The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин

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СКАЧАТЬ Evelyn!’ They bespoke a resolve. ‘Neither she nor you will ever see me again.’”

      “Ah! but these few words are very significant, Mr. Gryce. Could he have dealt that blow himself? May he have been a suicide after all?”

      “Madam, you have the right to inquire; but from Bartow’s pantomime, you must have perceived it is not a self-inflicted blow he mimics, but a maddened thrust from an outraged hand. Let us keep to our first conclusions; only—to be fair to every possibility—the condition of Mr. Adams’s affairs and the absence of all family papers and such documents as may usually be found in a wealthy man’s desk prove that he had made some preparation for possible death. It may have come sooner than he expected and in another way, but it was a thought he had indulged in, and—madam, I have a confession to make also. I have not been quite fair to my most valued colleague. The study—that most remarkable of rooms—contains a secret which has not been imparted to you; a very peculiar one, madam, which was revealed to me in a rather startling manner. This room can be, or rather could be, cut off entirely from the rest of the house; made a death-trap of, or rather a tomb, in which this incomprehensible man may have intended to die. Look at this plate of steel. It is worked by a mechanism which forces it across this open doorway. I was behind that plate of steel the other night, and these holes had to be made to let me out.”

      “Ha! You detectives have your experiences! I should not have enjoyed spending that especial evening with you. But what an old-world tragedy we are unearthing here! I declare”—and the good lady actually rubbed her eyes—“I feel as if transported back to mediæval days. Who says we are living in New York within sound of the cable car and the singing of the telegraph wire?”

      “Some men are perfectly capable of bringing the mediæval into Wall Street. I think Mr. Adams was one of those men. Romanticism tinged all his acts, even the death he died. Nor did it cease with his death. It followed him to the tomb. Witness the cross we found lying on his bosom.”

      “That was the act of another’s hand, the result of another’s superstition. That shows the presence of a priest or a woman at the moment he died.”

      “Yet,” proceeded Mr. Gryce, with a somewhat wondering air, “he must have had a grain of hard sense in his make-up. All his contrivances worked. He was a mechanical genius, as well as a lover of mystery.”

      “An odd combination. Strange that we do not feel his spirit infecting the very air of this study. I could almost wish it did. We might then be led to grasp the key to this mystery.”

      “That,” remarked Mr. Gryce, “can be done in only one way. You have already pointed it out. We must trace the young couple who were present at his death struggle. If they cannot be found the case is hopeless.”

      “And so,” said she, “we come around to the point from which we started—proof positive that we are lost in the woods.” And Miss Butterworth rose. She felt that for the time being she, at least, had come to the end of her resources.

      Mr. Gryce did not seek to detain her. Indeed, he appeared to be anxious to leave the place himself. They, however, stopped long enough to cast one final look around them. As they did so Miss Butterworth’s finger slowly rose.

      “See!” said she, “you can hardly perceive from this side of the wall the opening made by the removal of that picture on the stair landing. Wouldn’t you say that it was in the midst of those folds of dark-colored tapestry up there?”

      “Yes, I had already located that spot as the one. With the picture hung up on the other side, it would be quite invisible.”

      “One needs to keep one’s eyes moving in a case like this. That picture must have been drawn aside several times while we were in this room. Yet we failed to notice it.”

      “That was from not looking high enough. High and low, Mr. Gryce! What goes on at the level of the eye is apparent to every one.”

      The smile with which he acknowledged this parting shot and prepared to escort her to the door had less of irony than sadness in it. Was he beginning to realize that years tell even on the most sagacious, and that neither high places nor low would have escaped his attention a dozen years before?

Chapter X.

       Bride Roses

       Table of Contents

      “A blonde, you say, sir?”

      “Yes, Sweetwater; not of the usual type, but one of those frail, ethereal creatures whom we find it so hard to associate with crime. He, on the contrary, according to Miss Butterworth’s description (and her descriptions may be relied upon), is one of those gentlemanly athletes whose towering heads and powerful figures attract universal attention. Seen together, you would be apt to know them. But what reason have we for thinking they will be found together?”

      “How were they dressed?”

      “Like people of fashion and respectability. He wore a brown-checked suit apparently fresh from the tailor; she, a dove-colored dress with white trimmings. The parasol shows the color of her hat and plumes. Both were young, and (still according to Miss Butterworth) of sensitive temperament and unused to crime; for she was in a fainting condition when carried from the house, and he, with every inducement to self-restraint, showed himself the victim of such powerful emotion that he would have been immediately surrounded and questioned if he had not set his burden down in the vestibule and at once plunged with the girl into the passing crowd. Do you think you can find them, Sweetwater?”

      “Have you no clews to their identity beyond this parasol?”

      “None, Sweetwater, if you except these few faded rose leaves picked up from the floor of Mr. Adams’s study.”

      “Then you have given me a problem, Mr. Gryce,” remarked the young detective dubiously, as he eyed the parasol held out to him and let the rose-leaves drop carelessly through his fingers. “Somehow I do not feel the same assurances of success that I did before. Perhaps I more fully realize the difficulties of any such quest, now that I see how much rests upon chance in these matters. If Miss Butterworth had not been a precise woman, I should have failed in my former attempt, as I am likely to fail in this one. But I will make another effort to locate the owner of this parasol, if only to learn my business by failure. And now, sir, where do you think I am going first? To a florist’s, with these faded rose-leaves. Just because every other young fellow on the force would make a start from the parasol, I am going to try and effect one from these rose-leaves. I may be an egotist, but I cannot help that. I can do nothing with the parasol.”

      “And what do you hope to do with the rose-leaves? How can a florist help you in finding this young woman by means of them?”

      “He may be able to say from what kind of a rose they fell, and once I know that, I may succeed in discovering the particular store from which the bouquet was sold to this more or less conspicuous couple.”

      “You may. I am not the man to throw cold water on any one’s schemes. Every man has his own methods, and till they are proved valueless I say nothing.”

      Young Sweetwater, who was now all nerve, enthusiasm, and hope, bowed. He was satisfied to be allowed to work in his own way.

      “I may be back in an hour, and you may not see me for a week,” he remarked on leaving.

      “Luck СКАЧАТЬ