The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack

by Anna Katharine Green

  “But she shook her head and wrote her name in hastily, with a feverish energy that astonished me. Expecting to see her drop back exhausted if not lifeless as the pen left the paper, I drew the document away and bent to support her. But she did not need my assistance. Indeed she looked stronger than before, and what was still more astonishing, seemed even more anxious and burningly eager.

  “‘Is she holding up till the witnesses have affixed their signatures?’ I inwardly queried. And intent upon relieving her, I hastily explained to them the requirements of the case, and did not myself breathe easily till I saw their two names below hers. Then I felt that she could rest; but to my surprise but one sigh of relief rose in that room, and that was from the cringing, cruel-eyed inheritor, who, at the first intimation that the document was duly signed and attested, sprang from his corner with such a smile that the place seemed to grow hideous, and I drew involuntarily back.

  “‘Let me have it,’ were his first words. ‘I have lived in this hole, and for fifteen years made myself a slave to her whims, till I have almost rotted away like the place itself. And now I want my reward. Let me have the will.’

  “His hand was on the paper and in my surprise I had almost yielded it up to him, when another hand seized it, and the dying, gasping woman, mumbling and mouthing, pointed for the third time to the clock and then to one corner of the paper, trying to make me understand something I entirely failed to comprehend.

  “‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What do you want? Is not the will to your liking?’

  “‘Yes, yes,’ her frenzied nods seemed to say, and yet she continued pointing to the clock and then to the paper while the angry man before her stared and muttered in a mixture of perplexity and alarm which added no little to the excitement of the harrowing scene.

  “‘Let me see if I can tell what she wants,’ suddenly observed the young woman who had signed the paper as a witness. And bringing her sweet womanly face around where the rolling eye of the woman could see her, she asked with friendly interest in her tone, ‘Do you wish the time of day written on the will?’

  “Oh, the relief that swept over that poor woman’s tortured countenance! She nodded and looked up at me so confidingly that in despite of the oddity of the request I rapidly penned after the date, the words ‘at half-past ten o’clock P.M.,’ and caused the witnesses to note the addition.

  “This seemed to satisfy her, and she sank back with a sign that I was to yield to her brother’s demand and give him the paper he coveted, and when I hesitated, started up again with such a frenzied appeal in her face that in the terror of seeing her die before our eyes, I yielded it to his outstretched hand, expecting at the most to see him put it in his pocket.

  “But no, the moment he felt it in his grasp, he set down the lamp, and, without a look in her direction or a word of thanks to me or the two neighbors who had come to his assistance, started rapidly from the room. Disturbed and doubting my own wisdom in thus yielding to an impulse of humanity which may be called weakness by such strong-minded men as yourself, I turned to follow him, but the woman’s trembling hand again stopped me; and convinced at last that I was alarming myself unnecessarily and that she had had as much pleasure in making him her heir as he in being made so, I turned to pay her my adieux, when the expression of her face, changed now from what it had been to one of hope and trembling delight, made me pause again in wonder, and almost prepared me for the low and thrilling whisper which now broke from her lips in distinct tones.

  “‘Is he gone?’

  “‘Then you can speak,’ burst from the young woman.

  “The widow gave her an eloquent look.

  “‘I have not spoken,’ said she, ‘for two days; I have been saving my strength. Hark!’ she suddenly whispered. ‘He has no light, he will pitch over the landing. No, no, he has gone by it in safety, he has reached—’ she paused and listened intently, trembling as she did so—’Will he go into that room?—Run! follow! see if he has dared—but no, he has gone down to the kitchen,’ came in quick glad relief from her lips as a distant door shut softly at the back end of the house. ‘He is leaving the house and will never come back. I am released forever from his watchfulness; I am free! Now, sir, draw up another will, quick; let these two kind friends wait and see me sign it, and God will bless you for your kindness and my eyes will close in peace upon this cruel world.’

  “Aghast but realizing in a moment that she had but lent herself to her brother’s wishes in order to rid herself of a surveillance which had possibly had an almost mesmeric influence upon her, I opened my portfolio again, saying:

  “‘You declare yourself then to have been unduly influenced by your brother in making the will you have just signed in the presence of these two witnesses?’

  “To which she replied with every evidence of a clear mind—

  “‘I do; I do. I could not move, I could not breathe, I could not think except as he willed it. When he was near, and he was always near, I had to do just as he wished—perhaps because I was afraid of him, perhaps because he had the stronger will of the two, I do not know; I cannot explain it, but he ruled me and has done so all my life till this hour. Now he has left me, left me to die, as he thinks, unfriended and alone, but I am strong yet, stronger than he knows, and before I turn my face to the wall, I will tear my property from his unholy grasp and give it where I have always wanted it to go—to my poor, lost, unfortunate sister.’

  “‘Ah,’ thought I, ‘I see, I see’; and satisfied at last that I was no longer being made the minister of an unscrupulous avarice, I hastily drew up a second will, only pausing to ask the name of her sister and the place of her residence.

  “‘Her name is Harriet Smith,’ was the quick reply, ‘and she lived when last I heard of her in Marston, a little village in Connecticut. She may be dead now, it is so long since I received any news of her—Hiram would never let me write to her—but she may have had children, and if so, they are just as welcome as she is to the little I have to give.’

  “‘Her children’s names?’ I asked.

  “‘I don’t know, I don’t know anything about her. But you will find out everything necessary when I am gone; and if she is living, or has children, you will see that they are reinstated in the home of their ancestors. For,’ she now added eagerly, ‘they must come here to live, and build up this old house again and make it respectable once more or they cannot have my money. I want you to put that in my will; for when I have seen these old walls toppling, the doors wrenched off, and its lintels demolished for firewood, for firewood, sir, I have kept my patience alive and my hope up by saying, Never mind; some day Harriet’s children will make this all right again. The old house which their kind grandfather was good enough to give me for my own, shall not fall to the ground without one effort on my part to save it. And this is how I will accomplish it. This house is for Harriet or Harriet’s children if they will come here and live in it one year, but if they will not do this, let it go to my brother, for I shall have no more interest in it. You heed me, lawyer?’

  “I nodded and wrote on busily, thinking, perhaps, that if Harriet or Harriet’s children did not have some money of their own to fix up this old place, they would scarcely care to accept their forlorn inheritance. Meantime the two witnesses who had lingered at the woman’s whispered entreaty exchanged glances, and now and then a word expressive of the interest they were taking in this unusual affair.

  “‘Who is to be the executor of this will?’ I inquired.

  “‘You,’ she cried. Then, as I started in surprise, she added: ‘I know nobody but you. Put yourself in as executor, and oh, sir, when it is all in your hands, find my lost relatives, I beseech you, and bring them here, and take them into my mother’s room at the end of the hall, and tell them it is all theirs, and that they must make it their room and fix it up and lay a new floor—you remember, a new floor—and—’ Her words rambled off incoherently, but her eyes remained fixed and eager.

  “I wrote in my na
me as executor.

  “When the document was finished, I placed it before her and asked the young lady who had been acting as my lamp-bearer to read it aloud. This she did; the second will reading thus:

  “The last will and testament of Cynthia Wakeham, widow of John Lapham Wakeham, of Flatbush, Kings County, New York.

  “First: I direct all my just debts and funeral expenses to be paid.

  “Second: I give, devise, and bequeath all my property to my sister, Harriet Smith, if living at my death, and, if not living, then to her children living at my death, in equal shares, upon condition, nevertheless, that the legatee or legatees who take under this will shall forthwith take up their residence in the house I now occupy in Flatbush, and continue to reside therein for at least one year thence next ensuing. If neither my said sister nor any of her descendants be living at my death, or if so living, the legatee who takes hereunder shall fail to comply with the above conditions, then all of said property shall go to my brother, Hiram Huckins.

  “Third: I appoint Frank Etheridge, of New York City, sole executor of this my last will and testament, thereby revoking all other wills by me made, especially that which was executed on this date at half-past ten o’clock.

  “Witness my hand this fifth day of June, in the year eighteen hundred and eighty-eight.

  “Signed, published, and declared by the testatrix to be her last will and testament, in our presence, who, at her request and in her presence and in the presence of each other, have subscribed our names hereto as witnesses, on this 5th day of June, 1888, at five minutes to eleven P.M.

  “This was satisfactory to the dying widow, and her strength kept up till she signed it and saw it duly attested; but when that was done, and the document safely stowed away in my pocket, she suddenly collapsed and sank back in a dying state upon her pillow.

  “‘What are we going to do?’ now cried Miss Thompson, with looks of great compassion at the poor woman thus bereft, at the hour of death, of the natural care of relatives and friends. ‘We cannot leave her here alone. Has she no doctor—no nurse?’

  “‘Doctors cost money,’ murmured the almost speechless sufferer. And whether the smile which tortured her poor lips as she said these words was one of bitterness at the neglect she had suffered, or of satisfaction at the thought she had succeeded in saving this expense, I have never been able to decide.

  “As I stooped to raise her now fallen head a quick, loud sound came to our ears from the back of the house, as of boards being ripped up from the floor by a reckless and determined hand. Instantly the woman’s face assumed a ghastly look, and, tossing up her arms, she cried:

  “‘He has found the box!—the box! Stop him! Do not let him carry it away! It is—’ She fell back, and I thought all was over; but in another instant she had raised herself almost to a sitting position, and was pointing straight at the clock. ‘There! there! look! the clock!’ And without a sigh or another movement she sank back on the pillow, dead.”

  IV

  FLINT AND STEEL.

  “Greatly startled, I drew back from the bed which but a moment before had been the scene of such mingled emotions.

  “‘All is over here,’ said I, and turned to follow the man whom with her latest breath she had bidden me to stop from leaving the house.

  “As I could not take the lamp and leave my companions in darkness, I stepped out into a dark hall; but before I had taken a half dozen steps I heard a cautious foot descending the back stairs, and realizing that it would be both foolish and unsafe for me to endeavor to follow him through the unlighted rooms and possibly intricate passages of this upper hall, I bounded down the front stairs, and feeling my way from door to door, at last emerged into a room where there was a lamp burning.

  “I had found the kitchen, and in it were Huckins and the man Briggs. Huckins had his hand on the latch of the outside door, and from his look and the bundle he carried, I judged that if I had been a minute later he would have been in full flight from the house.

  “‘Put out the light!’ he shouted to Briggs.

  “But I stepped forward, and the man did not dare obey him, and Huckins himself looked cowed and dropped his hand from the door-knob.

  “‘Where are you going?’ I asked, moving rapidly to his side.

  “‘Isn’t she dead?’ was his only answer, given with a mixture of mockery and triumph difficult to describe.

  “‘Yes,’ I assented, ‘she is dead; but that does not justify you in flying the house.’

  “‘And who says I am flying?’ he protested. ‘Cannot I go out on an errand without being told I am running away?’

  “‘An errand,’ I repeated, ‘two minutes after your sister has breathed her last! Don’t talk to me of errands. Your appearance is that of flight, and that bundle in your arms looks like the cause of it.’

  “His eye, burning with a passion very natural under the circumstances, flashed over me with a look of disdain.

  “‘And what do you know of my appearance, and what is it to you if I carry or do not carry a bundle out of this house? Am I not master of everything here?’

  “‘No,’ I cried boldly; then, thinking it might perhaps be wiser not to undeceive him as to his position till I had fully sounded his purposes, I added somewhat nonchalantly: ‘that is, you are not master enough to take anything away that belonged to your sister. If you can prove to me that there is nothing in that bundle save what is yours and was yours before your sister died, well and good, you may go away with it and leave your poor dead sister to be cared for in her own house by strangers. But while I have the least suspicion that property of any nature belonging to this estate is hidden away under that roll of old clothes, you stop here if I have to appeal first to the strength of my arms and then to that of the law.’

  “‘But,’ he quavered, ‘it is mine—mine. I am but carrying away my own. Did you not draw up the will yourself? Don’t you know she gave everything to me?’

  “‘What I know has nothing to do with it,’ I retorted. ‘Did you think because you saw a will drawn up in your favor that therefore you had immediate right to what she left, and could run away with her effects before her body was cold? A will has to be proven, my good man, before an heir has any right to touch what it leaves. If you do not know this, why did you try to slink away like a thief, instead of walking out of the front door like a proprietor? Your manner convicts you, man; so down with the bundle, or I shall have to give you in charge of the constable as a thief.’

  “‘You—!’ he began, but stopped. Either his fears were touched or his cunning awakened, for after surveying me for a moment with mingled doubt and hatred, he suddenly altered his manner, till it became almost cringing, and muttering consolingly to himself, ‘After all it is only a delay; everything will soon be mine,’ he laid the bundle on the one board of the broken table beside us, adding with hypocritical meekness: ‘It was only some little keepsakes of my sister, not enough to make such a fuss about.’

  “‘I will see to these keepsakes,’ said I, and was about to raise the bundle, when he sprang upon me.

  “‘You—you—!’ he cried. ‘What right have you to touch them or to look at them? Because you drew up the will, does that make you an authority here? I don’t believe it, and I won’t see you put on the airs of it. I will go for the constable myself. I am not afraid of the law. I will see who is master in this house where I have lived in wretched slavery for years, and of which I shall be soon the owner.’

  “‘Very well,’ said I, ‘let us go find the constable.’

  “The calmness with which I uttered this seemed at once to abash and infuriate him.

  “He alternately cringed and ruffled himself, shuffling from one foot to the other till I could scarcely conceal the disgust with which he inspired me. At last he blurted forth with forced bravado:

  “‘Have I any rights, or haven’t I any rights! You think because I don’t know the law, that you can make a fool of me, but you can’t. I may have lived like a d
og, and I may not have a good coat to my back, but I am the man to whom this property has been given, as no one knows better than yourself; and if I chose to lift my foot and kick you out of that door for calling me a thief, who would blame me?—answer me that.’

  “‘No one,’ said I, with a serenity equal to his fury, ‘if this property is indeed to be yours, and if I know it as you say.’

  “Struck by the suggestion implied in these words, as by a blow in the face for which he was wholly unprepared, he recoiled for a moment, looking at me with mingled doubt and amazement.

  “‘And do you mean to deny to my face, within an hour of the fact, and with the very witnesses to it still in the house, what you yourself wrote in this paper I now flaunt in your face? If so, you are the fool, and I the cunning one, as you will yet see, Mr. Lawyer.’

  “I met his look with great calmness.

  “‘The hour you speak of contained many minutes, Mr. Huckins; and it takes only a few for a woman to change her mind, and to record that change.’

  “‘Her mind?’ The stare of terror and dismay in his eyes was contradicted by the laugh on his lips. ‘What mind had she after I left her? She couldn’t even speak. You cannot frighten me.’

  “‘Mr. Huckins,’ I now said, beckoning to the two witnesses whom our loud talking had guided to the spot where we were, ‘I have thought best to tell you what some men might have thought it more expedient perhaps to conceal. Mrs. Wakeham, who evidently felt herself unduly influenced by you in the making of that will you hold in your hand, immediately upon your withdrawal testified her desire to make another, and as I had no interest in the case save the desire to fulfil her real wishes, I at once complied with her request, and formally drew up a second will more in consonance with her evident desires.’

  “‘It is a lie, a lie; you are deceiving me!’ shrieked the unhappy man, taken wholly by surprise. ‘She couldn’t utter a word; her tongue was paralyzed; how could you know her wishes?’