“This I did, and the fault with which I have most to reproach myself is that I entered into this alliance without taking her or her father into my confidence. They thought me well off, possibly rich, and while Mr. Poindexter is a man of means, I am sure, if he had known I had nothing but the clothes I wore and the merest trifle in the way of pocket money, he would have cried halt to the marriage, for he is a very ambitious man and considers his daughter well worth a millionaire’s devotion—as she is.
“Felix (you must pardon me if I show no affection for my brother—he was a very strange man) was notified of my marriage, but did not choose to witness it, neither did he choose to prohibit it; so it was conducted quietly, with strangers for witnesses, in a hotel parlor. Then, with vague hopes, as well as certain vague fears, I prepared to take my young bride into the presence of my brother, who, hardened as he was by years of bachelorhood, could not be so entirely impervious to feminine charms as not to recognize my wife as a woman deserving of every consideration.
“But I had counted without my host. When, two days after the ceremony which had made us one, I took her to the house which has since become so unhappily notorious, I found that my brother had but shown me one facet, and that the least obdurate, of his many-sided nature.
“Brilliant as steel, he was as hard, and not only professed himself unmoved by my wife’s many charms, but also as totally out of sympathy with such follies as love and marriage, which were, he said, the fruit of unoccupied minds and a pastime wholly unworthy of men boasting of such talents and attainments as ourselves. Then he turned his back upon us, and I, moved by an anger little short of frenzy, began an abuse for which he was so little prepared that he crouched like a man under blows, and, losing minute by minute his self-control, finally caught up a dagger lying close at hand, and crying, ‘You want my money? Well, then, take it!’ stabbed himself to the heart with one desperate blow.
“I fear I shall not be believed, but that is the story of this crime, gentlemen.”
CHAPTER XIII
Despair
Was it? Tragedies as unpremeditated as this had doubtless occurred, and inconsistencies in character shown themselves in similar impetuosities, from the beginning of time up till now. Yet there was not a man present, with or without the memory of Bartow’s pantomime, which, as you will recall, did not tally at all with this account of Mr. Adams’s violent end, who did not show in a greater or less degree his distrust and evident disbelief in this tale, poured out with such volubility before them.
The young man, gifted as he was with the keenest susceptibilities, perceived this, and his head drooped.
“I shall add nothing to and take nothing from what I have said,” was his dogged remark. “Make of it what you will.”
The inspector who was conducting the inquiry glanced dubiously at Mr. Gryce as these words left Thomas Adams’s lips; whereupon the detective said:
“We are sorry you have taken such a resolution. There are many things yet left to be explained, Mr. Adams; for instance, why, if your brother slew himself in this unforeseen manner, you left the house so precipitately, without giving an alarm or even proclaiming your relationship to him?”
“You need not answer, you know,” the inspector’s voice broke in. “No man is called upon to incriminate himself in this free and independent country.”
A smile, the saddest ever seen, wandered for a minute over the prisoner’s pallid lips. Then he lifted his head and replied with a certain air of desperation:
“Incrimination is not what I fear now. From the way you all look at me I perceive that I am lost, for I have no means of proving my story.”
This acknowledgment, which might pass for the despairing cry of an innocent man, made his interrogator stare.
“You forget,” suggested that gentleman, “that you had your wife with you. She can corroborate your words, and will prove herself, no doubt, an invaluable witness in your favor.”
“My wife!” he repeated, choking so that his words could be barely understood. “Must she be dragged into this—so sick, so weak a woman? It would kill her, sir. She loves me—she—”
“Was she with you in Mr. Adams’s study? Did she see him lift the dagger against his own breast?”
“No.” And with this denial the young man seemed to take new courage. “She had fainted several moments previously, while the altercation between my brother and myself was at its height. She did not see the final act, and—gentlemen, I might as well speak the truth (I have nothing to gain by silence), she finds it as difficult as you do to believe that Mr. Adams struck himself. I—I have tried with all my arts to impress the truth upon her, but oh, what can I hope from the world when the wife of my bosom—an angel, too, who loves me—oh, sirs, she can never be a witness for me; she is too conscientious, too true to her own convictions. I should lose—she would die—”
Mr. Gryce tried to stop him; he would not be stopped.
“Spare me, sirs! Spare my wife! Write me down guilty, anything you please, rather than force that young creature to speak—”
Here the inspector cut short these appeals which were rending every heart present. “Have you read the newspapers for the last few days?” he asked.
“I? Yes, yes, sir. How could I help it? Blood is blood; the man was my brother; I had left him dying—I was naturally anxious, naturally saw my own danger, and I read them, of course.”
“Then you know he was found with a large cross on his breast, a cross which was once on the wall. How came it to be torn down? Who put it on his bosom?”
“I, sir. I am not a Catholic but Felix was, and seeing him dying without absolution, without extreme unction, I thought of the holy cross, and tore down the only one I saw, and placed it in his arms.”
“A pious act. Did he recognize it?”
“I cannot say. I had my fainting wife to look after. She occupied all my thoughts.”
“I see, and you carried her out and were so absorbed in caring for her you did not observe Mr. Adams’s valet—”
“He’s innocent, sir. Whatever people may think, he had nothing to do with this crime—”
“You did not observe him, I say, standing in the doorway and watching you?”
Now the inspector knew that Bartow had not been standing there, but at the loophole above; but the opportunity for entrapping the witness was too good to lose.
Mr. Adams was caught in the trap, or so one might judge from the beads of perspiration which at that moment showed themselves on his pale forehead. But he struggled to maintain the stand he had taken, crying hotly:
“But that man is crazy, and deaf-and-dumb besides! or so the papers give out. Surely his testimony is valueless. You would not confront me with him?”
“We confront you with no one. We only asked you a question. You did not observe the valet, then?”
“No, sir.”
“Or understand the mystery of the colored lights?”
“No, sir.”
“Or of the plate of steel and the other contrivances with which your brother enlivened his solitude?”
“I do not follow you, sir.” But there was a change in his tone.
“I see,” said the inspector, “that the complications which have disturbed us and made necessary this long delay in the collection of testimony have not entered into the crime as described by you. Now this is possible; but there is still a circumstance requiring explanation; a little circumstance, which is, nevertheless, one of importance, since your wife mentioned it to you as soon as she became conscious. I allude to the half dozen or more words which were written by your brother immediately preceding his death. The paper on which they were written has been found, and that it was a factor in your quarrel is evident, since she regretted that it had been left behind you, and he—Do you know where we found this paper?”
The eyes which young Adams raised at this interr
ogatory had no intelligence in them. The sight of this morsel of paper seemed to have deprived him in an instant of all the faculties with which he had been carrying on this unequal struggle. He shook his head, tried to reach out his hand, but failed to grasp the scrap of paper which the inspector held out. Then he burst into a loud cry:
“Enough! I cannot hold out, with no other support than a wicked lie. I killed my brother for reasons good as any man ever had for killing another. But I shall not impart them. I would rather be tried for murder and hanged.”
It was a complete breakdown, pitiful from its contrast with the man’s herculean physique and fine, if contracted, features. If the end, it was a sad end, and Mr. Gryce, whose forehead had taken on a deep line between the eyebrows, slowly rose and took his stand by the young man, who looked ready to fall. The inspector, on the contrary, did not move. He had begun a tattoo with his fingers on the table, and seemed bound to beat it out, when another sudden cry broke from the young man’s lips:
“What is that?” he demanded, with his eyes fixed on the door, and his whole frame shaking violently.
“Nothing,” began the inspector, when the door suddenly opened and the figure of a woman white as a wraith and wonderful with a sort of holy passion darted from the grasp of a man who sought to detain her, and stood before them, palpitating with a protest which for a moment she seemed powerless to utter.
It was Adams’s young, invalid wife, whom he had left three hours before at Belleville. She was so frail of form, so exquisite of feature, that she would have seemed some unearthly visitant but for the human anguish which pervaded her look and soon found vent in this touching cry:
“What is he saying? Oh, I know well what he is saying. He is saying that he killed his brother, that he held the dagger which rid the world of a monster of whose wickedness none knew. But you must not heed him. Indeed you must not heed him. He is innocent; I, his wife, have come twenty miles, from a bed of weakness and suffering, to tell you so. He—”
But here a hand was laid gently, but firmly on her mouth. She looked up, met her husband’s eyes filled with almost frantic appeal, and giving him a look in return that sank into the heart of every man who beheld it, laid her own hand on his and drew it softly away.
“It is too late, Tom, I must speak. My father, my own weakness, or your own peremptory commands could not keep me at Belleville when I knew you had been brought here. And shall I stop now, in the presence of these men who have heard your words and may believe them? No, that would be a cowardice unworthy of our love and the true lives we hope to lead together. Sirs!” and each man there held his breath to catch the words which came in faint and fainter intonation from her lips, “I know my husband to be innocent, because the hand that held the dagger was mine. I killed Felix Cadwalader!”
* * * *
The horror of such a moment is never fully realized till afterward. Not a man there moved, not even her husband, yet on every cheek a slow pallor was forming, which testified to the effect of such words from lips made for smiles and showing in every curve the habit of gentle thought and the loftiest instincts. Not till someone cried out from the doorway, “Catch her! she is falling!” did any one stir or release the pent-up breath which awe and astonishment had hitherto held back on every lip. Then he in whose evident despair all could read the real cause of the great dread which had drawn him into a false confession, sprang forward, and with renewed life showing itself in every feature, caught her in his arms. As he staggered with her to a sofa and laid her softly down, he seemed another man in look and bearing; and Mr. Gryce, who had been watching the whole wonderful event with the strongest interest, understood at once the meaning of the change which had come over his prisoner at that point in his memorable arrest when he first realized that it was for himself they had come, and not for the really guilty person, the idolized object of his affections.
Meanwhile, he was facing them all, with one hand laid tenderly on that unconscious head.
“Do not think,” he cried, “that because this young girl has steeped her hand in blood, she is a wicked woman. There is no purer heart on earth than hers, and none more worthy of the worship of a true man. See! she killed my brother, son of my father, beloved by my mother, yet I can kiss her hand, kiss her forehead, her eyes, her feet, not because I hate him, but because I worship her, the purest—the best—” He left her, and came and stood before those astonished men. “Sirs!” he cried, “I must ask you to listen to a strange, a terrible tale.”
CHAPTER XIV
Memoranda
“It is like and unlike what I have just related to you,” began young Adams. “In my previous confession I mixed truth and falsehood, and to explain myself fully and to help you to a right understanding of my wife’s act, I shall have to start afresh and speak as if I had already told you nothing.”
“Wait!” cried Mr. Gryce, in an authoritative manner. “We will listen to you presently;” and, leaning over the inspector, he whispered a few words, after which he took out a pencil and jotted down certain sentences, which he handed over to this gentleman.
As they had the appearance of a memorandum, and as the inspector glanced more than once at them while Mr. Adams (or Cadwalader, as he should now rightfully be called) was proceeding with his story, I will present them to you as written.
Points to be made clear by Mr. Adams in his account of this crime:
1. Why a woman who was calm enough to stop and arrange her hair during the beginning of an interview should be wrought up to such a pitch of frenzy and exasperation before it was over as to kill with her own hand a man against whom she had evidently no previous grudge. (Remember the comb found on the floor of Mr. Adams’s bedroom.)
2. What was the meaning of the following words, written just previous to this interview by the man thus killed: “I return you your daughter. Neither you nor she shall ever see me again. Remember Evelyn!”
3. Why was the pronoun “I” used in this communication? What position did Mr. Felix Adams hold toward this young girl qualifying him to make use of such language after her marriage to his brother?
4. And having used it, why did he, upon being attacked by her, attempt to swallow the paper upon which he had written these words, actually dying with it clinched between his teeth?
5. If he was killed in anger and died as monsters do (her own word), why did his face show sorrow rather than hate, and a determination as far as possible removed from the rush of over-whelming emotions likely to follow the reception of a mortal blow from the hand of an unexpected antagonist?
6. Why, if he had strength to seize the above-mentioned paper and convey it to his lips, did he not use that strength in turning on a light calculated to bring him assistance, instead of leaving blazing the crimson glow which, according to the code of signals as now understood by us, means: “Nothing more required just now. Keep away.”
7. What was the meaning of the huge steel plate found between the casings of the doorway, and why did it remain at rest within its socket at this, the culminating moment of his life?
8. An explanation of how old Poindexter came to appear on the scene so soon after the event. His words as overheard were: “It is Amos’s son, not Amos!” Did he not know whom he was to meet in this house? Was the condition of the man lying before him with a cross on his bosom and a dagger in his heart less of a surprise to him than the personality of the victim?
9. Remember the conclusions we have drawn from Bartow’s pantomime. Mr. Adams was killed by a left-handed thrust. Watch for an acknowledgment that the young woman is left-handed, and do not forget that an explanation is due why for so long a time she held her other arm stretched out behind her.
10. Why did the bird whose chief cry is “Remember Evelyn!” sometimes vary it with “Poor Eva! Lovely Eva! Who would strike Eva?” The story of this tragedy, to be true, must show that Mr. Adams knew his brother’s bride both long and well.
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11. If Bartow is, as we think, innocent of all connection with this crime save as witness, why does he show such joy at its result? This may not reasonably be expected to fall within the scope of Thomas Adams’s confession, but it should not be ignored by us. This deaf-and-dumb servitor was driven mad by a fact which caused him joy. Why?
12. Notice the following schedule. It has been drawn up after repeated experiments with Bartow and the various slides of the strange lamp which cause so many different lights to shine out in Mr. Adams’s study:
White light—Water wanted.
Green light—Overcoat and hat to be brought.
Blue light—Put back books on shelves.
Violet light—Arrange study for the night.
Yellow light—Watch for next light.
Red light—Nothing wanted; stay away.
The last was on at the final scene. Note if this fact can be explained by Mr. Adams’s account of the same.
With these points in our mind, let us peruse the history of this crime and of the remote and possibly complicated causes which led to it.
BOOK II: REMEMBER EVELYN
CHAPTER I
The Secret of the Cadwaladers
Thomas Cadwalader suggested rather than told his story. We dare not imitate him in this, nor would it be just to your interest to relate these facts with all the baldness and lack of detail imposed upon this unhappy man by the hurry and anxiety of the occasion. Remarkable tragedies have their birth in remarkable facts, and as such facts are but the outcome of human passions, we must enter into those passions if we would understand either the facts or their appalling consequences. In this case, the first link of the chain which led to Felix Adams’s violent death was forged before the birth of the woman who struck him. We must begin, then, with almost forgotten days, and tell the story, as her pleader did, from the standpoint of Felix and Thomas Cadwalader.
The Complete Amelia Butterworth Mystery Series Page 69
