I inquired when ready to speak. "The boy who delivered Miss Moore"s bridal bouquet?"
"Yes, sir."
I let go of his hand and sat down. Surely there was a power greater than chance governing this matter. Through what devious ways and from what unexpected sources had I come upon this knowledge?
"Mrs. Jeffrey, or Miss Moore, as she was then, told Jim to seat the gentleman in the library," I now said. "Why?"
"I do not know. He told her the gentleman"s name and then she whispered him that. I heard her, and that was why I got money, too.
But it"s all gone now. Oh, sir, when are you going back?"
I started to my feet. Was it in answer to this appeal or because I realized that I had come at last upon a clue calling for immediate action?
"I am going now," said I, "and you are going with me. Run! for the train we take leaves inside of ten minutes. My business here is over."
XX
"THE COLONEL"S OWN"
Words can not express the tediousness of that return journey. The affair which occupied all my thoughts was as yet too much enveloped in mystery for me to contemplate it with anything but an anxious and inquiring mind. While I clung with new and persistent hope to the thread which had been put in my hand, I was too conscious of the maze through which we must yet pa.s.s, before the light could be reached, to feel that lightness of spirit which in itself might have lessened the hours, and made bearable those days of forced inaction. To beguile the way a little, I made a complete a.n.a.lysis of the facts as they appeared to me in the light of this latest bit of evidence. The result was not strikingly encouraging, yet I will insert it, if only in proof of my diligence and the extreme interest I experienced in each and every stage of this perplexing affair. It again took the form of a summary and read as follows:
Facts as they now appear:
1. The peremptory demand for an interview which had been delivered to Miss Moore during the half-hour preceding her marriage had come, not from the bridegroom as I had supposed, but from the so-called stranger, Mr. Pfeiffer.
2. Her reply to this demand had been an order for that gentleman to be seated in the library.
3. The messenger carrying this order had been met and earnestly talked with by Mr. Jeffrey either immediately before or immediately after the aforementioned gentleman had been so seated.
4. Death reached Mr. Pfeiffer before the bride did.
5. Miss Moore remained in ignorance of this catastrophe till after her marriage, no intimation of the same having been given her by the few persons allowed to approach her before she descended to her nuptials; yet she was seen to shrink unaccountably when her husband"s lips touched hers, and when informed of the dreadful event before which she beheld all her guests fleeing, went from the house a changed woman.
6. For all this proof that Mr. Pfeiffer was well known to her, if not to the rest of the bridal party, no acknowledgment of this was made by any of them then or afterward, nor any contradiction given either by husband or wife to the accepted theory that this seeming stranger from the West had gone into this fatal room of the Moores"
to gratify his own morbid curiosity.
7. On the contrary, an extraordinary effort was immediately made by Mr. Jeffrey to rid himself of the only witnesses who could tell the truth concerning those fatal ten minutes; but this brought no peace to the miserable wife, who never again saw a really happy moment.
8. Extraordinary efforts at concealment argue extraordinary causes for fear. Fully too understand the circ.u.mstances of Mrs. Jeffrey"s death, it would be necessary first to know what had happened in the Moore house when Mr. Jeffrey learned from Curly Jim that the man, whose hold upon his bride had been such that he dared to demand an interview with her just as she was on the point of descending to her nuptials, had been seated, or was about to be seated, in the room where death had once held its court and might easily be persuaded to hold court again.
This was the limit of my conclusions. I could get no further, and awaited my arrival in Washington with the greatest impatience.
But once there, and the responsibility of this new inquiry shifted to broader shoulders than my own, I was greatly surprised and as deeply chagrined to observe the whole affair lag unaccountably and to note that, in spite of my so-called important discoveries, the prosecution continued working up the case against Miss Tuttle in manifest intention of presenting it to the grand jury at its fall sitting.
Whether Durbin was to blame for this I could not say. Certainly his look was more or less quizzical when next we met, and this nettled me so that I at once came to the determination that whatever was in his mind, or in the minds of the men whose counsels he undoubtedly shared, I was going to make one more great effort on my own account; not to solve the main mystery, which had pa.s.sed out of my hands, but to reach the hidden cause of the equally unexplained deaths which had occurred from time to time at the library fireplace.
For nothing could now persuade me that the two mysteries were not indissolubly connected, or that the elucidation of the one would not lead to the elucidation of the other.
To be sure, it was well accepted at headquarters that all possible attempts had been made in this direction and with nothing but failure as a result. The floor, the hearth, the chimney, and, above all, the old settle, had been thoroughly searched. But to no avail.
The secret had not been reached and had almost come to be looked upon as insolvable.
But I was not one to be affected by other men"s failures. The encouragement afforded me by my late discoveries was such that I felt confident that nothing could hinder my success save the necessity of completely pulling down the house. Besides, all investigation had hitherto started, if it had not ended, in the library. I was resolved to begin work in quite a different spot.
I had not forgotten the sensations I had experienced in the southwest chamber.
During my absence this house had been released from surveillance.
But the major still held the keys and I had no difficulty in obtaining them. The next thing was to escape its owner"s vigilance.
This I managed to do through the a.s.sistance of Jinny, and when midnight came and all lights went out in the opposite cottage I entered boldly upon the scene.
As before, I went first of all to the library. It was important to know at the outset that this room was in its normal condition.
But this was not my only reason for prefacing my new efforts by a visit to this scene of death and mysterious horror. I had another, so seemingly puerile, that I almost hesitate to mention it and would not if the sequel warranted its omission.
I wished to make certain that I had exhausted every suspected, as well as every known clue, to the information I sought. In my long journey home and the hours of thought it had forced upon me, I had more than once been visited by flitting visions of things seen in this old house and afterward nearly forgotten. Among these was the book which on that first night of hurried search had given proofs of being in some one"s hand within a very short period. The attention I had given it at a moment of such haste was necessarily cursory, and when later a second opportunity was granted me of looking into it again, I had allowed a very slight obstacle to deter me. This was a mistake I was anxious to rectify. Anything which had been touched with purpose at or near the time of so mysterious a tragedy,--and the position of this book on a shelf so high that a chair was needed to reach it proved that it had been sought and touched with purpose, held out the promise of a clue which one on so blind a trail as myself could not afford to ignore.
But when I had taken the book down and read again its totally uninteresting and unsuggestive t.i.tle and, by another reference to its dim and faded leaves, found that my memory had not played me false and that it contained nothing but stupid and wholly irrelevant statistics, my confidence in it as a possible aid in the work I had in hand departed just as it had on the previous occasion. I was about to put it back on the shelf, when I bethought me of running my hand in behind the two books between which it had stood. Ah!
that was it! Another book lay flat against the wall at the back of the shelf; and when, by the removal of those in front I was enabled to draw this book out, I soon saw why it had been relegated to such a remote place of concealment on the shelves of the Moore library.
It was a collection of obscure memoirs written by an English woman, but an English woman who had been in America during the early part of the century, and who had been brought more or less into contact with the mysteries connected with the Moore house in Washington.
Several pa.s.sages were marked, one particularly, by a heavy pencil-line running the length of the margin. As the name of Moore was freely scattered through these pa.s.sages as well as through two or three faded newspaper clippings which I discovered pasted on the inside cover, I lost no time in setting about their perusal.
The following extracts are from the book itself, taken in the order in which I found them marked:
"It was about this time that I spent a week in the Moore house; that grand and historic structure concerning which and its occupants so many curious rumors are afloat. I knew nothing then of its discreditable fame; but from the first moment of my entrance into its ample and well lighted halls I experienced a sensation which I will not call dread, but which certainly was far from being the impulse of pure delight which the graciousness of my hostess and the imposing character of the place itself were calculated to produce. This emotion was but transitory, vanishing, as was natural, in the excitement of my welcome and the extraordinary interest I took in Callista Moore, who in those days was a most fascinating little body. Small to the point of appearing diminutive, and lacking all a.s.sertion in manner and bearing, she was nevertheless such a lady that she easily dominated all who approached her, and produced, quite against her will I am sure, an impression of aloofness seasoned with kindness, which made her a most surprising and entertaining study to the a.n.a.lytic observer. Her position as nominal mistress of an establishment already accounted one of the finest in Washington,--the real owner, Reuben Moore, preferring to live abroad with his French wife,--gave to her least action an importance which her shy, if not appealing looks, and a certain strained expression most difficult to characterize, vainly attempted to contradict. I could not understand her, and soon gave up the attempt; but my admiration held firm, and by the time the evening was half over I was her obedient slave. I think from what I know of her now that she would have preferred to be mine.
"I was put to sleep in a great chamber which I afterward heard called "The Colonel"s Own." It was very grand and had a great bed in it almost royal in its size and splendor. I believe that I shrank quite unaccountably from this imposing piece of furniture when I first looked at it; it seemed so big and so out of proportion to my slim little body. But admonished by the look which I surprised on Mistress Callista"s high-bred face, I quickly recalled an expression so unsuited to my position as guest, and, with a gush of well-simulated rapture, began to expatiate upon the interesting characteristics of the room, and express myself as delighted at the prospect of sleeping there.
"Instantly the nervous look left her, and, with the quiet remark, "It was my father"s room," she set down the candles with which both her hands were burdened, and gave me a kiss so warm and surcharged with feeling that it sufficed to keep me happy and comfortable for a half-hour or more after she pa.s.sed out.
"I had thought myself a very sleepy girl, but when, after a somewhat lengthened brooding over the dying embers in the open fireplace, I lay down behind the curtains of the huge bed, I found myself as far from sleep as I had ever been in my whole life.
"And I did not recover from this condition for the entire night.
For hours I tossed from one side of the bed to the other in my efforts to avoid the persistent eyes of a scarcely-to-be-perceived drawing facing me from the opposite wall. It had no merit as a picture, this drawing, but seen as it was under the rays of a gibbous moon looking in through the half-open shutter, it exercised upon me a spell such as I can not describe and hope never again to experience. Finally I rose and pulled the curtains violently together across the foot of the bed. This shut out the picture; but I found it worse to imagine it there with its haunting eyes peering at me through the intervening folds of heavy damask than to confront it openly; so I pushed the curtains back again, only to rise a half-hour later and twitch them desperately together once more.
"I fidgeted and worried so that night that I must have looked quite pale when my attentive hostess met me at the head of the stairs the next morning. For her hand shook quite perceptibly as she grasped mine, and her voice was pitched in no natural key as she inquired how I had slept. I replied, as truth, if not courtesy, demanded, "Not as well as usual," whereupon her eyes fell and she remarked quite hurriedly; "I am so sorry; you shall have another room tonight," adding, in what appeared to be an unconscious whisper: "There is no use; all feel it; even the young and the gay;" then aloud and with irrepressible anxiety: "You didn"t see anything, dear?"
""No!" I protested in suddenly awakened dismay; "only the strange eyes of that queer drawing peering at me through the curtains of my bed. Is it--is it a haunted room?"
"Her look was a shocked one, her protest quite vehement. "Oh, no!
No one has ever witnessed anything like a ghost there, but every one finds it impossible to sleep in that bed or even in the room.
I do not know why, unless it is that my father spent so many weary years of incessant wakefulness inside its walls."
""And did he die in that bed?" I asked.
"She gave a startled shiver, and drew me hurriedly downstairs. As we paused at the foot, she pressed my hand and whispered:
""Yes; at night; with the full of the moon upon him."
"I answered her look with one she probably understood as little as I did hers. I had heard of this father of hers. He had been a terrible old man and had left a terrible memory behind him.