The step on the stair

by Anna Katharine Green

“Pray do. Since we have gone thus far, let us go the full length. Light is what I want; light on every angle of this affair. If it serves to clear him as it now seems it has served to clear me, I shall rejoice.”

Mr. Jackson, with a quick motion, held out his hand. I took it. We were friends from that hour.

“First, then,” continued the lawyer, “you must understand that Edgar has undergone a rigid examination at the hands of the police. This may not have appeared at the inquest but nevertheless what I say is true. Now taking his story as a basis, we have this much to go upon:

“He has always been led to believe that his future had been cut out for him according to the schedule universally understood and accepted. He was not only to marry Orpha, but to inherit personally the vast fortune which was to support her in the way to which she is entitled. No doubt as to this being his uncle’s intention—an intention already embodied in a will drawn up by Mr. Dunn—ever crossed his mind till you came upon the scene; and not then immediately. Even the misunderstanding with his uncle, occasioned, as I am told, by Mr. Bartholomew learning of some obligations he had entered into of which he was himself ashamed, failed to awaken the least fear in his mind of any change in his uncle’s testamentary intentions, or any real lessening of the affection which had prompted these intentions. Indeed, so much confidence did he have in his place in his uncle’s heart that he consented, almost with a smile, to defer the announcement of what he considered a definite engagement with Orpha, because he saw signs of illness in his uncle and could not think of crossing him. But he had no fear, as I have said, that all would not come right in time and the end be what it should be.

“Nor did his mind change with the sudden signs of favor shown by his uncle towards yourself. The odd scheme of sharing with you, by a definite arrangement, the care which your uncle’s invalid condition soon called for, he accepted without question, as he did every other whim of his autocratic relative. But when the servants began to talk to him of how much writing his uncle did while lying in his bed, and whispers of a new will, drawn up in your absence as well as in his began to circulate through the house, he grew sufficiently alarmed to call on Mr. Dunn at his office and propound a few inquiries. The result was a complete restoration of his tranquillity; for Mr. Dunn, having been kept in ignorance of another lawyer having visited Quenton Court immediately upon his departure, and supposing that the will he had prepared and seen attested was the last expression of Mr. Bartholomew’s wishes, gave Edgar such unqualified assurances of a secured future that he naturally was thrown completely off his balance when on the night which proved to be Mr. Bartholomew’s last, he was summoned to his uncle’s presence and was shown not only one new will but two, alike in all respects save in the essential point with which we are both acquainted. Now, as I am as anxious as you are to do justice to the young man, I will say that if your uncle was looking for any wonderful display of generosity from one who saw in a moment the hopes of a lifetime threatened with total disaster, then he was expecting too much. Of course, Edgar rebelled and said words which hurt the old gentleman. He would not have been normal otherwise. But what I want to impress upon you in connection with this interview is this. He left the room with these words ringing in his ears, ‘Now we will see what your cousin has to say. When he quits me, but one of these two wills will remain, and that one you must make up your mind to recognize.’ Therefore,” and here Mr. Jackson leaned towards me in his desire to hold my full attention, “he went from that room with every reason to fear that the will to be destroyed was the one favoring himself, and the one to be retained that which made you chief heir and the probable husband of Orpha. Have we heard of anything having occurred between then and early morning to reverse the conclusions of that moment? No. Then why should he resort to crime in order to shorten the few remaining days of his uncle’s life when he had every reason to believe that his death would only hasten the triumph of his rival?”

I was speechless, dazed by a fact that may have visited my mind, but which had never before been clearly formulated there! Seeing this, the lawyer went on to say:

“That is why our hands are held.”

Still I did not speak. I was thinking. What I had said we would not do had been done. The word crime had been used in connection with Edgar, and I had let it pass. The veil was torn aside. There was no use in asking to have it drawn to again. I would serve him better by looking the thing squarely in the face and meeting it as I had met the attack against myself, with honesty and high purpose. But first I must make some acknowledgment of the conclusion to which this all pointed, and I did it in these words.

“You see! The boy is innocent.”

“I have not said that.”