Hand and Ring by Anna Katharine Green (good book club books TXT) 📖

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id="Page_310" title="[310]"> morning, and wanting to see Miss Dare, ordered her to go up to the observatory and tell that lady to come down, and that she went, but to her surprise did not find Miss Dare there, though she was sure she had not gone home, or, at least, hadn't taken any of the cars that start from the front of the house, for she had looked at them every one as they went by the basement window where she was at work."

"The girl said this?"

"Yes, standing in the door of this small room, and looking me straight in the eye."

"And did you ask her nothing more? Say nothing about the time, Hickory, or—or inquire where she supposed Miss Dare to have gone?"

"Yes, I asked her all this. I am not without curiosity any more than you are, Mr. Byrd."

"And she replied?"

"Oh, as to the time, that it was somewhere before noon. Her reason for being sure of this was that Miss Tremaine declined to wait till another effort had been made to find Miss Dare, saying she had an engagement at twelve which she did not wish to break."

"And the girl's notions about where Miss Dare had gone?"

"Such as you expect, Byrd. She said she did not know any thing about it, but that Miss Dare often went strolling in the garden, or even in the woods when she came to Professor Darling's house, and that she supposed she had gone off on some such walk at this time, for, at one o'clock or thereabouts, she saw her pass in the horse-car on her way back to the town."

"Hickory, I wish you had not told me this just as I am going back to the city."

"Wish I had not told it, or wish I had not gone to Professor Darling's house as you requested?"

"Wish you had not told it. I dare not wish the other. But you spoke of seeing Miss Dare; how was that? Where did you run across her?"

"Do you want to hear?"

"Of course, of course."

"But I thought——"

"Oh, never mind, old boy; tell me the whole now, as long as you have told me any. Was she in the house?"

"I will tell you. I had asked the girl all these questions, as I have said, and was about to leave the observatory and go below when I thought I would cast another glance around the curious old place, and in doing so caught a glimpse of a huge portfolio of charts, as I supposed, standing upright in a rack that stretched across the further portion of the room. Somehow my heart misgave me when I saw this rack, and, scarcely conscious what it was I feared, I crossed the floor and looked behind the portfolio. Byrd, there was a woman crouched there—a woman whose pallid cheeks and burning eyes lifted to meet my own, told me only too plainly that it was Miss Dare. I have had many experiences," Hickory allowed, after a moment, "and some of them any thing but pleasant to myself, but I don't think I ever felt just as I did at that instant. I believe I attempted a bow—I don't remember; or, at least, tried to murmur some excuse, but the look that came into her face paralyzed me, and I stopped before I had gotten very far, and waited to hear what she would say. But she did not say much; she merely rose, and, turning toward me, exclaimed: 'No apologies; you are a detective, I suppose?' And when I nodded, or made some other token that she had guessed correctly, she merely remarked, flashing upon me, however, in a way I do not yet understand: 'Well, you have got what you desired, and now can go.' And I went, Byrd, went; and I felt puzzled, I don't know why, and a little bit sore about the heart, too, as if—— Well, I can't even tell what I mean by that if. The only thing I am sure of is, that Mansell's cause hasn't been helped by this day's job, and that if this lady is asked on the witness stand where she was during the hour every one believed her to be safely shut up with the telescopes and charts, we shall hear——"

"What?"

"Well, that she was shut up with them, most likely. Women like her are not to be easily disconcerted even on the witness stand."

XXVI. "HE SHALL HEAR ME!"

There's some ill planet reigns;
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favorable.—Winter's Tale.

THE time is midnight, the day the same as that which saw this irruption of Hickory into Professor Darling's observatory; the scene that of Miss Dare's own room in the northeast tower. She is standing before a table with a letter in her hand and a look upon her face that, if seen, would have added much to the puzzlement of the detectives.

The letter was from Mr. Orcutt and ran thus:

I have seen Mr. Mansell, and have engaged myself to undertake his defence. When I tell you that out of the hundreds of cases I have tried in my still short life, I have lost but a small percentage, you will understand what this means.

In pursuance to your wishes, I mentioned your name to the prisoner with an intimation that I had a message from you to deliver. But he stopped me before I could utter a word. "I receive no communication from Miss Dare!" he declared, and, anxious as I really was to do your bidding, I was compelled to refrain; for his tone was one of hatred and his look that of ineffable scorn.

This was all, but it was enough. Imogene had read these words over three times, and now was ready to plunge the letter into the flame of a candle to destroy it. As it burned, her grief and indignation took words:

"He is alienated, completely alienated," she gasped; "and I do not wonder. But," and here the full majesty of her nature broke forth in one grand gesture, "he shall hear me yet! As there is a God above, he shall hear me yet, even if it has to be in the open court and in the presence of judge and jury!"

BOOK III. THE SCALES OF JUSTICE. XXVII. THE GREAT TRIAL.

Othello.—What dost thou think?
Iago.— Think, my lord?
Othello.—By heav'n, he echoes me.
As if there was some monster in his thought
Too hideous to be shown.—Othello.

SIBLEY was in a stir. Sibley was the central point of interest for the whole country. The great trial was in progress and the curiosity of the populace knew no bounds.

In a room of the hotel sat our two detectives. They had just come from the court-house. Both seemed inclined to talk, though both showed an indisposition to open the conversation. A hesitation lay between them; a certain thin vail of embarrassment that either one would have found it hard to explain, and yet which sufficed to make their intercourse a trifle uncertain in its character, though Hickory's look had lost none of its rude good-humor, and Byrd's manner was the same mixture of easy nonchalance and quiet self-possession it had always been.

It was Hickory who spoke at last.

"Well, Byrd?" was his suggestive exclamation.

"Well, Hickory?" was the quiet reply.

"What do you think of the case so far?"

"I think"—the words came somewhat slowly—"I think that it looks bad. Bad for the prisoner, I mean," he explained the next moment with a quick flush.

"Your sympathies are evidently with Mansell," Hickory quietly remarked.

"Yes," was the slow reply. "Not that I think him innocent, or would turn a hair's breadth from the truth to serve him."

"He is a manly fellow," Hickory bluntly admitted, after a moment's puff at the pipe he was smoking. "Do you remember the peculiar straightforwardness of his look when he uttered his plea of 'Not guilty,' and the tone he used too, so quiet, yet so emphatic? You could have heard a pin drop."

"Yes," returned Mr. Byrd, with a quick contraction of his usually smooth brow.

"Have you noticed," the other broke forth, after another puff, "a certain curious air of disdain that he wears?"

"Yes," was again the short reply.

"I wonder what it means?" queried Hickory carelessly, knocking the ashes out of his pipe.

Mr. Byrd flashed a quick askance look at his colleague from under his half-fallen lids, but made no answer.

"It is not pride alone," resumed the rough-and-ready detective, half-musingly; "though he's as proud as the best of 'em. Neither is it any sort of make-believe, or I wouldn't be caught by it. 'Tis—'tis—what?" And Hickory rubbed his nose with his thoughtful forefinger, and looked inquiringly at Mr. Byrd.

"How should I know?" remarked the other, tossing his stump of a cigar into the fire. "Mr. Mansell is too deep a problem for me."

"And Miss Dare too?"

"And Miss Dare."

Silence followed this admission, which Hickory broke at last by observing:

"The day that sees her on the witness stand will be interesting, eh?"

"It is not far off," declared Mr. Byrd.

"No?"

"I think she will be called as a witness to-morrow."

"Have you noticed," began Hickory again, after another short interval of quiet contemplation, "that it is only when Miss Dare is present that Mansell wears the look of scorn I have just mentioned."

"Hickory," said Mr. Byrd, wheeling directly about in his chair and for the first time surveying his colleague squarely, "I have noticed this. That ever since the day she made her first appearance in the court-room, she has sat with her eyes fixed earnestly upon the prisoner, and that he has never answered her look by so much as a glance in her direction. This has but one explanation as I take it. He never forgets that it is through her he has been brought to trial for his life."

Mr. Byrd uttered this very distinctly, and with a decided emphasis. But the impervious Hickory only settled himself farther back in his chair, and stretching his feet out toward the fire, remarked dryly:

"Perhaps I am not much of a judge of human nature, but I should have said now that this Mansell was not a man to treat her contemptuously for that. Rage he might show or hatred, but this quiet ignoring of her presence seems a little too dignified for a criminal facing a person he has every reason to believe is convinced of his guilt."

"Ordinary rules don't apply to this man. Neither you nor I can sound his nature. If he displays contempt, it is because he is of the sort to feel it for the woman who has betrayed him."

"You make him out mean-spirited, then, as well as wicked?"

"I make him out human. More than that," Mr. Byrd resumed, after a moment's thought, "I make him out consistent. A man who lets his passions sway him to the extent of committing a murder for the purpose of satisfying his love or his ambition, is not of the unselfish cast that would appreciate such a sacrifice as Miss Dare has made. This under the supposition that our reasons for believing him guilty are well founded. If our suppositions are false, and the crime was not committed by him, his contempt needs no explanation."

"Just so!"

The peculiar tone in which this was uttered caused Mr. Byrd to flash another quick look at his colleague. Hickory did not seem to observe it.

"What makes you think Miss Dare will be called to the witness stand to-morrow?" he asked.

"Well I will tell you," returned Byrd, with the sudden vivacity of one glad to turn the current of conversation into a fresh channel. "If you have followed the method of the prosecution as I have done, you will have noticed that it has advanced to its point by definite stages. First, witnesses were produced to prove the