The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин

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СКАЧАТЬ and, hunting up his old friends, I met in the house of one who had come over from Scotland with my father a young lady” (how his voice shook, and with what a poignant accent he uttered that beloved name) “in whom I speedily became interested to the point of wishing to marry her. But I had no money, no business, no home to give her, and, as I was fain to acknowledge, no prospects. Still I could not give up the hope of making her my wife. So I wrote to my brother, Felix Cadwalader, or, rather, Felix Adams, as he preferred to be called in later years for family reasons entirely disconnected with the matter of his sudden demise, and, telling him I had become interested in a young girl of good family and some wealth, asked him to settle upon me a certain sum which would enable me to marry her with some feeling of self-respect. My only answer was a repetition of the vague promise he had thrown out before. But youth is hopeful, even to daring, and I decided to make her mine without further parley, in the hope that her beauty and endearing qualities would win from him, at first view, the definite concession he had so persistently denied me.

      “This I did, and the fault with which I have most to reproach myself is that I entered into this alliance without taking her or her father into my confidence. They thought me well off, possibly rich, and while Mr. Poindexter is a man of means, I am sure, if he had known I had nothing but the clothes I wore and the merest trifle in the way of pocket money, he would have cried halt to the marriage, for he is a very ambitious man and considers his daughter well worth a millionaire’s devotion—as she is.

      “Felix (you must pardon me if I show no affection for my brother—he was a very strange man) was notified of my marriage, but did not choose to witness it, neither did he choose to prohibit it; so it was conducted quietly, with strangers for witnesses, in a hotel parlor. Then, with vague hopes, as well as certain vague fears, I prepared to take my young bride into the presence of my brother, who, hardened as he was by years of bachelorhood, could not be so entirely impervious to feminine charms as not to recognize my wife as a woman deserving of every consideration.

      “But I had counted without my host. When, two days after the ceremony which had made us one, I took her to the house which has since become so unhappily notorious, I found that my brother had but shown me one facet, and that the least obdurate, of his many-sided nature.

      “Brilliant as steel, he was as hard, and not only professed himself unmoved by my wife’s many charms, but also as totally out of sympathy with such follies as love and marriage, which were, he said, the fruit of unoccupied minds and a pastime wholly unworthy of men boasting of such talents and attainments as ourselves. Then he turned his back upon us, and I, moved by an anger little short of frenzy, began an abuse for which he was so little prepared that he crouched like a man under blows, and, losing minute by minute his self-control, finally caught up a dagger lying close at hand, and crying, ‘You want my money? Well, then, take it!’ stabbed himself to the heart with one desperate blow.

      “I fear I shall not be believed, but that is the story of this crime, gentlemen.”

Chapter XIII.

       Despair

       Table of Contents

      Was it? Tragedies as unpremeditated as this had doubtless occurred, and inconsistencies in character shown themselves in similar impetuosities, from the beginning of time up till now. Yet there was not a man present, with or without the memory of Bartow’s pantomime, which, as you will recall, did not tally at all with this account of Mr. Adams’s violent end, who did not show in a greater or less degree his distrust and evident disbelief in this tale, poured out with such volubility before them.

      The young man, gifted as he was with the keenest susceptibilities, perceived this, and his head drooped.

      “I shall add nothing to and take nothing from what I have said,” was his dogged remark. “Make of it what you will.”

      The inspector who was conducting the inquiry glanced dubiously at Mr. Gryce as these words left Thomas Adams’s lips; whereupon the detective said:

      “We are sorry you have taken such a resolution. There are many things yet left to be explained, Mr. Adams; for instance, why, if your brother slew himself in this unforeseen manner, you left the house so precipitately, without giving an alarm or even proclaiming your relationship to him?”

      “You need not answer, you know,” the inspector’s voice broke in. “No man is called upon to incriminate himself in this free and independent country.”

      A smile, the saddest ever seen, wandered for a minute over the prisoner’s pallid lips. Then he lifted his head and replied with a certain air of desperation:

      “Incrimination is not what I fear now. From the way you all look at me I perceive that I am lost, for I have no means of proving my story.”

      This acknowledgment, which might pass for the despairing cry of an innocent man, made his interrogator stare.

      “You forget,” suggested that gentleman, “that you had your wife with you. She can corroborate your words, and will prove herself, no doubt, an invaluable witness in your favor.”

      “My wife!” he repeated, choking so that his words could be barely understood. “Must she be dragged into this—so sick, so weak a woman? It would kill her, sir. She loves me—she——”

      “Was she with you in Mr. Adams’s study? Did she see him lift the dagger against his own breast?”

      “No.” And with this denial the young man seemed to take new courage. “She had fainted several moments previously, while the altercation between my brother and myself was at its height. She did not see the final act, and—gentlemen, I might as well speak the truth (I have nothing to gain by silence), she finds it as difficult as you do to believe that Mr. Adams struck himself. I—I have tried with all my arts to impress the truth upon her, but oh, what can I hope from the world when the wife of my bosom—an angel, too, who loves me—oh, sirs, she can never be a witness for me; she is too conscientious, too true to her own convictions. I should lose—she would die——”

      Mr. Gryce tried to stop him; he would not be stopped.

      “Spare me, sirs! Spare my wife! Write me down guilty, anything you please, rather than force that young creature to speak——”

      Here the inspector cut short these appeals which were rending every heart present. “Have you read the newspapers for the last few days?” he asked.

      “I? Yes, yes, sir. How could I help it? Blood is blood; the man was my brother; I had left him dying—I was naturally anxious, naturally saw my own danger, and I read them, of course.”

      “Then you know he was found with a large cross on his breast, a cross which was once on the wall. How came it to be torn down? Who put it on his bosom?”

      “I, sir. I am not a Catholic but Felix was, and seeing him dying without absolution, without extreme unction, I thought of the holy cross, and tore down the only one I saw, and placed it in his arms.”

      “A pious act. Did he recognize it?”

      “I cannot say. I had my fainting wife to look after. She occupied all my thoughts.”

      “I see, and you carried her out and were so absorbed in caring for her you did not observe Mr. Adams’s valet——”

      “He’s innocent, sir. СКАЧАТЬ