“I think I will go in,” said I. “I know Mr. Randall quite well. If one or both of them come out before I do, follow. I will not be gone any longer than is necessary.”
He nodded and fell back into his hiding-place. I rang the bell and asked for Mr. Randall.
“He is busy just now, sir,” explained the neat servant girl who answered my summons. “But if you will step into his study, he will soon be ready to see you.”
I needed no second invitation. In a few moments I was ensconced in the cosy back parlor, listening to the low murmur of voices that came from the room in front through the heavy folding-doors that separated the two apartments. Of these voices I could distinguish two; the heavy bass of Mr. Randall, and the lighter, smoother tones of the young man who had brought me his keys in Seventy-third Street. Suddenly both voices ceased, and there was a slight bustle, then a solemn silence, then—could it be the sound of Mr. Randall’s voice again, not in the conversational tone he had previously used, but in the measured accent he was accustomed to use in the pulpit. “The enigma increases,” thought I, and, regardless of appearances, I crept to the folding-doors and glued my ear against the narrow crack that marked their line of division. What I heard only increased my curiosity to the fever point. At all risks, and in despite of all ordinary proprieties, I must see whom the clergyman was addressing; so, exerting all my skill and no little of the caution of a professional detective, I pried the doors the least bit apart and saw,—what I certainly had not come there to see, and yet a very pretty sight for all that—Mr. Sutton and Philippa Irwin kneeling before Mr. Randall, and that gentleman pronouncing over them the marriage benediction.
There was another lady and two gentlemen in a group about them, but beyond noting that the lady was Mrs. Randall, and the gentlemen members of the same family, I did not bestow a thought upon them, my whole attention being given to the man and woman, whom I had been following under so sinister a suspicion, only to find myself a witness of the most serious act of their lives.
The surprise of the occasion and the touching nature of the whole scene, made me for the instant forget the diamonds and what my very presence in that spot implied. But, when the final words had been said, and the few congratulations offered, the young people faced about and I caught a glimpse of the bride’s countenance, I remembered with a shock the gloomy nature of the shadow which surrounded them; and while I could not help but give my sympathy to a condition of things at once so novel and so interesting, I also felt my determination as a detective return. For Philippa’s face wore not the look of a happy bride, but that of a woman who has just dared everything that some cherished scheme might be fulfilled or some dreadful ill averted. Indeed, there was terror in the eye with which she regarded her husband; a terror so mixed with love and the light of something like hope as she met his glance of triumphant satisfaction, that I felt I must probe the matter of the diamonds to the bottom if only to solve the mystery of her action, and the motives by which she had been governed in this gift of herself at a moment so manifestly unpropitious to happiness and honor.
Meanwhile, Mr. Randall was saying some words of courtesy and farewell, and, seeing that in another moment his steps might be turned in my direction, I pushed to the doors at which I was standing, with even a greater caution than that with which I had separated them, and falling back to my old station on the sofa, I awaited with equal interest and impatience his entrance and the sound of the young couple’s departure.
Mr. Randall appeared and the front door closed at the same time. Resigning Mr. Sutton and his bride to the care of the man without, I turned my attention to the clergyman. I knew enough of his character and life to be certain he had not married them without knowing something of their history and condition, and that knowledge I meant to have.