Loe raamatut: «The Chief Legatee», lehekülg 5

CHAPTER XI
HALF-PAST ONE IN THE MORNING

Nothing now held Mr. Ransom to his room. The two women in whose fate he was so nearly concerned, his sister-in-law and his wife, had both retired and there was no other eye he feared. Indeed, he courted an interview with the lawyer, if only it could be naturally obtained; and he had little reason to think it could not. So he went down-stairs.

In a moment he seemed to have passed from the realm of dreams to that of reality. Here was no mystery. Here was life as he knew it. Walking boldly into the office, he ran his eye over the half-dozen men who sat there and, picking out the lawyer from the rest, sauntered easily up to him and sat down.

"My name is Johnston," said he. "I'm from New York; like yourself, I believe."

The lawyer, with a twinkle in his light-blue eye, answered with a cordial nod; and in two minutes a lively conversation had begun between them on purely impersonal subjects suited to the intelligence of the crowd they were in. This did not last, however. An opportunity soon came for them to stroll off together, and presently Mr. Ransom found himself closeted with this man who he had reason to believe was the sole holder of the key to the secret which was devouring him.

A bottle of wine was on the table between them, and some cigars. As Mr. Ransom filled the two glasses, he spoke:

"I have to thank you—" he began, but saw immediately that he had made a wrong start.

"For what, Mr. Johnston?" asked the other coldly.

"For giving me this opportunity to speak alone with you," Ransom explained with a nervous gesture. "An hour of unrestrained gossip is so necessary to me after a day of hard work. Perhaps you don't know that I am an author—have been one for seven whole hours. I find it exhausting. You could give me great relief by talking a little on some foreign subject, say on the one now engrossing every one in the house, the twin ladies from New York. You were in the same coach with them. Did they quarrel and did the most wilful of the two insist on getting out at the foot of the hill and walking up through the lane?"

"I doubt if I have anything to say to Mr. Johnston on this subject," was the wary reply.

"What if he added another name to the Johnston?"

"It would make no appreciable difference. The driver is a loquacious fellow, talk to him."

Mr. Ransom felt his heart fail him. He surveyed closely the mouth which had uttered this off-hand sentence and saw that it was set in a line there was no mistaking. Little enlightenment was to be got from this man. Yet he made one more effort.

"Did my wife sign the will?" he asked. "All pretense aside, this is a very important matter to me, Mr. Harper; not on account of the money involved, but because the doing of this simple act seemed to require such an effort on her part."

"You are mistaken," was the quick reply, harshly accentuated. "She did just what she wanted to do. She was not in the least coerced, unless it was by circumstances."

"Circumstances! But that is what I mean. They seem to have been too much for her. I want to understand these circumstances."

The lawyer honored him with his first direct look.

"I don't understand them myself," said he.

"You don't?"

"No."

Mr. Ransom set down the wineglass he had raised half-way to his lips.

"You have simply followed her orders?"

"You have said it. Your wife is a woman of much more character than you think. She has amazed me."

"She is amazing me. I am here; she is here; only a few boards separate us. But iron bars could not be more effectual. I dare not approach her door; dare not ask her to accept from me the natural protection of a lover and husband. Instinct holds me back, or her will, which may not be stronger than mine but is certainly more dominant."

"Lawyers do not believe much in instinct as a usual thing, but I should advise confidence in this one. A woman with a tremendous will like that of Mrs. Ransom should be allowed a slack tether. The day will arrive when she will come to you herself. This I have said before; I can say nothing more to you to-night."

"Then there is nothing in the will you have drawn up to show that she has lost her affection for me?"

The lawyer drained his glass.

"I have not been given permission to declare its terms," said he, when his glass was again upon the table.

"In other words, I am to know nothing," exclaimed his exasperated companion.

"Not from me."

And this ended the conversation. Ransom withdrew immediately up-stairs.

At ten o'clock he retired. The last look he cast down the hall had shown him the drowsy figure of the maid still sitting at her watch. It seemed to insure a peaceful night. But he had little expectation of sleep. Though the wind had quieted down and the rain fell with increasing gentleness, the roar of the waterfall surged through all his thoughts, which in themselves were turbulent. He did sleep, however, slept peacefully till half-past one, when he and all in the house were startled by a wild and piercing cry rising from one of the rooms. Terror was in the sound and in an instant every door was open save the two which were shut upon Georgian and her twin sister.

CHAPTER XII
"GEORGIAN!"

Mr. Ransom was the first one in the hall. He had not undressed himself, expecting a totally sleepless night. It was his figure, then, that the maid encountered as she came running from her post at the end of the corridor.

"Which room? which?" he gasped out, ignoring every precaution in his blind terror.

"This one. I am sure it came from this one," she declared, knocking loudly on Anitra's door.

There was a rustle within, a cry which was half a sob, then the sound of a hand fumbling with the lock. Meanwhile, Mr. Ransom had bent his ear to his wife's door.

"All still in here," he cried. "Not a sound. Something dreadful has happened—"

Just then Anitra's door fell back and a wild image confronted him and such others as had by this time collected in the passageway. With only a shawl covering her nightdress, the gipsy-like creature stood clawing the air and answering the looks that appealed to her, with wild gurgles, till suddenly her hot glances fell on Roger Ransom, when she instantly became rigid and stammered out:

"She's gone! I saw her black figure go by my window. She called out that the waterfall drew her. She went by the little balcony and the roof. The roof was slippery with the rain and she fell. That's why I screamed. But she got up again. What is she going to do at the waterfall? Stop her! stop her! She hasn't steady feet like me, and I wasn't really angry. I liked her; I liked her."

Sobs choked the rest. Her terror was infectious. Mr. Ransom reeled, then flung himself at Georgian's door. It resisted but the silence within told him that she was not there. Neither was she in Anitra's room. They could all look in and see it bare to the window.

"You saw her climbing past there?" he cried, forgetting she was deaf.

"Yes, yes," she chattered, catching his meaning from his pointing finger. "There's a balcony. She must have jumped on it from her own window. She didn't come in here. See! the door is locked on her side."

This was true.

"I woke and saw her. My eyes are like lynx's. I got out of bed to watch. She fell—"

The noise of a breaking lock snapped her words in two. One of the men present had flung himself against this communicating door. Immediately they all crowded into the adjoining room. It was empty and bitterly cold and wet. An open window explained why, and possibly the letter lying on the bureau inscribed with her husband's name would explain the rest. But he stopped to read no letters now.

"Show me the way to those falls," he cried, pocketing the letter as he rushed by the disheveled Anitra into the open hall. "I'm her husband, Roger Ransom. Who goes with me? He who does is my friend for life."

The clerk and one or two others rushed for their coats and lanterns. He waited for nothing. The roar of the waterfall had told him too many tales that day. And the will! Her will just signed!

"Georgian!"

They could hear his cry.

"Georgian! Georgian! Wait! wait! hear what I have to say!" thrilled back through the mist as he stumbled on, followed by the men waving their lanterns and shouting words of warning he probably never heard. Then his cry further off and fainter. "Georgian! Georgian!" Then silence and the slow drizzle of rain on the soggy walk and soaked roofs, with the far-off boom of the waterfall which Mrs. Deo and the trembling maids gazing at the wide-eyed Anitra shivering in the center of her deserted room, tried to shut out by closing window and blind, forgetting that she was deaf and only heard such echoes as were thundering in her own mind.

CHAPTER XIII
WHERE THE MILL STREAM RUNS FIERCEST

Two o'clock.

Three o'clock.

Two men were talking below their breaths in the otherwise empty office. "That 'ere mill stream never gives up anything it has once caught," muttered one into the ear of the other. "It's swift as fate and in certain places deep as hell. Dutch Jan's body was five months at the bottom of it, before it came up at Clark's pool."

The man beside him shivered and his hand roamed nervously towards his breast.

"Did Jan, the Dutchman you speak of, fall in by accident, or did he—throw himself over—from homesickness, or some such cause?"

"Wa'al we don't say; on account of his old mother, you know, we don't say. It was called accident."

The other man rose and walked restlessly to the window.

"Half the town is up," he muttered. "The lanterns go by like fire-flies. Poor Ransom! It's a hopeless job, I fear." And again his hand wandered to that breast pocket where the edge of a document could be seen. "I have half a mind to go out myself; anything is better than sitting here."

But he sat down just the same. Mr. Harper was no longer a young man.

"The storm's bating," observed the one.

"But not the cold. Throw on a stick; I'm freezing."

The other man obeyed; then looking up, stared. A girl stood before them in the doorway. Anitra, with cheeks ablaze and eyes burning, her traveling dress flapping damp about her heels, and on her head the red shawl she preferred to any hat. Behind her shoulder peered the anxious face of Mrs. Deo.

"I'm going out," cried the former in the loud and unmodulated voice of the deaf. "He don't come back! he don't come back! I'm going to see why."

The lawyer rose and bowed; then resolutely shook his head. He did not know whether she had appealed to him or not. She had not looked at him, had not looked at any one, but he felt that he must protest.

"I beg you not to do so," he began. "I really beg you to remain here and wait with me. You can do no good and the result may be dangerous." But he knew he was talking to deaf ears even before the landlady murmured:

"She doesn't hear a word. I've talked and talked to her. I've used every sign and motion I could think of, but it's done no good. She would dress and she will go out; you'll see."

The next minute her prophecy came true; the wild thing, with a quick whirl of her lithe body, was at the front door, and in another instant had flashed through it and was gone.

"It is my duty to follow her," said the lawyer. "Help me on with my coat; I'll find some one to guide me."

"Here is a lantern. Excuse me for not going with you," pleaded Mrs. Deo, "but some one must watch the house."

The New Yorker nodded, took the lantern offered him, and went stoically out.

He met a man on the walk in front. He was faced his way and was panting heavily.

"Hello," said he, "what news?"

"They haven't found her; but there's no doubt she went over the fall. The fellow who calls himself her husband has just been reading a letter they say she left on her bureau for him. It was a good-by, I reckon, for you can't tear him from the spot. He says he'll stay there till daylight. I couldn't stand the sight of his misery myself. Besides, it's mortal cold; I've just been running to get warm. Who was the girl who just went scurrying by out of here? It's no place for wimmen down there. One lost gal is enough."

"That's what I think," muttered the lawyer, hurrying on.

He was not a very imaginative man; some of his best friends thought him a cold and prosaic one, but he never forgot that walk or the sensations accompanying it. Dark as it still was, the way would have been impassable for a stranger, had it not been for the guidance given by the noisy passing to and fro of the awakened townspeople. Those coming from the river approached in a direct line from one spot; those going to it advanced in the same line and to the same spot. A ring of lanterns marked it. It was near, very near where the heavy waters fell into a deep pool. No one now spoke of Anitra; she had evidently been warned by her first encounter to move with less precipitancy.

As he approached the place of central interest, he moved more warily too. The ground was very bad; he had never walked in such slush. Once and again he tripped; once he came down upon his face. The boom of the waters was now very near; he could see nothing but the flicker of the lanterns, but he felt the near rush of the stream, and presently was at its very edge. Startled by the nearness of his escape, for he had almost lost his footing by his sudden halt, he started back, looked again at the lanterns, took a turn and came upon the dozen or more men bending over the edge of the stream where the waters ran most swiftly. But he did not join them. Another sight attracted his eyes and presently himself. This was the sight of Ransom crouched on the wet earth, staring down at a slip of paper he held in his hands. A lantern set in the sand at his feet sent its feeble rays over his face and possibly over the paper; but he was no longer reading it, he was simply so lost in its sorrowful contents that all power of movement had deserted him.

Harper approached to his side, but he did not address him. Something stirred in his own breast and kept him silent. But there was another person near who was not so deterred. As Harper stood watching Ransom's crouched, almost insensible figure, he perceived a slight dark form steal from the shadows and lay a hand on the stooping man's shoulder, then as he failed to move or give any token of feeling this touch, he heard Anitra's voice say in accents almost musical:

"You will get ill here; you are not used to the cold and the night air. Come back to the house; Georgian would wish it."

The name roused him and he looked up. Their eyes met and a strange gleam—a shock, perhaps, of sympathetic feeling, flashed upon either face. The lawyer saw and instinctively retreated from out the circle of light cast by the lantern; but the men at the stream's edge heard nothing. The flash of something white had caught their eyes and one man was reaching for it.

"Georgian," came in astonished repetition from the bereaved man's lips.

"She would wish it," persisted the other with still deeper and more urgent meaning.

Then in a whisper so penetrating that even Mr. Harper caught its least inflection through all the thunder of the waterfall, "She loved you."

Ah! the enchantment, the feminine persuasiveness, the heart-moving sincerity which breathed through that simple phrase! From lips so untutored, it seemed marvelous. Ransom was not insensible to its power, for he quivered under her hand and his eyes took on a look of wonder. But he made no attempt to answer, even by a sign. He seemed content for that one instant just to listen and to look.

The man hanging over the stream drew back his arm. He had been deceived by a bit of froth; some of it clung yet to his fingers.

"Come," entreated the girl, her face emerging softly into the light, as she stooped lower over the lantern. "Come!" she had taken him by the hand and was drawing him gently upward.

With a leap he was on his feet and had thrown her off. Some memory had come to make her entreaty hateful.

"No," he cried, "no! Here is my place and here will I stay. You are a stranger to me! You drove her to this act, and you shall not cajole me into forgetting it."

He had spoken loudly; not so much because he remembered her affliction, but because of the roar of the fall and his own overwhelming passion. The result was that the lawyer caught every word; possibly the workers at the water-edge did also; for some of them quickly turned their heads. But she, though she stopped short in the spot where he had pushed her, gave no evidence of hearing his words or even of resenting his manner.

"Won't you come?" she falteringly pleaded, pointing towards the house with its twinkling lights. "You are cold; you are shuddering; they will do the searching who don't mind night or wet. Follow Anitra, Anitra who is so sorry."

"No!" he shouted. His tone, his look, were almost those of a madman. He even put out his hands towards her in repulsion. He seemed to cast her away. This gesture, if not his words, reached her understanding. The lawyer saw her sway, fling back her young head with its disheveled locks to the night, and fall moaning pitifully to the ground. Here she lay still, with the wet grass all about her and the last lingering drops of rain beating on her huddled form.

Mr. Harper started to raise her, for Ransom stood petrified. But no sooner had the lawyer made his presence known by this impetuous movement, than Ransom woke from his trance and, darting down, lifted the girl in his arms and began moving with her towards the house. As he passed the lawyer he muttered between set teeth:

"She's caused me all my misery. But she looks too much like Georgian for me to see another man touch her. God will care for my poor darling's body."

CHAPTER XIV
A DETECTIVE'S WORK

Morning.

The living household was about its tasks for all the horror of the night before, and the still unrelieved suspense as to the fate of one of its members.

The maid, who had sat on watch in the upper hall for so many hours the evening before, was again at her post, but this time with her eye fixed only on one door, the door behind which slept the exhausted Anitra. Ransom's room was empty; he was in the sitting-room below, closeted with the lawyer.

Some one had been there before them. The tray of bottles and glasses had been removed from the table, and in their place were to be seen a woman's damaged hat and a small tortoise-shell comb. Mr. Harper's hand was on the former, which was wound about with a wet veil.

"I think I recognize this," said he. "At least I have a distinct impression of having seen it before."

"It was picked up with the veil still on it near the entrance of the lane," explained Ransom.

"Then there can be no doubt that it is the hat Miss Hazen wore during her journey. She tossed it off the moment her foot touched the ground, and taking the shawl from her neck pulled it over her head instead. You remember that she had no hat on when they brought her in."

"I remember. This is Miss Hazen's hat without any doubt."

The lawyer eyed the speaker with curious interest. There was something in his tone that he did not understand.

"And this?" he ventured, laying a respectful finger on the comb.

"Found in the open field between the house and the mill-stream."

"Do you recognize it?"

"No. Georgian wore such combs, but I cannot absolutely say that this is hers."

"I can. You see this little gold work at the top? Well, I have an eye for such things and I noticed this comb in her hair last night. There were two of them just alike."

Instinctively the two men sat with their eyes fixed for a minute on this comb, then, equally instinctively, they both looked up and gazed at each other long and hard. It was the lawyer who first spoke.

"I think that we should have no further secrets between us," said he. "Here is Mrs. Ransom's will. There is a name mentioned in it which I do not know. Perhaps you do." Here he laid the document on the table.

Mr. Ransom eyed it but did not take it up. Instead, he drew a crumpled paper from his own pocket and, handing it to the lawyer, said: "First, I should like you to read the letter which she left behind for me. My feelings as a husband would lead me to hold it as a sacred legacy from all eyes but my own; but there is a mystery hidden in it, a mystery which I must penetrate, and you are the only man who can assist me in doing so."

The lawyer, lowering his eyes to hide their own suspicious glint, opened the paper, and carefully read these lines:

"Forgive. My troubles are too much for me. I'm going to a place of rest, the only place and the only rest possible to one in my position. I don't blame anybody. Least of all do I blame Anitra. It was not her fault that she was brought up rudely, or that she knows no restraint in love or in hate. Be kind to her for my sake, and if any one else claims her or offers to take her from you, resist them. I give her entirely to you. It's a more priceless gift than you think; much more priceless than the one which I take from you by my death. I could never have been happy with you; you could never have been happy with me. Fate stood between us; a darker and more inexorable fate than you, in your kindly experience of life, could imagine. Else, why do I plunge to my death with your ring on my finger and your love in my heart?

"Georgian."

"Ravings?" questioned Ransom hoarsely, as Mr. Harper's eyes rose again to his face.

"It would seem so," assented the lawyer. "Yet there is intelligence in all the lines. And the will—read the will. There is no lack of intelligent purpose there; little as it accords with the feeling she exhibits here for her sister. She leaves her nothing; and does not even mention her name. Her personal belongings she bequeaths to you; but her realty, which comprises the bulk of her property I believe, she divides, somewhat unequally I own, between you and a man named Auchincloss. It is he I want to ask you about. Have you ever heard her speak of him?"

"Josiah Auchincloss of St. Louis, Missouri," read Mr. Ransom. "No, the name is new to me. Didn't she tell you anything about him when she gave you her instructions?"

"Not a word. She said, 'You will hear from him if ever this will is published. He has a right to the money and I entreat you to show your respect for me by seeing that he gets it without any unnecessary trouble.' That was all she said or would say. Your wife was a woman of powerful character, Mr. Ransom. My little arts counted for nothing in any difference of opinion between us."

"Auchincloss!" repeated Ransom. "Another unknown quantity in the problem of my poor girl's life. What a tangle! Do you wonder that I am overcome by it? Anitra—the so-called brother—and now this Auchincloss!"

"Right, Ransom, I share your confusion."

"Do you?" The words came very slowly, penetratingly. "Haven't you some idea—some strange, possibly half-formed notion or secret intuition which might afford some clew to this labyrinth? I have been told that lawyers have a knack of getting at the bottom of human conduct and affairs. You have had a wide experience; does it not suggest some answer to this problem which will harmonize all its discordant elements and make clear its various complications?"

Mr. Harper shook his head, but there was a restrained excitement in his manner which was not altogether the reflection of that which dominated Ransom, and the latter, observing it, leaned across the table till their faces almost touched.

"Do you guess my thought?" he whispered. "Look at me and tell me if you guess my thought."

The lawyer hesitated, eying well the trembling lip, the changing color, the wide-open, deeply flushed eyes so near his own; then with a slow smile of extraordinary subtlety, if not of comprehension, answered in a barely audible murmur:

"I think I do. I may be mad, but I think I do."

The other sank back with a sigh charged with what the lawyer interpreted as relief. Mr. Harper reseated himself, and for a moment neither looked at the other, and neither spoke; it would almost seem as if neither breathed. Then, as a bird, deceived by the silence, hopped to the window sill and began its cheep, "cheep," Mr. Ransom broke the spell by saying in low but studiously business-like tones:

"Have you thought it worth while to study the ground under her window or anywhere else for footprints? It might not be amiss; what do you think about it?"

"Let us go," readily acquiesced the lawyer, rising to his feet with an honest show of alacrity; "after which I must telegraph to New York. I was expected back to-day."

"I know it; but your duties there will keep; these here cannot. Your hand on the promise that you will respect my secret till—well, till I can assure you that my intuitions are devoid of any real basis."

The lawyer's palm met his; then they started to go out; but before they had passed the door, Mr. Ransom came back, and lifting the comb from the table he put it in his pocket. As he did this, his eye flashed sidewise on the other. There were strange hints and presentiments in it which brought the color to the usually imperturbable lawyer's cheek.

In going out they passed the office-door. A dozen men were hanging about, smoking and talking. Among them was a countryman who had just swallowed, open-mouthed, the story of the past night's tragedy. He was now speaking out his own mind concerning it, and this is what these two heard him say as they went by:

"Do you know what strikes me as mighty strange? That they should clear that stone of the name of Anitra just in time to put Georgian's in its place. I call that peculiar, I do."

The lawyer and the husband exchanged a glance.

"Mrs. Ransom had a deep mind," the lawyer remarked, as the door slammed behind them. "She apparently thought of everything."

Ransom, directing a look down the street towards the factories and the roaring mill-stream, uttered a shuddering sigh.

"They are still searching," said he. "But they will never find her. They will never find her."

The lawyer pulled him away.

"That's because they search the water. We will search the land."

"That's half water, too; but it cannot hide every clew. You have eyes for the imperceptible; use them, Mr. Harper, use them."

"I will; but this is a detective's work. Do not expect too much from me."

"I expect nothing. I do not dare to. Let us tread very softly, that is all, and be careful to talk low, if we have anything to say."

By this time they had rounded the corner of the house and entered a narrow walk, flagged with brick, which connected the space in front with the rear offices and garden. This walk ran close to the walls which were broken on this side by an ell projecting in the direction of the mill-stream. It was from the roof of this ell that Anitra declared Georgian to have slipped and fallen.

Their first care was to glance up at the roof. It was a sloping one and Anitra's story seemed credible enough when they noted how much easier it would be to drop upon it from the little balcony overhead than to traverse the roof itself and reach the ground beneath without slipping. But as they looked longer, each face betrayed doubt. The descent from the balcony was easy enough, but how about the passage from Georgian's window to the balcony? This latter was confined to the one window, and was surrounded by an ornamental balustrade, high enough to offer a decided obstacle to the adventurous person endeavoring to leap upon it from the adjoining window-ledge. However, this leap, made in the dark and under circumstances inducing the utmost recklessness, might look practical enough from the window-ledge itself, and Mr. Harper, making a remark to this effect, proposed that they should examine the ground rather than the house for evidences of Mrs. Ransom's slip and fall as related by Anitra.

The only spot where they could hope to find such was in the one short stretch—the width of the ell—underlying the edge of the sloping roof. But this spot was all flagged, as I have already said, and when their eyes strayed beyond it to the untilled fields, stretching between them and the great rock at the verge of the waterfall from which she was supposed to have taken her fatal leap, it was to find them as unproductive of evidence as the brick walk itself. Not one pair of feet but many had passed that way since early morning. The ground showed a mass of impressions of all sizes and shapes, amid which it would have been impossible for them, without the necessary experience, to have followed up the flight of any one person. They had come to their task too late.

"Futile," decided the lawyer. "There is no use in our going that way." And he turned to look again at the ground in their immediate vicinity. As he did so, his eye lighted on the triangular spot where the ell met the side of the house under the kitchen windows. Here there was no flagging, the walk taking a diagonal course from the corner of the ell to the kitchen door.

"What are those?" he asked, pointing to two oblong impressions brimming with water which disfigured the center of this small plot.

"They look like footprints," ventured Ransom.

"They are footprints," decided Mr. Harper as they stooped to examine the marks, "and the footprints of a person dropping from a height. Nothing else explains their depth or general appearance."

"Couldn't they be those of a person approaching the ell to converse with some one above? I see others similar to these in the open place over there beyond the kitchen door."

"It is a trail. Let us follow it. It seems to lead anywhere but towards the waterfall. This is an important discovery, Mr. Ransom, and may lead to conclusions such as we might not otherwise have presumed to entertain, especially if we come upon an impression clear enough to point in which direction the person making it was going."

"Here is what you want," Ransom assured him in a low and curiously smothered voice. He was evidently greatly excited by this result of their inquiries, for all his apparent quiet and precise movements. "It's a woman's step, and that woman was going from the ell when she left these tokens of her passage behind her. Going! and as you say not in the direction of the waterfall."