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

"We have a serious question before us to decide," said he. "Are we to go on with the prosecution or are we to stop? I should like to hear your views on the subject."

Hickory was, as usual, the first to speak.

"I should say, stop," he cried. "This fresh applicant for the honor of having slain the Widow Clemmens deserves a hearing at least."

"But," hurriedly interposed Byrd, "you don't give any credit to her story now, even if you did before the prisoner spoke? You know she did not commit the crime herself, whatever she may choose to declare in her anxiety to shield the prisoner. I hope, sir," he proceeded, glancing at the District Attorney, "that you have no doubts as to Miss Dare's innocence?"

But Mr. Ferris, instead of answering, turned to Hickory and said:

"Miss Dare, in summoning you to confirm her statement, relied, I suppose, upon the fact of your having been told by Professor Darling's servant-maid that she—that is, Miss Dare—was gone from the observatory when the girl came for her on the morning of the murder?"

"Yes, sir."

"A strong corroborative fact, if true?"

"Yes, sir."

"But is it true? In the explanation which Miss Dare gave me last night of this affair, she uttered statements essentially different from those she made in court to-day. She then told me she was in the observatory when the girl came for her; that she was looking through a telescope which was behind a high rack filled with charts; and that—— Why do you start?"

"I didn't start," protested Hickory.

"I beg your pardon," returned Mr. Ferris.

"Well, then, if I did make such a fool of myself, it was because so far her story is plausible enough. She was in that very position when I visited the observatory, you remember, and she was so effectually concealed I didn't see her or know she was there, till I looked behind the rack."

"Very good!" interjected Mr. Ferris. "And that," he resumed, "she did not answer the girl or make known her presence, because at the moment the girl came in she was deeply interested in watching something that was going on in the town."

"In the town!" repeated Byrd.

"Yes; the telescope was lowered so as to command a view of the town, and she had taken advantage of its position (as she assured me last night) to consult the church clock."

"The church clock!" echoed Byrd once more. "And what time did she say it was?" breathlessly cried both detectives.

"Five minutes to twelve."

"A critical moment," ejaculated Byrd. "And what was it she saw going on in the town at that especial time?"

"I will tell you," returned the District Attorney, impressively. "She said—and I believed her last night and so recalled her to the stand this morning—that she saw Craik Mansell fleeing toward the swamp from Mrs. Clemmens' dining-room door."

Both men looked up astonished.

"That was what she told me last night. To-day she comes into court with this contradictory story of herself being the assailant and sole cause of Mrs. Clemmens' death."

"But all that is frenzy," protested Byrd. "She probably saw from your manner that the prisoner was lost if she gave this fact to the court, and her mind became disordered. She evidently loves this Mansell, and as for me, I pity her."

"So do I," assented the District Attorney; "still——"

"Is it possible," Byrd interrupted, with feeling, as Mr. Ferris hesitated, "that you do doubt her innocence? After the acknowledgments made by the prisoner too?"

Rising from his seat, Mr. Ferris began slowly to pace the floor.

"I should like each of you," said he, without answering the appeal of Byrd, "to tell me why I should credit what she told me in conversation last night rather than what she uttered upon oath in the court-room to-day?"

"Let me speak first," rejoined Byrd, glancing at Hickory. And, rising also, he took his stand against the mantel-shelf where he could partially hide his face from those he addressed. "Sir," he proceeded, after a moment, "both Hickory and myself know Miss Dare to be innocent of this murder. A circumstance which we have hitherto kept secret, but which in justice to Miss Dare I think we are now bound to make known, has revealed to us the true criminal. Hickory, tell Mr. Ferris of the deception you practised upon Miss Dare in the hut."

The surprised, but secretly gratified, detective at once complied. He saw no reason for keeping quiet about that day's work. He told how, by means of a letter purporting to come from Mansell, he had decoyed Imogene to an interview in the hut, where, under the supposition she was addressing her lover, she had betrayed her conviction of his guilt, and advised him to confess it.

Mr. Ferris listened with surprise and great interest.

"That seems to settle the question," he said.

But it was now Hickory's turn to shake his head.

"I don't know," he remonstrated. "I have sometimes thought she saw through the trick and turned it to her own advantage."

"How to her own advantage?"

"To talk in such a way as to make us think Mansell was guilty."

"Stuff!" said Byrd; "that woman?"

"More unaccountable things have happened," was the weak reply of Hickory, his habitual state of suspicion leading him more than once into similar freaks of folly.

"Sir," said Mr. Byrd, confidingly, to the District Attorney, "let us run over this matter from the beginning. Starting with the supposition that the explanation she gave you last night was the true one, let us see if the whole affair does not hang together in a way to satisfy us all as to where the real guilt lies. To begin, then, with the meeting in the woods——"

"Wait," interrupted Hickory; "there is going to be an argument here; so suppose you give your summary of events from the lady's standpoint, as that seems to be the one which interests you most."

"I was about to do so," Horace assured him, heedless of the rough fellow's good-natured taunt. "To make my point, it is absolutely necessary for us to transfer ourselves into her position and view matters as they gradually unfolded themselves before her eyes. First, then, as I have before suggested, let us consider the interview held by this man and woman in the woods. Miss Dare, as we must remember, was not engaged to Mr. Mansell; she only loved him. Their engagement, to say nothing of their marriage, depended upon his success in life—a success which to them seemed to hang solely upon the decision of Mrs. Clemmens concerning the small capital he desired her to advance him. But in the interview which Mansell had held with his aunt previous to the meeting between the lovers, Mrs. Clemmens had refused to loan him this money, and Miss Dare, whose feelings we are endeavoring to follow, found herself beset by the entreaties of a man who, having failed in his plans for future fortune, feared the loss of her love as well. What was the natural consequence? Rebellion against the widow's decision, of course,—a rebellion which she showed by the violent gesture which she made;—and then a determination to struggle for her happiness, as she evinced when, with most unhappy ambiguity of expression, she begged him to wait till the next day before pressing his ring upon her acceptance, because, as she said:

"'A night has been known to change the whole current of a person's affairs.'

"To her, engrossed with the one idea of making a personal effort to alter Mrs. Clemmens' mind on the money question, these words seemed innocent enough. But the look with which he received them, and the pause that followed, undoubtedly impressed her, and prepared the way for the interest she manifested when, upon looking through the telescope the next day, she saw him flying in that extraordinary way from his aunt's cottage toward the woods. Not that she then thought of his having committed a crime. As I trace her mental experience, she did not come to that conclusion till it was forced upon her. I do not know, and so cannot say, how she first heard of the murder——"

"She was told of it on the street-corner," interpolated Mr. Ferris.

"Ah, well, then, fresh from this vision of her lover hasting from his aunt's door to hide himself in the woods beyond, she came into town and was greeted by the announcement that Mrs. Clemmens had just been assaulted by a tramp in her own house. I know this was the way in which the news was told her, from the expression of her face as she entered the house. I was standing at the gate, you remember, when she came up, and her look had in it determination and horror, but no special fear. In fact, the words she dropped show the character of her thoughts at that time. She distinctly murmured in my hearing: 'No good can come of it, none.' As if her mind were dwelling upon the advantages which might accrue to her lover from his aunt's death, and weighing them against the foul means by which that person's end had been hastened. Yet I will not say but she may have been influenced in the course which she took by some doubt or apprehension of her own. The fact that she came to the house at all, and, having come, insisted upon knowing all the details of the assault, seem to prove she was not without a desire to satisfy herself that suspicion rightfully attached itself to the tramp. But not until she saw her lover's ring on the floor (the ring which she had with her own hand dropped into the pocket of his coat the day before) and heard that the tramp had justified himself and was no longer considered the assailant, did her true fear and horror come. Then, indeed, all the past rose up before her, and, believing her lover guilty of this crime, she laid claim to the jewel as the first and only alternative that offered by which she might stand between him and the consequences of his guilt. Her subsequent agitation when the dying woman made use of the exclamation that indissolubly connected the crime with a ring, speaks for itself. Nor was her departure from the house any too hurried or involuntary, when you consider that the vengeance invoked by the widow, was, in Miss Dare's opinion, called down upon one to whom she had nearly plighted her troth. What is the next act in the drama? The scene in the Syracuse depot. Let me see if I cannot explain