One of My Sons

by Anna Katharine Green

The progress which I had made in the case I had undertaken against this man may seem to have reached a point justifying me in communicating the result to Hope. But though I had succeeded in supplying one of the missing links heretofore mentioned as necessary to that end, I nevertheless hesitated to approach her till the whole chain was complete. Her very desire to believe her youngest cousin innocent would make her slow in accepting conclusions too much in the line of her own wishes. She might even now be moved by secret hopes in this direction, might cherish convictions and calm herself with soothing anticipations of restored confidence in Alfred, but she would require the most positive evidence that the potion, however and by whomever obtained, had been actually and knowingly administered by Leighton. To the establishment of this last link in the chain, I must therefore address myself; an almost hopeless task, from which I shrank with very natural misgivings.

Two paths of inquiry, and two only, offered any promise of success. One of these struck me as practicable; the other not. But the practicable one was not within my reach, while the other was little more than a dream. I allude in the first instance to the knowledge supposed to lie hidden within the breast of the old butler; while the dream—well, the dream was this: For some time I had suspected the existence of a secret and as yet unknown witness of this crime, a witness for whose appearance on the scene I had daily looked, and from whom I did not yet despair of gleaning valuable testimony. What basis had I for this dream? I will endeavour to explain.

In presenting to your notice a diagram of the parlour floor of the Gillespie house, I was careful to show the window to be found at the left of Mr. Gillespie's desk. But I drew no attention to this window, nor did I think it worth my while to say that I found the shade of this window rolled up when I first followed Claire into the room. Later, I drew this shade down, but not before noticing that a window stood open in the extension running back of the Gillespie yard from the adjoining house on Fifty- —— Street, and that in the room thus disclosed a man was to be seen moving uneasily about.

Now, if this man had been in that room for any length of time, the chances were that his glances had fallen more than once on the brilliantly lighted interior of Mr. Gillespie's den, lying as it did directly under his eye. If so, how much or how little had he seen of what went on there? That is what I now proposed to find out.

That this person, who was a total stranger to me, had given no sign of being in the possession of facts withheld from the police, did not deter me from hoping that I should yet learn something from him. Many men, among them myself, have an invincible dislike to the publicity inseparable from the position of witness, and if this unknown man imagined, as he naturally might, that the police were ignorant of the opportunity which had been given him of looking into Mr. Gillespie's house at a moment so critical, the chances were that he would keep silent in regard to it. That his appearance at the window had been simultaneous with my sight of him, and thus too late for him to have seen more than I did of what went on in Mr. Gillespie's den, was a possibility which would occur to any man. Also, that he might have been there and in full sight of the window from the first, yet had distractions of his own which kept him from making use of his opportunities.

Nevertheless, the probabilities were favourable to the hope I had conceived; and, deciding that in my present uncertainty any action was better than none, I made up my mind to ascertain who this young man was, and whether any means offered for my making his acquaintance.

Sam Underhill was the only man I knew capable of bringing this about. I therefore went below in search of him, and was fortunate enough to come upon him just as he was returning to his room for some theatre tickets he had forgotten to put into his pocket. I attacked him before he could back out.

"What is the name of those people who live in the first house west from Fifth Avenue on Fifty- ——Street?" I asked. "Don't you remember the house I mean? That very narrow brown-stone front, with a vase of artificial flowers in one of the parlour windows."

"—— me if I know," he protested, in a high state of impatience, as he snatched up the tickets he was looking for. Then, seeing that I was in no condition to be fooled with, he admitted that the name was Rosenthal, and carelessly added, "What do you want to know for? Oh, I see, you are still on the scent; still harping on that Gillespie poisoning case. Well, the Rosenthals may live near the people just mentioned, but there's nothing in that for you or anyone else interested in this crime."

"Why?"