Agatha Webb, Anna Katharine Green [readnow TXT] 📗

my own temerity, I was standing in the hall of this ill-fated house.”

The interest, which up to this moment had been breathless, now expressed itself in hurried ejaculations and broken words; and Mr. Sutherland, who had listened like one in a dream, exclaimed eagerly, and in a tone which proved that he, for the moment at least, believed this more than improbable tale:

“Then you can tell us if Philemon was in the little room at the moment when you entered the house?”

As everyone there present realised the importance of this question, a general movement took place and each and all drew nearer as she met their eyes and answered placidly:

“Yes; Mr. Webb was sitting in a chair asleep. He was the only person I saw.”

“Oh, I know he never committed this crime,” gasped his old friend, in a relief so great that one and all seemed to share it.

“Now I have courage for the rest. Go on, Miss Page.”

But Miss Page paused again to look at her finger, and give that sideways toss to her head that seemed so uncalled for by the situation to any who did not know of the compact between herself and the listening man below.

“I hate to go back to that moment,” said she; “for when I saw the candles burning on the table, and the husband of the woman who at that very instant was possibly breathing her last breath in the room overhead, sitting there in unconscious apathy, I felt something rise in my throat that made me deathly sick for a moment. Then I went right in where he was, and was about to shake his arm and wake him, when I detected a spot of blood on my finger from the dagger I had handled. That gave me another turn, and led me to wipe off my finger on his sleeve.”

“It’s a pity you did not wipe off your slippers too,” murmured Sweetwater.

Again she looked at him, again her eyes opened in terror upon the face of this man, once so plain and insignificant in her eyes, but now so filled with menace she inwardly quaked before it, for all her apparent scorn.

“Slippers,” she murmured.

“Did not your feet as well as your hands pass through the blood on the grass?”

She disdained to answer him.

“I have accounted for the blood on my hand,” she said, not looking at him, but at Mr. Courtney. “If there is any on my slippers it can be accounted for in the same way.” And she rapidly resumed her narrative. “I had no sooner made my little finger clean I never thought of anyone suspecting the old gentleman when I heard steps on the stairs and knew that the murderer was coming down, and in another instant would pass the open door before which I stood.

“Though I had been courageous enough up to that minute, I was seized by a sudden panic at the prospect of meeting face to face one whose hands were perhaps dripping with the blood of his victim. To confront him there and then might mean death to me, and I did not want to die, but to live, for I am young, sirs, and not without a prospect of happiness before me. So I sprang back, and seeing no other place of concealment in the whole bare room, crouched down in the shadow of the man you call Philemon. For one, two minutes, I knelt there in a state of mortal terror, while the feet descended, paused, started to enter the room where I was, hesitated, turned, and finally left the house.”

“Miss Page, wait, wait,” put in the coroner. “You saw him; you can tell who this man was?”

The eagerness of this appeal seemed to excite her. A slight colour appeared in her cheeks and she took a step forward, but before the words for which they so anxiously waited could leave her lips, she gave a start and drew back with, an ejaculation which left a more or less sinister echo in the ears of all who heard it.

Frederick had just shown himself at the top of the staircase.

“Good-morning, gentlemen,” said he, advancing into their midst with an air whose unexpected manliness disguised his inward agitation. “The few words I have just heard Miss Page say interest me so much, I find it impossible not to join you.”

Amabel, upon whose lips a faint complacent smile had appeared as he stepped by her, glanced up at these words in secret astonishment at the indifference they showed, and then dropped her eyes to his hands with an intent gaze which seemed to affect him unpleasantly, for he thrust them immediately behind him, though he did not lower his head or lose his air of determination.

“Is my presence here undesirable?” he inquired, with a glance towards his father.

Sweetwater looked as if he thought it was, but he did not presume to say anything, and the others being too interested in the developments of Miss Page’s story to waste any time on lesser matters, Frederick remained, greatly to Miss Page’s evident satisfaction.

“Did you see this man’s face?” Mr. Courtney now broke in, in urgent inquiry.

Her answer came slowly, after another long look in Frederick’s direction.

“No, I did not dare to make the effort. I was obliged to crouch too close to the floor. I simply heard his footsteps.”

“See, now!” muttered Sweetwater, but in so low a tone she did not hear him. “She condemns herself. There isn’t a woman living who would fail to look up under such circumstances, even at the risk of her life.”

Knapp seemed to agree with him, but Mr. Courtney, following his one idea, pressed his former question, saying:

“Was it an old man’s step?”

“It was not an agile one.”

“And you did not catch the least glimpse of the man’s face or figure?”

“Not a glimpse.”

“So you are in no position to identify him?”

“If by any chance I should hear those same footsteps coming down a flight of stairs, I think I should be able to recognise them,” she allowed, in the sweetest tones at her command.

“She knows it is too late for her to hear those of the two dead Zabels,” growled the man from Boston.

“We are no nearer the solution of this mystery than we were in the beginning,” remarked the coroner.

“Gentlemen, I have not yet finished my story,” intimated Amabel, sweetly. “Perhaps what I have yet to tell may give you some clew to the identity of this man.”

“Ah, yes; go on, go on. You have not yet explained how you came to be in possession of Agatha’s money.”

“Just so,” she answered, with another quick look at Frederick, the last she gave him for some time. “As soon, then, as I dared, I ran out of the house into the yard. The moon, which had been under a cloud, was now shining brightly, and by its light I saw that the space before me was empty and that I might venture to enter the street. But before doing so I looked about for the dagger I had thrown from me before going in, but I could not find it. It had been picked up by the fugitive and carried away. Annoyed at the cowardice which had led me to lose such a valuable piece of evidence through a purely womanish emotion, I was about to leave the yard, when my eyes fell on the little bundle of sandwiches which I had brought down from the hill and which I had let fall under the pear tree, at the first scream I had heard from the house. It had burst open and two or three of the sandwiches lay broken on the ground. But those that were intact I picked up, and being more than ever anxious to cover up by some ostensible errand my absence from the party, I rushed away toward the lonely road where these brothers lived, meaning to leave such fragments as remained on the old doorstep, beyond which I had been told such suffering existed.

“It was now late, very late, for a girl like myself to be out, but, under the excitement of what I had just seen and heard, I became oblivious to fear, and rushed into those dismal shadows as into transparent daylight. Perhaps the shouts and stray sounds of laughter that came up from the wharves where a ship was getting under way gave me a certain sense of companionship. Perhaps—but it is folly for me to dilate upon my feelings; it is my errand you are interested in, and what happened when I approached the Zabels’ dreary dwelling.”

The look with which she paused, ostensibly to take breath, but in reality to weigh and criticise the looks of those about her, was one of those wholly indescribable ones with which she was accustomed to control the judgment of men who allowed themselves to watch too closely the ever-changing expression of her weird yet charming face. But it fell upon men steeled against her fascinations, and realising her inability to move them, she proceeded with her story before even the most anxious of her hearers could request her to do so.

“I had come along the road very quietly,” said she, “for my feet were lightly shod, and the moonlight was too bright for me to make a misstep. But as I cleared the trees and came into the open place where the house stands I stumbled with surprise at seeing a figure crouching on the doorstep I had anticipated finding as empty as the road. It was an old man’s figure, and as I paused in my embarrassment he slowly and with great feebleness rose to his feet and began to grope about for the door. As he did so, I heard a sharp tinkling sound, as of something metallic falling on the doorstone, and, taking a quick step forward, I looked over his shoulder and espied in the moonlight at his feet a dagger so like the one I had lately handled in Mrs. Webb’s yard that I was overwhelmed with astonishment, and surveyed the aged and feeble form of the man who had dropped it with a sensation difficult to describe. The next moment he was stooping for the weapon, with a startled air that has impressed itself distinctly upon my memory, and when, after many feeble attempts, he succeeded in grasping it, he vanished into the house so suddenly that I could not be sure whether or not he had seen me standing there.

“All this was more than surprising to me, for I had never thought of associating an old man with this crime. Indeed, I was so astonished to find him in possession of this weapon that I forgot all about my errand and only wondered how I could see and know more. Fearing detection, I slid in amongst the bushes and soon found myself under one of the windows. The shade was down and I was about to push it aside when I heard someone moving about inside and stopped. But I could not restrain my curiosity, so pulling a hairpin from my hair, I worked a little hole in the shade and through this I looked into a room brightly illumined by the moon which shone in through an adjoining window. And what did I see there?” Her eye turned on Frederick. His right hand had stolen toward his left, but it paused under her look and remained motionless. “Only an old man sitting at a table and—” Why did she pause, and why did she cover up that pause with a wholly inconsequential sentence? Perhaps Frederick could have told, Frederick, whose hand had now fallen at his side. But Frederick volunteered nothing, and no one,