One of My Sons

by Anna Katharine Green

Mr. Gillespie was standing just where his son had doubtless left him, gazing intently into the wine-glass which he held, untasted, in his hand. His face was wan and troubled. Suddenly he moved and, glancing behind him, like a man bound on some guilty errand, but not looking far enough into the distance to see Hewson watching him from the depths of the dimly lighted room on the other side of the hall, he hurried to the window, and, raising, first the shade and then the sash, flung out the contents of the glass into the back-yard. This done, he uttered a sigh, which spoke of some great inward trouble, and, reclosing the window, carried back the empty glass to the dining-room, from which Hewson had, by this time, slipped in guilty confusion.

Not understanding Mr. Gillespie's sudden distaste for the wine he had ordered, but determined to profit by what struck him as a very happy chance, Hewson put his own concoction on a tray, and, creeping to the buffet, took the phial out of the tea-cup in which he had concealed it, and emptied its contents into the glass he carried. Then not liking to put the phial back, he thrust it into his vest-pocket, mouth up (the cork having slipped from his hand and rolled away in the darkness). He was willing to be heard now, and was stepping briskly around the room, when Mr. Gillespie called out:

"Who's that? Is it Hewson?"

"It is, sir," was the demure reply. "I came up to make you that drink you like so well; but Mr. Leighton said you preferred sherry."

"Yes, yes; but I like your drink, too. Brew it and bring it in to me. I seem to be unusually thirsty to-night."

Without a quiver, without a conscious sense of doing anything greatly out of the common, this tried old servant brought him the glass which he knew would end all earthly relations between them. He even waited until he saw it emptied, then he took it out again and immediately washed it.

Why he felt this precaution necessary he hardly knew, unless it was to pass away the moment of suspense. He never dreamed for a minute that there was anything special for him to fear. Were not men dropping dead every day in counting-houses or in the streets? And why not this man? That the police would be called in or that so quiet a death would be treated as a crime, had never occurred to him. He had never read murder cases much; indeed, had never read anything much; he only knew he wanted his master to die, and that the quickest way to bring this about was to give him a dose of very strong poison. Yet after he had done this, he felt some nervousness, not over what he had done, but its seemingly slow results. He had expected Mr. Gillespie to fall at once, perhaps before he was, himself, well out of the room, and Mr. Gillespie did not fall. Hewson had had time to wash the glass, put it away, go down into the kitchen again, and come back, without hearing the heavy thud for which his ears were strained. Was his affair to fail again? Had the dark and pungent liquor been harmless, and was it decreed that he was to go back to the old life with no hopes of a change or relief? He was so worked up by this thought that he crept into the dining-room again and was making for the hall door to take another peep into the study, when his foot encountered a small object on the floor. Yielding to his usual methodical habits, he stooped and picked up what proved to be Alfred's pencil. This he mechanically dropped into his pocket, then he went on.

He found his master reeling over the study floor in the first consciousness, perhaps, of his alarming condition. He seemed to be trying to find the door, but as Hewson drew nearer (fascinated, perhaps, by the sight of suffering of which he himself had been the cause), Mr. Gillespie suddenly paused in this effort, and, meeting Hewson's eyes, threw up his arms and made for his desk, upon which he fell in a way which assured his anxious watcher that the last minutes of his quondam master were at hand.[A]

[A] It was at this moment probably, and not till this moment, that Mr. Gillespie recognized his real murderer. Of the tumult thus awakened in heart and brain, who can judge!

As he had no wish to watch his sufferings, he made another journey downstairs and showed himself in the servants' hall just as little Claire broke away from her nurse and rushed, laughing loudly, up to her grandfather.