Grayce declared she did not know the kind of bonds. She supposed they might have been issued by the Government. What difference did it make? Bonds were bonds, you know.
“Oh, none,” said Muriel. “None at all. But where does he keep them? For surely they’re not kept here at Ormesby?”
“Well, they’re in a safe place,” said Grayce with great complacency. “He’ll know where to look for them when the time comes.”
Muriel, seeing a gleam of suspicion enter the other’s eyes, decided to drop the subject. But she repeated what she had heard to Gray; and Gray, troubled, came to me with it.
“It’s not impossible,” I told her, “that Grayce may have learned something about those bonds Agnes had. I hope you don’t suspect that I——”
“Of course not! But why should Agnes have kept them here at Ormesby? I’d think it much more likely they’re in some safe deposit vault.”
“Still, no one has been able to find any record of such a box among her papers, or a key anywhere among her effects. Mr. Paget and the creditors’ auditor have been looking high and low for just such a key.”
“But where could she have hidden them? This is a large house, of course, and it’s old and all that, but really there aren’t many places where a package of bonds could be safely hidden so that no one could find them.”
“That depends,” I told her, “on how thoroughly one searches. Why, they might be lying at this moment behind some of the larger books in the library. If so, if they were left, apparently carelessly, in plain sight of everyone. . . . Well, you remember Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’?”
“But that was the work of a very clever person. Agnes was anything but clever. It would have been the greatest folly, in her opinion, to have tried to hide securities by revealing them.”
“I grant that. None the less, I’m becoming more and more convinced that those same securities are somewhere at Ormesby.”
“You must have a reason for thinking so.”
“I have. I’ll show it to you. For I’m also about convinced that the time has come to tell you the truth about Agnes’s death.”
“You mean——?”
“I mean that your sis— that Grayce hadn’t anything to do with it.”
“Then who——?”
“It was Alice Hobbs.”
“Are you quite sure of that?”
“Perfectly.” And I took from my pocketbook the folded note I had found on the table.
“Why this . . . this changes everything!” cried Gray, her eyes shining in excitement induced, I supposed, by proof that her sister must be held guiltless of murder. “For don’t you see what it means? ‘She cheated me.’ That must have something to do with those bonds we were speaking of. Oh, you’re perfectly right, Selden. They’re here at Ormesby. If only we knew where to look.”
We sat down and discussed possible hiding places. I was by no means as firmly convinced as Gray had immediately become that the bonds were meant by the wording of the note; but I owned myself, nevertheless, willing to accept such a supposition as a working hypothesis. For, so far as either Gray or I could imagine, there was no manner in which Agnes could have cheated Alice Hobbs, unless Alice had become in some way the accomplice of Agnes, with a promised reward out of the only money which Agnes was known to possess in considerable quantity. Moreover Alice had written “she hid them from me,” and the “them” certainly appeared to mean the things in respect of which Mrs. Hobbs had held herself to have been cheated. And they were in “the old iron place”?
“At least,” I said, having re-read the note slowly and aloud to Gray, “we needn’t waste time looking behind books and such things.”
“I keep thinking,” she remarked, “of an iron kettle, though ‘the old iron place’ hardly fits as description of such a thing. Then there’s a spot up in the woods where we’ve always thrown old scraps of tin and iron. But surely she wouldn’t have put them there.”
“Do you suppose Hobbs could help us? For she wrote as though he’d know what she meant. I haven’t told him about this note. I’ve hesitated to do it for more reasons than one.”
“Yes,” she nodded, slowly, “I think I understand you. And I also think you’ve been wise. Just the same . . .”
“Oh, he’s a right to know, of course, provided he can take it.”
And then we discussed this further matter of Hobbs’s reaction to the knowledge we possessed. In the end we broke off our talk without having come to any definite conclusion. I promised Gray, however, that I’d have a look at the scrap dump she had mentioned, while she declared herself ready to search attic, basement and all cupboards and closets to satisfy her notion that an iron kettle would prove to be the thing we wanted.
As to our actions in the event of finding the treasure, we held one purpose in common. That was to turn the securities over to the creditors or their representatives, who had in some way become possessed of a vague knowledge that assets in large amount were yet missing. Two or three of these men yet lingered in Tiltown, visiting us almost daily and pestering us with inquiries. Their questions were, to say the least of it, embarrassing. Each of us went in hourly dread lest one or more of the others betray something which might lead to an investigation which must bring down upon us the heavy hand of the law. To find the bonds and turn them over to Paget and the rest and thus to rid ourselves, as we hoped, of these spies—that, it seemed to both Gray and myself, would be well worth the loss of the value of the bonds to us.
I could not help thinking, for a moment, how naturally Gray and I worked together in double harness. And it may be that I sighed a little, upon leaving her company, to think that the time was surely approaching, even if slowly, when she and I must part forever. But enough of that!
I searched, then, the scrap heap I have mentioned, while Gray busied herself in rummaging through the house. We were obliged to work very quietly and unostentatiously. Neither of us dared let any of the others suspect our purpose, since we had reasons to suspect the discretion of all of them. I do not mean that they might have tried to hinder us, or that they might have objected to our intention to turn the bonds over to Ormond’s creditors. It was, rather, that our companions, with the exception of Muriel, had suffered so severely in their nervous states as to be quite untrustworthy. They were already carrying secrets enough, and to spare. We dreaded lest the addition of even one more to the load should prove to be too much. It is true that the people of the town had not, as yet, shown themselves to be very inquisitive. Doubtless they would begin to betray this very human characteristic before many more days had passed.
With all this, however, it almost seemed as though each of us at Ormesby were engaged in a private hunt for the bonds. I have spoken of how I encountered this one, or that, wandering alone, at dead of night, in various parts of the house. And now, when I came upon any of them anywhere about the place, that woman, or Hobbs, if it were he, started and turned hastily in another direction. Even Muriel acted thus unaccountably. Hitherto, in our married life before the divorce, on those occasions when temporary little quarrels had come between us, she had been wont to stare me out of countenance, with that silent hurt look which some women know so well how to put into their eyes. And in those days I was frequently made to feel that I had been brutal to her, and then I’d beg her pardon, make love to her, and peace would be restored between us. But now she would not glance at me at all. She avoided my eyes as if she, and not I, had been guilty of the things which were driving us apart. And this, in some unaccountable way, acted upon me to convince me that it was actually I who had done the wrong, whatever that might have been. It was as if she were so sure of my guilt she had no need to vindicate herself before me, or to bring me to woo peace with her in order to save her feminine pride. She gave me no chance whatever to justify myself. And I was mystified and, in spite of everything, I could not
bring myself to secret acknowledgment that I was not deeply hurt.
Let me make all clear in this matter of Muriel. I had wavered for a time before Gray’s dominating and somewhat mysterious charm. Even now I thought of her tenderly and pitied her for the fate which had overtaken her family and herself. I had more than once been tempted to lay myself at Barbara’s feet, a slave to the exquisite beauty of her face. More than that, I was tempted, by what abysmal demon within myself I do not know, to become her slave for worship of that very evil which I knew to be within her and which called to me to put by decency and pride and revel down to death in forgetfulness of all that has gone to create such civilization as we have. And despite Muriel’s notion to the contrary, I had not escaped a longing to throw myself into Grayce’s crazy arms, spend what little of life might remain to me in one delirious orgy with her, and then die and be done with it all, glad only to go out of the world and be at rest. Yet through all of this, I had never ceased entirely to think of Muriel as of the woman I had once loved and whom I might love again could I be convinced again of her truth and steadfastness. Besides, let her present aversion and dislike be the result of what they might, I did not doubt, in the deepest part of my heart, that she still loved me. Nor do I lay that wholly to masculine vanity. She might leave me again . . . oh yes! I could well imagine her doing that. But that she would always be, at bottom, my woman in such a way as she would never be woman to any other man, somehow I could not seriously doubt that. And it hurt, now, when I saw her turn coldly away from me with no slightest sign of a desire for reconciliation. I had rejected her offer of that very thing. Now, however, it hurt because she no longer seemed inclined to make such an offer.
The situation was rapidly becoming more than I could bear. Perhaps, even, the state of my relations with Muriel had lately made it possible for me to give Gray merely a sigh, no more.
“You treat me,” I told Muriel one day, stepping between her and the door, so that she could not leave the little drawing-room in which I had trapped her, “as if I were some kind of criminal. What’s come between us? I mean, what more than usual?”
“Let me pass,” she began, icily, “I——”
Then, abruptly, she changed her mind. “Come with me,” she commanded.
She passed me and led the way up the stairs and into the room formerly occupied by Agnes Ormes. As I have said, Muriel had been using it since Agnes’s death. I stood just over the threshold, wondering why she had brought me there. Without a word she pulled open a small drawer in Agnes’s ornate desk, took from it a package of brown paper, and thrust the package into my hands.
“Open it,” she said, simply, turning away from me to stand before one of the windows.
The package was not tied with string or anything else. The paper had been rolled loosely around whatever object it contained. It was the work of but a moment to disclose a sheaf of bonds. They were Government bonds; and there were a hundred of them, or so I estimated their number during the few seconds that elapsed while I stood examining them.
“Where did you find ’em?” I asked.
For answer she went again to the little desk and out of the same drawer in which the bonds had lain took another piece of paper. This also she handed to me, saying curtly “Read it.” I read:
“Dear Mrs. Seaverns I come to you because I haven’t no place else to turn to I am a wronged and a unhappy woman if ever they was one upon this earth. Things has got to such a pretty howdy-do that something desprit must be done soon. I take this means of writing terrible wrongs. Please forgive me and overlook the manner. Them bonds had disappeared entirely from the old iron place where she kept them in the pipe that leads down to where the poor dead folks reposes in peace I hope, God rest their souls. Your husban has got them safe and soun in his room. They lies safe and soun under the bath tub in his room which I didn’t clean this morning like I’d ought to have. Goodby. Don’t grieve for me to much. It is better so, to write the wrongs done me.
Yrs respectively,
Alice Haskins Hobbs.
“The old iron place”! It seems queer to me now that the large iron pipe had never come into my mind as a possible hiding place. But then, just as I had said to Gray might be the case, the most obvious place of concealment would be that in which we might never think to look. It appeared that either poor Alice Hobbs had removed them and placed them under my bathtub, before killing Agnes Ormes or immediately after that; or she had seen Agnes change the hiding place. That bathtub stood on four short legs; it was not of the modern pattern that sits flat on the floor.
But why had either woman put the securities into my apartment? And why had Alice informed my wife of what had been done? Had she become convinced that we, the strangers at Ormesby, were the only persons there who should escape alive from the clutches of the Ormesby curse? She might have thought that the sisters and the aunt of Ormond were doomed as he had been. Or it may have been that she had long nursed a secret grudge against all members of the family, not an uncommon thing with servants of a certain mental stripe. It might even have been that her hatred of Agnes had extended itself to include the others. It might have been that she hated her husband. Whatever her motive, it was clear that she had wanted Muriel and me to have possession of the wealth which she must have fancied she could never herself enjoy. And it could only have been a disordered brain that stressed the disappearance of the bonds from “the old iron place” to add, the next moment, that they were to be found under my bathtub.
To my questions Muriel replied readily enough. She informed me that she had found Alice’s letter in Agnes’s room, pinned to a pillow of the bed, quite as if Alice had been a reader of old-time murder tales. Muriel had entered the room for some little thing soon after the finding of Alice a suicide in the kitchen. She had then visited my room and had taken the bonds from under the bathtub. She had immediately placed them in her own bed, under the mattress, where they had been safe from the prying eyes of the creditors’ people, intending to inform me of the find. But circumstances had prevented her doing so until the next day, and by that time she had become somewhat suspicious that I was in some way conspiring with Grayce to rob the rest of the family of their rightful property. I had, of course, been keeping a very watchful eye on Grayce, remaining much in her company, since I dared not let her speak privately with any of the strangers at the house. But Muriel, sensible as she really was, was yet a woman. Jealousy had had its way with her, even when she had told herself that she was not jealous. She had not hesitated to conspire with Ormond Ormes to gain possession of the bonds, quite willing to believe his tale of needing his own property to stave off bankruptcy. Yet she could find it in her heart to condemn me for what she assumed was a contemplated theft. I know that we are all, at bottom, ready to blame others, rather than ourselves. Nevertheless I think that Muriel’s unconscious jealousy was at the root of her manner and actions.
“For all I could tell, you were really going to cut and run with Grayce,” she argued as we sat and talked, the bonds lying unnoticed on the floor between us. “I wasn’t jealous. I don’t think I was. I’ve been jealous often enough to know the feeling of it. But I did think you might want to go away with Grayce for a long enough time to— Oh, don’t you see? All of us hate this house. How could you or any of us be blamed for wanting to leave it? And if you took Grayce away with you and took the bonds, too, well, I supposed you’d not abandon the girl. I couldn’t think that of you. So the thing might easily have become permanent.”
“Yes,” said I, slowly, “this depression has made changes in all of us. You’d not once have thought such things of me.”
“I’m sorry, Selden. I don’t really think them now.”
“You’d not have thought them at all, if . . .” I did not finish. But she read my mind.
“Yes! I deserve that, I suppose. If I’d not been weak enough to. . . . Yes, you’re right. But I’m no
t going back to the stage. No matter what may happen, I’m not going back.”
“I don’t wish to act the prig,” I told her, for I was feeling, at that moment, very much like one. “Come! No one is above temptation, at some time, especially when poverty helps the tempter. I’m not holding anything of that divorce business against you. And I’m not saying that I myself haven’t been tempted to do the very thing, with Grayce, that you thought I might. So . . . well, all’s even between us, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” And there was a sudden gleam in her eyes. “Whatever we may have been tempted to do,” I told her, “we’re together again. It isn’t the being tempted that kills respect and . . . and love. I love you now. I’ve never ceased loving you, I think. We’ll start again . . . somewhere. We’ll be better people for having been through all this.”
But I did not go to her at once and put my arms around her. I am glad we did not coax passion, at that time, to do for us what reason was more slowly, yet more securely, doing.
For I had begun to understand something of Muriel’s motives and to see a little way into the recesses of her mind. That which had appealed to me as inconsistency and which had almost dismayed me, now resolved into something resembling consistency when it appeared that she had crushed down what she had supposed was her natural feeling of jealousy to excuse what she had taken to be my own wish to escape leaving Ormesby a pauper. That jealousy had been working, of course, all the while. And it had really been no more than a jealous fear that there might have been an understanding between Grayce and me which had caused Muriel to remain silent on this matter of the bonds all these weeks and months. None the less, if such a vice as jealousy can be made to serve one’s better instincts and to help one in the doing of generous deeds, then I do not see how it is entirely to be despised and condemned. Fear, also, is a vice, but it was fear, and very little else, that made the first man out of some whimpering ape.
Fingers of Fear Page 22
