As her back was to Frederick he could not judge of the expression of that face save by the effect it had upon the different men confronting her. But to see them was enough. From their looks he could perceive that this young girl was in one of her baffling moods, and that from his father down, not one of the men present knew what to make of her.
At the sound his feet made, a relaxation took place in her body and she lost something of the defiant attitude she had before maintained. Presently he heard her voice:
“I am willing to answer any questions you may choose to put to me here; but I cannot consent to shut myself in with you in that small study; I should suffocate.”
Frederick could perceive the looks which passed between the five men assembled before her, and was astonished to note that the insignificant fellow they called Sweetwater was the first to answer.
“Very well,” said he; “if you enjoy the publicity of the open hall, no one here will object. Is not that so, gentlemen?”
Her two little fingers, which were turned towards Frederick, ran up and down the rail, making a peculiar rasping noise, which for a moment was the only sound to be heard. Then Mr. Courtney said:
“How came you to have the handling of the money taken from Agatha Webb’s private drawer?”
It was a startling question, but it seemed to affect Amabel less than it did Frederick. It made him start, but she only turned her head a trifle aside, so that the peculiar smile with which she prepared to answer could be seen by anyone standing below.
“Suppose you ask something less leading than that, to begin with,” she suggested, in her high, unmusical voice. “From the searching nature of this inquiry, you evidently believe I have information of an important character to give you concerning Mrs. Webb’s unhappy death. Ask me about that; the other question I will answer later.”
The aplomb with which this was said, mixed as it was with a feminine allurement of more than ordinary subtlety, made Mr. Sutherland frown and Dr. Talbot look perplexed, but it did not embarrass Mr. Courtney, who made haste to respond in his dryest accents:
“Very well, I am not particular as to what you answer first. A flower worn by you at the dance was found near Batsy’s skirts, before she was lifted up that morning. Can you explain this, or, rather, will you?”
“You are not obliged to, you know,” put in Mr. Sutherland, with his inexorable sense of justice. “Still, if you would, it might rob these gentlemen of suspicions you certainly cannot wish them to entertain.”
“What I say,” she remarked slowly, “will be as true to the facts as if I stood here on my oath. I can explain how a flower from my hair came to be in Mrs. Webb’s house, but not how it came to be found under Batsy’s feet. That someone else must clear up.” Her little finger, lifted from the rail, pointed toward Frederick, but no one saw this, unless it was that gentleman himself. “I wore a purple orchid in my hair that night, and there would be nothing strange in its being afterward picked up in Mrs. Webb’s house, because I was in that house at or near the time she was murdered.”
“You in that house?”
“Yes, as far as the ground floor; no farther.” Here the little finger stopped pointing. “I am ready to tell you about it, sirs, and only regret I have delayed doing so so long, but I wished to be sure it was necessary. Your presence here and your first question show that it is.”
There was suavity in her tone now, not unmixed with candour. Sweetwater did not seem to relish this, for he moved uneasily and lost a shade of his self-satisfied attitude. He had still to be made acquainted with all the ins and outs of this woman’s remarkable nature.
“We are waiting,” suggested Dr. Talbot.
She turned to face this new speaker, and Frederick was relieved from the sight of her tantalising smile.
“I will tell my story simply,” said she, “with the simple suggestion that you believe me; otherwise you will make a mistake. While I was resting from a dance the other night, I heard two of the young people talking about the Zabels. One of them was laughing at the old men, and the other was trying to relate some half-forgotten story of early love which had been the cause, she thought, of their strange and melancholy lives. I was listening to them, but I did not take in much of what they were saying till I heard behind me an irascible voice exclaiming: ‘You laugh, do you? I wonder if you would laugh so easily if you knew that these two poor old men haven’t had a decent meal in a fortnight?’ I didn’t know the speaker, but I was thrilled by his words. Not had a good meal, these men, for a fortnight! I felt as if personally guilty of their suffering, and, happening to raise my eyes at this minute and seeing through an open door the bountiful refreshments prepared for us in the supper room, I felt guiltier than ever. Suddenly I took a resolution. It was a queer one, and may serve to show you some of the oddities of my nature. Though I was engaged for the next dance, and though I was dressed in the flimsy garments suitable to the occasion, I decided to leave the ball and carry some sandwiches down to these old men. Procuring a bit of paper, I made up a bundle and stole out of the house without having said a word to anybody of my intention. Not wishing to be seen, I went out by the garden door, which is at the end of the dark hall—”
“Just as the band was playing the Harebell mazurka,” interpolated Sweetwater.
Startled for the first time from her careless composure by an interruption of which it was impossible for her at that time to measure either the motive or the meaning, she ceased to play with her fingers on the baluster rail and let her eyes rest for a moment on the man who had thus spoken, as if she hesitated between her desire to annihilate him for his impertinence and a fear of the cold hate she saw actuating his every word and look. Then she went on, as if no one had spoken:
“I ran down the hill recklessly. I was bent on my errand and not at all afraid of the dark. When I reached that part of the road where the streets branch off, I heard footsteps in front of me. I had overtaken someone. Slackening my pace, so that I should not pass this person, whom I instinctively knew to be a man, I followed him till I came to a high board fence. It was that surrounding Agatha Webb’s house, and when I saw it I could not help connecting the rather stealthy gait of the man in front of me with a story I had lately heard of the large sum of money she was known to keep in her house. Whether this was before or after this person disappeared round the corner I cannot say, but no sooner had I become certain that he was bent upon entering this house than my impulse to follow him became greater than my precaution, and turning aside from the direct path to the Zabels’, I hurried down High Street just in time to see the man enter Mrs. Webb’s front gateway.
“It was a late hour for visiting, but as the house had lights in both its lower and upper stories, I should by good rights have taken it for granted that he was an expected guest and gone on my way to the Zabels’. But I did not. The softness with which this person stepped and the skulking way in which he hesitated at the front gate aroused my worst fears, and after he had opened that gate and slid in, I was so pursued by the idea that he was there for no good that I stepped inside the gate myself and took my stand in the deep shadow cast by the old pear tree on the right-hand side of the walk. Did anyone speak?”
There was a unanimous denial from the five gentlemen before her, yet she did not look satisfied.
“I thought I heard someone make a remark,” she repeated, and paused again for a half-minute, during which her smile was a study, it was so cold and in such startling contrast to the vivid glances she threw everywhere except behind her on the landing where Frederick stood listening to her every word.
“We are very much interested,” remarked Mr. Courtney. “Pray, go on.”
Drawing her left hand from the balustrade where it had rested, she looked at one of her fingers with an odd backward gesture.
“I will,” she said, and her tone was hard and threatening. “Five minutes, no longer, passed, when I was startled by a loud and terrible cry from the house, and looking up at the second-story win
dow from which the sound proceeded, I saw a woman’s figure hanging out in a seemingly pulseless condition. Too terrified to move, I clung trembling to the tree, hearing and not hearing the shouts and laughter of a dozen or more men, who at that minute passed by the corner on their way to the wharves. I was dazed, I was choking, and only came to myself when, sooner or later, I do not know how soon or how late, a fresh horror happened. The woman whom I had just seen fall almost from the window was a serving woman, but when I heard another scream I knew that the mistress of the house was being attacked, and rivetting my eyes on those windows, I beheld the shade of one of them thrown back and a hand appear, flinging out something which fell in the grass on the opposite side of the lawn. Then the shade fell again, and hearing nothing further, I ran to where the object flung out had fallen, and feeling for it, found and picked up an old-fashioned dagger, dripping with blood. Horrified beyond all expression, I dropped the weapon and retreated into my former place of concealment.
“But I was not satisfied to remain there. A curiosity, a determination even, to see the man who had committed this dastardly deed, attacked me with such force that I was induced to leave my hiding-place and even to enter the house where in all probability he was counting the gains he had just obtained at the price of so much precious blood. The door, which he had not perfectly closed behind him, seemed to invite me in, and before I had realised my own temerity, I was standing in the hall of this ill-fated house.”
The interest, which up to this moment had been breathless, now expressed itself in hurried ejaculations and broken words; and Mr. Sutherland, who had listened like one in a dream, exclaimed eagerly, and in a tone which proved that he, for the moment at least, believed this more than improbable tale:
“Then you can tell us if Philemon was in the little room at the moment when you entered the house?”
As everyone there present realised the importance of this question, a general movement took place and each and all drew nearer as she met their eyes and answered placidly:
“Yes; Mr. Webb was sitting in a chair asleep. He was the only person I saw.”
“Oh, I know he never committed this crime,” gasped his old friend, in a relief so great that one and all seemed to share it.
“Now I have courage for the rest. Go on, Miss Page.”
But Miss Page paused again to look at her finger, and give that sideways toss to her head that seemed so uncalled for by the situation to any who did not know of the compact between herself and the listening man below.
“I hate to go back to that moment,” said she; “for when I saw the candles burning on the table, and the husband of the woman who at that very instant was possibly breathing her last breath in the room overhead, sitting there in unconscious apathy, I felt something rise in my throat that made me deathly sick for a moment. Then I went right in where he was, and was about to shake his arm and wake him, when I detected a spot of blood on my finger from the dagger I had handled. That gave me another turn, and led me to wipe off my finger on his sleeve.”
“It’s a pity you did not wipe off your slippers too,” murmured Sweetwater.
Again she looked at him, again her eyes opened in terror upon the face of this man, once so plain and insignificant in her eyes, but now so filled with menace she inwardly quaked before it, for all her apparent scorn.
“Slippers,” she murmured.
“Did not your feet as well as your hands pass through the blood on the grass?”
She disdained to answer him.
“I have accounted for the blood on my hand,” she said, not looking at him, but at Mr. Courtney. “If there is any on my slippers it can be accounted for in the same way.” And she rapidly resumed her narrative. “I had no sooner made my little finger clean I never thought of anyone suspecting the old gentleman when I heard steps on the stairs and knew that the murderer was coming down, and in another instant would pass the open door before which I stood.
“Though I had been courageous enough up to that minute, I was seized by a sudden panic at the prospect of meeting face to face one whose hands were perhaps dripping with the blood of his victim. To confront him there and then might mean death to me, and I did not want to die, but to live, for I am young, sirs, and not without a prospect of happiness before me. So I sprang back, and seeing no other place of concealment in the whole bare room, crouched down in the shadow of the man you call Philemon. For one, two minutes, I knelt there in a state of mortal terror, while the feet descended, paused, started to enter the room where I was, hesitated, turned, and finally left the house.”
“Miss Page, wait, wait,” put in the coroner. “You saw him; you can tell who this man was?”
The eagerness of this appeal seemed to excite her. A slight colour appeared in her cheeks and she took a step forward, but before the words for which they so anxiously waited could leave her lips, she gave a start and drew back with, an ejaculation which left a more or less sinister echo in the ears of all who heard it.
Frederick had just shown himself at the top of the staircase.
“Good-morning, gentlemen,” said he, advancing into their midst with an air whose unexpected manliness disguised his inward agitation. “The few words I have just heard Miss Page say interest me so much, I find it impossible not to join you.”
Amabel, upon whose lips a faint complacent smile had appeared as he stepped by her, glanced up at these words in secret astonishment at the indifference they showed, and then dropped her eyes to his hands with an intent gaze which seemed to affect him unpleasantly, for he thrust them immediately behind him, though he did not lower his head or lose his air of determination.
“Is my presence here undesirable?” he inquired, with a glance towards his father.
Sweetwater looked as if he thought it was, but he did not presume to say anything, and the others being too interested in the developments of Miss Page’s story to waste any time on lesser matters, Frederick remained, greatly to Miss Page’s evident satisfaction.
“Did you see this man’s face?” Mr. Courtney now broke in, in urgent inquiry.
Her answer came slowly, after another long look in Frederick’s direction.
“No, I did not dare to make the effort. I was obliged to crouch too close to the floor. I simply heard his footsteps.”
“See, now!” muttered Sweetwater, but in so low a tone she did not hear him. “She condemns herself. There isn’t a woman living who would fail to look up under such circumstances, even at the risk of her life.”
Knapp seemed to agree with him, but Mr. Courtney, following his one idea, pressed his former question, saying:
“Was it an old man’s step?”
“It was not an agile one.”
“And you did not catch the least glimpse of the man’s face or figure?”
“Not a glimpse.”
“So you are in no position to identify him?”
“If by any chance I should hear those same footsteps coming down a flight of stairs, I think I should be able to recognise them,” she allowed, in the sweetest tones at her command.
“She knows it is too late for her to hear those of the two dead Zabels,” growled the man from Boston.
“We are no nearer the solution of this mystery than we were in the beginning,” remarked the coroner.
“Gentlemen, I have not yet finished my story,” intimated Amabel, sweetly. “Perhaps what I have yet to tell may give you some clew to the identity of this man.”
“Ah, yes; go on, go on. You have not yet explained how you came to be in possession of Agatha’s money.”
“Just so,” she answered, with another quick look at Frederick, the last she gave him for some time. “As soon, then, as I dared, I ran out of the house into the yard. The moon, which had been under a cloud, was now shining brightly, and by its light I saw that the space before me was empty and that I might venture to enter the street. But before doing so I looked about for the dagger I had thrown from me before going in, but I could not find it. It ha
d been picked up by the fugitive and carried away. Annoyed at the cowardice which had led me to lose such a valuable piece of evidence through a purely womanish emotion, I was about to leave the yard, when my eyes fell on the little bundle of sandwiches which I had brought down from the hill and which I had let fall under the pear tree, at the first scream I had heard from the house. It had burst open and two or three of the sandwiches lay broken on the ground. But those that were intact I picked up, and being more than ever anxious to cover up by some ostensible errand my absence from the party, I rushed away toward the lonely road where these brothers lived, meaning to leave such fragments as remained on the old doorstep, beyond which I had been told such suffering existed.
“It was now late, very late, for a girl like myself to be out, but, under the excitement of what I had just seen and heard, I became oblivious to fear, and rushed into those dismal shadows as into transparent daylight. Perhaps the shouts and stray sounds of laughter that came up from the wharves where a ship was getting under way gave me a certain sense of companionship. Perhaps—but it is folly for me to dilate upon my feelings; it is my errand you are interested in, and what happened when I approached the Zabels’ dreary dwelling.”
The look with which she paused, ostensibly to take breath, but in reality to weigh and criticise the looks of those about her, was one of those wholly indescribable ones with which she was accustomed to control the judgment of men who allowed themselves to watch too closely the ever-changing expression of her weird yet charming face. But it fell upon men steeled against her fascinations, and realising her inability to move them, she proceeded with her story before even the most anxious of her hearers could request her to do so.
“I had come along the road very quietly,” said she, “for my feet were lightly shod, and the moonlight was too bright for me to make a misstep. But as I cleared the trees and came into the open place where the house stands I stumbled with surprise at seeing a figure crouching on the doorstep I had anticipated finding as empty as the road. It was an old man’s figure, and as I paused in my embarrassment he slowly and with great feebleness rose to his feet and began to grope about for the door. As he did so, I heard a sharp tinkling sound, as of something metallic falling on the doorstone, and, taking a quick step forward, I looked over his shoulder and espied in the moonlight at his feet a dagger so like the one I had lately handled in Mrs. Webb’s yard that I was overwhelmed with astonishment, and surveyed the aged and feeble form of the man who had dropped it with a sensation difficult to describe. The next moment he was stooping for the weapon, with a startled air that has impressed itself distinctly upon my memory, and when, after many feeble attempts, he succeeded in grasping it, he vanished into the house so suddenly that I could not be sure whether or not he had seen me standing there.
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 123
