Agatha Webb, Anna Katharine Green [readnow TXT] 📗

is to it” (as the bright spot became suddenly eclipsed). “We are under examination, sirs, and the next thing we will hear is that he’s not the only person who’s been peering into this room through that hole.”

He was so far right that the first words of Sweetwater on his re-entrance were: “It’s all O. K., sirs. I have found my missing clew. James Zabel was not the only person who came up here from the Webb cottage last night.” And turning to Knapp, who was losing some of his supercilious manner, he asked, with significant emphasis: “If, of the full amount stolen from Agatha Webb, you found twenty dollars in the possession of one man and nine hundred and eighty dollars in the possession of another, upon which of the two would you fix as the probable murderer of the good woman?”

“Upon him who held the lion’s share, of course.”

“Very good; then it is not in this cottage you will find the person most wanted. You must look—But there! first let me give you a glimpse of the money. Is there anyone here ready to accompany me in search of it? I shall have to take him a quarter of a mile farther up-hill.”

“You have seen the money? You know where it is?” asked Dr. Talbot and Mr. Fenton in one breath.

“Gentlemen, I can put my hand on it in ten minutes.”

At this unexpected and somewhat startling statement Knapp looked at Dr. Talbot and Dr. Talbot looked at the constable, but only the last spoke.

“That is saying a good deal. But no matter. I am willing to credit the assertion. Lead on, Sweetwater; I’ll go with you.”

Sweetwater seemed to grow an inch taller in his satisfied vanity. “And Dr. Talbot?” he suggested.

But the coroner’s duty held him to the house and he decided not to accompany them. Knapp and Abel, however, yielded to the curiosity which had been aroused by these extraordinary promises, and presently the four men mentioned started on their small expedition up the hill.

Sweetwater headed the procession. He had admonished silence, and his wish in this regard was so well carried out that they looked more like a group of spectres moving up the moonlighted road, than a party of eager and impatient men. Not till they turned into the main thoroughfare did anyone speak. Then Abel could no longer restrain himself and he cried out:

“We are going to Mr. Sutherland’s.”

But Sweetwater quickly undeceived him.

“No,” said he, “only into the woods opposite his house.”

But at this Mr. Fenton drew him back.

“Are you sure of yourself?” he said. “Have you really seen this money and is it concealed in this forest?”

“I have seen the money,” Sweetwater solemnly declared, “and it is hidden in these woods.”

Mr. Fenton dropped his arm, and they moved on till their way was blocked by the huge trunk of a fallen tree.

“It is here we are to look,” cried Sweetwater, pausing and motioning Knapp to turn his lantern on the spot where the shadows lay thickest. “Now, what do you see?” he asked.

“The upturned roots of a great tree,” said Mr. Fenton.

“And under them?”

“A hole, or, rather, the entrance to one.”

“Very good; the money is in that hole. Pull it out, Mr. Fenton.”

The assurance with which Sweetwater spoke was such that Mr. Fenton at once stooped and plunged his hand into the hole. But when, after a hurried search, he drew it out again, there was nothing in it; the place was empty. Sweetwater stared at Mr. Fenton amazed.

“Don’t you find anything?” he asked. “Isn’t there a roll of bills in that hole?”

“No,” was the gloomy answer, after a renewed attempt and a second disappointment. “There is nothing to be found here. You are labouring under some misapprehension, Sweetwater.”

“But I can’t be. I saw the money; saw it in the hand of the person who hid it there. Let me look for it, constable. I will not give up the search till I have turned the place topsy-turvy.”

Kneeling down in Mr. Fenton’s place, he thrust his hand into the hole. On either side of him peered the faces of Mr. Fenton and Knapp. (Abel had slipped away at a whisper from Sweetwater.) They were lit with a similar expression of anxious interest and growing doubt. His own countenance was a study of conflicting and by no means cheerful emotions. Suddenly his aspect changed. With a quick twist of his lithe, if awkward, body, he threw himself lengthwise on the ground, and began tearing at the earth inside the hole, like a burrowing animal.

“I cannot be mistaken. Nothing will make me believe it is not here. It has simply been buried deeper than I thought. Ah! What did I tell you? See here! And see here!”

Bringing his hands into the full blaze of the light, he showed two rolls of new, crisp bills.

“They were lying under half a foot of earth,” said he, “but if they had been buried as deep as Grannie Fuller’s well, I’d have unearthed them.”

Meantime Mr. Fenton was rapidly counting one roll and Knapp the other. The result was an aggregate sum of nine hundred and eighty dollars, just the amount Sweetwater had promised to show them.

“A good stroke of business,” cried Mr. Fenton. “And now, Sweetwater, whose is the hand that buried this treasure? Nothing is to be gained by preserving silence on this point any longer.”

Instantly the young man became very grave. With a quick glance around which seemed to embrace the secret recesses of the forest rather than the eager faces bending towards him, he lowered his voice and quietly said:

“The hand that buried this money under the roots of this old tree is the same which you saw pointing downward at the spot of blood in Agatha Webb’s front yard.”

“You do not mean Annabel Page!” cried Mr. Fenton, with natural surprise.

“Yes, I do; and I am glad it is you who have named her.”

XVII

THE SLIPPERS, THE FLOWER, AND WHAT SWEETWATER MADE OF THEM

 

A half-hour later these men were all closeted with Dr. Talbot in the Zabel kitchen. Abel had rejoined them, and Sweetwater was telling his story with great earnestness and no little show of pride.

“Gentlemen, when I charge a young woman of respectable appearance and connections with such a revolting crime as murder, I do so with good reason, as I hope presently to make plain to you all.

“Gentlemen, on the night and at the hour Agatha Webb was killed, I was playing with four other musicians in Mr. Sutherland’s hallway. From the place where I sat I could see what went on in the parlour and also have a clear view of the passageway leading down to the garden door. As the dancing was going on in the parlour I naturally looked that way most, and this is how I came to note the eagerness with which, during the first part of the evening, Frederick Sutherland and Amabel Page came together in the quadrilles and country dances. Sometimes she spoke as she passed him, and sometimes he answered, but not always, although he never failed to show he was pleased with her or would have been if something—perhaps it was his lack of confidence in her, sirs—had not stood in the way of a perfect understanding. She seemed to notice that he did not always respond, and after a while showed less inclination to speak herself, though she did not fail to watch him, and that intently. But she did not watch him any more closely than I did her, though I little thought at the time what would come of my espionage. She wore a white dress and white shoes, and was as coquettish and seductive as the evil one makes them. Suddenly I missed her. She was in the middle of the dance one minute and entirely out of it the next. Naturally I supposed her to have slipped aside with Frederick Sutherland, but he was still in sight, looking so pale and so abstracted, however, I was sure the young miss was up to some sort of mischief. But what mischief? Watching and waiting, but no longer confining my attention to the parlour, I presently espied her stealing along the passageway I have mentioned, carrying a long cloak which she rolled up and hid behind the open door. Then she came back humming a gay little song which didn’t deceive me for a moment. ‘Good!’ thought I, ‘she and that cloak will soon join company.’ And they did. As we were playing the Harebell mazurka I again caught sight of her stealthy white figure in that distant doorway. Seizing the cloak, she wrapped it round her, and with just one furtive look backwards, seen, I warrant, by no one but myself, she vanished in the outside dark. ‘Now to note who follows her!’ But nobody followed her. This struck me as strange, and having a natural love for detective work, in spite of my devotion to the arts, I consulted the clock at the foot of the stairs, and noting that it was half-past eleven, scribbled the hour on the margin of my music, with the intention of seeing how long my lady would linger outside alone. Gentlemen, it was two hours before I saw her face again. How she got back into the house I do not know. It was not by the garden door, for my eye seldom left it; yet at or near half-past one I heard her voice on the stair above me and saw her descend and melt into the crowd as if she had not been absent from it for more than five minutes. A half-hour later I saw her with Frederick again. They were dancing, but not with the same spirit as before, and even while I watched them they separated. Now where was Miss Page during those two long hours? I think I know, and it is time I unburdened myself to the police.

“But first I must inform you of a small discovery I made while the dance was still in progress. Miss Page had descended the stairs, as I have said, from what I now know to have been her own room. Her dress was, in all respects, the same as before, with one exception—her white slippers had been exchanged for blue ones. This seemed to show that they had been rendered unserviceable, or at least unsightly, by the walk she had taken. This in itself was not remarkable nor would her peculiar escapade have made more than a temporary impression upon my curiosity if she had not afterward shown in my presence such an unaccountable and extraordinary interest in the murder which had taken place in the town below during the very hours of her absence from Mr. Sutherland’s ball. This, in consideration of her sex, and her being a stranger to the person attacked, was remarkable, and, though perhaps I had no business to do what I did, I no sooner saw the house emptied of master and servants than I stole softly back, and climbed the stairs to her room. Had no good followed this intrusion, which, I am quite ready to acknowledge, was a trifle presumptuous, I would have held my peace in regard to it; but as I did make a discovery there, which has, as I believe, an important bearing on this affair, I have forced myself to mention it. The lights in the house having been left burning, I had no difficulty in finding her apartment. I knew it by the folderols scattered about. But I did not stop to look at them. I was on a search for her slippers, and presently came upon them, thrust behind an old picture