“I am well acquainted with the faces of their friends, Mr. Raymond, and Henry Clavering is not amongst the number, but——”
“Were you ever with Mr. Leavenworth,” I interrupted, “when he has been away from home, in the country, for instance, or upon his travels?”
“No,” the secretary returned constrainedly.
“Yet I suppose he was in the habit of absenting himself from home?”
“Certainly.”
“Can you tell me where he was last July, he and the ladies?”
“Yes, sir; they went to R——, if you mean that; spent some time there. The famous watering-place, you know. Ah!” he cried, seeing a change in my face, “do you think he could have met them there?”
I looked at him for a moment, then, rising in my turn, stood level with him, and exclaimed:
“You are keeping something back, Mr. Harwell; you have more knowledge of this man than you have hitherto given me to understand. What is it?”
He seemed astonished at my penetration, but replied: “I know no more of the man than I have already informed you, but”—and a burning flush crossed his face—“if you are determined to pursue this matter——” and he paused, with an inquiring look.
“I am resolved to find out all I can about Henry Clavering,” I returned.
He lifted his head with a quick gesture. “Then,” said he, “I can tell you this much. Henry Clavering wrote a letter to Mr. Leavenworth a few days before the murder, that, I have some reason to believe, produced a marked effect upon the household.” And, folding his arms, the secretary stood quietly waiting for my next question.
“How do you know?” asked I.
“I opened it by mistake. I was in the habit of reading Mr. Leavenworth’s business letters, and this being from one unaccustomed to write to him, lacked the mark which usually distinguish those of a private nature.”
“And you saw the name of Clavering?”
“I did; Henry Ritchie Clavering.”
“Did you read the letter?” I was trembling now.
The secretary did not reply.
“Mr. Harwell,” I reiterated, “this is no time for false delicacy. Did you read that letter?”
“I did; but hastily and with an agitated conscience.”
“You can, however, recall its general drift?”
“It was some complaint in regard to the treatment received by him at the hand of one of Mr. Leavenworth’s nieces. I remember nothing more.”
“Which niece?”
“There were no names mentioned.”
“But you inferred——”
“No, sir; that is just what I did not do. I forced myself to forget the whole thing.”
“And yet you say that it produced an effect upon the family?”
“I can see now that it did. None of them have ever appeared quite the same toward each other as before.”
“Mr. Harwell,” I now said; “when you were questioned as to the receipt of any letter by Mr. Leavenworth, which might seem in any manner to be connected with this tragedy, you denied having seen any such; how was that?”
“Mr. Raymond,” he returned, “you are a gentleman; have a chivalrous regard for the ladies; do you think that you could have brought yourself (even if in your secret heart you considered some such result possible, which I am not ready to say I did) to mention at such a time as that the receipt of a letter complaining of the treatment received from one of Mr. Leavenworth’s nieces, as a suspicious circumstance worthy to be taken into account by a coroner’s jury?”
I shook my head. I could not but acknowledge the impossibility.
“What reason had I for thinking that letter was one of importance? I knew no Henry Ritchie Clavering.”
“And yet you seemed to think it was,” I murmured. “I remember you hesitated before replying.”
“It is true, but not as I should hesitate now, if the question were put to me again.”
Silence followed these words, during which I took two or three turns up and down the room.
“This is all very fanciful,” I said, laughing in the vain endeavor to throw off the superstitious horror that unaccountably to myself still clung about me.
He bent his head in assent. “I know it,” said he. “I am practical myself in broad daylight, and recognize the flimsiness of an accusation based upon a poor hard-working secretary’s dream, as plainly as you do. That is the reason I desired to keep from speaking at all. Dreams are not things with which to confront a man in a court of justice; but, Mr. Raymond”—and his long thin hand fell upon my arm with a nervous intensity which gave me almost the sensation of an electric shock—“if the murderer of Mr. Leavenworth is ever brought to confess his deed, mark my words, he will prove to be the man of my dream.”
I drew a long breath. For a moment his belief was mine; and a mingled sensation of relief and exquisite pain swept over me as I thought of the possibility of Eleanore being exonerated from crime only to be plunged into fresh humiliation and deeper abysses of suffering.
“He stalks the streets in freedom now,” the secretary went on, as if to himself, “even dares to enter the house he has so woefully desecrated; but justice is justice, and sooner or later something will transpire which will prove to you that a premonition so wonderful as that I received had its significance; that the voice calling ‘Trueman! Trueman!’ was something more than the empty utterances of an excited brain; that it was Justice itself calling attention to the guilty.”
I looked at him in wonder: did he know that the officers of justice were already upon the track of this same Clavering? I judged not from his look, but felt an inclination to make an effort and see.
“You speak with strange conviction,” I said; “but in all probability you are doomed to be disappointed. So far as we know, Mr. Clavering is a respectable man.”
He lifted his hat from the table. “I do not propose to denounce him; I do not even propose to speak his name again. I am not a fool, Mr. Raymond. I have spoken thus plainly to you only in explanation of last night’s most unfortunate betrayal; and while I trust that you will regard what I have told you as confidential, I also hope that you will give me credit for behaving on the whole as well as could be expected under the circumstances.” And he held out his hand.
“Certainly,” I replied as I took it. Then, with a sudden impulse to test the accuracy of this story of his, inquired if he had any means of verifying his statement of having had this dream at the time spoken of, that is before the murder and not afterward.
“No, sir; I know myself that I had it the night previous to that of Mr. Leavenworth’s death; but I cannot prove the fact.”
“You did not speak of it next morning to anyone?”
“Oh, no, sir; I was scarcely in a position to do so.”
“Yet it must have had a great effect upon you, unfitting you for work——”
“Nothing unfits me for work,” he murmured bitterly.
“I believe that is so,” I returned, remembering his diligence for the last few days. “But you must at least have shown some traces of having passed an uncomfortable night, if no more. Have you, then, no recollection of anyone speaking to you in regard to your appearance the next morning?”
“Mr. Leavenworth may have done so; no one else would have been likely to have noticed,” he returned, half-sadly.
“Mr. Harwell,” I now said, “I shall not be at the house tonight; nor do I know when I shall return there. Personal considerations keep me from Miss Leavenworth’s presence for a time, and I look to you to carry on the work we have undertaken, without my assistance, unless you can bring it here——”
“I can do that.”
“I shall expect you, then, tomorrow evening.”
“Very well, sir,” and he was going, when a sudden thought seemed to strike him. “Sir,” he said, “as we do not wish to return to this subject again, and as I have a natural curiosity in regard to the man whose countenance and figure are so well known to me while
yet he retains his title of utter stranger, would you object to telling me what you know of him? You believe him to be a respectable man; are you acquainted with him, Mr. Raymond?”
“I know his name, and where he resides.”
“And where is that?”
“In London; he is an Englishman.”
“Ah!” he murmured with a strange intonation.
“Why do you say that?”
He bit his lip, looked down, then up, finally fixed his eyes on mine, and returned with marked emphasis: “I used an exclamation, sir, because I was startled.”
“Startled?”
“Yes; you say he is an Englishman. Mr. Leavenworth had the most bitter antagonism to the English. It was one of his marked peculiarities. He would never be introduced to one if he could help it.”
It was my turn to look thoughtful.
“You know,” the secretary continued, “that Mr. Leavenworth was a man who carried his prejudices to the extreme. He had a hatred for the English race that almost amounted to mania. If he had known that letter he received was from an Englishman, I doubt if he would have read it. He used to say that he would sooner see a daughter of his dead before him than married to an Englishman.”
I turned hastily aside to hide the effect which this announcement made upon me.
“You think I am exaggerating,” he said. “Ask Mr. Veeley.”
“No,” I replied, “I have no reason for thinking so.”
“He had doubtless some cause for hating the English, with which we are unacquainted,” pursued the secretary. “He spent some time in Liverpool when young, and had, of course, many opportunities for studying their manners and character.” And the secretary made another movement as if to leave.
But it was my turn to detain him now. “Mr. Harwell, excuse me,” I said, “but you have been on familiar terms with Mr. Leavenworth for so long—do you think that in the case of one of his nieces, say, desiring to marry a gentleman of that nationality, his prejudice was sufficient to cause him absolutely to forbid the match?”
“I do.”
I moved back. I had learned what I wished, and saw no further reason for prolonging the interview.
CHAPTER 9
Patchwork
Come, give us a taste of your quality.
—HAMLET.
Starting with the assumption that Mr. Clavering, in his conversation of the morning, had been giving me, with more or less accuracy, a detailed account of his own experience and position regarding Eleanore Leavenworth, I asked myself what particular facts it would be necessary for me to establish in order to prove the truth of this assumption, and found them to be:
I. That Mr. Clavering had not only been in this country at the time designated, viz., last July, but that he had been located for some little time at a watering-place in New York State.
II. That this watering-place should correspond to that in which Miss Eleanore Leavenworth was to be found at the same time.
III. That they had been seen while there to hold more or less communication together.
IV. That they had both been absent from town at some one time, long enough to have gone through the ceremony of marriage at a point twenty miles or so away.
V. That a Methodist clergyman, who has since died, lived at that time within a radius of twenty miles of the said watering-place.
I next asked myself how I was to establish these facts. Mr. Clavering’s life was, as yet, too little known to me to offer me any assistance; so leaving it for the present, I took up the thread of Eleanore’s history, when upon tracing it back to the time given me, I found that she was known to have been in R——, a fashionable watering-place in this State. But if she was there, and my theory was correct, he must have been there also. To ascertain whether this was so, therefore, became my first business. I resolved to go to R——on the morrow.
But before proceeding in an undertaking of such importance, I considered it expedient to make such inquiries and collect such facts as it should be possible for me to do in the few hours that lay before me. I went first to the house of Mr. Gryce.
I found him lying upon a hard sofa in the bare sitting room I have before mentioned, suffering from a severe attack of rheumatism; with his hands done up in bandages and his feet encased in multiplied folds of a dingy red shawl that looked as if it had been through the wars. Greeting me with a short nod that was both a welcome and an apology, he devoted a few words to an explanation of his unwonted position, and then, without further preliminaries, rushed into the subject that was uppermost in both our minds by inquiring in a slightly sarcastic way if I was very much surprised to find my bird flown when I returned to the Hoffman House that afternoon.
“I was astonished to find that you allowed him to fly at this time,” replied I. “From the manner in which you requested me to make his acquaintance I supposed that you had reasons for considering him an important character in the tragedy which has just been enacted.”
“And what makes you think I hadn’t? Oh, the fact that I let him go off so easily? That’s no proof. One does not put on the brakes till one is going downhill. But let that pass for the present; Mr. Clavering, then, did not explain himself before going?”
“That is a question,” I returned, after due thought, “which I find it exceedingly difficult to answer. Constrained by circumstances, I cannot at present speak with the directness which is your due, but what I can say, I will. Know, then, that in my opinion, Mr. Clavering did explain himself in an interview with me this morning. But it was done in so blind a way that it will be necessary for me to make a few investigations before I shall feel sufficiently sure of my ground to take you into my confidence. He has given me a possible clue——”
“Wait,” said Mr. Gryce. “Does he know this? Was it done intentionally and with sinister motive, or unconsciously and in plain good faith?”
“In good faith, I should say.”
Mr. Gryce remained for a moment silent. “It is very unfortunate that you cannot explain yourself a little more definitely,” he said at last. “I am almost afraid to trust you to make investigations, as you call them, on your own hook. You are not used to the business and will lose time, to say nothing of running upon false scents and using up your strength on unprofitable details.”
“You should have thought of that when you admitted me into partnership.”
“And you absolutely insist upon working this mine alone?”
“Mr. Gryce,” said I, “the matter stands just here. Mr. Clavering, for all I know, is a gentleman of untarnished reputation. I am not even aware for what purpose you set me upon his trail. I only know that in thus following it, I have come upon certain facts that seem worthy of inquiry.”
“Well, well,” said he, “you know best. But the days are slipping by. Something must be done—and soon. The public are becoming clamorous.”
“I know it, and for that reason I have come to you for such assistance as you can give me at this stage of the proceedings. You are in possession of certain facts relating to this man which it concerns me to know, or your conduct in reference to him has been purposeless. Now, frankly, will you make me master of those facts: in short, tell me all you know of Mr. Clavering without requiring an immediate return of confidence on my part?”
“That is asking a great deal of a professional detective.”
“I know it, and under any other circumstances I should hesitate long before preferring such a request; but as things are, I don’t see how I am to proceed in the matter, without some such concession on your part. At all events——”
“Wait a moment! Is not Mr. Clavering the lover of one of the young ladies?”
Anxious as I was to preserve the secret of my interest in that gentleman, I could not prevent the blush from rising to my face at the suddenness of this question.
“I thought as much,” he went on. “Being neither a relative nor acknowledged friend, I took it for granted that he must occupy some such position as that in the family.”
“I do not see why you should draw such an inference,” said I, anxious to determine how much he knew about him. “Mr. Clavering is a stranger in town; has not even been in this country long; has, indeed, had no time to establish himself upon any such footing as you intimate.”
“This is not the only time Mr. Clavering has been in New York. He was here a year ago to my certain knowledge.”
“You know that?”
“Yes.”
“How much more do you know? Can it be possible that I am groping blindly about for facts which are already in your possession? I pray you listen to my entreaties, Mr. Gryce, and acquaint me at once with what I want to know. You will not regret it. I have no selfish motive in this matter. If I succeed, the glory shall be yours; if I fail, the shame of the defeat shall be mine.”
“That is fair,” he muttered. “And how about the reward?”
“My reward will be to free an innocent woman from the imputation of crime which hangs over her.”
This assurance seemed to satisfy him. His voice and appearance changed; for a moment he looked quite confidential. “Well, well,” said he, “and what is it you want to know?”
“I would first learn how your suspicions came to light on him at all. What reason had you for thinking a gentleman of his bearing and position was in any way connected with this affair?”
“That is a question you ought not to be obliged to put,” he returned.
“How so?”
“Simply because the opportunity of answering it was in your hands before ever it came into mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you remember the letter mailed in your presence by Miss Mary Leavenworth during your drive from her home to that of her friend in Thirty-seventh Street?”
“On the afternoon of the inquest?”
“Yes.”
“Certainly, but——”
“You never thought to look at its superscription before it was dropped into the box.”
The Leavenworth Case (Penguin Classics) Page 18
