Kitabı oku: «The House of the Whispering Pines», sayfa 7
"Yes, Miss Cumberland's. I thought you might have heard the name."
"Yes, I've heard it."
The tone was dry, the words abrupt, but the detective's heart was dancing like a feather. The next turn he took was toward the handsome residence district crowning the hill.
XI
IN THE COACH HOUSE
All things that we ordained festival
Turn from their office to black funeral;
Our instruments to melancholy bells;
Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast;
And all things change them to the contrary.
Romeo and Juliet.
Fifteen minutes later, he stood in a finely wooded street before an open gateway guarded by a policeman. Showing his badge, he passed in, and entered a long and slightly curved driveway. As he did so, he took a glance at the house. It was not as pretentious as he expected, but infinitely more inviting. Low and rambling, covered with vines, and nestling amid shrubbery which even in winter gave it a habitable air, it looked as much the abode of comfort as of luxury, and gave—in outward appearance at least—no hint of the dark shadow which had so lately fallen across it.
The ceremonies had been set for three o'clock, and it was now half past two. As Sweetwater reached the head of the driveway, he saw the first of a long file of carriages approaching up the street.
"Lucky that my business takes me to the stable," thought he. "What is the coachman's name? I ought to remember it. Ah—Zadok! Zadok Brown. There's a combination for you!"
He had reached this point in his soliloquy (a bad habit of his, for it sometimes took audible expression) when he ran against another policeman set to guard the side door. A moment's parley, and he left this man behind; but not before he had noted this door and the wide and hospitable verandah which separated it from the driveway.
"I am willing to go all odds that I shall find that verandah the most interesting part of the house," he remarked, in quiet conviction, to himself, as he noted its nearness to the stable and the ease with which one could step from it into a vehicle passing down the driveway.
It had another point of interest, or, rather the wing had to which it was attached. As his eye travelled back across this wing, in his lively walk towards the stable, he caught a passing glimpse of a nurse's face and figure in one of its upper windows. This located the sick chamber, and unconsciously he hushed his step and moved with the greatest caution, though he knew that this sickness was not one of the nerves, and that the loudest sound would fail to reach ears lapsed in a blessed, if alarming, unconsciousness.
Once around the corner, he resumed a more natural pace, and perceiving that the stable-door was closed but that a window well up the garden side was open, he cast a look towards the kitchen windows at his back, and, encountering no watchful eye, stepped up to the former one and peered in.
A man sat with his back to him, polishing a bit of harness. This was probably Zadok, the coachman. As his interest was less with him than with the stalls beyond, he let his eye travel on in their direction, when he suddenly experienced a momentary confusion by observing the head and shoulders of Hexford leaning towards him from an opposite window—in much the same fashion, and certainly with exactly the same intent, as himself. As their glances crossed, both flushed and drew back, only to return again, each to his several peep-hole. Neither meant to lose the advantage of the moment. Both had heard of the grey horse and wished to identify it; Hexford for his own satisfaction, Sweetwater as the first link of the chain leading him into the mysterious course mapped out for him by fate. That each was more or less under the surveillance of the other did not trouble either.
There were three stalls, and in each stall a horse stamped and fidgeted. Only one held their attention. This was a mare on the extreme left, a large grey animal with a curious black patch on its near shoulder. The faces of both men changed as they recognised this distinguishing mark, and instinctively their eyes met across the width of the open space separating them. Hexford's finger rose to his mouth, but Sweetwater needed no such hint. He stood, silent as his own shadow, while the coachman rubbed away with less and less purpose, until his hands stood quite still and his whole figure drooped in irresistible despondency. As he raised his face, moved perhaps by that sense of a watchful presence to which all of us are more or less susceptible, they were both surprised to see tears on it. The next instant he had started to his feet and the bit of harness had rattled from his hands to the floor.
"Who are you?" he asked, with a touch of anger, quite natural under the circumstances. "Can't you come in by the door, and not creep sneaking up to take a man at disadvantage?"
As he spoke, he dashed away the tears with which his cheeks were still wet.
"I thought a heap of my young mistress," he added, in evident apology for this display of what such men call weakness. "I didn't know that it was in me to cry for anything, but I find that I can cry for her."
Hexford left his window, and Sweetwater slid from his; next minute they met at the stable door.
"Had luck?" whispered the local officer.
"Enough to bring me here," acknowledged the other.
"Do you mean to this house or to this stable?"
"To this stable."
"Have you heard that the horse was out that night?"
"Yes, she was out."
"Who driving?"
"Ah, that's the question!"
"This man can't tell you."
A jerk of Hexford's thumb in Zadok's direction emphasised this statement.
"But I'm going to talk to him, for all that."
"He wasn't here that night; he was at a dance. He only knows that the mare was out."
"But I'm going to talk to him."
"May I come in, too? I'll not interrupt. I've just fifteen minutes to spare."
"You can do as you please. I've nothing to hide—from you, at any rate."
Which wasn't quite true; but Sweetwater wasn't a stickler for truth, except in the statements he gave his superiors.
Hexford threw open the stable-door, and they both walked in. The coachman was not visible, but they could hear him moving about above, grumbling to himself in none too encouraging a way.
Evidently he was in no mood for visitors.
"I'll be down in a minute," he called out, as their steps sounded on the hardwood floor.
Hexford sauntered over to the stalls. Sweetwater stopped near the doorway and glanced very carefully about him. Nothing seemed to escape his eye. He even took the trouble to peer into a waste-bin, and was just on the point of lifting down a bit of broken bottle from an open cupboard when Brown appeared on the staircase, dressed in his Sunday coat and carrying a bunch of fresh, hot-house roses.
He stopped midway as Sweetwater turned towards him from the cupboard, but immediately resumed his descent and was ready with his reply when Hexford accosted him from the other end of the stable:
"An odd beast, this. They don't drive her for her beauty, that's evident."
"She's fast and she's knowing," grumbled the coachman. "Reason enough for overlooking her spots. Who's that man?" he grunted, with a drop of his lantern jaws, and a slight gesture towards the unknown interloper.
"Another of us," replied Hexford, with a shrug. "We're both rather interested in this horse."
"Wouldn't another time do?" pleaded the coachman, looking gravely down at the flowers he held. "It's most time for the funeral and I don't feel like talking, indeed I don't, gentlemen."
"We won't keep you." It was Sweetwater who spoke. "The mare's company enough for us. She knows a lot, this mare. I can see it in her eye. I understand horses; we'll have a little chat, she and I, when you are gone."
Brown cast an uneasy glance at Hexford.
"He'd better not touch her," he cautioned. "He don't know the beast well enough for that."
"He won't touch her," Hexford assured him. "She does look knowing, don't she? Would like to tell us something, perhaps. Was out that night, I've heard you say. Curious! How did you know it?"
"I've said and said till I'm tired," Brown answered, with sudden heat. "This is pestering a man at a very unfortunate time. Look! the people are coming. I must go. My poor mistress! and poor Miss Carmel! I liked 'em, do ye understand? Liked 'em—and I do feel the trouble at the house, I do."
His distress was so genuine that Hexford was inclined to let him go; but Sweetwater with a cock of his keen eye put in his word and held the coachman where he was.
"The old gal is telling me all about it," muttered this sly, adaptable fellow. He had sidled up to the mare and their heads were certainly very close together. "Not touch her? See here!" Sweetwater had his arm round the filly's neck and was looking straight into her fiery and intelligent eye. "Shall I pass her story on?" he asked, with a magnetic smile at the astonished coachman, which not only softened him but seemed to give the watchful Hexford quite a new idea of this gawky interloper.
"You'll oblige me if you can put her knowledge into words," the man Zadok declared, with one fascinated eye on the horse and the other on the house where he evidently felt that his presence was wanted. "She was out that night, and I know it, as any coachman would know, who doesn't come home stone drunk. But where she was and who took her, get her to tell if you can, for I don't know no more 'n the dead."
"The dead!" flashed out Sweetwater, wheeling suddenly about and pointing straight through the open stable-door towards the house where the young mistress the old servant mourned, lay in her funeral casket. "Do you mean her—the lady who is about to be buried? Could she tell if her lips were not sealed by a murderer's hand?"
"She!" The word came low and awesomely. Rude and uncultured as the man was, he seemed to be strangely affected by this unexpected suggestion. "I haven't the wit to answer that," said he. "How can we tell what she knew. The man who killed her is in jail. He might talk to some purpose. Why don't you question him?"
"For a very good reason," replied Sweetwater, with an easy good-nature that was very reassuring. "He was arrested on the spot; so that it wasn't he who drove this mare home, unharnessed her, put her back in her stall, locked the stable-door and hung up the key in its place in the kitchen. Somebody else did that."
"That's true enough, and what does it show? That the mare was out on some other errand than the one which ended in blood and murder," was the coachman's unexpected retort.
"Is that so?" whispered Sweetwater into the mare's cocked ear. "She's not quite ready to commit herself," he drawled, with another enigmatical smile at the lingering Zadok. "She's keeping something back. Are you?" he pointedly inquired, leaving the stalls and walking briskly up to Zadok.
The coachman frowned and hastily retreated a step; but in another moment he leaped in a rage upon Sweetwater, when the sight of the flowers he held recalled him to himself and he let his hand fall again with the quiet remark:
"You're overstepping your dooty. I don't know who you are or what you want with me, but you're overstepping your dooty."
"He's right," muttered Hexford. "Better let the fellow go. See! one of the maids is beckoning to him."
"He shall go, and welcome, if he will tell me where he gets his taste for this especial brand of whiskey." Sweetwater had crossed to the cupboard and taken down the lower half of the broken bottle which had attracted his notice on his first entrance, and was now holding it out, with a quizzical look at the departing coachman.
Hexford was at his shoulder with a spring, and together they inspected the label still sticking to it—which was that of the very rare and expensive spirit found missing from the club-house vault.
"This is a find," muttered Hexford into his fellow detective's ear. Then, with a quick move towards Zadok, he shouted out:
"You'd better answer that question. Where did this bit of broken bottle come from? They don't give you whiskey like this to drink."
"That they don't," muttered the coachman, not so much abashed as they had expected. "And I wouldn't care for it if they did. I found that bit of bottle in the ash-barrel outside, and fished it out to put varnish in. I liked the shape."
"Broken this way?"
"Yes; it's just as good."
"Is it? Well, never mind, run along. We'll close the stable-door for you."
"I'd rather do it myself and carry in the key."
"Here then; we're going to the funeral, too. You'd like to?" This latter in a whisper to Sweetwater.
The answer was a fervent one. Nothing in all the world would please this protean-natured man quite so well.
XII
"LILA—LILA!"
O, treble woe
Fall ten times treble on that cursed head,
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
Depriv'd thee of!—Hold off the earth awhile,
Till I have caught her once more in my arms.
Hamlet.
"Let us enter by the side door," suggested Sweetwater, as the two moved towards the house. "And be sure you place me where I can see without being seen. I have no wish to attract attention to myself, or to be identified with the police until the necessity is forced upon me."
"Then we won't go in together," decided Hexford. "Find your own place; you won't have any difficulty. A crowd isn't expected. Miss Cumberland's condition forbids it."
Sweetwater nodded and slid in at the side door.
He found himself at once in a narrow hall, from the end of which opened a large room. A few people were to be seen in this latter place, and his first instinct was to join them; but finding that a few minutes yet remained before the hour set for the services, he decided to improve them by a rapid glance about this hall, which, for certain reasons hardly as yet formulated in his own mind, had a peculiar interest for him.
The most important object within view, according to his present judgment, was the staircase which connected it with the floor above; but if you had asked his reason for this conclusion, he would not have told you, as Ranelagh might have done, that it was because it was the most direct and convenient approach to Carmel Cumberland's room. His thoughts were far from this young girl, intimately connected as she was with this crime; which shows through what a blind maze he was insensibly working. With his finger on the thread which had been put in his hand, he was feeling his way along inch by inch. It had brought him to this staircase, and it led him next to a rack upon which hung several coats and a gentleman's hat.
He inspected the former and noted that one was finished with a high collar; but he passed the latter by—it was not a derby. The table stood next the rack, and on its top lay nothing more interesting than a clothes-brush and one or two other insignificant objects; but, with his memory for details, he had recalled the keys which one of the maids had picked up somewhere about this house, and laid on a hall table. If this were the hall and this the table, then was every inch of the latter's simple cloth-covered top of the greatest importance in his eyes.
He had no further time for even these cursory investigations; Hexford's step could be heard on the verandah, and Sweetwater was anxious to locate himself before the officer came in. Entering the room before him, he crossed to the small group clustered in its further doorway. There were several empty chairs in sight; but he passed around them all to a dark and inconspicuous corner, from which, without effort, he could take in every room on that floor—from the large parlour in which the casket stood, to the remotest region of the servants' hall.
The clergyman had not yet descended, and Sweetwater had time to observe the row of little girls sitting in front of the bearers, each with a small cluster of white flowers in her hand. Miss Cumberland's Sunday-school class, he conjectured, and conjectured rightly. He also perceived that some of these children loved her.
Near them sat a few relatives and friends. Among these was a very, very old man, whom he afterwards heard was a great-uncle and a centenarian. Between him and one of the little girls, there apparently existed a strong sympathy; for his hand reached out and drew her to him when the tears began to steal down her cheeks, and the looks which passed between the two had all the appeal and all the protection of a great love.
Sweetwater, who had many a soft spot in his breast, felt his heart warm at this one innocent display of natural feeling in an assemblage otherwise frozen by the horror of the occasion. His eyes dwelt lingeringly on the child, and still more lingeringly on the old, old man, before passing to that heaped-up mound of flowers, under which lay a murdered body and a bruised heart. He could not see the face, but the spectacle was sufficiently awe-compelling without that.
Would it have seemed yet more so, had he known at whose request the huge bunch of lilies had been placed over that silent heart?
The sister sick, the brother invisible, there was little more to hold his attention in this quarter; so he let it roam across the heads of the people about him, to the distant hall communicating with the kitchen.
Several persons were approaching from this direction, among them Zadok. The servants of the house, no doubt, for they came in all together and sat down, side by side, in the chairs Sweetwater had so carefully passed by. There were five persons in all: two men and three women. Only two interested him—Zadok, with whom he had already made a superficial acquaintance and had had one bout; and a smart, bright-eyed girl with a resolute mouth softened by an insistent dimple, who struck him as possessing excellent sense and some natural cleverness. A girl to know and a girl to talk to, was his instantaneous judgment. Then he forgot everything but the solemnity of the occasion, for the clergyman had entered and taken his place, and a great hush had fallen upon the rooms and upon every heart there present.
"I am the resurrection and the life."
Never had these consoling words sounded more solemn than when they rang above the remains of Adelaide Cumberland, in this home where she had reigned as mistress ever since her seventeenth year. The nature of the tragedy which had robbed the town of one of its most useful young women; the awful fate impending over its supposed author,—a man who had come and gone in these rooms with a spell of fascination to which many of those present had themselves succumbed—the brooding sense of illness, if not of impending death, in the room above; gave to these services a peculiar poignancy which in some breasts of greater susceptibility than the rest, took the form of a vague expectancy bordering on terror.
Sweetwater felt the poignancy, but did not suffer from the terror. His attention had been attracted in a new direction, and he found himself watching, with anxious curiosity, the attitude and absorbed expression of a good-looking young man whom he was far from suspecting to be the secret representative of the present suspect, whom nobody could forget, yet whom nobody wished to remember at this hallowed hour.
Had this attitude and this absorption been directed towards the casket over which the clergyman's words rose and fell with ever increasing impressiveness, he might have noted the man but would scarcely have been held by him. But this interest, sincere and strong as it undoubtedly was, centred not so much in the services, careful as he was to maintain a decorous attitude towards the same, but in the faint murmurs which now and then came down from above where unconsciousness reigned and the stricken brother watched over the delirious sister, with a concentration and abandonment to fear which made him oblivious of all other duties, and almost as unconscious of the rites then being held below over one who had been as a mother to him, as the sick girl herself with her ceaseless and importunate "Lila! Lila!" The detective, watching this preoccupied stranger, shared in some measure his secret emotions, and thus was prepared for the unexpected occurrence of a few minutes later.
No one else had the least forewarning of any break in the services. There had been nothing in the subdued but impressive rendering of the prayers to foreshadow a dramatic episode; yet it came, and in this manner:
The final words had been said, and the friends present invited to look their last on the calm face which, to many there, had never worn so sweet a smile in life. Some had hesitated; but most had obeyed the summons, among them Sweetwater. But he had not much time in which to fix those features in his mind; for the little girls, who had been waiting patiently for this moment, now came forward; and he stepped aside to watch them as they filed by, dropping as they did so, a tribute of fragrant flowers upon the quiet breast. They were followed by the servants, among whom Zadok had divided his roses. As the last cluster fell from the coachman's trembling hand, the undertaker advanced with the lid, and, pausing a moment to be sure that all were satisfied, began to screw it on.
Suddenly there was a cry, and the crowd about the door leading into the main hall started back, as wild steps were heard on the stairs and a young man rushed into the room where the casket stood, and advanced upon the officiating clergyman and the astonished undertaker with a fierceness which was not without its suggestion of authority.
"Take it off!" he cried, pointing at the lid which had just been fastened down. "I have not seen her—I must see her. Take it off!"
It was the brother, awake at last to the significance of the hour!
The clergyman, aghast at the sacrilegious look and tone of the intruder, stepped back, raising one arm in remonstrance, and instinctively shielding the casket with the other. But the undertaker saw in the frenzied eye fixed upon his own, that which warned him to comply with the request thus harshly and peremptorily uttered. Unscrewing the lid, he made way for the intruder, who, drawing near, pushed aside the roses which had fallen on the upturned face, and, laying his hand on the brow, muttered a few low words to himself. Then he withdrew his hand, and without glancing to right or left, staggered back to the door amid a hush as unbroken as that which reigned behind him in that open casket. Another moment and his white, haggard face and disordered figure would be blotted from sight by the door-jamb.
The minister recovered his poise and the bearers their breath; the men stirred in their seats and the women began to cast frightened looks at each other, and then at the children, some of whom had begun to whimper, when in an instant all were struck again into stone. The young man had turned and was facing them all, with his hands held out in a clench which in itself was horrible.
"If they let the man go," he called out in loud and threatening tones, "I will strangle him with these two hands."
The word, and not the shriek which burst irrepressibly from more than one woman before him, brought him to himself. With a ghastly look on his bloated features, he scanned for one moment the row of deeply shocked faces before him, then tottered back out of sight, and fled towards the staircase. All thought that an end had come to the harrowing scene, and minister and people faced each other once more; when, loud and sharp from above, there rang down the shrill cry of delirium, this time in articulate words which even the children could understand:
"Break it open, I say! break it open, and see if her heart is there!"
It was too awful. Men and women and children leaped to their feet and dashed away into the streets, uttering smothered cries and wild ejaculations. In vain the clergyman raised his voice and bade them respect the dead; the rooms were well-nigh empty before he had finished his appeal. Only the very old uncle and the least of the children remained of all who had come there in memory of their departed kinswoman and friend.
The little one had fled to the old man's arms before he could rise, and was now held close to his aged and shaking knees, while he strove to comfort her and explain.
Soon these, too, were gone, and the casket was refastened and carried out by the shrinking bearers, leaving in those darkened rooms a trail of desolation which was only broken from time to time by the now faint and barely heard reiteration of the name of her who had just been borne away!
"Lila! Lila!"
