The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин

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СКАЧАТЬ is not a pleasant one, but we cannot be wrong in contemplating it.”

      “Not at all. This apparition, as they call it, was seen by two persons; therefore it was no apparition but a real coach. It came from the mountains, that is, from the Mountain Station, and it glided—ah!”

      “Well?”

      “Mr. Gryce, it was its noiselessness that gave it its spectral appearance. Now I remember a petty circumstance which I dare you to match, in corroboration of our suspicions.”

      “You do?”

      I could not repress a slight toss of my head. “Yes, I do,” I repeated.

      He smiled and made the slightest of deprecatory gestures.

      “You have had advantages——” he began.

      “And disadvantages,” I finished, determined that he should award me my full meed of praise. “You are probably not afraid of dogs. I am. You could visit the stables.”

      “And did; but I found nothing there.”

      “I thought not!” I could not help the exclamation. It is so seldom one can really triumph over this man. “Not having the cue, you would not be apt to see what gives this whole thing away. I would never have thought of it again if we had not had this talk. Is Mr. Simsbury a neat man?”

      “A neat man? Madam, what do you mean?”

      “Something important, Mr. Gryce. If Mr. Simsbury is a neat man, he will have thrown away the old rags which, I dare promise you, cumbered his stable floor the morning after the phantom coach was seen to enter the lane. If he is not, you may still find them there. One of them, I know, you will not find. He pulled it off of his wheel with his whip the afternoon he drove me down from the station. I can see the sly look he gave me as he did it. It made no impression on me then, but now——”

      “Madam, you have supplied the one link necessary to the establishment of this theory. Allow me to felicitate you upon it. But whatever our satisfaction may be from a professional standpoint, we cannot but feel the unhappy nature of the responsibility incurred by these discoveries. If this seemingly respectable family stooped to such subterfuge, going to the length of winding rags around the wheels of their lumbering old coach to make it noiseless, and even tying up their horse’s feet for this same purpose, they must have had a motive dark enough to warrant your worst suspicions. And William was not the only one involved. Simsbury, at least, had a hand in it, nor does it look as if the girls were as innocent as we would like to consider them.”

      “I cannot stop to consider the girls,” I declared. “I can no longer consider the girls.”

      “Nor I,” he gloomily assented. “Our duty requires us to sift this matter, and it shall be sifted. We must first find if any child alighted from the cars at the Mountain Station on that especial night, or, what is more probable, from the little station at C., five miles farther back in the mountains.”

      “And—” I urged, seeing that he had still something to say.

      “We must make sure who lies buried under the floor of the room you call the Flower Parlor. You may expect me at the Knollys house some time to-day. I shall come quietly, but in my own proper person. You are not to know me, and, unless you desire it, need not appear in the matter.”

      “I do not desire it.”

      “Then good-morning, Miss Butterworth. My respect for your abilities has risen even higher than before. We part in a similar frame of mind for once.”

      And this he expected me to regard as a compliment.

Chapter XXVII.

       The Text Witnesseth

       Table of Contents

      I have a grim will when I choose to exert it. After Mr. Gryce left the hotel, I took a cup of tea with the landlady and then made a round of the stores. I bought dimity, sewing silk, and what not, as I said I would, but this did not occupy me long (to the regret probably of the country merchants, who expected to make a fool of me and found it a by no means easy task), and was quite ready for William when he finally drove up.

      The ride home was a more or less silent one. I had conceived such a horror of the man beside me, that talking for talk’s sake was impossible, while he was in a mood which it would be charity to call non-communicative. It may be that my own reticence was at the bottom of this, but I rather think not. The remark he made in passing Deacon Spear’s house showed that something more than spite was working in his slow but vindictive brain.

      “There’s a man of your own sort,” he cried. “You won’t find him doing anything out of the way; oh, no. Pity your visit wasn’t paid there. You’d have got a better impression of the lane.”

      To this I made no reply.

      At Mr. Trohm’s he spoke again:

      “I suppose that you and Trohm had the devil of a say about Lucetta and the rest of us. I don’t know why, but the whole neighborhood seems to feel they’ve a right to use our name as they choose. But it isn’t going to be so, long. We have played poor and pinched and starved all I’m going to. I’m going to have a new horse, and Lucetta shall have a dress, and that mighty quick too. I’m tired of all this shabbiness, and mean to have a change.”

      I wanted to say, “No change yet; change under the present circumstances would be the worst thing possible for you all,” but I felt that this would be treason to Mr. Gryce, and refrained, saying simply, as he looked sideways at me for a word:

      “Lucetta needs a new dress. That no one can deny. But you had better let me get it for her, or perhaps that is what you mean.”

      The grunt which was my only answer might be interpreted in any way. I took it, however, for assent.

      As soon as I was relieved of his presence and found myself again with the girls, I altered my whole manner and cried out in querulous tones:

      “Mrs. Carter and I have had a difference.” (This was true. We did have a difference over our cup of tea. I did not think it necessary to say this difference was a forced one. Some things we are perfectly justified in keeping to ourselves.) “She remembers a certain verse in the New Testament one way and I in another. We had not time to settle it by a consultation with the sacred word, but I cannot rest till it is settled, so will you bring your Bible to me, my dear, that I may look that verse up?”

      We were in the upper hall, where I had taken a seat on the old-fashioned sofa there. Lucetta, who was standing before me, started immediately to do my bidding, without stopping to think, poor child, that it was very strange I did not go to my own room and consult my own Bible as any good Presbyterian would be expected to do. As she was turning toward the large front room I stopped her with the quiet injunction:

      “Get me one with good print, Lucetta. My eyes won’t bear much straining.”

      At which she turned and to my great relief hurried down the corridor toward William’s room, from which she presently returned, bringing the very volume I was anxious to consult.

      Meanwhile СКАЧАТЬ