THE NEXT ROOM
It was as much the mystery as the horror that made the case of Margaret Clark (commonly known as Old Twentypercent) of such burning interest to the six daily journals of the town. I have been told that the feet of tireless young reporters wore a separate path up the bluff to the site of old Margaret’s abode; but this I question, because there were already two paths made for them by the feet of old Margaret’s customers—the winding path up the grassy slope, and the steps hewn out of the sheer yellow bluff-side, sliced down to make a backing for the street. These are the facts that, whichever the path taken, they were able to glean: Miss Margaret lived on the bluff in the western part of town. The street below crosses at right angles the street running to the river, which is of the kind the French term an “impasse.” It is a street of varied fortunes, beginning humbly in a wide and treeless plain, where jimson, dock, and mustard weed have their will with the grass, passing a number of houses, each in its own tiny yard, creeping up the hill and the social scale at the same time, until it is bordered by velvety boulevards and terraces and lawns that glow in the evening light, and pretty houses often painted; then dropping again to a lonely gully, with the flaming kilns of the brick-yard on one side, and the huge dark bulk of the brewery on the other, reaching at last the bustle and roar of the busiest street in town. The great arc-light swung a dazzling white porcupine above the brewery vats every night (when the moon did not shine), and hung level with the crest of the opposite bluff. By day or night one could see the trim old-fashioned garden and the close-cropped lawn and the tall bur-oaks that shaded the two-story brown cottage in which for fifteen years Margaret Clark had lived. Here she was living at the time of these events, with no protector except her bull-dog, the Colonel (who, to be sure, understood his business, and I cannot deny him a personal pronoun), and no companion except Esquire Clark, her cat. She did not keep fowls—judging it right and necessary to slay them on occasion, but never having the heart to kill anything for which she had cared and which she had taught to know her. Therefore she bought her eggs and her “frying chickens” of George Washington, a worthy colored man who lived below the hill, and who kept Margaret’s garden in order. Although he had worked for her (satisfactory service given for satisfactory wage) during all these fifteen years, he knew as little about her, he declared, as the first week he came. Nor did the wizened little Irishwoman who climbed the clay stairway three times a week to wash and scrub know any more. But she stoutly maintained “the old lady was a rale lady, and the saints would be good to her.” One reporter, more curious, discovered that Margaret several times had helped this woman over a rough pass.
The only other person (outside of her customers) who kept so much as a speaking acquaintance with Margaret was the sheriff, Amos Wickliff. And what he knew of her he was able to keep even from the press. As for the customers, her malicious nickname explains her business. Margaret was an irregular money-lender. She loaned money for short periods on personal security or otherwise. It should speak well for her shrewdness that she rarely made a bad debt. Yet she was not unpopular; on the contrary, she had the name of giving the poor a long day, and, for one of her trade, was esteemed lenient. Shortly after her accident, also (she had the ill-hap to fall down her cellar-way, injuring her spine), she had remitted a number of debts to her poorest debtors.
The accident occurred of a Wednesday morning; Wednesday afternoon her nephew called on her, having, he said, but just discovered her whereabouts. The reporters discovered that this nephew, Archibald Cary Allerton by name, was not an invited and far from a welcome guest, although he gave out that his mother and he were his aunt’s sole living kindred. She would not speak to him when he visited her, turning her head to the wall, moaning and muttering, so that it was but kindness to leave her. The nurse (Mrs. Raker, the jailer’s wife, had come up from the jail) said that he seemed distressed. He called again during the evening, after Wickliff, who spent most of the evening with her alone, was gone, but he had no better success; she would not or could not speak to him. Thursday morning she saw Amos Wickliff. She seemed brighter, and gave Amos, in the presence of the nurse, the notes and mortgages that she desired released. Thursday evening, about eight o’clock, Amos returned to report how he had done his commissions. He found the house flaming from roof-tree to sills! There was no question of his saving the sick woman. Even as he panted up the hill-side the roof fell in with a crash. Amos screamed to the crowd: “Where is she? Did you save her?” And the Irish char-woman’s wail answered him: “I wint in—I wint in whin it was all afire, and the fire jumped at me, so I run; me eyebrows is gone, and I didn’t see a sign of her!” Then Amos betook himself to Mrs. Raker, whom he found only after much searching; nor did her story reassure him. She was violently agitated between pity and shock, but, as usual, she kept her head on her shoulders and her wits on duty. She was not in the house when the catastrophe had happened. Allerton had come to see his aunt. He told the nurse that she might go to her sister, her sister’s child being ill, and that he would stay with his aunt. Wickliff was expected every moment. And the patient had added her word, “Do go, Mrs. Raker; it’s only a step; and take a jar of my plum jelly to Sammy to take his medicine in!” So Mrs. Raker went. She saw the fire first, and that not half an hour from the time she left the house. She saw it flickering in the lower windows. It was she sent her brother-in-law to give the alarm, while she ran swiftly to the house. The whole lower story was ablaze when she got up the hill. To enter was impossible. But Mrs. O’Shea, the char-woman, and she did find a ladder, and put it against the wall and the window of Miss Clark’s chamber, which window was wide open, and Mrs. Baker held the ladder while Mrs. O’Shea, who was of an agile and slimmer build, clambered up the rounds to look through the smoke, already mixed with flame. And the room was empty. Amos at once had the neighborhood searched, hoping that Allerton had conveyed his aunt to a place of safety. There was no trace of either aunt or nephew. But Amos found a boy who confessed (after some pressure) that he had been in Miss Margaret’s yard, in the vineyard facing her room. He had been startled by a kind of rattling noise and a scream. Involuntarily he cowered behind the vines and peered through at the house. The windows of Miss Clark’s room were closed, or maybe one was open very slightly; but suddenly this window was pushed up and Allerton leaned out. He knew it was Allerton by the square shoulders. He did not say anything, only turned his head, looking every way. The boy thought it time to run. He was clear of the yard and beginning to descend the bluff, when he looked back and saw Allerton running very swiftly through the circle of light cast by the electric lamp. All the reporters examined the lad, but he never altered his tale. “Mr. Allerton looked frightened—he looked awful frightened,” he said.
Amos was on the point of sending to the police, when Allerton himself appeared. The incredible story which he told only thickened the suspicions beginning to gather about him.
He said that he had found his aunt disinclined to talk. She told him to go into the other room, for she wished to go to sleep; and although he had matters of serious import to discuss with her, he could not force his presence on a lady, and he obeyed her. He went into the adjoining room, and there he sat in a chair before the door. The door was the sole means of exit from the bedchamber. The two rooms opened into each other by the door; and the second room, in which Allerton sat, had a door into a small hall, from which the staircase led down-stairs. Allerton was ready to swear to his story, which was that he had sat in the chair before the door until he heard a singular muffled scream from the other room. Instantly he sprang up, opened the door, and ran into the other room. The bed was opposite the door. To his terror and amazement, the bed was empty, the room was empty. He ran frantically round the room, and then flung up the window, looking out; but there was nothing to be seen. Moreover, the room was twenty feet from the ground, nor was there so much as a vine or a lightning-rod to help a climber. It was past believing that a decrepit old woman, who could not turn in bed alone, should have climbed out of a window and dropped twenty feet to the ground. Besides, there was the boy watching that side of the house all the time. He had seen nothing. But where was Margaret Clark? The chief of police took the responsibility of arresting Allerton. Perhaps he was swayed to this decisive step by the boy’s testimony being in a measure corroborated by a woman of unimpeachable character living in the neighborhood, who had heard screams, as of something in mortal pain or fear, at about the time mentioned by the boy. She looked up to the house and was half minded to climb the steps; but the sounds ceased, the peaceful lights in the house on the hill were not disturbed, and, chiding her own ears, she passed on.
The fire broke out a little later, hardly a quarter of an hour after Allerton went away. This was established by the fact that the boy, who ran at the top of his speed, had barely reached home before he heard the alarm-bells. The flames seemed to envelop the whole structure in a flash, which was not so much a matter of marvel as other things, since the house was of wood, and dry as tinder from a long drought.
It was possible that Allerton was lying, and that while he and the boy were gone the old woman had discovered the fire and painfully crawled down-stairs and out of the burning house; but, in that case, where was she? How could a feeble old woman thus vanish off the face of the earth? The next day the police explored the ruins. They half expected to find the bones of the unfortunate creature. They did not find a shred of anything that resembled bones. If Allerton had murdered his aunt, he had so contrived his crime as to destroy every vestige of the body; and granting him a motive to do such an atrocious deed, why should so venturesome and ingenious a murderer jeopard everything by a wild fairy tale? The reporters found themselves before a blank wall.