The Woman in the Alcove (American Illustrated serial)/Part 3
Synopsis of Preceding Chapters. At a ball, the heroine, Miss Van Arsdale, who tells the story becomes engaged to Anson Durand, a dealer in diamonds. An hour later a Mrs. Fairbrother is found murdered in an alcove and the police searching for clues discover her gloves and a great diamond which she wore, in the reticule on Miss Van Arsdale's arm. Miss Van Arsdale denies all knowledge. Durand, however, admits that he placed the gloves, which earlier in the evening Mrs, Fairbrother had given to him, in his fiancé's bag, but did not know the diamond was in them. He confesses having come upon Mrs. Fairbrother's body but protests his absolute innocence. Miss Van Arsdale believes his protestations.
V. SUPERSTITION
had gone upstairs for my wraps—my uncle having insisted upon my withdrawing from a scene where my very presence seemed in some degree to compromise me.
Soon equipped and all ready for departure, I was crossing the hall to the small door communicating with the side staircase where my uncle had promised to await me, when I felt myself seized by a desire to have another look below before leaving the place in which were concentrated all my deepest interests.
A wide landing, breaking up the main flight of stairs some few feet from the top, offered me an admirable point of view. With but little thought of possible consequences, and no thought at all of my poor, patient uncle, I slipped down to this landing, and protected by the unusual height of its balustrade, allowed myself a parting glance at the scene with which my most poignant memories were henceforth to be connected.
Before me lay the large square of the central hall. Opening out from this was the corridor leading to the front door, and incidentally to the library. As my glance penetrated this corridor, I beheld approaching from the room just mentioned the tall figure of the Englishman.
He halted as he reached the main hall and stood gazing eagerly at a group of men and women clustered near the fireplace—a group upon which I no sooner cast my own eye than my attention also became fixed.
The Inspector had come from the room where I had left him with Mr. Durand and was showing to these people the extraordinary diamond, which he had just recovered under such remarkable if not suspicious circumstances. Young heads and old were meeting over it, and I was straining my ears to hear such comments as were audible above the general hubbub, when Mr. Grey made a quick move and I looked his way again in time to mark his air of concern and the uncertainty he showed whether to advance or retreat.
Unconscious of my watchful eye, and noting, no doubt, that most of the persons in the group upon which his own eye was leveled stood with their backs towards him, he made no effort to disguise his profound interest in the stone. His eye followed its passage from hand to hand with a covetous eagerness of which he may not have been aware, and I was not at all surprised when, after a short interval of troubled indecision, he impulsively stepped forward and begged the privilege of handling the gem himself.
Our host, who stood not far from the Inspector, said something to that gentleman which led to this request being complied with. The stone was passed over to Mr. Grey, and I saw, possibly because my heart was in my eyes, that the great man's hand trembled as it touched his palm. Indeed his whole frame trembled, and I was looking eagerly for the result of his inspection when, on his turning to hold the jewel up to the light, something happened so abnormal and so strange that no one who was fortunate, or unfortunate enough to be present in the house at that instant will ever forget it.
This something was a cry, coming from no one knew where, which, unearthly in its shrillness and the power it had upon the imagination, rang reverberating through the house and died away in a wail so weird, so thrilling and so prolonged that it gripped not only my own nerveless and weakened heart, but those of the ten strong men congregated below me. The diamond dropped from Mr. Grey's hand, and neither he nor any one else moved to pick it up. Not till silence had come again—a silence almost as unendurable to the sensitive ear as the cry which had preceded it, did any one stir or think of the gem. Then one gentleman after another bent to look for it, but with no success, till one of the waiters, who possibly had followed it with his eye or caught sight of its sparkle on the edge of the rug, whither it had rolled, sprang and picked it up and handed it back to Mr. Grey.
Instinctively the Englishman's hand closed on it, but it was very evident to me, and I think to all, that his interest in it was gone. If he looked at it he did not see it, for he stood like one stunned all the time that agitated men and women were running hither and thither in unavailing efforts to locate the sound yet ringing in all ears. Not till these various searchers had all come together again, in terror of a mystery they could not solve, did he let his hand fall and himself awake to the scene about him.
The words he at once gave utterance to were as remarkable as all the rest.
"Gentlemen," said he, "you must pardon my agitation. This cry,—you need not seek its source, is one to which I am only too well accustomed. I have been the happy father of six children. Five I have buried, and, before the death of each, this same cry has echoed in my ears. I have but one child left,—a daughter,—she is ill at the hotel. Do you wonder that I shrink from this note of warning, and show myself something less than a man under its influence? I am going home; but, first, one word about this stone." Here he lifted it and bestowed, or appeared to bestow upon it, an anxious scrutiny, putting on his glasses and inspecting it carefully on all sides before passing it back to the Inspector.
"I have heard," said he, with a change of tone which must have been noticeable to every one, "that this stone was a very superior one, and quite worthy of the fame it bore here in America. But, gentlemen, you have all been greatly deceived in it; no one more than he who was willing to commit murder for its possession. The stone which you have just been good enough to allow me to inspect, is no diamond, but a carefully manufactured bit of paste not worth the rich and elaborate setting which has been given to it. I am sorry to be the one to say this; but I have made a study of precious stones, and I cannot let this bare-faced imitation pass through my hands without a protest Mr. Ramsdell,—" this to our host,—"I beg you will allow me to utter my excuses, and depart at once. My daughter is worse,—this I know, as certainly as that I am standing here. The cry you have heard is the one superstition of our family. Pray God that I find her alive!"
After this, what could be said. Though no one who had heard him, not even my own romantic self, showed any belief in this interpretation of the remarkable sound that had just gone thrilling through the house, yet, in face of his declared acceptance of it as a warning, and the fact that all efforts had failed to locate the sound, or even to determine its source, no other course seemed open but to let this distinguished man depart with the suddenness his superstitious fears demanded.
That this was in opposition to the Inspector's wishes, was evident enough. Naturally, he would have preferred Mr. Grey to remain, if only to make clear his surprising conclusions in regard to a diamond which had passed through the hands of some of the best judges in the country, without a doubt having been raised as to its genuineness.
With his departure from our midst, the Inspector's manner changed. He glanced at the stone in his hand, and slowly shook his head.
"I doubt if Mr. Grey's judgment can be depended on, to-night," said he, and pocketed the gem as carefully as if his belief in its real value had been but little disturbed by the assertion of this renowned foreigner.
I have no distinct remembrance of how I finally left this house, or of what passed between my uncle and myself, on our way home. I was numb with shock, and neither my intelligence nor my feelings were any longer active. I recall but one impression, and that was, the effect made upon me by my old home on our arrival there, as of something new and strange; so much had happened, and such changes had taken place in myself since leaving it five hours before. But, nothing else is vivid in my remembrance, till that early hour of the dreary morning, when, on waking to the world with a cry, I beheld my uncle's anxious figure, bending over me from the foot-board.
Instantly I found tongue, and question after question leaped from my lips. He did not answer them; he could not; but, when I grew feverish and insistent, he drew the morning paper from behind his back, and laid it quietly down within my reach. I felt calmed in an instant, and when, after a few affectionate words, he left me to myself, I seized upon the sheet and read what so many others were reading at that moment throughout the city.
I spare you the account so far as it coincides with what I had myself seen and heard the night before. A few particulars which had not reached my ears, will interest you. The instrument of death found in the place designated by Mr. Durand was one of note to such as had any taste or knowledge of curios. It was a stiletto of the most delicate type; long, keen and slender. Not an American product, not even of this century's manufacture, but a relic of the days when deadly thrusts were given in the corners and by-ways of mediæval streets.
This made the first mystery.
The second, was the as yet unexplainable presence on the alcove floor, of two broken coffee cups, which no waiter nor any other person, in fact, acknowledged having carried there. The tray, which had fallen from Peter Mooney's hand,—the waiter who had been the first to give the alarm of murder,—had held no cups, only ices. This was a fact, proved. But the handles of two cups had been found among the debris,—cups which must have been full, from the size of the coffee stain left upon the rug where they had fallen.
In reading this I remembered that Mr. Durand had mentioned stepping on some broken pieces of china in his escape from the fatal scene, and struck with this confirmation of a theory which was slowly taking form in my own mind, I passed on to the next paragraph, with a bouyant sense of expectation.
The result was a surprise. Others may have been told, I was not, that Mrs. Fairbrother had received a communication from outside only a few minutes previously to her death. A Mr. Fullerton who had preceded Mr. Durand in his visit to the alcove, owned to having opened the window for her at some call or signal from outside, and taken in a small piece of paper which he saw lifted up from below on the end of a whip handle. He could not see who held the whip, but at Mrs. Fairbrother's entreaty he unpinned the note and gave it to her. While she was puzzling over it, for it was apparently far from legible, he took another look out in time to mark a figure rush from below towards the carriage drive. He did not recognize the figure nor would he know it again. As to the nature of the communication itself he could say nothing save that Mrs. Fairbrother did not seem to be affected favorably by it. She frowned and was looking very gloomy when he left the alcove. Asked if he had pulled the curtains together after closing the window, he said no; she had not requested him to do so, so he left them just as he had found them.
This story, which was certainly a strange one, had been confirmed by the testimony of the coachman who had lent his whip for the above purpose. This coachman, who was known to be a man of extreme good nature, had seen no harm in lending his whip to a poor devil who wished to give a telegram or some such hasty message to the lady sitting just above them in a lighted window. The wind was fierce and the snow blinding and it was natural that the man should duck his head, but he remembered his appearance well enough to say that he was either very cold or very much done up and that he wore a great coat with the collar pulled up about his ears. When he came back with the whip he seemed more cheerful than when he asked for it, but had no "thank you" for the favor done him, or if he had, it was lost in his throat and the piercing gale.
The communication, which was regarded by the police as a matter of the highest importance, had been found in her hand by the coroner. It was a mere scrawl written in pencil on a small scrap of paper. The following facsimile of the same was given to the public in the hope that some one would recognize the handwriting.
The first two lines overlap and are confused, but the last one is clear enough. Expect trouble if—If what? Hundreds were asking the question and at this very moment. I would soon be asking it, too, but first, I must make an effort to understand the situation, a situation which up to this time appeared to involve Mr. Durand and Mr. Durand only, as the suspected party.
This was no more than I expected, yet it came with a shock under the broad glare of this wintry morning; so impossible did it seem in the light of everyday life that guilt could be associated in any one's mind with a man of such unblemished record and excellent standing. But the evidence adduced against him was of a kind to appeal to the common mind—we all know that evidence—nor could I say after reading the full account, that I was myself unaffected by its seeming weight. Not that my faith in his innocence was shaken. I had met his look of love and tender gratitude and my confidence in him had been restored, but I saw with all the clearness of a mind trained by continuous study, how difficult it was going to be to counteract the prejudice induced first by his own inconsiderate acts, especially by that unfortunate attempt of his to secrete Mrs. Fairbrother's gloves in another woman's bag, and secondly, by his peculiar explanations of the same, explanations which to many must seem forced and unnatural.
I saw and felt nerved to a superhuman task. I believed him innocent, and if others failed to prove him so, I would undertake to clear him myself, I, the little Rita, with no experience of law or courts or crime, but with simply an unbounded faith in the man suspected and in the keenness of my own insight; an insight which had already served me so well and would serve me yet better after I had mastered the details which must be the prelude to all intelligent action.
The morning's report stopped with the explanations given by Mr. Durand of the appearances against him. Consequently no word appeared of the after events which had made such an impression at the time on all the persons present Mr. Grey was mentioned, but simply as one of the guests, and to no one reading this early morning issue would any doubt come as to the genuineness of the diamond which, to all appearance, had been the leading motive in the commission of this great crime.
The effect on my own mind of this suppression was a curious one. I began to wonder if the whole event had not been a chimera of my disturbed brain—a nightmare which had visited me, and me alone, and not a fact to be reckoned with. But a moment's further thought served to clear my mind of all such doubts, and I perceived that the police had only exercised common prudence in withholding Mr. Grey's sensational opinion of the stone till it could be verified by experts.
The two columns of gossip devoted to the family differences which had led to the separation of Mr. and Mrs. Fairbrother, I shall compress into a few lines. They had been married three years before in the city of Baltimore. He was a rich man then, but not the multi-millionaire he is to-day. Plain-featured and without manner, he was no mate for this sparkling coquette, whose charm was of the kind which increases with its exercise. Though no actual scandal was ever associated with her name, he grew tired of her caprices, and the conquests which she made no endeavor to to hide either from him or the world at large; and some time during the previous year they had come to a friendly understanding which led to their living apart, each in grand style and with a certain deference to the proprieties which retained them their friends and an enviable place in society. He was not often invited where she was, and she never appeared in any assemblage where he was expected; but with this exception little feeling was shown; matters progressed smoothly, and to their credit let it be said, no one ever heard either of them speak otherwise than with consideration of the other. He was at present out of town, having started some three days before for the southwest, but would probably return on receipt of the telegram which had been sent him.
The comments made on the murder were necessarily hurried. It was called a mystery, but it was evident enough that Mr. Durand's detention was looked upon as the almost certain prelude to his arrest on a charge of murder.
I had had some discipline in life. Although a favorite of my wealthy uncle, I had given up very early the prospects he held out to me of a continued enjoyment of his bounty, and entered upon duties which required self-denial and hard work. I did this because I enjoy having both my mind and heart occupied. To be necessary to some one, as a nurse is to a patient, seemed to me an enviable fate till I came under the influence of Anson Durand. Then the craving of all women for the common lot of her sex became my craving also; a craving, however, to which I failed at first to yield, for I felt that it was unshared, and thus a token of weakness. Fighting my battle, I succeeded in winning it, as I thought, just as the nurse's diploma was put in my hands. Then came the great surprise of my life. Anson Durand expressed his love for me and I awoke to the fact that all my preparation had been for home joys and a woman's true existence. One hour of ecstacy in the light of this new hope, then tragedy and something approaching chaos! Truly I had been through a schooling. But was it one to make me useful in the only way I could be useful now? I did not know; I did not care; I was determined on my course, fit or unfit, and in the relief brought by this appeal my energy, I rose and dressed and went about the duties of the day.
One of these was to determine whether Mr. Grey, on his return to his hotel, had found his daughter as ill as his fears had foreboded. A telephone message or two satisfied me on this point. Miss Grey was very ill, but not considered dangerously so; indeed, if anything, her condition was improved, and if nothing happened in the way of fresh complications, the prospects were that she would be out in a fortnight.
I was not surprised. It was no more than I had expected. The cry of a banshee in an American house was past belief, even in an atmosphere surcharged with fear and all the horror surrounding a great crime; and in the secret reckoning I was making against a person I will not even name at this juncture, I added it as another suspicious circumstance.
VI
THE MOUSE NIBBLES AT THE NET
To relate the full experiences of the next few days would be to overweigh my narrative with unnecessary detail. A few new developments cropped up in the course of the coroner's inquest, held, as it seemed to my inexperience, too close upon the crime for the proper collection of all possible witnesses; but, nothing to materially affect Mr. Durand's position, which, in spite of some few facts in confirmation of his story, continued to be almost universally regarded as that of a suspect.
No due having been obtained from any of the members of Mrs. Fairbrother's household, or even from her many friends and personal adherents to the writer of the warning found in her hand, a warning which had been deciphered to read: "Be warned. He means to be at the ball. Expect trouble if—" the obvious conclusion that, whatever its source, it had been directed against Mr. Durand, received no contradiction from anyone, and soon became the secret, and, in some cases, the expressed belief of many who might otherwise have accepted as true, his certainly rather bizarre explanations.
The circumstance, however, which affected me most at this time, and which gave to the affair its most tragic import, was the unexpected confirmation by experts of Mr. Grey's opinion in regard to the diamond. This gentleman had not been called as a witness, nor did his name appear, but, the hint he had given the Inspector had been acted upon, and the proper tests having been made, the stone for which so many believed a life to have been risked, and another taken, was declared to be an imitation,—fine and successful beyond all parallel, but still an imitation,—of the great and renowned gem which had passed through Tiffany's hands a twelve month before: a decision which fell like a thunderbolt on all such as had seen the diamond blazing in unapproachable brilliancy on the breast of the unhappy Mrs. Fairbrother an hour or two before her death.
On me the effect was such that for days I lived in a dream; a condition that, nevertheless, did not prevent me from starting a certain little inquiry of my own, of which, more hereafter; and when, in the course of time, it became evident from a telegram received from Mr. Fairbrother, who had finally been reached at some point in New Mexico, that, whatever the character of the gem now occupying the attention of the New York police, the veritable jewel returned from Tiffany's, and none other was what had passed from his possession into that of his wife on her departure from his house, the question with me was not so much through whose cupidity, or for what reasons of personal safety or enjoyment the false had been substituted for the true, as the time when.
To the police and such higher officials as were interested in solving this curious mystery, it appeared to be a conceded fact that this exchange had been made prior to the ball, and with Mrs. Fairbrother's full cognizance. The effectual way in which she had wielded her fan between the glittering ornament on her breast, and the curious glances constantly leveled upon it, might have been due to coquetry, but to many it looked more like an expression of fear lest the deception in which she was indulging should be discovered.
But, these men were all interested in proving Mr. Durand guilty, while I, with contrary mind, was bent on establishing such facts as confirmed the explanations he had been pleased to give us; explanations which necessitated a conviction, on Mrs. Fairbrother's part, of the great value of the jewel she wore, and the consequent advisability of ridding herself of it temporarily, if, as so many believed, the full letter of the warning should read: "Be warned. He means to be at the ball. Expect trouble if you do not give him the diamond."
True, she may herself have been deceived concerning it. Unconsciously, to herself, she may have been the victim of a daring fraud on the part of some hanger-on who had access to her jewels. But, as no such evidence had as yet come to light,—as she had no recognized, nor, so far as could be learned, any secret lover or dishonest dependent; and, moreover, as no gem of such unusual value was known to have been offered within the year, here or abroad, in public or private market, I could not bring myself to credit this assumption; possibly, because I was too eager to credit another, and a different one; one which you have already seen growing in my mind, and which, presumptuous as it was, impressed me so much with its truth, that, on the jury rendering a verdict which, while not accusing Mr. Durand, did not completely exonerate him, I worked my courage up to the point of begging an interview from the Inspector, with the intention of confiding to him a theory which must either cost me his sympathy, or open the way to a new inquiry, which I felt sure would lead to Mr. Durand's complete exoneration.
I chose this gentleman for my confidant from among all those with whom I had been brought in contact by my position as witness in a case of this magnitude, first, because he had been present at the most tragic moment of my life, and secondly, because I was conscious of a sympathetic bond between us which would ensure me a kind hearing. However ridiculous my idea might appear to him, I was assured that he would treat me with consideration and not visit whatever folly I might be guilty of, on the head of him for whom I risked my reputation for good sense. Nor was I disappointed in this. Inspector Dalzell's air was fatherly and his tone altogether gentle, as, in reply to my excuses for troubling him with my opinions, he told me that in a case of such importance he was glad to receive the impressions even of such a prejudiced little partisan as myself.
The word fired me and I spoke.
"You consider Mr. Durand guilty and so do many others I fear, notwithstanding his long record for honesty and uprightness. And why? Because you will not admit the possibility of another person's guilt, a person standing so high in private and public estimation that the very idea seems preposterous and little short of insult to the country of which he is an acknowledged ornament."
"My dear!"
The Inspector had actually risen. His expression and whole attitude showed shock. But I did not quail, I only subdued my manner and spoke with quieter conviction.
"I am aware," said I, "how words so daring must impress you. But listen, sir; listen to what I have to say before you utterly condemn me. I acknowledge that it is the frightful position into which I threw Mr. Durand by my officious attempt to right him, which has driven me to make this second effort to fix this crime on the only other man who had possible access to Mrs. Fairbrother at the fatal moment. How could I live in inaction? How could you expect me to weigh for a moment this foreigner's reputation against that of my own lover? If I have reasons—"
"Reasons!"
"—Reasons, which would appeal to all, if instead of this person's having an international reputation at his back he had been a simple gentleman like Mr. Durand, would you not consider me entitled to speak?"
"Certainly, but—"
"You have no confidence in my reasons, Inspector; they may not weigh against that splash of blood on Mr. Durand's shirt front, but such as they are I must give them. But first, it will be necessary for you to accept for the nonce Mr. Durand's statements as true. Are you willing to do this?"
"I will try."
"Then, a harder thing yet, to put some confidence in my judgment. I saw the man and did not like him long before any intimation of the evening's tragedy had turned suspicion on any one. I watched him as I watched others. I saw that he had not come to the ball to please Mr. Ramsdell or for any pleasure he himself hoped to reap from social intercourse, but for some purpose much more important and that this purpose was connected with Mrs. Fairbrother's diamond. Indifferent, almost morose before she came upon the scene, he brightened to a surprising extent the moment he found himself in her presence. Not because she was a beautiful woman, for he scarcely honored her face or even her superb figure with a look, All his glances were concentrated on her large fan, which, in swaying to and fro, alternately hid and revealed the splendor on her breast; and when by chance it hung suspended for a moment in her forgetful hand and he caught a full glimpse of the great gem, I perceived such a change in his face that, if nothing more had occurred that night to give prominence to this woman and her diamond, I should have carried home the conviction that interests of no common import lay behind a feeling so extraordinarily displayed."
"Fanciful, my dear Miss Van Arsdale. Interesting, but fanciful."
"I know. I have not yet touched on fact. But facts are coming, Inspector."
He stared. Evidently he was not accustomed to hear the law laid down in this fashion by a midget of my proportions.
"Go on," said he, "happily, I have no clerk here to listen."
"I would not speak if you had. These are words for but one ear as yet. Not even my uncle suspects the direction of my thoughts."
"Proceed," he again commanded,
Upon which I plunged into my subject.
"Mrs. Fairbrother wore the real diamond and no imitation, to the ball. Of this I feel sure. The bit of glass or paste displayed to the coroner's jury was bright enough, but it was not the star of light I saw burning on her breast as she passed me on her way to the alcove."
"Miss Van Arsdale!"
"The interest which Mr. Durand displayed in it, the marked excitement into which he was thrown by his first view of its size and splendor, confirm in my mind the evidence which he gave on oath (and he is a well-known diamond expert, you know, and must have been very well aware that he would injure rather than help his cause by this admission) that at that time he believed the stone to be real and of immense value. Wearing such a gem, then, she entered the fatal alcove, with a smile on her face and quite prepared to employ her fascinations on whoever chanced to come within their reach. But now something happened. (Please let me tell it my own way.) A shout from the driveway without or a bit of snow thrown against the window, drew her attention to a man standing beneath holding up a note fastened to the end of a whip handle. I do not know whether or not you have found that man. If you have—" The Inspector made no sign. "I judge that you have not, so I may go on with my suppositions. Mrs. Fairbrother took in this note. She may have expected it and for this reason chose the alcove to sit in, or it may have been a surprise to her. Probably we will never know the whole truth about it; but what we can know and do, if you are still holding to our compact and viewing this crime in the light of Mr. Durand's explanations, is that it made a change in her and made her anxious to rid herself of the diamond. It has been decided that the hurried scrawl should read: "Take warning. He means to be at the ball. Expect trouble if you do not give him the diamond," or something to that effect. But why was it passed up to her unfinished? Was the haste so great? I hardly think so. I believe in another explanation which points with startling directness to the possibility that the person referred to in this broken communication was not Mr. Durand, but one whom I need not name; and that the reason you have failed to find this messenger of whose appearance you have received definite information, is that you have not looked among the servants of a certain distinguished visitor in town. Oh," I burst forth with feverish volubility as I saw the Inspector's lips open in what could not fail to be a sarcastic utterance, "I know what you feel tempted to reply. Why should a servant deliver a warning against his own master? If you will be patient with me you will soon see, but first I wish to make it clear that Mrs. Fairbrother, having received this warning just before Mr. Durand appeared in the alcove, it would be just like the reckless, scheming woman she was to seek to rid herself of the object against which it was directed in the way we have temporarily accepted as true. Relying on her arts, and possibly misconceiving the nature of Mr. Durand's interest in her, she hands over the diamond hidden in her rolled-up gloves, which he, without suspicion, carries away with him, thus linking himself indissolubly to a great crime of which another was the perpetrator. That other, or so I believe from my very heart of hearts, was the man I saw leaning against the wall at the foot of the alcove a few minutes before I passed intb the supper-room."
I stopped with a gasp, hardly able to meet the stern and forbidding look with which the Inspector sought to restrain what he evidently considered the senseless ravings of a child. But I had come there to speak and I hastily proceeded before the rebuke thus expressed could formulate itself into words.
"I have some excuse for a declaration so monstrous. Perhaps I am the only person who can satisfy you in regard to a certain fact about which you have expressed some curiosity. Inspector, have you ever solved the mystery of the two broken tea-cups found amongst the debris at Mrs. Fairbrother's feet?"
"Not yet," he cried, "but— You cannot tell me anything about them!"
"Possibly not But I can tell you this. When I reached the supper-room door that evening I looked back and, providentially or otherwise—only the future can determine that—detected Mr. Grey in the act of lifting two cups from a tray left by some waiter on a table standing just outside the reception-room door. I did not see where he carried them; I only saw his face turn towards the alcove; and as there was no other lady there, or anywhere near there, I have dared to think—"
Here the Inspector found speech.
"You saw Mr. Grey lift two cups and turn toward the alcove at a moment we all know to have been critical? You should have told me this before. He may be a possible witness."
I scarcely listened. I was too full of my own argument.
"There were other people in the hall, especially at my end of it. A perfect throng was coming from the billiard-room, where the dancing had been, and it might easily be that he could both enter and leave that secluded spot without attracting attention. He had shown too early and much too unmistakably his lack of interest in the general company for his every movement to be watched as at his first arrival. But this is simple conjecture; what I have to say next is evidence. The stiletto—have you studied it, sir? I have, from the pictures. It is very quaint; and among the devices on the handle is one that especially attracted my attention. See! This is what I mean." And I handed him a drawing which I had made with some care in expectation of this very interview.
He surveyed it with some astonishment.
"I understand," I pursued in trembling tones, for I was much afflicted by my own daring, that no one has so far succeeded in tracing this weapon to its owner. Why didn't your experts study heraldry and the devices of great houses? They would have found that this one is not unknown in England. I can tell you on whose blazon it can often be seen, and so could—Mr. Grey."
(To be continued.)