XXXVIII
“There is some small fact thus far successfully suppressed, which, when known, will alter the trend of public opinion and clarify the whole situation.”
A sentence almost fatuous in its expression of a self-evident truth. One, too, which had been uttered by myself. But foolish and fatuous as it was, it kept ringing on in my brain all that day and far into the night, until I formulated for myself another one less general and more likely to lead to a definite conclusion:
“Something occurred between the hour I left Uncle’s room and my visit to his door at three o’clock in the morning which from its nature was calculated to make Edgar indifferent to the destruction of the will marked with red and Wealthy so apprehensive of harm to him that to save him from the attention of the police she was willing to sacrifice me and perjure herself before the Coroner.” What was it?
You see from declining to connect Edgar with this crime, I had come to the point of not only admitting the possibility of his guilt, but of arguing for and against it in my own mind. I had almost rather have died than do this; but the word having once passed between me and Mr. Jackson, every instinct within me clamored for a confutation of my doubt or a confirmation of it so strong that my duty would be plain and the future of Orpha settled as her father would have it.
To repeat then: to understand this crime and to locate the guilty hand which dropped poison into the sick man’s soothing mixture it was necessary to discover what had happened somewhere in the house between the hours I have mentioned, of sufficient moment to account for Edgar’s attitude and that of the faithful Wealthy.
But one conjecture suggested itself after hours of thought. Was it not possible that while I was below, Clarke in his room, and Wealthy in Orpha’s, that Edgar had made his way for the second time into his uncle’s presence, persuaded him to revoke his decision and even gone so far as to obtain from him the will adverse to his own hopes?
Thus fortified, but still fearful of further vacillation on the part of one whose mind, once so strong, seemed now to veer this way or that with every influence brought to bear upon it, what more natural than, given a criminal’s heart, he should think of the one and only way of ending this indecision and making himself safe from this very hour.
A glass of water—a drop of medicine from the bottle labeled dangerous—a quick good-night—and a hasty departure!
It made the hair stir on my forehead to conceive of all this in connection with a man like Edgar. But my thoughts, once allowed to enter this groove, would run on.