The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин

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СКАЧАТЬ the five spangles you speak of, behind me on Mr. Adams’s miserable floor. I was simply passing by the house; and had I been the woman I once was, that is, a woman who had never dipped into a mystery, I should have continued on my way, instead of turning aside. Sir, it’s a curious sensation to find yourself, however innocent, regarded by a whole city full of people as the cause or motive of a terrible murder, especially when you have spent some time, as I have, in the study of crime and the pursuit of criminals. I own I don’t enjoy the experience. But I have brought it on myself. If I had not been so curious—But it was not curiosity I felt. I will never own that I am subject to mere curiosity; it was the look on the young man’s face. But I forget myself. I am rambling in all directions when I ought to be telling a consecutive tale. Not my usual habit, sir; this you know; but I am not quite myself at this moment. I declare I am more upset by this discovery of my indiscretion than I was by Mr. Trohm’s declaration of affection in Lost Man’s Lane! Give me time, Mr. Gryce; in a few minutes I will be more coherent.”

      “I am giving you time,” he returned with one of his lowest bows. “The half-dozen questions I long to ask have not yet left my lips, and I sit here, as you must yourself acknowledge, a monument of patience.”

      “So you thought this deed perpetrated by an outsider,” she suddenly broke in. “Most of the journals—I read them very carefully this morning—ascribed the crime to the man you have mentioned. And there seems to be good reason for doing so. The case is not a simple one, Mr. Gryce; it has complications—I recognized that at once, and that is why—but I won’t waste another moment in apologies. You have a right to any little fact I may have picked up in my unfortunate visit, and there is one which I failed to find included in any account of the murder. Mr. Adams had other visitors besides myself in those few fatal minutes preceding his death. A young man and woman were with him. I saw them come out of the house. It was at the moment I was passing——”

      “Tell your story more simply, Miss Butterworth. What first drew your attention to the house?”

      “There! That is the second time you have had to remind me to be more direct. You will not have to do so again, Mr. Gryce. To begin, then, I noticed the house, because I always notice it. I never pass it without giving a thought to its ancient history and indulging in more or less speculation as to its present inmates. When, therefore, I found myself in front of it yesterday afternoon on my way to the art exhibition, I naturally looked up, and—whether by an act of providence or not, I cannot say—it was precisely at that instant the inner door of the vestibule burst open, and a young man appeared in the hall, carrying a young woman in his arms. He seemed to be in a state of intense excitement, and she in a dead faint; but before they had attracted the attention of the crowd, he had placed her on her feet, and, taking her on his arm, dragged her down the stoop and into the crowd of passers-by, among whom they presently disappeared. I, as you may believe, stood rooted to the ground in my astonishment, and not only endeavored to see in what direction they went, but lingered long enough to take a peep into the time-honored interior of this old house, which had been left open to view by the young man’s forgetting to close the front door behind him. As I did so, I heard a cry from within. It was muffled and remote, but unmistakably one of terror and anguish: and, led by an impulse I may live to regret, as it seems likely to plunge me into much unpleasantness, I rushed up the stoop and went in, shutting the door behind me, lest others should be induced to follow.

      “So far, I had acted solely from instinct; but once in that semi-dark hall, I paused and asked what business I had there, and what excuse I should give for my intrusion if I encountered one or more of the occupants of the house. But a repetition of the cry, coming as I am ready to swear from the farthest room on the parlor floor, together with a sharp remembrance of the wandering eye and drawn countenance of the young man whom I had seen stagger hence a moment before, with an almost fainting woman in his arms, drew me on in spite of my feminine instincts; and before I knew it, I was in the circular study and before the prostrate form of a seemingly dying man. He was lying as you probably found him a little later, with the cross on his breast and a dagger in his heart; but his right hand was trembling, and when I stooped to lift his head, he gave a shudder and then settled into eternal stillness. I, a stranger from the street, had witnessed his last breath while the young man who had gone out——”

      “Can you describe him? Did you encounter him close enough for recognition?”

      “Yes, I think I would know him again. I can at least describe his appearance. He wore a checked suit, very natty, and was more than usually tall and fine-looking. But his chief peculiarity lay in his expression. I never saw on any face, no, not on the stage, at the climax of the most heart-rending tragedy, a greater accumulation of mortal passion struggling with the imperative necessity for restraint. The young girl whose blond head lay on his shoulder looked like a saint in the clutch of a demon. She had seen death, but he—But I prefer not to be the interpreter of that expressive countenance. It was lost to my view almost immediately, and probably calmed itself in the face of the throng he entered, or we would be hearing about him to-day. The girl seemed to be devoid of almost all feeling. I should not remember her.”

      “And was that all? Did you just look at that recumbent man and vanish? Didn’t you encounter the butler? Haven’t you some definite knowledge to impart in his regard which will settle his innocence or fix his guilt?”

      “I know no more about him than you do, sir, except that he was not in the room by the time I reached it, and did not come into it during my presence there. Yet it was his cry that led me to the spot; or do you think it was that of the bird I afterward heard shouting and screaming in the cage over the dead man’s head?”

      “It might have been the bird,” admitted Mr. Gryce. “Its call is very clear, and it seems strangely intelligent. What was it saying while you stood there?”

      “Something about Eva. ‘Lovely Eva, maddening Eva! I love Eva! Eva! Eva!’”

      “Eva? Wasn’t it ‘Evelyn? Poor Evelyn?’”

      “No, it was Eva. I thought he might mean the girl I had just seen carried out. It was an unpleasant experience, hearing this bird shriek out these cries in the face of the man lying dead at my feet.”

      “Miss Butterworth, you didn’t simply stand over that man. You knelt down and looked in his face.”

      “I acknowledge it, and caught my dress in the filagree of the cross. Naturally I would not stand stock still with a man drawing his last breath under my eye.”

      “And what else did you do? You went to the table——”

      “Yes, I went to the table.”

      “And moved the inkstand?”

      “Yes, I moved the inkstand, but very carefully, sir, very carefully.”

      “Not so carefully but that I could see where it had been sitting before you took it up: the square made by its base in the dust of the table did not coincide with the place afterwards occupied by it.”

      “Ah, that comes from your having on your glasses and I not. I endeavored to set it down in the precise place from which I lifted it.”

      “Why did you take it up at all? What were you looking for?”

      “For clews, Mr. Gryce. You must forgive me, but I was seeking for clews. I moved several things. I was hunting for the line of writing which ought to explain this murder.”

      “The line of writing?”

      “Yes. I have not told you what the young girl said as she slipped with her companion into the crowd.”

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