On Vaughan’s part there was no further hesitation. He had gone too far for that. Yet his face was drawn and distorted with pain as in a tone so low that Carleton could scarcely hear, he uttered the single word, “Jack.”
And this time the added shock was too great. Henry Carleton started visibly, the most intense emotion showing in every line of his face. “Jack?” he gasped, “Jack?”
In silence Vaughan bowed his head, hardly able to look on the anguish which his words had caused. “Jack,” he muttered again, under his breath.
Henry Carleton started visibly.—Page [292]
There was a silence, tense, pregnant. Once Vaughan, slowly raising his head, had started to speak, and Henry Carleton had instantly lifted a hand to enjoin silence. “Wait a minute!” he commanded. Evidently he was striving to recollect. Then presently he spoke again. “Nonsense,” he cried, “I remember perfectly now. That was the night that Jack said he felt tired; he went to his room early to smoke a pipe, and then turn in. Jack murder Satterlee! Why, nonsense, man! You’re dreaming. You’re not in your right mind. Jack and Satterlee were always good friends, and Mrs. Satterlee, too. No, no. Jack to murder any one is nonsensical enough; but Jack to murder Satterlee—impossible—simply impossible!”
Stubbornly Vaughan shook his head. “I wish to God it were,” he answered, with deep feeling. “It sounds wild enough, I know, but it’s true, for all that. Every word. And one thing you’ve just said—” he hesitated, and stopped, then unwillingly enough continued, “one thing, I’m afraid, goes a long ways toward explaining, and that is that Jack was such good friends with Mrs. Satterlee. I’m afraid that was the beginning of everything.”
Carleton’s face was pale, and his voice, when he spoke, was hoarse with emotion. “God, Vaughan,” he said, “this is terrible,” and then, with a quick return to his former manner, “no, no, I can’t believe it yet. Tell me what you saw. Not what you imagined or conjectured. Just what you saw—actually saw with your own eyes.”
“There isn’t very much to tell,” Vaughan answered. “I just happened to walk that way, for no reason whatsoever. Just by chance; I might have gone any other way as well. And finally I came out on the top of a little hill—no, not a hill exactly; more like a cliff—and from there I could see across to Satterlee’s house. And while I stood there, I saw a man—Satterlee—come across the drive, and up the back way, and go in. Then, in a minute, I heard a noise up-stairs, and some one cry out; and then, a minute after that, Jack rushed out of the house, with Satterlee after him—and suddenly Satterlee took to running queer and wide and in a circle, with his head all held pitched to one side—ah, it was ghastly to see him—and then he came straight for the rock where I was standing, and all at once his legs seemed to go out from under him, and he sprawled right out on the gravel on his face, and lay there. I turned faint for a minute, I think, and the next thing I recall was looking down again, and there was Jack trying to lift Satterlee up, and when he scratched a match his hands were all over blood, and Satterlee’s face—oh, I’ve dreamed it all fifty times since—he was dead then, I suppose. His head hung limp, I remember, and then—it was cowardly, of course, and all that, but the whole thing was so unexpected—so like a damnable kind of a nightmare, somehow—and Jack, you know—why, it was too much for me. I just turned, and made off, and never stopped till I’d got back safe into my room again. And that’s all.”
Henry Carleton sat silent, engrossed in thought. Almost he seemed to be oblivious of Vaughan’s presence. “It couldn’t be,” he muttered, at last, as though incredulous still, “it couldn’t be. Jack!” he paused, only to repeat the name again. Then he shook his head. “Never,” he said with decision, “he would have told everything. You saw wrong, Arthur. You didn’t see Jack.”