Agatha Webb, Anna Katharine Green [readnow TXT] 📗

or margin.”

“Are those the only blank places in the sacred book? Search the leaves devoted to the family record. Now! what do you find there?”

Knapp, who was losing some of his indifference, drew nearer and read for himself the scrawl which now appeared to every eye on the discoloured page which Abel here turned uppermost.

“Almost illegible,” he said; “one can just make out these words: ‘Forgive me, James—tried to use dagger—found lying—but hand wouldn’t—dying without—don’t grieve—true men—haven’t disgraced ourselves—God bless—’ That is all.”

“The effort must have overcome him,” resumed Sweetwater in a voice from which he carefully excluded all signs of secret triumph, “and when James returned, as he did a few minutes later, he was evidently unable to ask questions, even if John was in a condition to answer them. But the fallen dagger told its own story, for James picked it up and put it back on the table, and it was at this minute he saw, what John had not, the twenty-dollar bill lying there with its promise of life and comfort. Hope revives; he catches up the bill, flies down to Loton’s, procures a loaf of bread, and comes frantically back, gnawing it as he runs; for his own hunger is more than he can endure. Reentering his brother’s presence, he rushes forward with the bread. But the relief has come too late; John has died in his absence; and James, dizzy with the shock, reels back and succumbs to his own misery. Gentlemen, have you anything to say in contradiction to these various suppositions?”

For a moment Dr. Talbot, Mr. Fenton, and even Knapp stood silent; then the last remarked, with pardonable dryness:

“All this is ingenious, but, unfortunately, it is up set by a little fact which you yourself have overlooked. Have you examined attentively the dagger of which you have so often spoken, Mr. Sweetwater?”

“Not as I would like to, but I noticed it had blood on its edge, and was of the shape and size necessary to inflict the wound from which Mrs. Webb died.”

“Very good, but there is something else of interest to be observed on it. Fetch it, Abel.”

Abel, hurrying from the room, soon brought back the weapon in question. Sweetwater, with a vague sense of disappointment disturbing him, took it eagerly and studied it very closely. But he only shook his head.

“Bring it nearer to the light,” suggested Knapp, “and examine the little scroll near the top of the handle.”

Sweetwater did so, and at once changed colour. In the midst of the scroll were two very small but yet perfectly distinct letters; they were J. Z.

“How did Amabel Page come by a dagger marked with the Zabel initials?” questioned Knapp. “Do you think her foresight went so far as to provide herself with a dagger ostensibly belonging to one of these brothers? And then, have you forgotten that when Mr. Crane met the old man at Mrs. Webb’s gateway he saw in his hand something that glistened? Now what was that, if not this dagger?”

Sweetwater was more disturbed than he cared to acknowledge.

“That just shows my lack of experience,” he grumbled. “I thought I had turned this subject so thoroughly over in my mind that no one could bring an objection against it.”

Knapp shook his head and smiled. “Young enthusiasts like yourself are great at forming theories which well-seasoned men like myself must regard as fantastical. However,” he went on, “there is no doubt that Miss Page was a witness to, even if she has not profited by, the murder we have been considering. But, with this palpable proof of the Zabels’ direct connection with the affair, I would not recommend her arrest as yet.”

“She should be under surveillance, though,” intimated the coroner.

“Most certainly,” acquiesced Knapp.

As for Sweetwater, he remained silent till the opportunity came for him to whisper apart to Dr. Talbot, when he said:

“For all the palpable proof of which Mr. Knapp speaks—the J. Z. on the dagger, and the possibility of this being the object he was seen carrying out of Philemon Webb’s gate—I maintain that this old man in his moribund condition never struck the blow that killed Agatha Webb. He hadn’t strength enough, even if his lifelong love for her had not been sufficient to prevent him.”

The coroner looked thoughtful.

“You are right,” said he; “he hadn’t strength enough. But don’t expend too much energy in talk. Wait and see what a few direct questions will elicit from Miss Page.”

XVIII SOME LEADING QUESTIONS

Frederick rose early. He had slept but little. The words he had overheard at the end of the lot the night before were still ringing in his ears. Going down the back stairs, in his anxiety to avoid Amabel, he came upon one of the stablemen.

“Been to the village this morning?” he asked.

“No, sir, but Lem has. There’s great news there. I wonder if anyone has told Mr. Sutherland.”

“What news, Jake? I don’t think my father is up yet.”

“Why, sir, there were two more deaths in town last night—the brothers Zabel; and folks do say (Lem heard it a dozen times between the grocery and the fish market) that it was one of these old men who killed Mrs. Webb. The dagger has been found in their house, and most of the money. Why, sir, what’s the matter? Are you sick?”

Frederick made an effort and stood upright. He had nearly fallen.

“No; that is, I am not quite myself. So many horrors, Jake. What did they die of? You say they are both dead—both?”

“Yes, sir, and it’s dreadful to think of, but it was hunger, sir. Bread came too late. Both men are mere skeletons to look at. They have kept themselves close for weeks now, and nobody knew how bad off they were. I don’t wonder it upset you, sir. We all feel it a bit, and I just dread to tell Mr. Sutherland.”

Frederick staggered away. He had never in his life been so near mental and physical collapse. At the threshold of the sitting-room door he met his father. Mr. Sutherland was looking both troubled and anxious; more so, Frederick thought, than when he signed the check for him on the previous night. As their eyes met, both showed embarrassment, but Frederick, whose nerves had been highly strung by what he had just heard, soon controlled himself, and surveying his father with forced calmness, began:

“This is dreadful news, sir.”

But his father, intent on his own thought, hurriedly interrupted him.

“You told me yesterday that everything was broken off between you and Miss Page. Yet I saw you reenter the house together last night a little while after I gave you the money you asked for.”

“I know, and it must have had a bad appearance. I entreat you, however, to believe that this meeting between Miss Page and myself was against my wish, and that the relations between us have not been affected by anything that passed between us.”

“I am glad to hear it, my son. You could not do worse by yourself than to return to your old devotion.”

“I agree with you, sir.” And then, because he could not help it, Frederick inquired if he had heard the news.

Mr. Sutherland, evidently startled, asked what news; to which Frederick replied:

“The news about the Zabels. They are both dead, sir,—dead from hunger. Can you imagine it!”

This was something so different from what his father had expected to hear, that he did not take it in at first. When he did, his surprise and grief were even greater than Frederick had anticipated. Seeing him so affected, Frederick, who thought that the whole truth would be no harder to bear than the half, added the suspicion which had been attached to the younger one’s name, and then stood back, scarcely daring to be a witness to the outraged feelings which such a communication could not fail to awaken in one of his father’s temperament.

But though he thus escaped the shocked look which crossed his father’s countenance, he could not fail to hear the indignant exclamation which burst from his lips, nor help perceiving that it would take more than the most complete circumstantial evidence to convince his father of the guilt of men he had known and respected for so many years.

For some reason Frederick experienced great relief at this, and was bracing himself to meet the fire of questions which his statement must necessarily call forth, when the sound of approaching steps drew the attention of both towards a party of men coming up the hillside.

Among them was Mr. Courtney, Prosecuting Attorney for the district, and as Mr. Sutherland recognised him he sprang forward, saying, “There’s Courtney; he will explain this.”

Frederick followed, anxious and bewildered, and soon had the doubtful pleasure of seeing his father enter his study in company with the four men considered to be most interested in the elucidation of the Webb mystery.

As he was lingering in an undecided mood in the small passageway leading upstairs he felt the pressure of a finger on his shoulder. Looking up, he met the eyes of Amabel, who was leaning toward him over the banisters. She was smiling, and, though her face was not without evidences of physical languor, there was a charm about her person which would have been sufficiently enthralling to him twenty-four hours before, but which now caused him such a physical repulsion that he started back in the effort to rid his shoulder from her disturbing touch.

She frowned. It was an instantaneous expression of displeasure which was soon lost in one of her gurgling laughs.

“Is my touch so burdensome?” she demanded. “If the pressure of one finger is so unbearable to your sensitive nerves, how will you relish the weight of my whole hand?”

There was a fierceness in her tone, a purpose in her look, that for the first time in his struggle with her revealed the full depth of her dark nature. Shrinking from her appalled, he put up his hand in protest, at which she changed again in a twinkling, and with a cautious gesture toward the room into which Mr. Sutherland and his friends had disappeared, she whispered significantly:

“We may not have another chance to confer together. Understand, then, that it will not be necessary for you to tell me, in so many words, that you are ready to link your fortunes to mine; the taking off of the ring you wear and your slow putting of it on again, in my presence, will be understood by me as a token that you have reconsidered your present attitude and desire my silence and—myself.”

Frederick could not repress a shudder.

For an instant he was tempted to succumb on the spot and have the long agony over. Then his horror of the woman rose to such a pitch that he uttered an execration, and, turning away from her face, which was rapidly growing loathsome to him, he ran out of the passageway into the garden, seeing as he ran a persistent vision of himself pulling off the ring and putting it back again, under the spell of a look he rebelled against even while he yielded to its influence.

“I will not wear a ring, I will not subject myself to the possibility of obeying her behest under a sudden stress of fear or fascination,” he exclaimed, pausing by the well-curb and looking over it at his reflection in the water beneath. “If I drop it here I at least lose the horror of doing what she suggests, under some involuntary impulse.” But the thought that the mere absence of the ring from his finger would not stand in the way of his going through the motions to which she had just