The Tracy diamonds

by Mary Jane Holmes

Craig did not answer, but closed his eyes and leaned his head against a projecting stone in the wall. Jeff was lifting the veil and letting in the light, and it hurt him cruelly.

“Do you feel worse?” he asked, and Craig replied, “Yes,—no. No matter how I feel. Go on, and never mind the reading.”

“I’s only tellin’ you to show how things was, and that if there was any seducin’ it was Miss Helen who did it. Mark was some to blame, of course, but she was most. She is not an atom like t’other one,—Miss Alice. Oh, but she is a dandy, and true as steel. Miss Helen is the handsomest, and when she turns her eyes on you and smiles, you are a goner. And she rolled her eyes at Mark until he didn’t know what he was about, and when she was talkin’ to him in the office, as she did by the half hour when nobody was there, I’ve called him two or three times before he heard me. She used to sit on the piazzer with him after you’d gone to bed, and once she staid there so late her mother called her and asked what she was doin’.

“‘Been talkin’ to Mr. Mason,’ she said, and she spoke the been low so her mother couldn’t hear it, and the ‘talkin’ to Mr. Mason’ high, so she could hear. I was lyin’ in the grass and heard her say, laughin’ like, ‘’Tain’t a fib. I have been talking to Mr. Mason.’ I tell you, she’s a clipper.”

Craig felt he ought to stop the boy, whose every word was a stab, and he opened his lips to do so, then closed them with the thought, “I may as well hear the whole,” and Jeff went on: “The day you went away she talked ever so long with Mark, and right after supper they started for a walk. Miss Taylor sent me over on the North Ridgefield road on an errant to Miss Nichols, and I staid a while to play hide and coop with the boys, and then started home. As I got near the haunted house the moon was shinin’ so bright that I said to myself, ‘I mean to go in and mabby I’ll see the woman who, they say, walks there wringin’ her hands.’ I ain’t a bit afraid, and I went along the lane on the grass till I got near a window, or where one used to be. Then I heard voices very low, almost a whisper. I knew it wasn’t the ghost, and I crept up still as I could and looked in, and who do you s’pose was there?”

Craig’s eyes were riveted on Jeff, who continued: “Mr. Hilton and Miss Helen, settin’ close together with his arm round her, and she a cryin’, while he talked so low I couldn’t understand, but I could see, for the moon fell full on both of ’em. First, I thought I’d give a whoop and scare ’em; then concluded to let ’em alone, and tiptoed away without seeing Mark’s grandmother at all. That was Tuesday, and the next day Miss Helen took the noon train for New York. Had malary, she said, and must see her doctor. That night Mark went to New York on some business for Mr. Taylor. He didn’t come back the next day, nor she neither; nor the next day, nor she neither, and this morning there came a letter from her, sayin’ she was married to Mark Thursday, and was goin’ to Chicago last night, and Mark had brought her the diamonds. That’s why Miss Tracy screeched so and went into fits. Half the town know it now, and are talkin’ about it. A lot have been in the office askin’ me questions, but Miss Taylor told me to shet up, and I shet and said I didn’t know nothin’, but I’ve told you because you made me, and you’d hear it when you got to the hotel. You are not going to faint?” he exclaimed, as Craig leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands on his face.

“No, no,” and Craig straightened up, but his pallid face frightened Jeff, who continued: “You are awful sick, and you look bad. What can I do for you?”

“Nothing,” Craig answered; then asked suddenly: “Has any one mentioned me in connection with this affair?”

“Why, no. Not in particular,” Jeff replied. “Some who come into the office said: ‘I thought by the looks of things ’twas the Boston chap,’ and Sarah said: ‘I guess the one who was with her last had the inside track.’ That’s before Miss Taylor told me to shet up. I said I knew all the time it was Mark.”

“Thank you, Jeff. There’s a newspaper in my coat pocket. Fan me with it, please. I am very warm,” Craig said, taking off his hat and wiping the drops of sweat from his forehead.