"William is soured through his long illness," Beardsley hastened to say apologetically. "And he cared more for Lou than I supposed. We were wrong to bring him in this morning"; and he hurried out to help him up the stairs. Mrs. Beardsley laid down her knitting, and glanced cautiously about her. I saw that the vital point of her testimony had been omitted until now.
"I think it but right to tell you—nobody has ever heard it before"—coming close to me, her old face quite pale. "When I undressed Louisa that night her shoes and stockings were stained, and a long reddish hair clung to her sleeve. She had trodden over the bloody ground and handled the murdered man."
Every professional man will understand me when I say I was glad to hear this. Hitherto the girl's whim and the murder appeared to me two events connected only by the accident of occurrence on the same day. Now there was but one mystery to solve.
Whatever success I have had in my practice has been due to my habit of boldly basing my theories upon the known character of the parties implicated, and not upon more palpable accidental circumstances. Left to myself now, I speedily resolved this case into a few suppositions, positive to me as facts. The girl had been present at the murder. She was not naturally reticent: was instead an exceptionally confiding, credulous woman. Her motive for silence, therefore, must have been a force brought to bear on her at the time of the murder stronger than her love for Merrick, and which was still existing and active. Her refusal to meet her lover I readily interpreted to be a fear of her own weakness—dread lest she should betray this secret to him. Might not her refusal to marry him be caused by the same fear? some crushing disgrace or misery which threatened her through the murder, and which she feared to bring upon her husband? The motive I had guessed to be strong as her love: what if it were her love? Having stepped from surmise to surmise so far, I paused to strengthen my position by the facts. There were but two ways in which this murder could have prevented her marriage—through Merrick's guilt or her own. His innocence was proven; hers I did not doubt after I had again carefully studied her face. Concealed guilt leaves its secret signature upon the mouth and eye in lines never to be mistaken by a man who has once learned to read them.
Were there but these two ways? There was a third, more probable than either—fear. At the first presentation of this key to the riddle the whole case mapped itself out before me. The murderer had sealed her lips by some threat. He was still living, and she was in daily expectation of meeting him. She had never seen his face, but had reason to believe him of her own class. (This supposition I based on her quick, terrified inspection of every man's face who approached her.) Now what threat could have been strong enough to keep a weak girl silent for years, and to separate her from her lover on their wedding day? I knew women well enough to say, none against herself; the threat I believed hung over Merrick's head, and would be fulfilled if she betrayed the secret or married him, which, with a weak, loving woman, was equivalent, as any man would know, to betrayal.
I cannot attempt to make the breaks in this reasoning solid ground for my readers; it was solid ground for me.
The next morning Beardsley met me on leaving the breakfast table. He held a letter open in his hand, and looked annoyed and anxious.
"Here's a note from Merrick. He sailed a week sooner than he expected—has left New York, and will be here to-night. If I had only put the case in your hands earlier! I had a hope that you could clear the little girl. But it's too late. She'll take flight as soon as she hears he is coming. Scheffer says it's a miserable, bloody muddle, and that I was wrong to stir it up."
"I do not agree with Dr. Scheffer," I said quietly. "I am going now to the library. In half an hour send Miss Waring to me."
"You have not yet been presented to her?"