The Shadow of the Rope by E. W. Hornung (buy e reader .TXT) 📖

fond of Alec Minchin as a young man; now, I am not often exceedingly fond of anybody, as you may also know by this time. Before your trial I was convinced that you had killed my old friend, whom I was so keen to see again that I came up to town by the very first train after getting his letter. You had robbed me of the only friend I had in England at the very moment when he needed me and I was on my way to him. I could have saved his ship, and you had sent both him and it to the bottom! That, I say candidly, was what I thought."

"I don't blame you for thinking it before the trial," said Rachel. "It seems to have been the universal opinion."

"I formed mine for myself, and I had a particular reason for forming it," continued Steel, with a marked vibration in his usually unemotional voice. "I don't know which to tell you first.... Well, it shall be that reason. On the night of the murder do you remember coming downstairs and going or rather looking into the study—at one o'clock in the morning?"

Rachel recoiled in her chair.

"Heavens!" she cried. "How can you know that?"

"Did you hear nothing as you went upstairs again?"

"I don't remember."

"Not a rattle at the letter-box?"

"Yes! Yes! Now I do remember. And it was actually you!"

"It was, indeed," said Steel, gravely. "I saw you come down, I saw you peep in—all dread and reluctance! I saw you recoil, I saw the face with which you shut those doors and put out the lights. And afterwards I learned from the medical evidence that your husband must have been dead at that time; one thing I knew, and that was that he was not shot during the next hour and more, for I waited about until half-past two in the hope that he would come out. I was not going to ring and bring you down again, for I had seen your face, and I still saw your light upstairs."

"So you thought I had come down to see my handiwork!"

"To see if he was really dead. Yes, I thought that afterwards. I could not help thinking it, Rachel."

"Did it never occur to you that I might have thought he was asleep?"

"Yes, that has struck me since."

"You have not thought me guilty all along, then?"

"Not all along."

"Did you right through my trial?"

"God forgive me—yes, I did! And there was one thing that convinced me more than anything else; that was when you told the jury that the occasion of your final parting upstairs was the last time you saw poor Alec alive."

"But it was," said Rachel. "I remember the question. I did not know how to answer it. I could not tell them I had seen him dead but fancied him only asleep; that they would never have believed. So I told the simple truth. But it upset me dreadfully."

"That I saw. You expected cross-examination."

"Yes; and I did not know whether to stick to the truth or to lie!"

"I can read people sometimes," Steel continued after a pause. "I guessed your difficulty. Surely you must see the only conceivable inference?"

"I did see it."

"And, seeing, do you not forgive?"

"Yes, that. But you married me while you still thought me guilty. I forgive you for denying it at the time. I suppose that was necessary. But you have not yet told me why you did it."

"Honestly, Rachel, it was largely fascination—"

"But not primarily."

"No."

"Then let me hear the prime motive at last, for I am tired of trying to guess it!"

Steel stood before his wife as he had never stood before her yet, his white head bowed, his dark eyes lowered, hands clasped, shoulders bent, the suppliant and the penitent in one.

"I did it to punish you," he said. "I thought some one must—I felt I could have hanged you if I had spoken out what I had seen—and I—married you instead!"

His eyes were on the ground. When he raised them she was smiling through unshed tears. But she had spoken first.

"It was not a very terrible motive, after all," she had said; "at least, it has not been such a very terrible—punishment!"

"No; but that was because I did the very last thing I ever thought of doing."

"And that was?"

"To fall in love with you at the beginning!"

Rachel gave a little start.

"Although you thought me guilty?"

"That made no difference at all. But I have thought it less and less, until, on the night you appealed first to me and then to Langholm—on thinking over that night—it was impossible to suppose it any more."

Rachel rose, her cheeks divinely red, her lip trembling, her hand outstretched.

"And you fell in love with me!" she murmured.

"God knows I did, Rachel, in my own way," said Steel.

"I am so glad!" whispered his wife.

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Shadow of the Rope, by E. W. Hornung