The House of the Whispering Pines (18 page)

"Leave those bottles alone. They're waiting for the old clothes man. He
pays us money for them."

Sweetwater gaped and strolled away. He had used his eyes to purpose, and
was quite assured that the bottle he wanted was not there. But the
woman's words had given him his cue, and when later in the day a certain
old Jew peddler went his rounds through this portion of the city, a
disreputable-looking fellow accompanied him, whom even the sharp landlady
in Cuthbert Road would have failed to recognise as the same man who had
occupied the snuggery the night before. He was many hours on the route
and had many new experiences with human nature. But he gained little
else, and was considering with what words he should acknowledge his
defeat at police headquarters, when he found himself again at the markets
and a minute later in the alley where the cart stood, with the contents
of which he had busied himself earlier in the day.

He had followed the peddler here because he had followed him to every
other back door and alley. But he was tired and had small interest in the
cart which looked quite undisturbed and in exactly the same condition as
when he turned his back upon it in the morning. But when he drew nearer
and began to lend a hand in removing the bottles to the waggon, he
discovered that a bottle had been added to the pile, and that this bottle
bore the label which marked it as being one of the two which had been
taken from the club-house on the night of the murder.

Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had liv'd a blessed time; for from this instant,
There's nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys; renown, and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the lees
Is left this vault to brag of.

Macbeth
.

The lamp in the coroner's room shone dully on the perturbed faces of
three anxious men. They had been talking earnestly and long, but were now
impatiently awaiting the appearance of a fourth party, as was shown by
the glances which each threw from time to time towards the door leading
into the main corridor.

The district attorney courted the light, and sat where he would be the
first seen by any one entering. He had nothing to hide, being entirely
engrossed in his duty.

Further back and rather behind the lamp than in front of it stood or sat,
as his restlessness prompted, Coroner Perry, the old friend of Amasa
Cumberland, with whose son he had now to do. Behind him, and still
further in the shadow, could be seen the quiet figure of Sweetwater. All
counted the minutes and all showed relief—the coroner by a loud
sigh—when the door finally opened and an officer appeared, followed by
the lounging form of Adelaide's brother.

Arthur Cumberland had come unwillingly, and his dissatisfaction did not
improve his naturally heavy countenance. However, he brightened a little
at sight of the two men sitting at the table, and, advancing, broke into
speech before either of the two officials had planned their questions.

"I call this hard," he burst forth. "My place is at home and at the
bedside of my suffering sister, and you drag me down here at nine o'clock
at night to answer questions about things of which I am completely
ignorant. I've said all I have to say about the trouble which has come
into my family; but if another repetition of the same things will help to
convict that scoundrel who has broken up my home and made me the
wretchedest dog alive, then I'm ready to talk. So, fire ahead, Dr. Perry,
and let's be done with it."

"Sit down," replied the district attorney, gravely, with a gesture of
dismissal to the officer. "Mr. Cumberland, we have spared you up to
this time, for two very good reasons. You were in great trouble, and
you appeared to be in the possession of no testimony which would
materially help us. But matters have changed since you held
conversation with Dr. Perry on the day following your sister's decease.
You have laid that sister away; the will which makes you an independent
man for life has been read in your hearing; you are in as much ease of
mind as you can be while your remaining sister's life hangs trembling
in the balance; and, more important still, discoveries not made before
the funeral, have been made since, rendering it very desirable for you
to enter into particulars at this present moment, which were not
thought necessary then."

"Particulars? What particulars? Don't you know enough, as it is, to hang
the fellow? Wasn't he seen with his fingers on Adelaide's throat? What
can I tell you that is any more damaging than that? Particulars!" The
word seemed to irritate him beyond endurance. Never had he looked more
unprepossessing or a less likely subject for sympathy, than when he
stumbled into the chair set for him by the district attorney.

"Arthur!"

The word had a subtle ring. The coroner, who uttered it, waited to watch
its effect. Seemingly it had none, after the first sullen glance thrown
him by the young man; and the coroner sighed again, but this time softly,
and as a prelude to the following speech:

"We can understand," said he, "why you should feel so strongly against
one who has divided the hearts of your sisters, and played with one, if
not with both. Few men could feel differently. You have reason for your
enmity and we excuse it; but you must not carry it to the point of open
denunciation before the full evidence is in and the fact of murder
settled beyond all dispute. Whatever you may think, whatever we may
think, it has not been so settled. There are missing links still to be
supplied, and this is why we have summoned you here and ask you to be
patient and give the district attorney a little clearer account of what
went on in your own house, before you broke up that evening and you went
to your debauch, and your sister Adelaide to her death at The
Whispering Pines."

"I don't know what you mean." He brought his fist down on the table with
each word. "Nothing went on. That is,—"

"Something went on at dinner-time. It was not a usual meal," put in the
district attorney. "You and your sisters—"

"Stop!" He was at that point of passion which dulls the most
self-controlled to all sense of propriety.

"Don't talk to me about that dinner. I want to forget that dinner. I want
to forget everything but the two things I live for—to see that fellow
hanged, and to—" The words choked him, and he let his head fall, but
presently threw it up again. "That dastard, whom may God confound, passed
a letter across Adelaide into Carmel's hand," he panted out. "I saw him,
but I didn't take it in; I wasn't thinking. I was—"

"Who broke the glasses?" urged his relentless inquisitor. "One at your
plate, one at Carmel's, and one at the head of the board where sat your
sister Adelaide?"

"God! Must I tell these things?" He had started to his feet and his hand,
violent in all it did, struck his forehead impulsively, as he uttered
this exclamation. "Have it, then! Heaven knows I think of it enough not
to be afraid to speak it out in words. Adelaide"—the name came with
passion, but once uttered, produced its own calming effect, so that he
went on with more restraint—"Adelaide never had much patience with me.
She was a girl who only saw one way. 'The right! the right!' was what
she dinned into my ears from the time I was a small boy and didn't know
but that all youngsters were brought up by sisters. I grew to hate what
she called 'the right,' I wanted pleasure, a free time, and a good drink
whenever the fancy took me. You know what I am, Dr. Perry, and everybody
in town knows; but the impulse which has always ruled me was not a
downright evil one; or if it was, I called it natural independence, and
let it go at that. But Adelaide suffered. I didn't understand it and I
didn't care a fig for it, but she
did
suffer. God forgive me!"

He stopped and mopped his forehead. Sweetwater moved a trifle on his
seat, but the others—men who had passed the meridian of life, who had
known temptations, possibly had succumbed to them, from time to time—sat
like two statues, one in full light and the other in as dark a shadow as
he could find.

"That afternoon," young Cumberland presently resumed, "she was keyed up
more than usual. She loved Ranelagh,—damn him!—and he had played or was
playing her false. She watched him with eyes that madden me, now, when I
think of them. She saw him look at Carmel, and she saw Carmel look at
him. Then her eyes fell on me. I was angry; angry at them all, and I
wanted a drink. It was not her habit to have wine on the table; but
sometimes, when Ranelagh was there, she did. She was a slave to Ranelagh,
and he could make her do whatever he wished, just as he can make you and
everybody else."

Here he shot insolent glances at his two interlocutors, one of whom
changed colour—which, happily, he did not see. "'Ring the bell,' I
ordered, 'and have in the champagne. I want to drink to your marriage and
the happy days in prospect for us all,' It was brutal and I knew it; but
I was reckless and wild for the wine. So, I guess, was Ranelagh, for he
smiled at her, and she rang for the champagne. When the glasses had been
set beside each plate, she turned towards Carmel. 'We will all drink,'
she said, 'to my coming marriage,' This made Carmel turn pale; for
Adelaide had never been known to drink a drop of liquor in her life. I
felt a little queer, myself; and not one of us spoke till the glasses
were filled and the maid had left the dining-room and shut the door.

"Then Adelaide rose. 'We will drink standing,' said she, and never had I
seen her look as she did then. I thought of my evil life when I should
have been watching Ranelagh; and when she lifted the glass to her lips
and looked at me, almost as earnestly as she did at Ranelagh,—but it was
a different kind of earnestness,—I felt like—like—well, like the
wretch I was and always had been; possibly, always will be. She
drank;—we wouldn't call it drinking, for she just touched the wine with
her lips; but to her it was debauch. Then she stood waiting, with the
strangest gleam in her eyes, while Ranelagh drained his glass and I
drained mine. Ranelagh thought she wanted some sentiment, and started to
say something appropriate; but his eye fell on Carmel, who had tried to
drink and couldn't, and he bungled over his words and at last came to a
pause under the steady stare of Adelaide's eyes.

"'Never mind, Elwood,' she said; 'I know what you would like to say. But
that's not what I am thinking of now. I am thinking of my brother, the
boy who will soon be left to find his way through life without even the
unwelcome restraint of my presence. I want him to remember this day. I
want him to remember me as I stand here before him with this glass in my
hand. You see wine in it, Arthur; but I see poison—poison—nothing else,
for one like you who cannot refuse a friend, cannot refuse your own
longing. Never from this day on shall another bottle be opened under my
roof. Carmel, you have grieved as well as I over what has passed for
pleasure in this house. Do as I do, and may Arthur see and remember.'

"Her fingers opened; the glass fell from her hand, and lay in broken
fragments beside her plate. Carmel followed suit, and, before I knew it,
my own fingers had opened, and my own glass lay in pieces on the
table-cloth beneath me. Only Ranelagh's hand remained steady. He did not
choose to please her, or he was planning his perfidy and had not caught
her words or understood her action. She held her breath, watching that
hand; and I can hear the gasp yet with which she saw him set his glass
down quietly on the board. That's the story of those three broken
glasses. If she had not died that night, I should be laughing at them
now; but she did die and I don't laugh! I curse—curse her recreant
lover, and sometimes myself! Do you want anything more of me? I'm eager
to be gone, if you don't."

The district attorney sought out and lifted a paper from the others lying
on the desk before him. It was the first movement he had made since
Cumberland began his tale.

"I'm sorry," said he, with a rapid examination of the paper in his hand,
"but I shall have to detain you a few minutes longer. What happened after
the dinner? Where did you go from the table?"

"I went to my room to smoke. I was upset and thirsty as a fish."

"Have you liquor in your room?"

"Sometimes."

"Did you have any that night?"

"Not a drop. I didn't dare. I wanted that champagne bottle, but
Adelaide had been too quick for me. It was thrown out—wasted—I do
believe, wasted."

"So you did not drink? You only smoked in your room?"

"Smoked one cigar. That was all. Then I went down town."

His tone had grown sulky, the emotion which had buoyed him up till now,
seemed suddenly to have left him. With it went the fire from his eye, the
quiver from his lip, and it is necessary to add, everything else
calculated to awaken sympathy. He was simply sullen now.

"May I ask by which door you left the house?"

"The side door—the one I always take."

"What overcoat did you wear?"

"I don't remember. The first one I came to, I suppose."

"But you can surely tell what hat?"

They expected a violent reply, and they got it.

"No, I can't. What has my hat got to do with the guilt of Elwood
Ranelagh?"

"Nothing, we hope," was the imperturbable answer. "But we find it
necessary to establish absolutely just what overcoat and what hat you
wore down street that night."

"I've told you that I don't remember." The young man's colour was rising.

"Are not these the ones?" queried the district attorney, making a sign to
Sweetwater, who immediately stepped forward, with a shabby old ulster
over his arm, and a battered derby in his hand.

The young man started, rose, then sat again, shouting out with
angry emphasis: