The step on the stair

by Anna Katharine Green

XXXVII

Slowly I rose to my feet. The agitation caused by these words was uncontrollable. How much did he mean by them and why should I be so much more moved by hearing them spoken than by the suppressed thought?

He made no move to enlighten me, and, walking again to the window, I affected to look out. When I turned back it was to ask:

“What do you make of it, Mr. Jackson? This seems to place me on a very different footing; but—”

“The woman spoke at random. She saw no shadow. Her whole story was a fabrication.”

“A fabrication?”

“Yes, that is how we look at it. She may have heard some one in the room—she may even have heard the setting down of the glass on the shelf, but she did not see your shadow, or if she did, she did not recognize it as such; for the light was the same and so was every other condition as on the previous night, yet the Inspector standing at her side and knowing well who was passing, says there was nothing to be seen on the wall but a blur; no positive outline by which any true conclusion could be drawn.”

“Does she hate me so much as that? So honest a woman fabricate a story in order to involve me in anything so serious as crime?” I could not believe this myself.

“No, it was not through hate of you; rather through her great love for another. Don’t you see what lies at the bottom of her whole conduct? She thinks—”

“Don’t!” The word burst from me unawares. “Don’t put it into words. Let us leave some things to be understood, not said.” Then as his lips started to open and a cynical gleam came into his eyes, I hurriedly added: “I want to tell you something. On the night when the question of poison was first raised by the girl Martha’s ignorant outbreak over her master’s casket, I was standing with Miss Bartholomew in the balcony; Wealthy was on her other side. As that word rang up from the court, Miss Bartholomew fainted, and as I shrieked out some invective against the girl for speaking so in her mistress’ presence, I heard these words hissed into my ear. ‘Would you blame the girl for what you yourself have brought upon us?’ It was Wealthy speaking, and she certainly hated me then. And,” I added, perhaps with unnecessary candor, “with what she evidently thought very good reason.”

At this Mr. Jackson’s face broke into a smile half quizzical and half kindly:

“You believe in telling the truth,” said he. “So do I, but not all of it. You may feel yourself exonerated in the eyes of the police, but remember the public. It will be uphill work exonerating yourself with them.”

“I know it; and no man could feel the sting of his position more keenly. But you must admit that it is my duty to be as just to Edgar as to myself. Nay, more so. I know how much my uncle loved this last and dearest namesake of his. I know—no man better—that if what we do not say and must not say were true, and Uncle could rise from his grave to meet it, it would be with shielding hands and a forgiveness which would demand this and this only from the beloved ingrate, that he should not marry Orpha. Uncle was my benefactor and in honor to his memory I must hold the man he loved innocent unless forced to find him otherwise. Even for Orpha’s sake—”

“Does she love him?”

The question came too quickly and the hot flush would rise. But I answered him.

“He is loved by all who know him. It would be strange if his lifelong playmate should be the only one who did not.”

“Deuce take it!” burst from the irate lawyer’s lips, “I was speaking of a very different love from that.”

And I was thinking of a very different one.

The embarrassment this caused to both of us made a break in the conversation. But it was presently resumed by my asking what he thought the police were likely to do under the circumstances.

He shot out one word at me.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” My face brightened, but my heart sank.

“That is, as I feel bound to inform you, this is one of those cases where a premature move would be fatal to official prestige. The Bartholomews are held in much too high esteem in this town for thoughtless attack. The old gentleman was the czar of this community. No one more respected and no one more loved. Had his death been attributed to the carelessness or aggression of an outsider, no one but the Governor of the state could have held the people in check. But the story of the two wills having got about, suspicion took its natural course; the family itself became involved—an enormity which would have been inconceivable had it not been that the one suspected was the one least known and—you will pardon me if I speak plainly, even if I touch the raw—the one least liked: a foreigner, moreover, come, as all thought, from England on purpose to gather in this wealth. You felt their animosity at the inquest and you also must have felt their restraint; but had any one dared to say of Edgar what was said of you, either a great shout of derisive laughter would have gone up or hell would have broken loose in that court-room. With very few exceptions, no one there could have imagined him playing any such part. And they cannot to-day. They have known him too long, admired him too long, seen him too many times in loving companionship with the man now dead to weigh any testimony or be moved by any circumstance suggestive of anything so flagrant as guilt of this nature. The proof must be absolute before the bravest among us would dare assail his name to this extent. And the proof is not absolute. On the contrary, it is very defective; for so far as any of us can see, the crime, if perpetrated by him, lacks motive. Shall I explain?”

“Pray do. Since we have gone thus far, let us go the full length. Light is what I want; light on every angle of this affair. If it serves to clear him as it now seems it has served to clear me, I shall rejoice.”

Mr. Jackson, with a quick motion, held out his hand. I took it. We were friends from that hour.

“First, then,” continued the lawyer, “you must understand that Edgar has undergone a rigid examination at the hands of the police. This may not have appeared at the inquest but nevertheless what I say is true. Now taking his story as a basis, we have this much to go upon:

“He has always been led to believe that his future had been cut out for him according to the schedule universally understood and accepted. He was not only to marry Orpha, but to inherit personally the vast fortune which was to support her in the way to which she is entitled. No doubt as to this being his uncle’s intention—an intention already embodied in a will drawn up by Mr. Dunn—ever crossed his mind till you came upon the scene; and not then immediately. Even the misunderstanding with his uncle, occasioned, as I am told, by Mr. Bartholomew learning of some obligations he had entered into of which he was himself ashamed, failed to awaken the least fear in his mind of any change in his uncle’s testamentary intentions, or any real lessening of the affection which had prompted these intentions. Indeed, so much confidence did he have in his place in his uncle’s heart that he consented, almost with a smile, to defer the announcement of what he considered a definite engagement with Orpha, because he saw signs of illness in his uncle and could not think of crossing him. But he had no fear, as I have said, that all would not come right in time and the end be what it should be.

“Nor did his mind change with the sudden signs of favor shown by his uncle towards yourself. The odd scheme of sharing with you, by a definite arrangement, the care which your uncle’s invalid condition soon called for, he accepted without question, as he did every other whim of his autocratic relative. But when the servants began to talk to him of how much writing his uncle did while lying in his bed, and whispers of a new will, drawn up in your absence as well as in his began to circulate through the house, he grew sufficiently alarmed to call on Mr. Dunn at his office and propound a few inquiries. The result was a complete restoration of his tranquillity; for Mr. Dunn, having been kept in ignorance of another lawyer having visited Quenton Court immediately upon his departure, and supposing that the will he had prepared and seen attested was the last expression of Mr. Bartholomew’s wishes, gave Edgar such unqualified assurances of a secured future that he naturally was thrown completely off his balance when on the night which proved to be Mr. Bartholomew’s last, he was summoned to his uncle’s presence and was shown not only one new will but two, alike in all respects save in the essential point with which we are both acquainted. Now, as I am as anxious as you are to do justice to the young man, I will say that if your uncle was looking for any wonderful display of generosity from one who saw in a moment the hopes of a lifetime threatened with total disaster, then he was expecting too much. Of course, Edgar rebelled and said words which hurt the old gentleman. He would not have been normal otherwise. But what I want to impress upon you in connection with this interview is this. He left the room with these words ringing in his ears, ‘Now we will see what your cousin has to say. When he quits me, but one of these two wills will remain, and that one you must make up your mind to recognize.’ Therefore,” and here Mr. Jackson leaned towards me in his desire to hold my full attention, “he went from that room with every reason to fear that the will to be destroyed was the one favoring himself, and the one to be retained that which made you chief heir and the probable husband of Orpha. Have we heard of anything having occurred between then and early morning to reverse the conclusions of that moment? No. Then why should he resort to crime in order to shorten the few remaining days of his uncle’s life when he had every reason to believe that his death would only hasten the triumph of his rival?”

I was speechless, dazed by a fact that may have visited my mind, but which had never before been clearly formulated there! Seeing this, the lawyer went on to say:

“That is why our hands are held.”

Still I did not speak. I was thinking. What I had said we would not do had been done. The word crime had been used in connection with Edgar, and I had let it pass. The veil was torn aside. There was no use in asking to have it drawn to again. I would serve him better by looking the thing squarely in the face and meeting it as I had met the attack against myself, with honesty and high purpose. But first I must make some acknowledgment of the conclusion to which this all pointed, and I did it in these words.

“You see! The boy is innocent.”

“I have not said that.”

“But I have said it.”

“Very good, you have said it; now go on.”

This was not so easy. But the lawyer was waiting and watching me and I finally stammered forth:

“There is some small fact thus far successfully suppressed which when known will change the trend of public opinion and clarify the whole situation.”

“Exactly, and till it is, we will continue the search for the will which I honestly believe lies hidden somewhere in that mysterious house. Had he destroyed it during that interval in which he was left alone, there would have been some signs left in the ashes on the hearth; and Wealthy denies seeing anything of the sort when she stooped to replenish the fire that night, and so does Clarke, who, at Edgar’s instigation, took up the ashes after their first failure to find the will and carefully sifted them in the cellar.”

“I have been wondering if they did that.”

“Well, they did, or so I have been told. Besides, you must remember the look of consternation, if not of horror, which crossed your uncle’s face as he felt that death was upon him and he could no longer speak. If he had destroyed both wills, the one when alone, the other in the face of you all, he would have shown no such emotion. He had simply been eliminating every contestant save his daughter—something which should have given him peace.”

“You are right. And as for myself I propose to keep quiet, hoping that the mystery will soon end. Do you think that the police will allow me to leave town?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Back to work; to my desk at Meadows & Waite in New York.”

“I don’t think that I would do that. You will meet with much unpleasantness.”

“I must learn to endure cold looks and hypocritical smiles.”

“But not unnecessarily. I would advise you to take a room at the Sheldon; live quietly and wait. If you wish to write a suitable explanation to your firm, do so. There can be no harm in that.”

My heart leaped. His advice was good. I should at least be in the same town as Orpha.

“There is just one thing more,” I observed, as we were standing near his office door preparatory to my departure. “Did Edgar say whether he saw the wills themselves or, like myself, only the two envelopes presumably holding them?”

He was shown them open. Mr. Bartholomew took them one after the other from their envelopes and, spreading them out on the desk, pointed out the name of Edgar Quenton, the son of my brother, Frederick, on the one, and Edgar Quenton, the son of my brother, James, on the other, and so stood with his finger pressed on the latter while they had their little scene. When that was over, he folded the two wills up again and put them back in their several envelopes, all without help, Edgar looking on, as I have no doubt, in a white heat of perfectly justifiable indignation. “Can’t you see the picture?”

I could and did, but I had no disposition to dwell on it. A question had risen in my mind to which I must have an answer.

“You speak of Edgar looking on. At what, may I ask? At Uncle’s handling of the wills or in a general way at Uncle himself?”

“He said that he kept his eye on the two wills.”

“Oh! and did he note into which envelope the one went in which he was most interested,—the one favoring himself?”

“Yes, but the envelopes were alike, neither being marked at that time, and as his uncle jumbled them together in his hands, this did not help him or us.”

“Ah, the red mark was put on later?”

“Yes. The pencil with which he did it was found on the floor.”

I tried to find a way through these shadows,—to spur my memory into recalling the one essential thing which would settle a very vexing question—but I was obliged to give it up with the acknowledgment:

“That mark was in the corner of one of the envelopes at the time I saw them; but I do not know which will it covered. God! what a complication!”

“Yes. No daylight yet, my boy. But it will come. Some trivial matter, unseen as yet, or if seen regarded as of no account, will provide us with a clew, leading straight to the very heart of this mystery. I believe this, and you must, too; otherwise you will find your life a little hard to bear.”

I braced myself. I shrank unaccountably from what I felt it to be my present duty to communicate. I always did when there was any possibility of Orpha’s name coming up.

“Some trivial matter? An unexpected clew?” I repeated. “Mr. Jackson, I have been keeping back a trivial matter which may yet prove to be a clew.”

And I told him of the note made up of printed letters which I had found in my box of cigars.

He was much interested in it and regretted exceedingly that I had obeyed the injunction to burn it.

“From whom did this communication come?”

That I could not answer. I had my own thoughts. Much thinking and perhaps much hoping had led me to believe that it was from Orpha; but I could not say this to him. Happily his own thoughts had turned to the servants and I foresaw that sooner or later they were likely to have a strenuous time with him. As his brows puckered and he seemed in imagination to have them already under examination, I took a sudden resolution.

“Mr. Jackson, I have heard—I have read—of a means now in use in police investigation which sometimes leads to astonishing results.” I spoke hesitatingly, for I felt the absurdity of my offering any suggestion to this able lawyer. “The phial which held the poison was handled—must have been handled. Wouldn’t it show finger-prints—”

The lawyer threw back his head with a good-natured snort and I stopped confused.

“I know that it is ridiculous for me,” I began—

But he cut me short very quickly.

“No, it’s not ridiculous. I was just pleased; that’s all. Of course the police made use of this new method of detection. Looked about for finger-prints and all that and found some, I have been told. But you must remember that two days at least elapsed between Mr. Bartholomew’s death and any suspicion of foul play. That such things as the glass and other small matters had all been removed and—here is the important point; the most important of all,—that the cabinet which held the medicines had been visited and the bottle labeled dangerous touched, if not lifted entirely out, and that by more than one person. Of course, they found finger-prints on it and on the woodwork of the cabinet, but they were those of Orpha, Edgar and Wealthy who rushed up to examine the same at the first intimation that your uncle’s death might have been due to the use of this deadly drug. And now you will see why I felt something like pleasure at your naïve mention of finger-prints. Of all the persons who knew of the location and harmful nature of this medicine, you only failed to leave upon the phial this irrefutable proof of having had it in your hand. Now you know the main reason why the police have had the courage to dare public opinion. Your finger-prints were not to be found on anything connected with that cabinet.”

“My finger-prints? What do they know of my finger-prints. I never had them taken.”

Again that characteristic snort.

“You have had a personal visit, I am told, from the Inspector. What do you think of him? Don’t you judge him to be quite capable of securing an impression of your finger-tips, if he so desired, during the course of an interview lasting over two hours?”

I remembered his holding out to me a cigarette case and urging me to smoke. Did I do so? Yes. Did I touch the case? Yes, I took it in hand. Well, as it had done me no harm, I could afford to smile and I did.

“Yes, he is quite capable of putting over a little thing like that. Bless him for it.”

“Yes, you are a fortunate lad to have won his good will.”

I thought of Edgar and of the power which, seemingly without effort, he exercised over every kind of person with whom he came in contact, and was grateful that in my extremity I had found one man, if not two, who trusted me.

Just a little buoyed up by my success in this venture, I attempted another.

“There is just one thing more, Mr. Jackson. There is a name which we have not mentioned—that is, in any serious connection,—but which, if we stop to think, may suggest something to our minds worthy of discussion. I mean—Clarke’s. Can it be that under his straightforward and devoted manner he has held concealed jealousies or animosities which demanded revenge?”

“I have no acquaintance with the man; but I heard the Inspector say that he wished every one he had talked to about this crime had the simple candor and quiet understanding of Luke Clarke. Though broken-hearted over his loss, he stands ready to answer any and all questions; declaring that life will be worth nothing to him till he knows who killed the man he has served for fifteen years. I don’t think there is anything further to be got out of Clarke. The Inspector is positive that there is not.”

But was I? By no means. I was not sure of anything but Orpha’s beauty and worth and the love I felt for her; and vented my dissatisfaction in the querulous cry:

“Why should I waste your time any longer? I have nothing to offer; nothing more to suggest. To tell the truth, Mr. Jackson, I am all at sea.”

And he, being, I suspect, somewhat at sea himself, accepted my “Good day,” and allowed me to go.