CHAPTER X.
BRIDE ROSES.
"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 herdescriptions may be relied upon), is one of those gentlemanly athleteswhose towering heads and powerful figures attract universal attention.Seen together, you would be apt to know them. But what reason have wefor thinking they will be found together?"
"How were they dressed?"
"Like people of fashion and respectability. He wore a brown-checked suitapparently fresh from the tailor; she, a dove-colored dress with whitetrimmings. The parasol shows the color of her hat and plumes. Both wereyoung, and (still according to Miss Butterworth) of sensitivetemperament and unused to crime; for she was in a fainting conditionwhen carried from the house, and he, with every inducement toself-restraint, showed himself the victim of such powerful emotion thathe would have been immediately surrounded and questioned if he had notset his burden down in the vestibule and at once plunged with the girlinto 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 upfrom the floor of Mr. Adams's study."
"Then you have given me a problem, Mr. Gryce," remarked the youngdetective dubiously, as he eyed the parasol held out to him and let therose-leaves drop carelessly through his fingers. "Somehow I do not feelthe same assurances of success that I did before. Perhaps I more fullyrealize the difficulties of any such quest, now that I see how muchrests upon chance in these matters. If Miss Butterworth had not been aprecise woman, I should have failed in my former attempt, as I am likelyto fail in this one. But I will make another effort to locate the ownerof 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 fadedrose-leaves. Just because every other young fellow on the force wouldmake a start from the parasol, I am going to try and effect one fromthese rose-leaves. I may be an egotist, but I cannot help that. I can donothing with the parasol."
"And what do you hope to do with the rose-leaves? How can a florist helpyou 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 Iknow that, I may succeed in discovering the particular store from whichthe 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 saynothing."
Young Sweetwater, who was now all nerve, enthusiasm, and hope, bowed. Hewas 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," heremarked on leaving.
"Luck to your search!" was the short reply. This ended the interview. Ina few minutes more Sweetwater was off.
The hour passed; he did not come back; the day, and still no Sweetwater.Another day went by, enlivened only by an interchange of notes betweenMr. Gryce and Miss Butterworth. Hers was read by the old detective witha smile. Perhaps because it was so terse; perhaps because it was socharacteristic.
Dear Mr. Gryce:
I do not presume to dictate or even to offer a suggestion to the New York police, but have you inquired of the postman in a certain district whether he can recall the postmark on any of the letters he delivered to Mr. Adams?
A. B.
His, on the contrary, was perused with a frown by his exacting colleaguein Gramercy Park. The reason is obvious.
Dear Miss Butterworth:
Suggestions are always in order, and even dictation can be endured from you. The postman delivers too many letters on that block to concern himself with postmarks. Sorry to close another thoroughfare.
E. G.
Meanwhile, the anxiety of both was great; that of Mr. Gryce excessive.He was consequently much relieved when, on the third morning, he foundSweetwater awaiting him at the office, with a satisfied smile lightingup his plain features. He had reserved his story for his special patron,and as soon as they were closeted together he turned with beaming eyestoward the old detective, crying:
"News, sir; good news! I have found them; I have found them both, and bysuch a happy stroke! It was a blind trail, but when the florist saidthat those petals might have fallen from a bride rose--well, sir, I knowthat any woman can carry bride roses, but when I remembered that theclothes of her companion looked as though they had just come from thetailor's, and that she wore gray and white--why, it gave me an idea, andI began my search after this unknown pair at the Bureau of VitalStatistics."
"Brilliant!" ejaculated the old detective. "That is, if the thingworked."
"And it did, sir; it did. I may have been born under a lucky star,probably was, but once started on this line of search, I went straightto the end. Shall I tell you how? Hunting through the list of suchpersons as had been married within the city limits during the last twoweeks, I came upon the name of one Eva Poindexter. Eva! that was a namewell-known in the house on ---- Street. I decided to follow up thisEva."
"A wise conclusion! And how did you set about it?"
"Why, I went directly to the clergyman who had performed the ceremony.He was a kind and affable dominie, sir, and I had no trouble in talkingto him."
"And you described the bride?"
"No, I led the conversation so that he described her."
"Good; and what kind of a woman did he make her out to be? Delicate?Pale?"
"Sir, he had not read the service for so lovely a bride in years. Veryslight, almost fragile, but beautiful, and with a delicate bloom whichshowed her to be in better health than one would judge from her daintyfigure. It was a private wedding, sir, celebrated in a hotel parlor; buther father was with her----"
"Her father?" Mr. Gryce's theory received its first shock. Then the oldman who had laughed on leaving Mr. Adams's house was not the father towhom those few lines in Mr. Adams's handwriting were addressed. Or thisyoung woman was not the person referred to in those lines.
"Is there anything wrong about that?" inquired Sweetwater.
Mr. Gryce became impassive again.
"No; I had not expected his attendance at the wedding; that is all."
"Sorry, sir, but there is no doubt about his having been there. Thebridegroom----"
"Yes, tell me about the bridegroom."
"Was the very man you described to me as leaving Mr. Adams's house withher. Tall, finely developed, with a grand air and gentlemanly manners.Even his clothes correspond with what you told me to expect: a checkedsuit, brown in color, and of the latest cut. Oh, he is the man!"
Mr. Gryce, with a suddenly developed interest in the lid of hisinkstand, recalled the lines which Mr. Adams had written immediatelybefore his death, and found himself wholly at sea. How reconcile factsso diametrically opposed? What allusion could there be in these lines tothe new-made bride of another man? They read, rather, as if she were hisown bride, as witness:
I return your daughter to you. She is here. Neither she nor you will ever see me again. Remember Evelyn!
AMOS'S SON.
There must be something wrong. Sweetwater must have been led astray by aseries of extraordinary coincidences. Dropping the lid of the inkstandin a way to make the young man smile, he looked up.
"I'm afraid it's been a fool chase, Sweetwater. The facts you relate inregard to this couple, the fact of their having been married at all,tally so little with what we have been led to expect from certain otherevidences which have come in----"
"Pardon me, sir, but will you hear me out? At the Imperial, where theywere married, I learned that the father and daughter had registered ascoming from a small place in Pennsylvania; but I could learn nothing inregard to the bridegroom. He had not appeared on th
e scene till the timefor the ceremony, and after the marriage was seen to take his bride awayin one carriage while the old gentleman departed in another. The latterconcerned me little; it was the young couple I had been detailed tofind. Employing the usual means of search, I tracked them to theWaldorf, where I learned what makes it certain that I have beenfollowing the right couple. On the afternoon of the very day of Mr.Adams's death, this young husband and wife left the hotel on foot anddid not come back. Their clothes, which had all been left behind, weretaken away two days later by an elderly gentleman who said he was herfather and whose appearance coincides with that of the personregistering as such at the Imperial. All of which looks favorable to mytheory, does it not, especially when you remember that the bridegroom'sname----"
"You have not told it."
"Is Adams, Thomas Adams. Same family as the murdered man, you see. Atleast, he has the same name."
Mr. Gryce surveyed the young man with admiration, but was not yetdisposed to yield him entire credence.
"Humph! I do not wonder you thought it worth your while to follow up thepair, if one of them is named Adams and the other Eva. But, Sweetwater,the longer you serve on the force the more you will learn thatcoincidences as strange and unexpected as these do occur at times, andmust be taken into account in the elucidation of a difficult problem.Much as I may regret to throw cold water on your hopes, there arereasons for believing that the young man and woman whom we are seekingare not the ones you have busied yourself about for the last two days.Certain facts which have come to light would seem to show that if shehad a husband at all, his name would not be Thomas Adams, but Felix, andas the facts I have to bring forward are most direct and unimpeachable,I fear you will have to start again, and on a new tack."
But Sweetwater remained unshaken, and eyed his superior with a vaguesmile playing about his lips.
"You have not asked me, sir, where I have spent all the time which haselapsed since I saw you last. The investigations I have mentioned didnot absorb more than a day."
"Very true. Where have you been, Sweetwater?"
"To Montgomery, sir, to that small town in Pennsylvania from which Mr.Poindexter and his daughter registered."
"Ah, I see! And what did you learn there? Something directly to thepoint?"
"I learned this, that John Poindexter, father of Eva, had for a friendin early life one Amos Cadwalader."
"Amos!" repeated Mr. Gryce, with an odd look.
"Yes, and that this Amos had a son, Felix."
"Ah!"
"You see, sir, we must be on the right track; coincidences cannot extendthrough half a dozen names."
"You are right. It is I who have made a mistake in drawing myconclusions too readily. Let us hear about this Amos. You gatheredsomething of his history, no doubt."
"All that was possible, sir. It is closely woven in with that ofPoindexter, and presents one feature which may occasion you no surprise,but which, I own, came near nonplussing me. Though the father of Felix,his name was not Adams. I say was not, for he has been dead six months.It was Cadwalader. And Felix went by the name of Cadwalader, too, in theearly days of which I have to tell, he and a sister whose name----"
"Well?"
"Was Evelyn."
"Sweetwater, you are an admirable fellow. So the mystery is ours."
"The history, not the mystery; that still holds. Shall I relate what Iknow of those two families?"
"At once: I am as anxious as if I were again twenty-three and had beenin your shoes instead of my own for the last three days."
"Very well, sir. John Poindexter and Amos Cadwalader were, in theirearly life, bosom friends. They had come from Scotland together andsettled in Montgomery in the thirties. Both married there, but JohnPoindexter was a prosperous man from the first, while Cadwalader hadlittle ability to support a family, and was on the verge of bankruptcywhen the war of the rebellion broke out and he enlisted as a soldier.Poindexter remained at home, caring for his own family and for the twochildren of Cadwalader, whom he took into his own house. I say his ownfamily, but he had no family, save a wife, up to the spring of '80. Thena daughter was born to him, the Eva who has just married Thomas Adams.Cadwalader, who was fitted for army life, rose to be a captain; but hewas unfortunately taken prisoner at one of the late battles and confinedin Libby Prison, where he suffered the tortures of the damned till hewas released, in 1865, by a forced exchange of prisoners. Broken, old,and crushed, he returned home, and no one living in the town at thattime will ever forget the day he alighted from the cars and took his wayup the main street. For not having been fortunate enough, or unfortunateenough, perhaps, to receive any communication from home, he advancedwith a cheerful haste, not knowing that his only daughter then lay deadin his friend's house, and that it was for her funeral that the peoplewere collecting in the green square at the end of the street. He was sopale, broken, and decrepit that few knew him. But there was one oldneighbor who recognized him and was kind enough to lead him into a quietplace, and there tell him that he had arrived just too late to see hisdarling daughter alive. The shock, instead of prostrating the oldsoldier, seemed to nerve him afresh and put new vigor into his limbs. Heproceeded, almost on a run, to Poindexter's house, and arrived just asthe funeral cortege was issuing from the door. And now happened astrange thing. The young girl had been laid on an open bier, and wasbeing carried by six sturdy lads to her last resting place. As thefather's eye fell on her young body under its black pall, a cry ofmortal anguish escaped him, and he sank on his knees right in the lineof the procession.
"At the same minute another cry went up, this time from behind the bier,and John Poindexter could be seen reeling at the side of FelixCadwalader, who alone of all present (though he was the youngest and theleast) seemed to retain his self-possession at this painful moment.Meanwhile the bereaved father, throwing himself at the side of the bier,began tearing away at the pall in his desire to look upon the face ofher he had left in such rosy health four years before. But he wasstopped, not by Poindexter, who had vanished from the scene, but byFelix, the cold, severe-looking boy who stood like a guard behind hissister. Reaching out a hand so white it was in itself a shock, he laidit in a certain prohibitory way on the pall, as if saying no. And whenhis father would have continued the struggle, it was Felix whocontrolled him and gradually drew him into the place at his own sidewhere a minute before the imposing figure of Poindexter had stood; afterwhich the bearers took up their burden again and moved on.
"But the dramatic scene was not over. As they neared the churchyardanother procession, similar in appearance to their own, issued from anadjoining street, and Evelyn's young lover, who had died almostsimultaneously with herself, was brought in and laid at her side. Butnot in the same grave: this was noticed by all, though most eyes andhearts were fixed upon Cadwalader, who had escaped his loathsome prisonand returned to the place of his affections for _this_.
"Whether he grasped then and there the full meaning of this doubleburial (young Kissam had shot himself upon hearing of Evelyn's death),or whether all explanations were deferred till he and Felix walked awaytogether from the grave, has never transpired. From that minute tillthey both left town on the following day, no one had any word with him,save Poindexter, whom he went once to see, and young Kissam's mother,who came once to see him. Like a phantom he had risen upon the sight ofthe good people of Montgomery, and like a phantom he disappeared, neverto be seen by any of them again, unless, as many doubt, the story istrue which was told some twenty years ago by one of the little villagelads. He says (it was six years after the tragic scene I have justrelated) that one evening as he was hurrying by the churchyard, in greatanxiety to reach home before it was too dark, he came upon the figure ofa man standing beside a grave, with a little child in his arms. This manwas tall, long-bearded, and terrifying. His attitude, as the laddescribes it, was one of defiance, if not of cursing. High in his righthand he held the child, almost as if he would hurl him at the villagewhich lies under the hill on which the ch
urchyard is perched; and thoughthe moment passed quickly, the boy, now a man, never has forgotten thepicture thus presented or admitted that it was anything but a real one.As the description he gave of this man answered to the appearance ofAmos Cadwalader, and as the shoe of a little child was found nextmorning on the grave of Cadwalader's daughter, Evelyn, it has beenthought by many that the boy really beheld this old soldier, who forsome mysterious reason had chosen nightfall for this fleeting visit tohis daughter's resting-place. But to others it was only a freak of thelad's imagination, which had been much influenced by the reading ofromances. For, as these latter reasoned, had it really been Cadwalader,why did he not show himself at John Poindexter's house--that old friendwho now had a little daughter and no wife and who could have made him socomfortable? Among these was Poindexter himself, though some thought helooked oddly while making this remark, as if he spoke more from customthan from the heart. Indeed, since the unfortunate death of Evelyn inhis house, he had never shown the same interest in the Cadwaladers. Butthen he was a man much occupied with great affairs, while theCadwaladers, except for their many griefs and misfortunes, were regardedas comparatively insignificant people, unless we except Felix, who fromhis earliest childhood had made himself feared even by grown people,though he never showed a harsh spirit or exceeded the bounds of decorumin speech or gesture. A year ago news came to Montgomery of AmosCadwalader's death, but no particulars concerning his family or burialplace. And that is all I have been able to glean concerning theCadwaladers."
Mr. Gryce had again become thoughtful.
"Have you any reason to believe that Evelyn's death was not a naturalone?"
"No, sir. I interviewed the old mother of the young man who shot himselfout of grief at Evelyn's approaching death, and if any doubt had existedconcerning a matter which had driven her son to a violent end, she couldnot have concealed it from me. But there seemed to have been none.Evelyn Cadwalader was always of delicate health, and when a quickconsumption carried her off no one marvelled. Her lover, who adored her,simply could not live without her, so he shot himself. There was nomystery about the tragic occurrence except that it seemed to sever anold friendship that once was firm as a rock. I allude to that betweenthe Poindexters and Cadwaladers."
"Yet in this tragedy which has just occurred in ---- Street we see thembrought together again. Thomas Adams marries Eva Poindexter. But who isThomas Adams? You have not mentioned him in this history."
"Not unless he was the child who was held aloft over Evelyn's grave."
"Humph! That seems rather far-fetched. What did you learn about him inMontgomery? Is he known there?"
"As well as any stranger can be who spends his time in courting a younggirl. He came to Montgomery a few months ago, from some foreigncity--Paris, I think--and, being gifted with every personal charmcalculated to please a cultivated young woman, speedily won theaffections of Eva Poindexter, and also the esteem of her father. Buttheir favorable opinion is not shared by every one in the town. Thereare those who have a good deal to say about his anxious and unsettledeye."
"Naturally; he could not marry all their daughters. But this history youhave given me: it is meagre, Sweetwater, and while it hints at somethingdeeply tragic, does not supply the key we want. A girl who died somethirty years ago! A father who disappeared! A brother who, from being aCadwalader, has become an Adams! An Eva whose name, as well as that ofthe long-buried Evelyn, was to be heard in constant repetition in theplace where the murdered Felix lay with those inscrutable lines in hisown writing, clinched between his teeth! It is a snarl, a perfect snarl,of which we have as yet failed to pull the right thread. But we'll gethold of it yet. I'm not going to be baffled in my old age bydifficulties I would have laughed at a dozen years ago."
"But this right thread? How shall we know it among the fifty I seeentangled in this matter?"
"First, find the whereabouts of this young couple--but didn't you tellme you had done so; that you know where they are?"
"Yes. I learned from the postmaster in Montgomery that a letteraddressed to Mrs. Thomas Adams had been sent from his post-office toBelleville, Long Island."
"Ah! I know that place."
"And wishing to be assured that the letter was not a pretense, I sent atelegram to the postmaster at Belleville. Here is his answer. It isunequivocal: 'Mr. Poindexter of Montgomery, Pa. Mr. Thomas Adams andMrs. Adams of the same place have been at the Bedell House in this placefive days.'"
"Very good; then we have them! Be ready to start for Belleville by oneo'clock sharp. And mind, Sweetwater, keep your wits alert and yourtongue still. Remember that as yet we are feeling our way blindfold, andmust continue to do so till some kind hand tears away the bandage fromour eyes. Go! I have a letter to write, for which you may send in a boyat the end of five minutes."
This letter was for Miss Butterworth, and created, a half-hour later,quite a stir in the fine old mansion in Gramercy Park. It ran thus:
Have you sufficient interest in the outcome of a certain matter to take a short journey into the country? I leave town at 1 P.M. for Belleville, Long Island. If you choose to do the same, you will find me at the Bedell House, in that town, early in the afternoon. If you enjoy novels, take one with you, and let me see you reading it on the hotel piazza at five o'clock. I may be reading too; if so, and my choice is a book, all is well, and you may devour your story in peace. But if I lay aside my book and take up a paper, devote but one eye to your story and turn the other on the people who are passing you. If after you have done so, you leave your book open, I shall understand that you fail to recognize these persons. But if you shut the volume, you may expect to see me also fold up my newspaper; for by so doing you will have signaled me that you have identified the young man and woman you saw leaving Mr. Adams's house on the fatal afternoon of your first entrance. E. G.
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