The Leavenworth Case (Penguin Classics)
Page 16
Her lips moved, but no words issued from them.
“I begin to think,” I solemnly proceeded, following the lead of her emotion, “that confession is the only way out of this difficulty, that only by the words you can utter Eleanore can be saved from the doom that awaits her. Will you not, then, show yourself a true woman by responding to my earnest entreaties?”
I seemed to have touched the right chord, for she trembled, and a look of wistfulness filled her eyes. “Oh, if I could!” she murmured.
“And why can you not? You will never be happy till you do. Eleanore persists in silence, but that is no reason why you should emulate her example. You only make her position more doubtful by it.”
“I know it, but I cannot help myself. Fate has got too strong a hold upon me; I cannot break away.”
“That is not true. Anyone can escape from bonds imaginary as yours.”
“No, no,” cried she, “you do not understand.”
“I understand this, that the path of rectitude is a straight one, and that he who steps into devious by-ways is going astray.”
A flicker of light, pathetic beyond description, flashed for a moment across her face; her throat rose as, with one wild sob, her lips opened, she seemed yielding, when—a sharp ring at the front door bell!
“Oh,” cried she, sharply turning, “tell him I cannot see him, tell him——”
“Miss Leavenworth,” said I, taking her by both hands, “never mind the door, never mind anything but this; I have asked you a question which involves the mystery of this whole affair; answer me, then, for your soul’s sake; tell me what the unhappy circumstances were which could induce you——”
But she tore her hands from mine. “The door!” cried she, “it will open, and——”
Stepping into the hall I met Thomas coming up the basement stairs. “Go back,” said I, “I will call you when you are wanted.”
With a bow he disappeared.
“You expect me to answer,” exclaimed she, when I reentered, “now, in a moment? I cannot.”
“But——”
“Impossible!” fastening her gaze upon the front door.
“Miss Leavenworth!”
She shuddered.
“I fear the time will never come if you do not speak now.”
“Impossible,” she reiterated.
Another twang at the bell.
“You hear!” said she.
I went into the hall and called Thomas. “You may open the door now,” said I, and moved to return to her side.
But she pointed commandingly upstairs. “Leave me!” cried she, looking at Thomas as if to bid him wait.
“I will see you again before I go,” said I, and hastened upstairs.
Thomas opened the door. “Is Miss Leavenworth in?” I heard a rich, tremulous voice inquire.
“Yes, sir,” came in the butler’s most respectful and measured accents, and leaning over the banisters I beheld, to my amazement, the form of Mr. Clavering enter the front hall and move toward the reception-room.
CHAPTER 5
On The Stairs
You cannot say I did it.
—MACBETH.
Excited, tremulous, filled with wonder at this unlooked-for event, I paused for a moment to collect my scattered senses, when, the sound of a low, monotonous voice breaking upon my ear from the direction of the library, I went toward it and found that it was Mr. Harwell reading aloud from his late employer’s manuscript. It would be difficult for me to describe the effect which this simple discovery made upon me at this time. There, in that room of late death, withdrawn from the turmoil of the world, a hermit in his skeleton-lined cell, this man employed himself in reading and re-reading with passive interest the words of the dead, while above and below, human beings agonized in doubt and shame. Listening, I heard these words:
“By these means their native rulers will not only lose their jealous terror of our institutions, but acquire an actual curiosity in regard to them.”
Opening the door I went in.
“Ah! you are late, sir,” murmured he, rising and bringing forward a chair.
“Yes,” replied I, with my thoughts on those two below.
“I am afraid you are not well,” he went on.
I roused myself.
“I am not ill,” I returned, and pulling the papers toward me, began looking them over. But the words danced before my eyes, and I was obliged to give up all attempt at work for that night.
“I fear that I shall not be able to assist you this evening, Mr. Harwell. The fact is, I find it difficult to give proper attention to this business, while the man who by a dastardly assassination has made it necessary goes unpunished.”
The secretary in his turn pushed the papers aside, as if moved by a sudden distaste for them, but gave me no answer.
“You told me when you first came to me with news of this fearful tragedy, that it was a mystery; but it is one which must be solved, Mr. Harwell, it is wearing out the lives of too many that we love and respect.”
The secretary gave me a look. “Miss Eleanore?” he murmured.
“And Miss Mary,” I went on, “myself, you and many others.”
“You have manifested much interest in the matter from the beginning,” he said, methodically dipping his pen into the ink.
I stared at him in amazement.
“And you,” said I, “do not take no interest in that which involves not only the safety, but the happiness and honor of the family in which you have dwelt so long?”
He looked at me with increased coldness. “I have requested, Mr. Raymond, that you would not converse with me upon this subject. It is not one which I am fond of discussing.” And he arose.
“But fondness has nothing to do with it,” I persisted. “If you know any facts connected with this affair, which have not yet been made public, it is manifestly your duty to state them. The position which Miss Eleanore occupies at this time is one which should arouse the sense of justice in every true breast, and if you——”
“If I knew anything which would serve to release her from this unhappy position, Mr. Raymond, I should have spoken long ago.”
I bit my lip, weary of these continual bafflings, and rose also.
“If you have nothing more to say,” he went on, “and feel utterly disinclined to work, why, I should be glad to excuse myself, as I have an engagement out.”
“Do not let me keep you,” I said bitterly. “I can take care of myself.”
He turned upon me with a short stare as if this display of feeling was well-nigh incomprehensible to him, and then with a quiet, almost compassionate bow left the room. I heard him go upstairs, felt the jar when his room door closed, and, satisfied I was indeed to be left alone again, sat down to enjoy my solitude. But solitude in that room was unbearable. By the time Mr. Harwell again descended I felt that I could remain no longer, and stepping out into the hall told him that if he had no objection I would accompany him for a short stroll.
He bowed a stiff assent and hastened before me down the stairs. By the time I had closed the library door, he was half-way to the foot, and I was just remarking to myself upon the empliability of his figure and the awkwardness of his carriage as seen from my present standpoint, when suddenly I saw him stop, clutch the banister at his side, and hang there with a startled, deathly expression upon his half-turned countenance, that fixed me for an instant where I was in breathless astonishment and then caused me to rush down to his side, catch him by the arm, and cry:
“What is it? What is the matter?”
But thrusting out one powerful hand he pushed me upwards. “Go back,” he whispered, in a voice shaking with intensest emotion, “go back.” And catching me by the arm, he literally pulled me up the stairs. Arrived at the top he loosened his grasp and leaning, quivering from head to foot, over the banisters, glared below.
“Who is that?” he cried. “Who is that man? What is his name?”
Startled in my turn, I bent beside him and
saw Henry Clavering come out of the reception-room and cross the hall.
“That is Mr. Clavering,” I whispered, with all the self-possession I could muster. “Do you know him?”
Mr. Harwell fell back against the opposite wall. “Clavering, Clavering,” he murmured with quaking lips; then suddenly bounding forward, clutched the railing before him, and fixing me with his eyes from which all the stoic calmness had gone down forever in flame and frenzy, gurgled into my ear—“You want to know who the assassin of Mr. Leavenworth is, do you? Look here, then, that is the man, Clavering!” And with a leap he bounded from my side, and swaying like a drunken man, disappeared from my gaze in the hall above.
My first impulse was to follow him. Rushing upstairs, I knocked at the door of his room, but no response came to my summons. I then called his name in the hall, but without avail; he was determined not to show himself. Resolved that he should not thus escape me, I returned to the library and wrote him a short note, in which I asked for an explanation of his tremendous accusation, saying that I would be in my rooms the next evening at six, when I should expect to see him. This done I descended to rejoin Mary.
But the evening was destined to be full of disappointments. She had retired to her room while I was in the library, and I had lost the interview from which I expected so much. “The woman is slippery as an eel,” I inwardly commented, pacing the hall in my chagrin. “Wrapped in mystery, she expects me to feel for her the respect due to to an open and frank nature.”
I was about to leave the house, when I saw Thomas descending the stairs with a letter in his hand.
“Miss Leavenworth’s compliments, sir,” said he, handing me the note, “and she is too fatigued to remain below this evening.”
I moved aside to read it, feeling a little conscience-stricken as I traced the hurried, trembling handwriting through the following words:
You ask more than I can give. Matters must be received as they are without explanation from me. It is the grief of my life to deny you, but I have no choice. God forgive us all and keep us from despair!
M.
And below:
. . . and we cannot meet now without embarrassment, it would be better for us to bear our burdens in silence and apart. Mr. Harwell will visit you. Farewell!’
As I was crossing Thirty-second Street I heard a quick footstep behind me, and turning, saw Thomas at my side. “Excuse me, sir,” said he, “but I have something a little particular to say to you. When you asked me the other night what sort of a person the gentleman was who called on Miss Eleanore the evening of the murder, I didn’t answer you as I should. The fact is, the detectives had been talking to me about that very thing and I felt shy; but, sir, I know you are a friend of the family, and I want to tell you now that that same gentleman, whoever he was—Mr. Robbins he called himself then—was at the house again tonight, sir, and the name he gave me this time to carry to Miss Leavenworth was Clavering. Yes, sir,” he went on, seeing me start, “and as I told Molly, he acts queer for a stranger. When he came the other night, he hesitated a long time before asking for Miss Eleanore, and when I wanted his name, took out a card and wrote the one I told you of, sir, with a look on his face a little peculiar for a caller; besides——”
“Well?”
“Mr. Raymond,” the butler went on, in a low, excited voice, edging up very closely to me in the darkness, “there is something I have never told any living being but Molly, sir, which may be of use to those as wishes to find out who committed this murder.”
“A fact or a suspicion?” I inquired.
“A fact, sir; which I beg your pardon for troubling you with at this time, but Molly will give me no rest unless I speak of it to you or Mr. Gryce, her feelings being so worked up on Hannah’s account, whom we all know is innocent, though folks do dare to say as how she must be guilty just because she is not to be found the minute they want her.”
“But this fact?” I urged.
“Well, the fact is this. You see—I would tell Mr. Gryce,” he resumed, unconscious of my anxiety, “but I have my fears of detectives, sir, they catch you up so quick at times, and seem to think you know so much more than you really do.”
“But this fact——” I again broke in.
“Oh, yes, sir, the fact is, that that night, the one of the murder, you know, I saw Mr. Clavering, Robbins or whatever his name is, enter the house, but neither I nor anyone else saw him go out of it, nor do I know that he did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, sir, what I mean is this. When I came down from Miss Eleanore and told Mr. Robbins, as he called himself at that time, that my mistress was ill and unable to see him (the word she gave me, sir, to deliver) Mr. Robbins instead of bowing and leaving the house as most gentlemen would have done, stepped into the reception-room and sat down. He may have felt sick, he looked pale enough; at any rate he asked me for a glass of water. Not knowing any reason then for suspicionating anyone’s actions, I immediately went down to the kitchen for it, leaving him there in the reception-room alone. But before I could get it, I heard the front door close. ‘What’s that?’ said Molly, who was helping me, sir. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘unless it’s the gentleman has got tired of waiting and gone.’ ‘If he’s gone, he won’t want the water,’ she said. So down I set the pitcher and upstairs I come, and sure enough he was gone, or so I thought then. But who knows, sir, if he was not in that room or the drawing room, which was dark that night, all the time I was a-shutting up of the house?”
I made no reply to this; I was more startled than I cared to reveal.
“You see, sir, I wouldn’t speak of such a thing about any person that comes to see the young ladies, but we all know someone who was in the house that night murdered my master, and as it was not Hannah——”
“You say that Miss Eleanore refused to see him,” I interrupted in the hope that the simple suggestion would be enough to elicit further details of his interview with Eleanore.
“Yes, sir. When she first looked at the card she showed a little hesitation, but in a moment she grew very flushed in the face and bade me say what I told you. I should never have thought of it again if I had not seen him come blazoning and bold into the house this evening, with a new name on his tongue. Indeed, and I do not like to think any evil of him now, but Molly would have it I should speak to you, sir, and ease my mind—and that is all, sir.”
When I arrived home that night, I entered into my memorandum book a new list of suspicious circumstances, but this time with the letter “C” at the top instead of “E.”
CHAPTER 6
In My Office
Something between an hindrance and a help.
—WORDSWORTH.
The next day as, with nerves unstrung and an exhausted brain, I entered my office, I was greeted by the announcement:
“A gentleman, sir, in your private room—been waiting some time, very impatient.”
Weary, and in no mood to hold consultation with clients new or old, I advanced with anything but an eager step toward my room, when upon opening the door I saw—Mr. Clavering.
Too much astounded for the moment to speak, I bowed to him silently, whereupon he approached me with the air and dignity of a highly-bred gentleman, and presented his card, on which I saw written, in free and handsome characters, his whole name, Henry Ritchie Clavering. After this introduction of himself, he apologized for making so unceremonious a call, saying, in excuse, that he was a stranger in town, that his business was one of great urgency, that he had casually heard honorable mention of me as a lawyer and a gentleman, and so had ventured to seek this interview on behalf of a friend who was so unfortunately situated as to require the opinion and advice of a lawyer upon a question that not only involved an extraordinary state of facts, but was of a nature peculiarily embarrassing to him, owing to his ignorance of American laws, and the legal bearing of these facts upon the same.
Having thus secured my attention and awakened my curiosity, he asked me if
I would permit him to relate his story. Recovering in a measure from my astonishment, and subduing the extreme repulsion, almost horror, I felt for the man, I signified my assent, at which he drew from his pocket a memorandum book from which he read in substance as follows:
“An Englishman traveling in this country meets, at a fashionable watering-place, an American girl, with whom he falls deeply in love, and whom after a few days he desires to marry. Knowing his position to be good, his fortune ample, and his intentions highly honorable, he offers her his hand and is accepted. But a decided opposition arising in the family to the match, he is compelled to disguise his sentiments, though the engagement remained unbroken. While matters were in this uncertain condition, he received advices from England demanding his instant return, and alarmed at the prospect of a protracted absence from the object of his affections, he writes to the lady, informing her of the circumstances and proposing a secret marriage. She consents, with stipulations, the first of which is that he should leave her instantly upon the conclusion of the ceremony, and the second, that he should entrust the public declaration of the marriage to her. It was not precisely what he wished, but anything which served to make her his own was acceptable at such a crisis. He readily enters into the plans proposed. Meeting the lady at a parsonage some twenty miles from the watering-place at which she was staying, he stands up with her before a Methodist preacher, and the ceremony of marriage is performed. There were two witnesses, a hired man of the minister, called in for the purpose, and a lady friend who came with the bride; but there was no license, and the bride had not completed her twenty-first year. Now, was that marriage legal? If the lady, wedded in good faith upon that day by my friend, chooses to deny that she is his lawful wife, can he hold her to a compact entered into in so informal a manner? In short, Mr. Raymond, is my friend the lawful husband of that girl or not?”