On the night of the 10th of May, 1880, the light burned late in Lawyer Wing’s library. It was the scandal of Millbank that this occurred often. The village was given to regarding the night as a time when no man should work. “Early to bed and early to rise” was its motto, and though an opposite practice had left Theodore Wing with more of health, wealth, and wisdom than most Millbankians possessed, he had never succeeded in reconciling his townsmen to his methods. But to-night conditions were more outrageous than usual. Mrs. Merrick, from the bed of an ailing grandchild, glanced up the hill at midnight and saw the light still burning. Old Doctor Portus, coming villageward from a confinement case, an hour later, saw the light as he passed the house and shook his head with dire prognostications. If Wing should be sick, old Doctor Portus would certainly not be called in attendance, and therefore he could measure this outrage of nature’s laws with a mind uninfluenced by personal bias.

At four o’clock, however, a farmer’s son, who had yielded the night to Millbank’s temptations, hurrying farmward to his morning chores, saw no light growing dim in the first flush of the spring morning to attract his attention to a scene that later knowledge revealed. At six, the hired man came down the back stairs and went through the woodshed to the barns. Turning the heavy wooden bar that held the great doors fast, he swung them open and let in the soft morning air.

Then, his eye travelled along the stretch of house and he saw something that startled him. The side door was standing ajar—half open—and on the stone step was a huddled mass that looked strangely like a man, half lying and half crouching. Before the hired man had passed half the distance to the door, he knew that the huddled mass was Theodore Wing. His head and right arm rested on the threshold and held the door from closing; his body was on the stone step. There was blood spattered on the white of the westerly door-post, and the left temple of the man, which was upward as he lay, showed a spot around which the flesh was blackened as if powder-burnt, while between the head and the threshold a thin stream of blood still flowed and fell drop by drop on the stone below. The eyes were wide open and the look in them seemed to say that, suddenly as death had come, it had not come too suddenly for the man to realise that here had fallen the end of his hopes and ambitions, his strivings and accomplishments, in a form that left him powerless to strike a blow in his own behalf.

This murder was the most tragic event that had ever happened in the history of Millbank. It caused the more terror in that, so far as any one could understand, it was absolutely without motive. It was not known that Theodore Wing had an enemy in the world. Millbank was proud of him with a wholesome, kindly pride, which found much of self-gratulation in having such a citizen. Yet this man had been struck down by a murderer’s hand, so silently that no sound had been heard, and the murderer had gone as he had come, without leaving trace of his coming or going.

Contrary to expectation aroused by the first news, the house seemed not to have been entered. The whole of the crime was evidenced in the dead man on the stone step. Apparently, there had been a ring at the bell and a shot from a pistol, held close to the head of the man, as he stood in the doorway, by some one who had stationed himself at the easterly end of the doorstep, and who, his purpose accomplished, slipped into the darkness which had opened to give him way for this deed. It was uncanny in the extreme and gave a sense of insecurity to life that an ordinary murder, due to traceable causes, would have failed utterly to give.

The closest inspection furnished no clue. There was no footprint on the drive, and the grass at the end of the step, where the murderer must have stood, gave no token. And yet—here was another fearsome fact—the deed had been done by some one who knew the house and its peculiarities. The door had two bell-pulls, one on either door-post. Originally there had been only the one on the right or easterly post, and this was the general bell. When Wing took the library as his special room, he had a change made and the bell transferred to that room, so that his personal visitors could come and go without disturbing the house. In a little time, however, this proved very annoying, because most visitors came to this door, and he gave an order for a general bell to be put in. This he intended should also have a pull on the right-hand post, but the workman, who seemed to have no conception that one post could carry two pulls, put it on the left. Thus the post nearest Wing’s room carried the general bell, and the further post his own, and neither of the bells could be heard on the premises devoted to the other. At first, this condition gave rise to troublesome mistakes, and Wing talked often of a change, but gradually the visitors to the house became accustomed to the condition and the need of a change disappeared.

It was clear, therefore, that whoever the murderer was, he had rung the bell which alone could be heard by the lawyer at his desk, and therefore must have been acquainted with the peculiarity of the bell-pulls. Had the lawyer had any cause to fear? Apparently not, for the shade to the window nearest his desk was raised and he evidently had answered the bell as a matter of course, not even taking with him a light. But, if he was seated at his desk, as seemed clearly the case, the man must have seen him as he came up the drive and might easily have shot him through the window. Why, then, had he called him to the door? The body had not been disturbed after it fell; the watch was in the fob, and money in the pocket. Murder was evidently the murderer’s purpose; yet he had summoned his victim, when clearly he had him in his power without so doing.

CHAPTER II
Mrs. Parlin Testifies

IN addition to the ill-fated lawyer, there were but three people in the Parlin household—the widow; a general house girl, Mary Mullin; and the hired man, Jonathan Oldbeg, a nephew of the Mullin woman. Oldbeg was about thirty, and his aunt forty. The widow’s room was in the northwest corner of the second floor, while that of the Mullin woman was over the kitchen. The hired man slept over the woodshed. All the windows of the three rooms gave to the north, excepting two in Mrs. Parlin’s room, which opened to the west, overlooking the orchard and the river.