am altogether wrong or altogether right. Or if proof is not possible pray allow me the privilege of doing what I can myself to clear up the matter. You? There was apprehension, disapprobation, almost menacing his tone. I brought with as steady and modest a glance as possible sane when I thought he was about to speak again. I will do nothing without your sanction. I realised the dangers of this inquiry and the disgrace that would follow if our attempt was suspected before proof reached a point sufficient to justify it. It is not an open attack I meditate but one. Here I whispered in his ear for several minutes. When I had finished he gave me a prolonged stare. Then he laid his hand on my head. You are a little wonder. He declared. But your ideas are very chaotic. Very. However. He added suddenly groan grave. Something I must admit may be excused a young girl who finds herself forced to choose between the guilt of her lover and that of a man esteemed greater by the world but altogether removed from her and her natural sympathies. You acknowledge then that it lies between these two? I see no third. Said he. I drew her breath of relief. Don't deceive yourself, Ms. Van Arsdell. It is not among the possibilities that Mr. Gray has had any connection with this crime. He is an eccentric man, that's all. But, but. I shall do my duty. I shall satisfy you and myself on certain points. And if. I hardly breathed. There is the least doubt. I will see you again and. The change he saw me frightened away at the end of his sentence. Turning upon me with some severed he declared. There are 999 chances in a thousand that my next word to you will be to prepare yourself for Mr. Durand's arraignment and trial. But an infinitesimal chance remains to the contrary. If you choose to trust it I can only admire your pluck and the great confidence you show in your unfortunate lover. And with this half-hearted encouragement I was forced to be content not only for that day but for many days when. END OF CHAPTER X The Inspector astonishes me. But before I proceed to relate what happened at the end of those two weeks I must say a word or two in regard to what happened during them. Nothing happened to improve Mr. Durand's position and nothing openly to compromise Mr. Gray's. Mr. Fairbrother, from whose testimony many of us hoped something would yet be gleaned calculated to give a turn to the suspicion now centered on one man, continued ill in New Mexico and all that could be learned from him of any importance was contained in a short letter dictated from his bed, in which he affirmed that the diamond, when it left him, was in a unique setting procured by himself in France, that he knew of no other jewel similarly mounted, and if the false gem was set according to his own description, the probabilities were that the imitation stone had been put in place of the real one under his wife's direction and in some workshop in New York as she was not the woman to take the trouble to send abroad for anything she could get done in this country. The description followed. It coincided with the one we all knew. This was something of a blow to me. Public opinion would naturally reflect that of the husband, and it would require very strong evidence indeed to combat a logical supposition of this kind, with one so forced and seemingly extravagant as that upon which my own theory was based. Yet truth often transcends imagination, and having confidence in the inspector's integrity, I subdued my impatience for a week, almost for two, when my suspense and rapidly culminating dread of some action being taken against Mr. Durand were suddenly cut short by a message from the inspector, followed by his speedy presence in my uncle's house. We have a little room on our parlor floor, very snug and secluded, and in this room I received him. seldom have I dreaded a meeting more, and seldom have I been met with greater kindness and consideration. He was so kind that I feared he had only disappointing news to communicate. But his first words reassured me. He said, I have come to you on a matter of importance. We have found enough truth in the suppositions you advanced at our last interview to warrant us in the attempt you yourself propose for the elucidation of this mystery. That this is the most risky and altogether the most unpleasant duty which I have encountered during my several years of service, I am willing to acknowledge to one so sensible and at the same time of so much modesty as yourself. This English gentleman has a reputation which lifts him far above any unworthy suspicion, and were it not for the favorable impression made upon us by Mr. Durand in a long talk we had with him last night, I would sooner resign my place than pursue this matter against him. Success would create a horror on both sides, the water unprecedented during my career, while failure would bring down ridicule on us which would destroy the prestige of the whole force. Do you see my difficulty, Ms. Van Arsdale? We cannot even approach this haughty and highly reputable Englishman with questions without calling down on us the wrath of the whole English nation. We must be sure before we make a move, and for us to be sure where the evidence is all circumstantial, I know of no better plan than the one you were pleased to suggest, which at the time I was pleased to call quixotic. Drawing a long breath I surveyed him timidly. Never had I so realized my presumption or experienced such a thrill of joy in my frightened yet elated heart. They believed in Anson's innocence, and they trusted me. Insignificant as I was, it was to my exertions this great result was due. As I realized this, I felt my heart swell and my throat close. In despair of speaking I held out my hands. He took them kindly and seemed to be quite satisfied. Such a little, trembling, tear-filled Amazon, he cried. Shall you have courage to undertake the task before you? If not. Oh, but I have, said I. It is your goodness, and the surprise of it all which unnerves me. I can go through with what we have planned if you think the secret of my personality and interest in Mr. Durand can be kept from the people I go among. It can, if you will follow our advice implicitly. You say that you know the doctor, and that he stands ready to recommend you in case Miss Pearson withdraws her services. Yes, he is eager to give me a chance. He was a college maid of my father's. How will you explain to him your wish to enter upon your duties under another name? Very simply, I have already told him that the publicity given my name in the late proceedings has made me very uncomfortable, that my first case of nursing would require all my self-possession, and that if he did not think it wrong, I should like to go to it under my mother's name. He made no dissent, and I think I can persuade him that I would do much better work as Miss Ayers than as the two well-known Miss Van Arsdale. You have great powers of persuasion, but may you not meet people at the hotel who know you? I shall try to avoid people, and if my identity is discovered, its effect or non-effect upon one we find it difficult to mention, will give us our clue. If he has no guilty interest in the crime, my connection with it as a witness will not disturb him. Besides, two days of unsuspicious acceptance of me as Miss Gray's nurse are all I want. I shall take immediate opportunity, I assure you, to make the test I mentioned. But how much confidence you will have to repose in me? I comprehend all the importance of my undertaking, and shall work as if my honor, as well as yours, were at stake. I am sure you will. Then for the first time in my life I was glad that I was small and plain rather than tall and fascinating like so many of my friends, for he said, If you had been a triumphant beauty, depending on your charms as a woman to win people to your will, we should never have listened to your proposition or risk our reputation in your hands. It is your wit, your earnestness, and your quiet determination which have impressed us. You see, I speak plainly. I do so because I respect you. And now to business. Details followed. After these were well understood between us, I ventured to say, Do you object, would it be asking too much, if I requested some enlightenment as to what facts you have discovered about Mr. Gray which go to substantiate my theory, I might work more intelligently. No, Miss Van Arsdale, you would not work more intelligently, and you know it. But you have the natural curiosity of one whose very heart is bound up in this business. I could deny you what you ask, but I won't, for I want you to work with quiet confidence, which you would not do if your mind were taken up with doubts and questions. Miss Van Arsdale, one surmise of yours was correct. A man was sent that night to the Ramsdale House with a note from Miss Gray. We know this because he boasted of it to one of the bellboys before he went out, saying that he was going to have a glimpse of one of the swellest parties of the season. It is also true that this man was Mr. Gray's valet, an old servant who came over with him from England. But what adds weight to all this and makes us regard the whole affair with suspicion is the additional fact that this man received his dismissal the following morning, and has not been seen since by any one we could reach. This looks bad to begin with, like the suppression of evidence, you know. Then Mr. Gray has not been the same man since that night. He is full of care, and this care is not entirely in connection with his daughter, who is doing very well in Bidsfair to be up in a few days. But all this would be nothing if we had not received advice from England, which proved that Mr. Gray's visit here has an element of mystery in it. There was every reason for his remaining in its own country where a political crisis is approaching, yet he crossed the water, bringing his sickly daughter with him. The explanation as volunteered by one who knew him well was this, that only his desire to see or acquire some precious object for his collection could have taken him across the ocean at this time, nothing else rivaling his attention for governmental affairs. Still this would be nothing if a stiletto, similar to the one employed in this crime, had not once formed part of a collection of curios belonging to a cousin of his whom he often visited. This stiletto has been missing for some time, stolen as the owner declared, by some unknown person. All this looks bad enough, but when I tell you that a week before the fatal ball at Mr. Ramsdale's, Mr. Gray made a tour of the jewelers on Broadway, and with the pretext of buying a diamond for his daughter, entered into a talk about famous stones, ending always with some question about the Fairbrother gem. You will see that his interest in that stone is established, and that it only remains for us to discover if that interest is a guilty one. I cannot believe this is possible, but you have our leave to make your experiment and see. Only do not count too much on his superstition. If he is the deep-dyed criminal you imagine, the cry, which startled us all at a certain critical instant, was raised by himself and for the purpose you suggested. None of the sensitiveness often shown by a man who has been surprised into crime will be his. Relying on his reputation and the prestige of his great name, he will, if he thinks himself under fire, face every shock unmoved. I see. I understand. He must believe himself all alone. Then the natural man may appear. I thank you, Inspector. That idea is of inestimable value to me, and I shall act on it. I do not say immediately, not on the first day, and possibly not on the second, but as soon as opportunity offers for my doing what I have planned, with any chance of success. And now advise me how to circumvent my uncle and aunt who must never know to what an undertaking I have committed myself. Inspector Dalzel spared me another fifteen minutes, and this last detail was arranged. Then he rose to go. As he turned from me, he said, Tomorrow, and I answered with a full heart, but with a voice clear as my purpose, Tomorrow.