Chương Chương 36 · GATHERED THREADS

. GATHERED THREADS

“This is the short and the long of it.”

Merry Wives of Windsor.

Promptly at the hour named, I made my appearance at Mr. Gryce’s

door. I found him awaiting me on the threshold.

“I have met you,” said he gravely, “for the purpose of requesting

you not to speak during the coming interview. I am to do the

talking; you the listening. Neither are you to be surprised at

anything I may do or say. I am in a facetious mood”--he did not

look so--“and may take it into my head to address you by another

name than your own. If I do, don’t mind it. Above all, don’t talk:

remember that.” And without waiting to meet my look of doubtful

astonishment, he led me softly up-stairs.

The room in which I had been accustomed to meet him was at the top

of the first flight, but he took me past that into what appeared to

be the garret story, where, after many cautionary signs, he ushered

me into a room of singularly strange and unpromising appearance. In

the first place, it was darkly gloomy, being lighted simply by a

very dim and dirty skylight. Next, it was hideously empty; a pine

table and two hard-backed chairs, set face to face at each end of

it, being the only articles in the room. Lastly, it was surrounded

by several closed doors with blurred and ghostly ventilators over

their tops which, being round, looked like the blank eyes of a row

of staring mummies. Altogether it was a lugubrious spot, and in the

present state of my mind made me feel as if something unearthly

and threatening lay crouched in the very atmosphere. Nor, sitting

there cold and desolate, could I imagine that the sunshine glowed

without, or that life, beauty, and pleasure paraded the streets

below.

Mr. Gryce’s expression, as he took a seat and beckoned me to do the

same, may have had something to do with this strange sensation, it

was so mysteriously and sombrely expectant.

“You’ll not mind the room,” said he, in so muffled a tone I

scarcely heard him. “It’s an awful lonesome spot, I know; but folks

with such matters before them mustn’t be too particular as to the

places in which they hold their consultations, if they don’t want

all the world to know as much as they do. Smith,” and he gave me

an admonitory shake of his finger, while his voice took a more

distinct tone, “I have done the business; the reward is mine; the

assassin of Mr. Leavenworth is found, and in two hours will be in

custody. Do you want to know who it is?” leaning forward with every

appearance of eagerness in tone and expression.

I stared at him in great amazement. Had anything new come to

light? any great change taken place in his conclusions? All this

preparation could not be for the purpose of acquainting me with

what I already knew, yet--

He cut short my conjectures with a low, expressive chuckle. “It was

a long chase, I tell you,” raising his voice still more; “a tight

go; a woman in the business too; but all the women in the world

can’t pull the wool over the eyes of Ebenezer Gryce when he is on

a trail; and the assassin of Mr. Leavenworth and”--here his voice

became actually shrill in his excitement--“and of Hannah Chester is

found.

“Hush!” he went on, though I had neither spoken nor made any move;

“you didn’t know Hannah Chester was murdered. Well, she wasn’t in

one sense of the word, but in another she was, and by the same

hand that killed the old gentleman. How do I know this? look here!

This scrap of paper was found on the floor of her room; it had a

few particles of white powder sticking to it; those particles were

tested last night and found to be poison. But you say the girl

took it herself, that she was a suicide. You are right, she did

take it herself, and it was a suicide; but who terrified her into

this act of self-destruction? Why, the one who had the most reason

to fear her testimony, of course. But the proof, you say. Well,

sir, this girl left a confession behind her, throwing the onus of

the whole crime on a certain party believed to be innocent; this

confession was a forged one, known from three facts; first, that

the paper upon which it was written was unobtainable by the girl

in the place where she was; secondly, that the words used therein

were printed in coarse, awkward characters, whereas Hannah, thanks

to the teaching of the woman under whose care she has been since

the murder, had learned to write very well; thirdly, that the story

told in the confession does not agree with the one related by the

girl herself. Now the fact of a forged confession throwing the

guilt upon an innocent party having been found in the keeping of

this ignorant girl, killed by a dose of poison, taken with the fact

here stated, that on the morning of the day on which she killed

herself the girl received from some one manifestly acquainted

with the customs of the Leavenworth family a letter large enough

and thick enough to contain the confession folded, as it was when

found, makes it almost certain to my mind that the murderer of Mr.

Leavenworth sent this powder and this so-called confession to the

girl, meaning her to use them precisely as she did: for the purpose

of throwing off suspicion from the right track and of destroying

herself at the same time; for, as you know, dead men tell no tales.”

He paused and looked at the dingy skylight above us. Why did the

air seem to grow heavier and heavier? Why did I shudder in vague

apprehension? I knew all this before; why did it strike me, then,

as something new?

“But who was this? you ask. Ah, that is the secret; that is the bit

of knowledge which is to bring me fame and fortune. But, secret

or not, I don’t mind telling you”; lowering his voice and rapidly

raising it again. “The fact is, _I_ can’t keep it to myself; it

burns like a new dollar in my pocket. Smith, my boy, the murderer

of Mr. Leavenworth--but stay, who does the world say it is? Whom do

the papers point at and shake their heads over? A woman! a young,

beautiful, bewitching woman! Ha, ha, ha! The papers are right; it

is a woman; young, beautiful, and bewitching too. But what one?

Ah, that’s the question. There is more than one woman in this

affair. Since Hannah’s death I have heard it openly advanced that

she was the guilty party in the crime: bah! Others cry it is the

niece who was so unequally dealt with by her uncle in his will:

bah! again. But folks are not without some justification for this

latter assertion. Eleanore Leavenworth did know more of this matter

than appeared. Worse than that, Eleanore Leavenworth stands in a

position of positive peril to-day. If you don’t think so, let me

show you what the detectives have against her.

“First, there is the fact that a handkerchief, with her name on it,

was found stained with pistol grease upon the scene of murder; a

place which she explicitly denies having entered for twenty-four

hours previous to the discovery of the dead body.

“Secondly, the fact that she not only evinced terror when

confronted with this bit of circumstantial evidence, but manifested

a decided disposition, both at this time and others, to mislead

inquiry, shirking a direct answer to some questions and refusing

all answer to others.

“Thirdly, that an attempt was made by her to destroy a certain

letter evidently relating to this crime.

“Fourthly, that the key to the library door was seen in her

possession.

“All this, taken with the fact that the fragments of the letter

which this same lady attempted to destroy within an hour after

the inquest were afterwards put together, and were found to

contain a bitter denunciation of one of Mr. Leavenworth’s nieces,

by a gentleman we will call _X_ in other words, an unknown

quantity--makes out a dark case against _you_, especially as

after investigations revealed the fact that a secret underlay the

history of the Leavenworth family. That, unknown to the world at

large, and Mr. Leavenworth in particular, a marriage ceremony

had been performed a year before in a little town called F----

between a Miss Leavenworth and this same _X_. That, in other

words, the unknown gentleman who, in the letter partly destroyed

by Miss Eleanore Leavenworth, complained to Mr. Leavenworth of

the treatment received by him from one of his nieces, was in fact

the secret husband of that niece. And that, moreover, this same

gentleman, under an assumed name, called on the night of the murder

at the house of Mr. Leavenworth and asked for Miss Eleanore.

“Now you see, with all this against her, Eleanore Leavenworth is

lost if it cannot be proved, first that the articles testifying

against her, viz.: the handkerchief, letter, and key, passed after

the murder through other hands, before reaching hers; and secondly,

that some one else had even a stronger reason than she for desiring

Mr. Leavenworth’s death at this time.

“Smith, my boy, both of these hypotheses have been established by

me. By dint of moleing into old secrets, and following unpromising

clues, I have finally come to the conclusion that not Eleanore

Leavenworth, dark as are the appearances against her, but another

woman, beautiful as she, and fully as interesting, is the true

criminal. In short, that her cousin, the exquisite Mary, is the

murderer of Mr. Leavenworth, and by inference of Hannah Chester

also.”

He brought this out with such force, and with such a look of

triumph and appearance of having led up to it, that I was for the

moment dumbfounded, and started as if I had not known what he was

going to say. The stir I made seemed to awake an echo. Something

like a suppressed cry was in the air about me. All the room

appeared to breathe horror and dismay. Yet when, in the excitement

of this fancy, I half turned round to look, I found nothing but the

blank eyes of those dull ventilators staring upon me.

“You are taken aback!” Mr. Gryce went on. “I don’t wonder.

Every one else is engaged in watching the movements of Eleanore

Leavenworth; I only know where to put my hand upon the real

culprit. You shake your head!” (Another fiction.) “You don’t

believe me! Think I am deceived. Ha, ha! Ebenezer Gryce deceived

after a month of hard work! You are as bad as Miss Leavenworth

herself, who has so little faith in my sagacity that she offered

me, of all men, an enormous reward if I would find for her the

assassin of her uncle! But that is neither here nor there; you

have your doubts, and you are waiting for me to solve them.

Well, nothing is easier. Know first that on the morning of the

inquest I made one or two discoveries not to be found in the

records, viz.: that the handkerchief picked up, as I have said,

in Mr. Leavenworth’s library, had notwithstanding its stains of

pistol grease, a decided perfume lingering about it. Going to the

dressing-table of the two ladies, I sought for that perfume, and

found it in Mary’s room, not Eleanore’s. This led me to examine

the pockets of the dresses respectively worn by them the evening

before. In that of Eleanore I found a handkerchief, presumably the

one she had carried at that time. But in Mary’s there was none,

nor did I see any lying about her room as if tossed down on her

retiring. The conclusion I drew from this was, that she, and not

Eleanore, had carried the handkerchief into her uncle’s room, a

conclusion emphasized by the fact privately communicated to me by

one of the servants, that Mary was in Eleanore’s room when the

basket of clean clothes was brought up with this handkerchief lying

on top.

“But knowing the liability we are to mistake in such matters as

these, I made another search in the library, and came across a very

curious thing. Lying on the table was a penknife, and scattered

on the floor beneath, in close proximity to the chair, were two

or three minute portions of wood freshly chipped off from the leg

of the table; all of which looked as if some one of a nervous

disposition had been sitting there, whose hand in a moment of

self-forgetfulness had caught up the knife and unconsciously

whittled the table. A little thing, you say; but when the question

is, which of two ladies, one of a calm and self-possessed nature,

the other restless in her ways and excitable in her disposition,

was in a certain spot at a certain time, it is these little things

that become almost deadly in their significance. No one who has

been with these two women an hour can hesitate as to whose delicate

hand made that cut in Mr. Leavenworth’s library table.

“But we are not done. I distinctly overheard Eleanore accuse her

cousin of this deed. Now such a woman as Eleanore Leavenworth has

proved herself to be never would accuse a relative of crime without

the strongest and most substantial reasons. First, she must have

been sure her cousin stood in a position of such emergency that

nothing but the death of her uncle could release her from it;

secondly, that her cousin’s character was of such a nature she

would not hesitate to relieve herself from a desperate emergency

by the most desperate of means; and lastly, been in possession

of some circumstantial evidence against her cousin, seriously

corroborative of her suspicions. Smith, all this was true of

Eleanore Leavenworth. As to the character of her cousin, she has

had ample proof of her ambition, love of money, caprice and deceit,

it having been Mary Leavenworth, and not Eleanore, as was first

supposed, who had contracted the secret marriage already spoken of.

Of the critical position in which she stood, let the threat once

made by Mr. Leavenworth to substitute her cousin’s name for hers in

his will in case she had married this _x_ be remembered, as well as

the tenacity with which Mary clung to her hopes of future fortune;

while for the corroborative testimony of her guilt which Eleanore

is supposed to have had, remember that previous to the key having

been found in Eleanore’s possession, she had spent some time in her

cousin’s room; and that it was at Mary’s fireplace the half-burned

fragments of that letter were found,--and you have the outline of a

report which in an hour’s time from this will lead to the arrest of

Mary Leavenworth as the assassin of her uncle and benefactor.”

A silence ensued which, like the darkness of Egypt, could be felt;

then a great and terrible cry rang through the room, and a man’s

form, rushing from I knew not where, shot by me and fell at Mr.

Gryce’s feet shrieking out:

“It is a lie! a lie! Mary Leavenworth is innocent as a babe unborn.

I am the murderer of Mr. Leavenworth. I! I! I!”

It was Trueman Harwell.