At One-Thirty, Isabel Ostrander [ebook reader with highlight function .TXT] 📗
- Author: Isabel Ostrander
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“You heard your husband’s voice, Mrs. Appleton; but did you hear hers?”
“No. When I had heard all I wanted to from Garret’s own lips, I turned and fled to my room.”
“Had you waited, you would have heard her denounce him for his infamous plan; heard her tell him how she loathed him for it, and that she hoped never to see his face again.”
“She never will,” Mrs. Appleton observed. Something in the cold, emotionless young voice made Gaunt shiver, in spite of himself. It was as if she stood beyond the pale of all things human and sentient with life. If only she would weep, or rage in passion against this girl, whom she believed had meant to supplant her, he would have understood, have known how to handle the situation. But this stony calmness, this serene detachment from all things vital, was utterly unnatural, and unique in his experience. A sudden shock, a thrust in the dark, might arouse her, might render her as pliant in his hands as she had been on their last interview.
“And so,” he began briskly in a louder, less gentle voice, “when you had heard all you wanted to, you went back to your room, waited until your sister came home, and told her. To save you from the threatened dishonor, she descended to the den, and—”
“You are wrong, Mr. Gaunt.” That dreadful, toneless voice sounded unchanged by a shade upon his ears. “You are mistaken. It was not Barbara. It was I who killed him.”
“You?” he cried, in well-feigned surprise.
“Yes. Was I not justified? Did he not merit death at my hands?”
There was a pause, and then he said quietly:
“Tell me what you did, Mrs. Appleton.”
“I fled to my room, as I told you, and waited until long after our guests had gone, and the house was quiet. Then, I went straight down to the den, and faced Garret, and told him what I had heard him say. He tried to lie out of it, at first; but finally he admitted it, and defied me. I opened the drawer where I knew he kept his revolver, and took it out, and—shot him.”
“At what time did you descend [to the den the second time—the last time, Mrs. Appleton?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Some time after midnight.”
“And after you had shot your husband, what did you do?”
“I laid the revolver down—oh, I forgot to tell you that it was when I went around the table to get the revolver that I caught my hair on the hanging lamp, and pulled off that strand which you found there.”
“Is that so? Then you had not been in the den that morning?”
“No, Mr. Gaunt.”
“But your sister corroborated you. She said you had been.”
“She knew—the truth. She lied—for me. That is like Barbara.”
“Well, Mrs. Appleton, what did you do after you laid the revolver down?”
“I went back to my room, and, when Barbara came home, I told her what I had done, and why.”
“Then it was Miss Ellerslie who went down later and changed the appearance of the room, to give the impression that the murder had been committed during an attempt at burglary?”
“Yes.”
“You are perfectly sure of this?”
“Quite sure. She—told me herself, afterward, that she had done so.”
“And she has your husband’s money and~valuables?”
“I think so. I don’t know what she had done with them.”
“Your sister returned from the wedding festivities at one o’clock, and it was midnight, or after, when you descended to the den. Therefore, it was during that hour, between twelve and one, that you killed your husband?”
“Yes, Mr. Gaunt…. When—are you going to take me away?”
“Away—where?” this time it was the detective who was, for once, caught off his guard.
“Why, to prison.” There was for the first time a flicker of interest in her voice. “Let me see Barbara just once before you take me awayl I must see my sister—alone I”
“Oh, we won’t talk about taking you to prison until you are better. In fact, I won’t notify Inspector Hanrahan or the police yet, until you are able to be moved. I’m not afraid, now that you have confessed, that you will try to escape. If you will give me your word, Mrs. Appleton, not to run away, we will keep this a secret between our two selves for a time.”
“Oh, Mr. Gaunt, how good, how very kind, you are! Now I can have a few days longer with my sister, can’t I? I promise you—oh, I will take any oath you please, that I will be here ready to go with the police when they come for me!”
The soft, brown, sightless eyes of Damon Gaunt grew “even softer and nffety, and there was a queer choke in his voice as he said, very gently:
“I can trust you, Mrs. Appleton.”
She smiled faintly, and laid her little hand on his coat-sleeve in silent gratitude. Then, she turned again to the window, where the dazzlmg blue was changing to a delicate gray, to meet the westering sun; and in her eyes was no longing, no wistfulness, only a deep content.
DAMON GAUNT lay back in his library chair inert, exhausted mentally and spiritually with the battle which he had waged with himself and his conscience for two long hours. Now, it was ended, the victory was won, and over his spirit had crept the sacred peace of renunciation.
In the pale, ghastly glow from the green-shaded lamp, his thin face seemed older than it had ever looked before, the lines more sharply drawn, the cheek-bones more prominent, the closed eyes more sunken. But a smile, which was almost ethereal, wreathed his smooth-shaven, finely chiseled lips, and about his brow was that same expression of serenity which had rested upon young Mrs. Appleton’s that afternoon, when she had so calmly confessed the murder of her husband.
How long he remained motionless in his chair before the empty hearth, Gaunt never knew. He became aware gradually of a deferential, but insistent knocking on the locked door. With an effort he roused himself from his reverie, and called wearily:
“What is it?”
“Mr. Force, sir. Says he will see you, sir—he won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I told him I had orders not to disturb you—”
“Never mind. Bring him up, Jenkins.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a long sigh of relief, audible even through the door, and Jenkins hurried off. He had been a worried man, had Jenkins, since his master returned that afternoon. The door locked upon him, Miss Barnes dismissed for the day, dinner sent away untasted, and gruiF orders issued that he was on no account to be disturbed! This was a new Damon Gaunt to him. The like had never happened before in all the faithful years of his service. He was more thankful than he could have expressed to Mr. Force; for his advent, volcanic as it was, had broken the spell.
Gaunt felt for the electric button in the wall, switched on the lights, and, striding over to the door, unlocked it.
There was a quick, firm tread down the hall, and Randolph Force fairly burst into the room. “What does it mean?” he cried hoarsely, waiving any more conventional salutation. “Before Goji, Gaunt, what does it mean?”
“If you’ll tell me what you mean, my dear fellow, I may be able to help you,” the detective returned, quietly.
“It’s Barbara! I’ve just come from her. She— she’s broken our engagement! She won’t give me any reason; but she says her decision is irrevocable, and she means it! She doesn’t deny that she loves me; but merely says any thought of marriage between us would be impossible!”
“Why have you come to me, Mr. Force?” asked Gaunt. “I know nothing of Miss Ellerslie’s private affairs.”
“I’ve come to you because I know her decision has something to do with this cursed affair—with the murder of Garret Appleton! She has changed since this morning, when I telephoned her—changed since you talked with her sister this afternoon! Gaunt, for God’s sake, tell me what it means!”
“I do not know. Until I have seen Miss Ellerslie myself and talked with her, I can tell you nothing.” The detective’s tone was kindly, but decisive.
“Oh, you’ll see her, fast enough. She’s coming here tonight to see you. She told me so. She may be here at any moment, and I must be off before she comes. She has learned, somehow, that the foreign post of which I told you is still open to me. Should I accept it, I must sail a week from next Wednesday, on the sixth of November. She insists that I do accept it, and sail—alone. She says that, if I love her—and I do, God knows— I must prove my love by obeying her command, and that I must not relinquish it and return, no matter what I hear. What can she mean? If I obeyed her, and took this post which has been offered me, what is it that I might hear, which would cause me to rush back to her side? What is it?” There was no query in the man’s tones, only an agony, an entreaty, which was but thinly veiled. Gaunt approa>ched the young man, and placed a hand upon his shoulder.
“I know no more than you, Mr. Force,” he replied, with a significant intensity in his voice, which was like a bracing dash of icy water on the other’s frenzied mind. “She is coming here tonight you say. She may be here at any moment. After my interview with her, I may be able to help you—may be in a position to tell you more. If you will accept my advice, you will go to your rooms at once, and remain there until you hear from me—or from her.”
“From her?” Randolph Force cried out, in trembling tones. “From her? Oh, Gaunt, you don’t mean that you—”
“I mean,” interrupted Damon Gaunt, in stern haste, “that within two hours you will hear from me, or from her…. Is that a motor that I hear below? You’d better go, Mr. Force.”
Speechlessly, the young man seized his hand, and wrung it convulsively. Then, with an inarticulate sob, he dashed from the room.
Gaunt flung himself again in his chair. There had been no purring of a motor car outside. He had wanted to get Randolph Force out of the way before that young man’s lack of self-control led him to commit himself in speech, in a way he would perhaps forever regret. And, too, he must have time to think, to reflect, to prepare himself for the hour at hand—the hour that would be the most difficult one of all his life.
All too soon, he heard her car approach swiftly, and stop with a grinding of brakes at the curb, and Jenkins was not half-way to the library door to announce her coming, when his master called him to ask the lady to come in.
She came slowly, and hesitated on the threshold.
“Mr. Gaunt,” her sweet, low voice was steady; but there was a haunting sadness in its cadence, which struck at his heart, “my sister has told me of your interview with her this afternoon, of everything that was said. I have come to you to thank you, if I can, for your great kindness, your forbearance, in offering to delay the—final formalities, until she is better able to endure them. But I have come, also, for another purpose; to beg you, to implore you on my knees, if I must, to grant me an extraordinary—a supreme—favor. You have offered to put matters off” for
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