Susan sipped her tea for a moment in silence.
"Where"s Jathrop and Mr. Kettlewell?" she asked at length. "Ain"t they up yet?"
Mrs. Lathrop nodded. "They start--" she began.
"You don"t mean they"ve both lit out already?" asked Susan in surprise.
Then: "I was hoping to see Mr. Kettlewell again. But it"s a long journey back to New York, so I suppose they set off before light."
Mrs. Lathrop nodded once more.
"Aren"t--?" she questioned.
"I certainly am. I"m going to report the burglary at once. I"ve got a clue, and it ought to be easy enough to run down that burglar." She drew from her bosom a rather damp handkerchief. "That"s what he left me to chew on for five hours," she said, as she spread it out. "And there"s the clue right there in the corner."
Mrs. Lathrop took it to the window and inspected it through her gla.s.ses.
The handkerchief was initialed with a "K."
The New Year came and January was pa.s.sing and, so far as Susan Clegg cared to divulge at least, there was no news of her burglar. It was noted, however, not only by Mrs. Lathrop, but by Mrs. Macy and Gran"ma Mullins, and indeed by all the ladies of the Sewing Society, that Miss Clegg had adopted an air of secretiveness concerning the matter that was quite foreign to her usual frank, unreserved communicativeness. But the curiosity provoked by this strangely unfamiliar att.i.tude was swallowed up in the sensational tidings which spread throughout the community shortly after. Without so much as a hint of warning, Susan Clegg had vanished between dark and dawn, leaving her house locked, bolted, and barred, the blinds drawn, and the shutters fast closed.
For once Mrs. Lathrop, thus deprived of her prop and her stay, evinced sufficient initiative to have the cellar door forced and a search of the premises made; a rumor having got abroad that the burglar had returned, this time more murderously inclined, and that Miss Clegg"s mangled corpse would be found stiff and stark within her own darkened domicile.
To every one"s infinite relief the search proved the rumor utterly unfounded; and it proved something more, as well. It proved that Susan"s departure was plainly premeditated--"with malice prepense," to quote Judge Fitch--since all her best clothes had gone with her. Whereupon sentiment switched to the opposite pole, and it was openly declared that Miss Clegg had gone after the burglar.
The wonder was of a magnitude calculated to extend far beyond the proverbial nine days, and it probably would have greatly exceeded that limit, had not the heroine of the affair chosen to cut it short of her own volition by reappearing quite as suddenly as she had vanished, at the end of a single week.
Mrs. Lathrop, looking across from her bedroom window as she arose from her night"s sleep on the morning of the eighth day, was joyously startled to see the Clegg windows unshaded, and the house otherwise displaying signs of rehabitation. Nor did she have long to wait for the explanation of the mystery, which to the exclusion of everything else had filled her mind ever since her friend"s going. With a shawl over her head and shoulders, she hastened through the pergola, and the next moment was facing her neighbor with glad eyes across four yards of kitchen floor s.p.a.ce.
"Oh, Susan! Such a fri--" These were her four and a half words of greeting.
"I knew it would," Miss Clegg caught her up, beaming as Mrs. Lathrop couldn"t remember ever to have seen her beam before. "I knew it would frighten you all half to death, but when a thing"s to be done, it"s to be done, and there ain"t no use shirking. I had to go, and I had to go quick, and I was never so glad of anything in my life, past or present, as that I went. Of course, it was all along of that burglary, as any fool might have guessed if they took the trouble. In the first place, I don"t mind telling you now, I went straight to Mr. Weskin the morning after it happened, and I took him the clue and showed it to him. The way he spun around in his spinning chair was fit to make even a level-headed person like me dizzy. He examined the linen, and he examined the way the K was worked, and then he says, no it couldn"t possibly be Mr.
Kimball"s. Now, what _do_ you think of that? Just as if I ever suspected it was. I guess I know Mr. Kimball well enough to know him, even if he has got his head wrapped up in one of my new roller towels, and I told Lawyer Weskin so. Mr. Kimball, indeed! But Lawyer Weskin said as he didn"t never hear of a burglar whose name commenced with K, and he didn"t know a soul in these parts either, burglar or no burglar, whose name did, except Mr. Kimball. There"s only one way to ferret out the perpetrator of a crime, he says, and that"s by deduction, and the first rule of deduction is to guess what the K stands for. I never thought much of Lawyer Weskin, I"m free to admit that, but if he don"t know nothing else, it"s as clear as shooting that he does know about education. For in the end it worked out just as he said, and the Lord be praised for it."
"You don"t--" began Mrs. Lathrop in astonishment.
"I don"t say as Mr. Kimball had a thing to do with it. I certainly don"t. In the first place, Mr. Kimball would never dare to come to my house at such a hour of the morning, and in the second place Mr. Kimball never carried as fine a handkerchief as the one I chewed on. So that put it past Mr. Kimball. And the only other K I could possibly think of was old Mrs. Kitts over to Meadville, who could no more of got over here than could the king of the Sandwich Islands, whose name begins with K, too. There was the Kellys, of course, but the Kellys couldn"t qualify neither, for they"re too rich to need to do any burglarizing. Well, I can tell you, I soon come to a point where I didn"t know where to turn, and I never would of turned neither, if it hadn"t of been for a letter I got the day of the night I went away. You"d never guess in the world, Mrs. Lathrop, who that letter was from so I may as well tell you first as last. It was from Mr. Kettlewell."
Mrs. Lathrop opened her mouth in astonishment, but no sound came forth.
"I knew it"ld surprise you, but it"s as true as we"re both standing in this kitchen at this minute. It was a very nice letter, and it said as how he had admired me from the first minute he saw me, but more particularly after he"d sat opposite to me at the table and eat my cranberry sauce. He said he"d always loved cranberry sauce, but as he felt he"d never tasted none until he tasted mine. I certainly never see a more complimentary letter than that letter of Mr. Kettlewell"s. But it was the end of the letter where he signed his name that lit me up with the clear light of revelation. Until I see his name spelled out there in black and white, I never once believed it begun with a K. I"d thought all along as his name was Cattlewell, with a C. Far be it from me, Mrs.
Lathrop, to ever have suspected as Jathrop"s friend would stoop to housebreaking and to binding and gagging a lone woman, but there"s other ways as his handkerchief might have got to my mouth, and I felt to know the truth. His address was on the letter, and there was nothing as could have stayed me from getting to that address as fast as steam and steel could carry me. I left in the middle of the night, and I got to New York in the morning, and I didn"t have that feeling for nothing. Mr.
Kettlewell was at his hotel, and in all my born days I never see a person gladder to see anybody than Mr. Kettlewell was to see me. It"s marvelous what a impression a little good cooking will make on a man, even if it"s only in cranberry sauce. His mouth actually hadn"t stopped watering yet. Leastwise he said it hadn"t, and I"d be a fool not to believe him. He begun talking about it right away, and I let him talk, just so"s I could look at his shiny bald head and his red whiskers without having to think of anything else except the sound of his milk-and-honey voice. Finally he said he supposed I"d come to the city to select Jathrop"s Christmas present of furnishings, and if I"d like him to help me select "em, he"d be glad enough to go along and lend a hand. Well, nothing could of been nicer than that, now, could it? But I told him I wasn"t one as traveled all the way to New York under false pretences, and that if he must have the truth, I"d never give one thought to Jathrop"s present since he mentioned it. All my thought, I said, had been give to finding a handkerchief with a K onto it, which I"d washed and ironed with my own hands and brought to him, believing I must of picked it up at the Christmas dinner by mistake, and not wanting him to feel the need of it any longer. And you can believe me or not, Mrs. Lathrop, just as you feel about it, if he didn"t right then and there on seeing that clue, confess that it did belong to him, and that he couldn"t for the life of him remember where he"d left it."
Mrs. Lathrop, who had been standing all the while, dropped into a chair at this point in dumb stupefaction. But Susan, who had been caught with a bowl of batter in one hand and a spoon in the other, paused only to do a little more stirring.
"Yes, sir," she went on, still apparently as pleased as punch. "The clue belonged to Mr. Kettlewell and no one else, which led me to suspect right away that the burglar must have robbed your house first. I knowed very well that I never carried that clue home myself, though I"d said I might, just for the sake of drawing Mr. Kettlewell on. And so how could it have got into my mouth unless the burglar got it from Mr. Kettlewell himself? But there is stranger things in this world than you and me ever dreamed of, Mrs. Lathrop, and that was one of "em. Mr. Kettlewell is a very frank and open gentleman, and seeing how disturbed I was over something, though I"d never so much as breathed burglar or burglary, he made another confession. And when it comes to dreaming, there is very few people, he said, as has the power to dream the way he does. He don"t just lie still in bed and picture things out in his sleep, but he gets up and does the things he"s dreaming about. He ain"t got no limitations in it, either. Sleepwalkers is more or less common. But sleepwalkers just walk, and that ends "em. Mr. Kettlewell says he very seldom walks. He usually drives a automobile when he"s dreaming, just as he does when he"s wide awake. Sometimes he comes to while he"s driving, and he"s found himself often as much as a couple a hundred miles from home, and without a cent in his clothes, the clothes usually being just pajamas with nothing but a handkerchief in the pocket. Now, if you had any imagination a _tall_, Mrs. Lathrop, you"d see what I"m coming to, but as you haven"t you don"t, I can tell by the way you look. So you"ll get the full benefit of the surprise when I say that on Christmas night Mr. Kettlewell distinctly remembers he dreamed of committing a burglary.
He says it wasn"t my mince pie as did it, because he"s often eaten mince pie before and never dreamed nothing worse than going to the electric chair; and it wasn"t my stuffing neither, for turkey stuffing when it"s indigestible always makes him dream he"s a monkey climbing trees. He says once he woke up sudden and fell and broke his arm, but that that was a long while ago. Now he"s had more experience, he never wakes up till he"s safe back in bed again. And he says doughnuts causes his dreams to run back to when he was a boy, and one time he come to, after a after-dinner nap, when he had doughnuts for dessert, playing marbles in the back alley with a lot of street urchins. I can tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, he was most interesting. He"s got all his dreams sort of cla.s.sified in that way, and can almost tell to a dot what he"ll dream about according to what he eats. And he says soggy biscuits always makes him dream he"s robbing a house or killing somebody. It was mighty lucky for me, as you can see for yourself, that this time he only dreamed of binding and gagging. If he"d dreamed of murder, I"d not be here now to tell the tale. And it"s clean to be seen that your biscuits would of been an accessory before the fact."
"Then he--"
"Yes, it was him as done it, and without no moral blame attaching to him a _tall_. If he"d killed me, the law couldn"t of touched him either, for the law takes no account of what a person does while they"re asleep. But as you made the biscuits in your full senses and with your eyes wide open, you"d of been the only one to blame."
Mrs. Lathrop groaned. "You know, Sus--" she protested.
"Of course if I was alive, I"d never hold it against you, because I know very well you can"t make biscuits no better, and ain"t never had sense enough to learn. But if I was murdered, my ghost couldn"t testify, and I don"t see as how you could be saved from the law taking its course."
At this juncture there was a sound overhead, and both ladies started, Mrs. Lathrop in surprise and her friend in sudden realization of neglected duties.
"What is--?" inquired Mrs. Lathrop.
"It"s him," answered Susan. "Mr. Kettlewell. And the coffee"s boiled now till it"s bitter, and there ain"t a single cake on the griddle." She was turning back to the stove as Mrs. Lathrop"s exclamation caught her and switched her around.
"Why, Susan Clegg!"
"Don"t Susan Clegg me, Mrs. Lathrop," she commanded. "There ain"t no Susan Clegg any more. When Susan Clegg disappeared a week ago last night, she disappeared for good, never to return. And if you suspect anything else, it"s best I should introduce myself here and now,--Susan Kettlewell, from this time forth, if you please."
Mrs. Lathrop sprang up and dropped back again.
"You don"t--"
"I do. I do mean to say I"m married at last. We was wedded with a ring in New York last Wednesday, and it"s my husband"s footsteps you hear up there in the new bathroom."
She dropped three spreading spoonfuls of batter on the greased griddle and gave Mrs. Lathrop a full minute to absorb the announcement. Then, as she drew the coffee pot to one side, she continued:
"And it was purely a love match, make no mistake about that. He"s got money enough to buy and sell Jathrop, but he"s as simple-minded and simple-tasted as a babe in arms. And there"s nothing I can think of that he"s not ready and willing to give me. Besides, he"s frank and open about everything. He says his teeth is false, and he has a bullet in his right leg, got one time when he dreamed somebody was shooting him; but that otherwise he"s as perfect as a man of his age can be. He says he"ll buy a wig if I want him to, and that if I don"t like the color of his whiskers, he"ll have "em dyed whatever color I"d like best, and the wig"l be made to match. But I wouldn"t have him changed the least mite.
And if there"s one thing in the world I"m thankful for it is that I got him and not Jathrop. And I"m not thinking from the financial standpoint, neither."
THE END