Mr. Jeffrey was expecting us. This was evident from his first look, though the attempt he made at surprise was instantaneous and very well feigned. Indeed, I think he was in a constant state of apprehension during these days and that no inroad of the police would have astonished him. But expectation does not preclude dread; indeed it tends to foster it, and dread was in his heart. This he had no power to conceal.
"To what am I indebted for this second visit from you?" he asked of Coroner Z., with an admirable presence of mind. "Are you not yet satisfied with what we have been able to tell you of my poor wife"s unhappy end?"
"We are not," was the plain response. "There are some things you have not attempted to explain, Mr. Jeffrey. For instance, why you went to the Moore house previous to your being called there by the death of your wife."
It was a shot that told; an arrow which found its mark. Mr.
Jeffrey flushed, then turned pale, rallied and again lost himself in a maze of conflicting emotions from which he only emerged to say:
"How do you know that I was there? Have I said so; or do those old walls babble in their sleep?"
"Old walls have been known to do this," was the grave reply.
"Whether they had anything to say in this case is at present quite immaterial. That you were where I charge you with being is evident from your own manner. May I then ask if you have anything to say about this visit. When a person has died under such peculiar circ.u.mstances as Mrs. Jeffrey, everything bearing upon the case is of interest to the coroner."
I was sorry he added that last sentence; sorry that he felt obliged to qualify his action by anything savoring of apology; for the time spent in its utterance afforded his agitated hearer an opportunity not only of collecting himself but of preparing an answer for which he would not have been ready an instant before.
"Mrs. Jeffrey"s death was a strange one," her husband admitted with tardy self-control. "I find myself as much at a loss to understand it as you do, and am therefore quite ready to answer the question you have so openly broached. Not that my answer has any bearing upon the point you wish to make, but because it is your due and my pleasure. I did visit the Moore house, as I certainly had every right to do. The property was my wife"s, and it was for my interest to learn, if I could, the secret of its many crimes."
"Ah!"
Mr. Jeffrey looked quickly up. "You think that an odd thing for me to do?"
"At night. Yes."
"Night is the time for such work. I did not care to be seen pottering around there in daylight."
"No? Yet it would have been so much easier. You would not have had to buy candles or carry a pistol or--"
"I did not carry a pistol. The only pistol carried there was the one with which my demented wife chose to take her life. I do not understand this allusion."
"It grew out of a misunderstanding of the situation, Mr. Jeffrey; excuse me if I supposed you would be likely to provide yourself with some means of defense in venturing alone upon the scene of so many mysterious deaths."
"I took no precaution."
"And needed none, I suppose."
"And needed none."
"When was this visit paid, Mr. Jeffrey? Before or after your wife pulled the trigger which ended her life? You need not hesitate to answer."
"I do not." The elegant gentleman before us had acquired a certain fierceness. "Why should I? Certainly, you don"t think that I was there at the same time she was. It was not on the same night, even.
So much the walls should have told you and probably did, or my wife"s uncle, Mr. David Moore. Was he not your informant?"
"No; Mr. Moore has failed to call our attention to this fact. Did you meet Mr. Moore during the course of your visit to a neighborhood over which he seems to hold absolute sway?"
"Not to my knowledge. But his house is directly opposite, and as he has little to do but amuse himself with what he can see from his front window, I concluded that he might have observed me going in."
"You entered by the front door, then?"
"How else?"
"And on what night?"
Mr. Jeffrey made an effort. These questions were visibly hara.s.sing him.
"The night before the one--the one which ended all my earthly happiness," he added in a low voice.
Coroner Z. cast a glance at me. I remembered the lack of dust on the nest of little tables from which the upper one had been drawn forward to hold the candelabrum, and gently shook my head. The coroner"s eyebrows went up, but none of his disbelief crept into his voice as he made this additional statement.
"The night on which you failed to return to your own house."
Instantly Mr. Jeffrey betrayed by a nervous action, which was quite involuntary, that his outward calm was slowly giving way under a fire of questions for which he had no ready reply.
"It was odd, your not going home that night," the coroner coldly pursued. "The misunderstanding you had with your wife immediately after breakfast must have been a very serious one; more serious than you have hitherto acknowledged."
"I had rather not discuss the subject," protested Mr. Jeffrey.
Then as if he suddenly recognized the official character of his interlocutor, he hastily added: "Unless you positively request me to do so; in which case I must."
"I am afraid that I must insist upon it," returned the other. "You will find that it will be insisted upon at the inquest, and if you do not wish to subject yourself to much unnecessary unpleasantness, you had better make clear to us to-day the cause of that special quarrel which to all intents and purposes led to your wife"s death."
"I will try to do so," returned Mr. Jeffrey, rising and pacing the room in his intense restlessness. "We did have some words; her conduct the night before had not pleased me. I am naturally jealous, vilely jealous, and I thought she was a little frivolous at the German amba.s.sador"s ball. But I had no idea she would take my sharp speeches so much to heart. I had no idea that she would care so much or that I should care so much. A little jealousy is certainly pardonable in a bridegroom, and if her mind had not already been upset, she would have remembered how I loved her and hopefully waited for a reconciliation."
"You did love your wife, then? It was you and not she who had a right to be jealous? I have heard the contrary stated. It is a matter of public gossip that you loved another woman previous to your acquaintance with Miss Moore; a woman whom your wife regarded with sisterly affection and subsequently took into her new home."
"Miss Tuttle?" Mr. Jeffrey stopped in his walk to fling out this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. "I admire and respect Miss Tuttle," he went on to declare, "but I never loved her. Not as I did my wife," he finished, but with a certain hard accent, apparent enough to a sensitive ear.
"Pardon me; it is as difficult for me to put these questions as it is for you to hear them. Were you and Miss Tuttle ever engaged?"
I started. This was a question which half of Washington had been asking itself for the last three months.
Would Mr. Jeffrey answer it? or, remembering that these questions were rather friendly than official, refuse to satisfy a curiosity which he might well consider intrusive? The set aspect of his features promised little in the way of information, and we were both surprised when a moment later he responded with a grim emphasis hardly to be expected from one of his impulsive temperament:
"Unhappily, no. My attentions never went so far."
Instantly the coroner pounced on the one weak word which Mr.
Jeffrey had let fall.
"Unhappily?" he repeated. "Why do you say, unhappily?"
Mr. Jeffrey flushed and seemed to come out of some dream.
"Did I say unhappily?" he inquired. "Well, I repeat it; Miss Tuttle would never have given me any cause for jealousy."
The coroner bowed and for the present dropped her name out of the conversation.
"You speak again of the jealousy aroused in you by your wife"s impetuosities. Was this increased or diminished by the tone of the few lines she left behind her?"
The response was long in coming. It was hard for this man to lie.