The House of the Whispering Pines (43 page)

An officer shook Zadok by the arm and he got up and began to move
aside. Then I had mind to face my own fate, and, looking up, I met
Sweetwater's eye.

It was quietly apologetic.

"I only wished to congratulate you," said he, "on the conclusion of a
case in which I know you are highly interested." Lifting his hat, he
nodded affably and was gone before I could recover from my stupor.

It was for Clifton to show his indignation. I was past all feeling.
Farce as an after-piece never appealed to me.

Would I have considered it farce if I could have heard the words which
this detective was at that moment whispering into the district
attorney's ears:

"Do you want to know who throttled Adelaide Cumberland? It was not her
brother; it was not her lover; it was her old and trusted coachman."

—I have within my mind
A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks
Which I will practise.

Merchant of Venice
.

"Give me your reasons. They must be excellent ones, Sweetwater, or you
would not risk making a second mistake in a case of this magnitude and
publicity."

"Mr. Fox, they are excellent. But you shall judge of them. From the
moment Miss Carmel Cumberland overthrew the very foundations of our case
by her remarkable testimony, I have felt that my work was only half done.
It was a strain on credulity to believe Arthur guilty of a crime so
prefaced, and the alternative which Mr. Moffat believed in, which you
were beginning to believe in, and perhaps are allowing yourself to
believe in even now, never appealed to me.

"I allude to the very natural suspicion that the act beheld by your man
Clarke was a criminal act, and that Ranelagh is the man really
responsible for Miss Cumberland's death. Some instinct held me back from
this conclusion, as well as the incontrovertible fact that he could have
had no hand in carrying that piece of broken bottle into the Cumberland
stable, or of dropping his engagement ring in the suggestive place where
it was found. Where, then, should I look for the unknown, the
unsuspected third party? Among the ten other persons who dropped
something into that casket.

"Most of these were children, but I made the acquaintance of every one. I
spent most of my Sunday that way; then, finding no clouded eye among
them, I began a study of the Cumberland servants, naturally starting with
Zadok. For two hours I sat at his stable fire, talking and turning him
inside out, as only we detectives know how. I found him actually
overwhelmed with grief; not the grief of a sane man, but of one in whom
the very springs of life are poisoned by some dreadful remorse.

"He did not know he revealed this; he expressed himself as full of hope
that his young master would be acquitted the next day; but I could see
that this prospect could never still the worm working at his heart, and
resolved to understand why. I left him ostensibly alone, but in reality
shadowed him. The consequence was that, in the evening dusk, he led me to
the cemetery, where he took up his watch at Miss Cumberland's grave, as
if it were a Mecca and he a passionate devotee. I could hear his groans
as he hung to the fence and spoke softly to the dead; and though I was
too far away to catch a single word, I felt confident that I had at last
struck the right track, and should soon see my way more clearly than at
any time since this baffling case opened.

"But before I allowed my fancy to run away with me, I put in an evening
of inquiry. If this man had an absolute alibi, what was the use of
wasting effort upon him. But I could not find that he had, Mr. Fox. He
went with the rest of the servants to the ball—which, you know, was held
in Tibbitt's Hall, on Ford Street and he was seen there later, dancing
and making merry in a way not usual to him. But there was a space of time
dangerously tallying with that of the tragic scene at the club-house,
when he was not seen by any one there, so far as I can make out; and this
fact gave me courage to consider a certain point which had struck me, and
of which I thought something might be made.

"Mr. Fox, after the fiasco I have made of this affair, it costs me
something to go into petty details which must suggest my former failures
and may not strike you with the force they did me. That broken bottle—
or rather, that piece of broken bottle! Where was the rest of it? Sought
for almost immediately after the tragedy, it had not been found at the
Cumberland place or on the golf-links. It had been looked for carefully
when the first thaw came; but, though glass was picked up, it was not the
same glass. The task had become hopeless and ere long was abandoned.

"But with this idea of Zadok being the means of its transfer from The
Whispering Pines to the house on the Hill, I felt the desire to look once
more, and while court was in session this morning, I started a fresh
search—this time not on the golf-links. Tibbitt's Hall communicates more
quickly with The Whispering Pines by the club-house road than by the
market one. So I directed my attention to the ground in front, and on
the further side of the driveways.
And I found the neck of that bottle
!

"Yes, sir, I will show it to you later. I picked it up at some distance
from the northern driveway, under a small tree, against the trunk of
which it had evidently been struck off. This meant that the lower part
had been carried away, broken.

"Now, who would do this but Zadok, who saw in it, he has said, a
receptacle for some varnish which he had; and if Zadok, how had he
carried it, if not in some pocket of his greatcoat. But glass edges make
quick work with pockets; and if this piece of bottle had gone from The
Whispering Pines to Tibbitt's Hall, and from there to the Hill, there
should be some token of its work in Zadok's overcoat pocket.

"This led me to look for those tokens; and as I had by this time
insinuated my way into his confidence by a free and cheerful manner which
gave him a rest from his gloomy thoughts, I soon had a chance to see for
myself the condition of those pockets. The result was quite satisfactory.
In one of them I found a frayed lining, easily explainable on the theory
I had advanced. That pocket can be seen by you.

"But Mr. Fox, I wanted some real proof. I wasn't willing to embarrass
another man, or to risk my own reputation on a hazard so blind as
this, without something really definite. A confession was what I
wanted, or such a breakdown of the man as would warrant police action.
How could I get this?

"I am a pupil of Mr. Gryce, and I remembered some of his methods.

"This man, guilty though he might be, loved this family, and was
broken-hearted over the trouble in which he saw it plunged. Excused
to-day from attendance at court, he was in constant telephonic
communication with some friend of his, who kept him posted as to the
conduct of the trial and the probabilities of a favourable verdict.

"If the case had gone against Arthur, we should have heard from his
coachman—that I verily believe, but when we all saw that he was likely
to be acquitted, I realised that some other course must be taken to shake
Zadok from his new won complacency, and I chose the most obvious one.

"Just when everything looked most favourable to their restored peace and
happiness, I shocked Miss Carmel and, through her, this Zadok, into the
belief that the whole agony was to be gone over again, in the rearrest
and consequent trial of the man she still loves, in spite of all that has
happened to separate them.

"He was not proof against this new responsibility. As she fainted, he
leaped from the box; and, could I have heard the words he muttered in her
ear, I am sure that I should have that to give you which would settle
this matter for all time. As it is, I can only say that my own
convictions are absolute; the rest remains with you."

"We will go see the man," said District Attorney Fox.

For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,
Too much avenged by those who err. I wait,
Enduring thus, the retributive hour
Which since we spake is even nearer now.

Prometheus Unbound
.

The moment I felt Sweetwater's hand lifted from my shoulder I sprang into
the first hack I could find, and bade the driver follow the Cumberland
sleigh post-haste. I was determined to see Carmel and have Carmel see me.
Whatever cold judgment might say against the meeting, I could not live in
my present anxiety. If the thunderbolt which had struck her had spared
her life and reason she must know from my own lips that I was not only a
free man, but as innocent of the awful charge conveyed in Sweetwater's
action as was the brother, who had just been acquitted of it by the
verdict of his peers.

I must declare this, and she must believe me. Nothing else
mattered—nothing else in all the world. That Arthur might stop me, that
anything could stop me, did not disturb my mind for a minute. All that I
dreaded was that I might find myself too late; that this second blow
might have proved to be too much for her, and that I should find my
darling dead or passed from me into that living death which were the
harder punishment of the two. But I was spared this killing grief. When
our two conveyances stopped, it was in the driveway of her old home; and
as I bounded upon the walk, it was to see her again in Arthur's arms, but
this time with open eyes and horror-drawn features.

"Carmel!" rushed in a cry from my lips. "Don't believe what they say. I
cannot bear it—I cannot bear it!"

She roused; she looked my way, and struggling to her feet, held back
Arthur with one hand while she searched my face—and possibly searched
her own soul—for answer to my plea. Never was moment more surcharged.
Further word I could not speak; I could only meet her eyes with the
steady, demanding look of a despairing heart, while Arthur moved in every
fibre of his awakened manhood, waited—thinking, perhaps, how few minutes
had passed since he hung upon the words of a fellow being for his
condemnation to death, or release to the freedom which he now enjoyed.

A moment! But what an eternity before I saw the rigid lines of her white,
set face relax—before I marked the play of human, if not womanly,
emotion break up the misery of her look and soften her youthful lips into
some semblance of their old expression. Love might be dead—friendship,
even, be a thing of the far past—but consideration was still alive and
in another instant it spoke in these trembling sentences, uttered across
a threshold made sacred by a tragedy involving our three lives:

"Come in and explain yourself. No man should go unheard. I know you will
not come where Adelaide's spirit yet lingers, if you cannot bring hands
clean from all actual violence."

I motioned my driver away, and as Carmel drew back out of sight, I caught
at Arthur's arm and faced him with the query:

"Are you willing that I should enter? I only wish to declare to her, and
to you, an innocence I have no means of proving, but which you cannot
disbelieve if I swear it, here and now, by your sister Carmel's sacred
disfigurement. Such depravity could not exist, as such a vow from the
lips guilty of the crime you charge me with. Look at me, Arthur. I
considered you—now consider me."

Quickly he stepped back. "Enter," said he.

It was some minutes later—I cannot say how many—that one of the
servants disturbed us by asking if we knew anything about Zadok.

"He has not come home," said he, "and here is a man who wants him."

"What man?" asked Arthur.

"Oh, that detective chap. He never will leave us alone."

I arose. In an instant enlightenment had come to me. "It's nothing," said
I with my eyes on Carmel; but the gesture I furtively made Arthur, said
otherwise.

A few minutes later we were both in the driveway. "We are on the brink of
a surprise," I whispered. "I think I understand this Sweetwater now."

Arthur looked bewildered, but he took the lead in the interview which
followed with the man who had made him so much trouble and was now doing
his best to make us all amends.

Zadok could not be found; he was wanted by the district attorney, who
wished to put some questions to him. Were there any objections to his
searching the stable-loft for indications of his whereabouts?

Arthur made none; and the detective, after sending the Cumberlands'
second man before him to light up the stable, disappeared beneath the
great door, whither we more slowly followed him.

"Not here!" came in a shout from above, as we stepped in from the night
air; and in a few minutes the detective came running down the stairs,
baffled and very ill at ease. Suddenly he encountered my eye. "Oh—I
know!" he cried, and started for the gate.

"I am going to follow him," I confided to Arthur. "Look for me again
to-night; or, at least, expect a message. If fortune favours us, as I now
expect, we two shall sleep to-night as we have not slept for months." And
waiting for no answer, not even to see if he comprehended my meaning, I
made a run for the gate, and soon came up with Sweetwater.

"To the cemetery?" I asked.

"Yes, to the cemetery."

And there we found him, in the same place where we had seen him before,
but not in the same position. He was sunken now to the ground; but his
face was pressed against the rails, and in his stiff, cold hand was
clutched a letter which afterwards we read.

Let it be read by you here. It will explain the mystery which came near
destroying the lives of more than Adelaide.

No more unhappy wretch than I goes to his account. I killed her who had
shown me only goodness, and will be the death of others if I do not
confess my dreadful, my unsuspected secret. This is how it happened. I
cannot give reasons; I cannot even ask for pardon.