Cynthia Wakeham's Money

by Anna Katharine Green

Frank rode down to the depot with Jerry. As he passed Miss Cavanagh's house he was startled to perceive a youthful figure bending over the flower-beds on the inner side of the wall. "She is not so pretty by daylight," was his first thought. But at that moment she raised her head, and with a warm thrill he recognized the fact that it was not Hermione, but the sister he was looking at.

It gave him something to think of, for this sister was not without her attractions, though they were less brilliant and also less marred than those of the sad and stately Hermione.

When he arrived at his office his first inquiry was if anything had been heard from Flatbush, and upon being told to the contrary he immediately started for that place. He found the house a scene of some tumult. Notwithstanding the fact that the poor woman still lay unburied, the parlors and lower hall were filled with people, who stared at the walls and rapped with wary but eager knuckles on the various lintels and casements. Whispers of a treasure having been found beneath the boards of the flooring had reached the ear of the public, and the greatest curiosity had been raised in the breasts of those who up to this day had looked upon the house as a worm-eaten structure fit only for the shelter of dogs.

Mr. Dickey was in a room above, and to him Frank immediately hastened.

"Well," said he, "what news?"

"Ah," cried the jovial witness, coming forward, "glad to see you. Have you found the heirs?"

"Not yet," rejoined Frank. "Have you had any trouble? I thought I saw a police-officer below."

"Yes, we had to have some one with authority here. Even Huckins agreed to that; he is afraid the house will be run away with, I think. Did you see what a crowd has assembled in the parlors? We let them in so that Huckins won't seem to be the sole object of suspicion; but he really is, you know. He gave me plenty to do that night."

"He did, did he?"

"Yes; you had scarcely gone before he began his tactics. First he led me very politely to a room where there was a bed; then he brought me a bottle of the vilest rum you ever drank; and then he sat down to be affable. While he talked I was at ease, but when he finally got up and said he would try to get a snatch of sleep I grew suspicious, and stopped drinking the rum and set myself to listening. He went directly to a room not far from me and shut himself in. He had no light, but in a few minutes I heard him strike a match, and then another and another. 'He is searching under the boards for more treasure,' thought I, and creeping into the next room I was fortunate enough to come upon a closet so old and with such big cracks in its partition that I was enabled to look through them into the place where he was. The sight that met my eye was startling. He was, as I conjectured, peering under the boards, which he had ripped up early in the evening; and as he had only the light of a match to aid him, I would catch quick glimpses of his eager, peering face and then lose the sight of it in sudden darkness till the gleam of another match came to show it up again. He crouched upon the floor and crept along the whole length of the board, thrusting in his arm to right and left, while the sweat oozed on his forehead and fell in large drops into the long, narrow hollow beneath him. At last he seemed to grow wild with repeated disappointments, and, starting up, stood looking about him at the four surrounding walls, as if demanding them to give up their secrets. Then the match went out, and I heard him stamp his foot with rage before proceeding to put back the boards and shift them into place. Then there came silence, during which I crept on tiptoe to the place I had left, judging that he would soon leave his room and return to see if I had been watching him.