“Charles,” said I, at last, struggling for calmness, and succeeding better in my task than either he or I expected; “what motive do they assign for this deed? Why should Arthur follow Adelaide to the club-house and kill her? Now, if he had followed me—”
“You were at dinner with them that night, and know what she did and what she vowed about the wine. He was very angry. Though he dropped his glass, and let it shiver on the board, he himself says that he was desperately put out with her, and could only drown his mad emotions in drink. He knew that she would hear of it if he went to any saloon in town; so he stole the key from your bunch, and went to help himself out of the club-house wine-vault. That’s how he came to be there. What followed, who knows? He won’t tell, and we can only conjecture. The ring, which she certainly wore that night, might give the secret away; but it is not gifted with speech, though as a silent witness it is exceedingly eloquent.”
The episode of the ring confused me. I could make nothing out of it, could not connect it with what I myself knew of the confused experiences of that night. But I could recall the dinner and the sullen aspect, not unmixed with awe, with which this boy contemplated his sister when his own glass fell from his nerveless fingers. My own heart was not in the business; it was on the elopement I had planned; but I could not help seeing what I have just mentioned, and it recurred to me now with fatal distinctness. The awe was as great as the sullenness. Did that offer a good foundation for crime? I disliked Arthur. I had no use for the boy, and I wished with all my heart to detect guilt in his actions, rather than in those of the woman I loved; but I could not forget that tinge of awe on features too heavy to mirror very readily the nicer feelings of the human soul. It would come up, and, under the influence of this impression I said:
“Are you sure that he made no denial of this crime? That does not seem like Arthur, guilty or innocent.”
“He made none in my presence and I was in the coroner’s office when the ring was produced from its secret hiding-place and set down before him. There was no open accusation made, but he must have understood the silence of all present. He acknowledged some days ago, when confronted with the bottle found in Cuthbert Road, that he had taken both it and another from the club-house just before the storm began to rage that night.”
“The hour, the very hour!” I muttered.
“He entered and left by that upper hall window, or so he says; but he is not to be believed in all his statements. Some of his declarations we know to be false.”
“Which ones? Give me a specimen, Charlie. Mention something he has said that you know to be false.”
“Well, it is hard to accuse a man of a direct lie. But he cannot be telling the truth when he says that he crossed the links immediately to Cuthbert Road, thus cutting out the ride home, of which we have such extraordinary proof.”
Under the fear of betraying my thoughts, I hurriedly closed my eyes. I was in an extraordinary position, myself. What seemed falsehood to them, struck me as the absolute truth. Carmel had been the one to go home; he, without doubt, had crossed the links, as he said. As this conviction penetrated deeply and yet more deeply into my mind, I shrank inexpressibly from the renewed mental struggle into which it plunged me. To have suffered, myself,—to have fallen under the ban of suspicion and the disgrace of arrest—had certainly been hard; but it was nothing to beholding another in the same plight through my own rash and ill-advised attempt to better my position and Carmel’s by what I had considered a totally harmless subterfuge.