It was a violent one and of a character she was least fitted to meet. Taking up the box I have so often mentioned, the coroner drew away the ribbon lying on top and disclosed the pistol. In a moment her hands were over her ears.
"Why do you do that?" he asked. "Did you think I was going to discharge it?"
She smiled pitifully as she let her hands fall again.
"I have a dread of firearms," she explained. "I always have had. Now they are simply terrible to me, and this one—"
"I understand," said the coroner, with a slight glance in the direction of Durbin. They had evidently planned this test together on the strength of an idea suggested to Durbin by her former action when the memory of this shot was recalled to her.
"Your horror seems to lie in the direction of the noise they make," continued her inexorable interlocutor. "One would say you had heard this pistol discharged."
Instantly a complete breaking-up of her hitherto well maintained composure altered her whole aspect and she vehemently cried:
"I did, I did. I was on Waverley Avenue that night, and I heard the shot which in all probability ended my sister's life. I walked farther than I intended; I strolled into the street which had such bitter memories for us and I heard—No, I was not in search of my sister. I had not associated my sister's going out with any intention of visiting this house; I was merely troubled in mind and anxious and—and—"
She had overrated her strength or her cleverness. She found herself unable to finish the sentence, and so did not try. She had been led by the impulse of the moment farther than she had intended, and, aghast at her own imprudence, paused with her first perceptible loss of courage before the yawning gulf opening before her.
I felt myself seized by a very uncomfortable dread lest her concealments and unfinished sentences hid a guiltier knowledge of this crime than I was yet ready to admit.
The coroner, who is an older man than myself, betrayed a certain satisfaction but no dread. Never did the unction which underlies his sharpest speeches show more plainly than when he quietly remarked:
"And so under a similar impulse you, as well as Mr. Jeffrey, chose this uncanny place to ramble in. To all appearance that old hearth acted much more like a lodestone upon members of your family than you were willing at one time to acknowledge."
This reference to words she had herself been heard to use seemed to overwhelm her. Her calmness fled and she cast a fleeting look of anguish at Mr. Jeffrey. But his face was turned from sight, and, meeting with no help there, or anywhere, indeed, save in her own powerful nature, she recovered as best she could the ground she had lost and, with a trembling question of her own, attempted to put the coroner in fault and reestablish herself.
"You say 'ramble through.' Do you for a moment think that I entered that old house?"
"Miss Tuttle," was the grave, almost sad reply, "did you not know that in some earth, dropped from a flower-pot overturned at the time when a hundred guests flew in terror from this house, there is to be seen the mark of a footstep,—a footstep which you are at liberty to measure with your own?"
"Ah!" she murmured, her hands going up to her face.
But in another moment she had dropped them and looked directly at the coroner.
"I walked there—I never said that I did not walk there—when I went later to see my sister and in sight of a number of detectives passed straight through the halls and into the library."
"And that this footstep," inexorably proceeded the coroner, "is not in a line with the main thoroughfare extending from the front to the back of the house, but turned inwards toward the wall as if she who made it had stopped to lean her head against the partition?"
Miss Tuttle's head drooped. Probably she realized at this moment, if not before, that the coroner and jury had ample excuse for mistrusting one who had been so unmistakably caught in a prevarication; possibly her regret carried her far enough to wish she had not disdained all legal advice from those who had so earnestly offered it. But though she showed alike her shame and her disheartenment, she did not give up the struggle.
"If I went into the house," she said, "it was not to enter that room. I had too great a dread of it. If I rested my head against the wall it was in terror of that shot. It came so suddenly and was so frightful, so much more frightful than anything you can conceive."
"Then you did enter the house?"
"I did."
"And it was while you were inside, instead of outside, that you heard the shot?"
"I must admit that, too. I was at the library door."
"You acknowledge that?"
"I do."
"But you did not enter the library?"
"No, not then; not till I was taken back by the officer who told me of my sister's death."
"We are glad to hear this precise statement from you. It encourages me to ask again the nature of the freak which took you into this house. You say that it was not from any dread on your sister's account? What, then, was it? No evasive answer will satisfy us, Miss Tuttle."
She realized this as no one else could.
Mr. Jeffrey's reason for his visit there could not be her reason, yet what other had she to give? Apparently none.
"I can not answer," she said.
And the deep sigh which swept through the room was but an echo of the despair with which she saw herself brought to this point.
"We will not oblige you to," said the coroner with apparent consideration. But to those who knew the law against forcing a witness to incriminate himself, this was far from an encouraging concession.
"However," he now went on, with suddenly assumed severity, "you may answer this. Was the house dark or light when you entered it? And, how did you get in?"
"The house was dark, and I got in through the front door, which I found ajar."
"You are more courageous than most women! I fear there are few of your sex who could be induced to enter it in broad daylight and under every suitable protection."
She raised her figure proudly.
"Miss Tuttle, you have heard Chloe say that you were in the kitchen of Mr. Jeffrey's house when the grocer boy delivered the candles which had been left by your brother-in-law on the counter of the store where he bought them. Is this true?"
"Yes, sir, it is true."
"Did you see those candles?"
"No, sir."
"You did not see them?"
"No, sir."
"Yet you went over to the table?"
"Yes, sir, but I did not meddle with the packages. I had really no business with them."
The coroner, surveying her sadly, went quickly on as if anxious to terminate this painful examination.
"You have not told us what you did when you heard that pistol-shot."
"I ran away as soon as I could move; I ran madly from the house."
"Where?"
"Home."
"But it was half-past ten when you got home."
"Was it?"
"It was half-past ten when the man came to tell you of your sister's death."
"It may have been."
"Your sister is supposed to have died in a few minutes. Where were you in the interim?"
"God knows. I do not."
A wild look was creeping into her face, and her figure was swaying. But she soon steadied it. I have never seen a more admirable presence maintained in the face of a dreadful humiliation.
"Perhaps I can help you," rejoined the coroner, not unkindly. "Were you not in the Congressional Library looking up at the lunettes and gorgeously painted walls?"
"I?" Her eyes opened wide in wondering doubt. "If I was, I did not know it. I have no remembrance of it."
She seemed to lose sight of her present position, the cloud under which she rested, and even the construction which might be put upon such a forgetfulness at a time confessedly prior to her knowledge of the purpose and effect of the shot from which she had so incontinently fled.
"Your condition of mind and that of Mr. Jeffrey seem to have been strangely alike," remarked the coroner.
"No, no!" she protested.
"Arguing a like source."
"No, no," she cried again, this time with positive agony. Then with an effort which awakened respect for her powers of mind, if for nothing else, she desperately added: "I can not say what was in his heart that night, but I know what was in mine—dread of that old house, to which I had been drawn in spite of myself, possibly by the force of the tragedy going on inside it, culminating in a delirium of terror, which sent me flying in an opposite direction from my home and into places I had been accustomed to visit when my heart was light and untroubled."
The coroner glanced at the jury, who unconsciously shook their heads. He shook his, too, as he returned to the charge.
"Another question, Miss Tuttle. When you heard a pistol-shot sounding from the depths of that dark library, what did you think it meant?"
She put her hands over her ears—it seemed as if she could not prevent this instinctive expression of recoil at the mention of the death-dealing weapon—and in very low tones replied:
"Something dreadful; something superstitious. It was night, you remember, and at night one has such horrible thoughts."
"Yet an hour or two later you declared that the hearth was no lodestone. You forgot its horrors and your superstition upon returning to your own house."
"It might be;" she murmured; "but if so, they soon returned. I had reason for my horror, if not for my superstition, as the event showed."
The coroner did not attempt to controvert this. He was about to launch a final inquiry.
"Miss Tuttle; upon the return of yourself and Mr. Jeffrey to your home after your final visit to the Moore house, did you have any interview that was without witnesses?"
"No."
"Did you exchange any words?"
"I think we did exchange some words; it would be only natural."
"Are you willing to state what words?"
She looked dazed and appeared to search her memory.
"I don't think I can," she objected.
"But something was said by you and some answer was made by him?"
"I believe so."
"Can not you say definitely?"
"We did speak."
"In English?"
"No, in French."
"Can not you translate that French for us?"
"Pardon me, sir; it was so long ago my memory fails me."
"Is it any better for the second and longer interview between you the next day?"
"No-sir."
"You can not give us any phrase or word that was uttered there?"
"No."
"Is this your final reply on this subject?"
"It is."
She never had been subjected to an interrogation like this before. It made her proud soul quiver in revolt, notwithstanding the patience with which she had fortified herself. With red cheeks and glistening eyes she surveyed the man who had made her suffer so, and instantly every other man there suffered with her; excepting possibly Durbin, whose heart was never his strong point. But our hearts were moved, our reasons were not convinced, as was presently shown, when, with a bow of dismissal, the coroner released her, and she passed back to her seat.
Simultaneously with her withdrawal the gleam of sensibility left the faces of the jury, and the dark and brooding look which had marked their countenances from the beginning returned, and returned to stay.
What would their verdict be? There were present two persons who affected to believe that it would be one of suicide occasioned by dementia. These were Miss Tuttle and Mr. Jeffrey, who, now that the critical period had come, straightened themselves boldly in their seats and met the glances concentrated upon them with dignity, if not with the assurance of complete innocence. But from the carefulness with which they avoided each other's eyes and the almost identical expression mirrored upon both faces, it was visible to all that they regarded their cause as a common one, and that the link which they denied, as having existed between them prior to Mrs. Jeffrey's death, had in some way been supplied by that very tragedy; so that they now unwittingly looked with the same eyes, breathed with the same breath, and showed themselves responsive to the same fluctuations of hope and fear.
The celerity with which that jury arrived at its verdict was a shock to us all. It had been a quiet body, offering but little assistance to the coroner in his questioning; but when it fell to these men to act, the precision with which they did so was astonishing. In a half-hour they returned from the room into which they had adjourned, and the foreman gave warning that he was prepared to render a verdict.
Mr. Jeffrey and Miss Tuttle both clenched their hands; then Miss Tuttle pulled down her veil.
"We find," said the solemn foreman, "that Veronica Moore Jeffrey, who on the night of May eleventh was discovered lying dead on the floor of her own unoccupied house in Waverley Avenue, came to her death by means of a bullet, shot from a pistol connected to her wrist by a length of white satin ribbon.
"That the first conclusion of suicide is not fully sustained by the facts;
"And that attempt should be made to identify the hand that fired this pistol."
It was as near an accusation of Miss Tuttle as was possible without mentioning her name. A groan passed through the assemblage, and Mr. Jeffrey, bounding to his feet, showed an inclination to shout aloud in his violent indignation. But Miss Tuttle, turning toward him, lifted her hand with a commanding gesture and held it so till he sat down again.
It was both a majestic and an utterly incomprehensible movement on her part, giving to the close of these remarkable proceedings a dramatic climax which set all hearts beating and, I am bound to say, all tongues wagging till the room cleared.
XVI
AN EGOTIST OF THE FIRST WATER
Had the control of affairs been mine at this moment I am quite positive that I should have found it difficult to deny these two the short interview which they appeared to crave and which would have been to them such an undeniable comfort. But a sterner spirit than mine was in charge, and the district attorney, into whose hands the affair had now fallen, was inexorable. Miss Tuttle was treated with respect, with kindness, even, but she was not allowed any communication with her brother-in-law beyond the formal "Good afternoon" incident upon their separation; while he, scorning to condemn his lips to any such trite commonplace, said nothing at all, only looked a haggard inquiry which called forth from her the most exalted look of patience and encouraging love it has ever been my good fortune to witness. Durbin was standing near and saw this look as plainly as I did, but it did not impose on him, he said. But what in the nature of human woe could impose on him? Durbin is a machine—a very reliable and useful machine, no doubt, yet when all is said, a simple contrivance of cogs and wheels; while I—well, I hope that I am something more than that; or why was I a changed man toward her from the moment I saw the smile which marked this accused woman's good by to Francis Jeffrey. No longer believing in her guilt, I went about my business with tumult in brain and heart, asking in my remorse for an opportunity to show her some small courtesy whereby to relieve the torture I felt at having helped the coroner in the inquiries which had brought about what looked to me now like a cruel and unwarranted result.
That it should be given to Durbin to hold such surveillance over her as her doubtful position demanded added greatly to my discomfort. But I was enabled to keep my lips firmly shut over any expression of secret jealousy or displeasure; and this was fortunate, as otherwise I might have failed to obtain the chance of aiding her later on, in other and deeper matters.
Meanwhile, and before any of us had left this room, one fact had become apparent. Mr. Jeffrey was not going to volunteer any fresh statement in face of the distinct disapproval of his sister-in-law. As his eye fell upon the district attorney, who had lingered near, possibly in the hope of getting something more from this depressed and almost insensible man, he made one remark, but it was an automatic one, calculated to produce but little effect on the discriminating ears of this experienced official.
"I do not believe that my wife was murdered." This was what he said. "It was a wicked verdict. My wife killed herself. Wasn't the pistol found tied to her?"
Either from preoccupation or a dazed condition of mind, he seemed to forget that Miss Tuttle had owned to tying on this pistol; and that nothing but her word went to prove that this was done before and not after the shot had been delivered in the Moore house library. I thought I understood him and was certain that I sympathized with his condition; but in the ears of those less amiably disposed toward him, his statements had lost force and the denial went for little.
Meanwhile a fact which all had noted and commented on had recurred to my mind and caused me to ask a brother officer who was walking out beside me what he thought of Mr. Moore's absence from an inquiry presumably of such importance to all members of this family.
The fellow laughed and said:
"Old Dave has lost none of his peculiarities in walking into his fortune. This is his day at the cemetery. Didn't you know that? He will let nothing on earth get in the way of his pilgrimage to that spot on the twenty-third of May, much less so trivial an occurrence as an inquest over the remains of his nearest relative."
I felt my gorge rise; then a thought struck me and I asked how long the old gentleman kept up his watch.
"From sunrise to sundown, the boys say. I never saw him there myself. My beat lies in an opposite direction."
I left him and started for Rock Creek Cemetery. There were two good hours yet before sundown and I resolved to come upon Uncle David at his post.
It took just one hour and a quarter to get there by the most direct route I could take. Five minutes more to penetrate the grounds to where a superb vehicle stood, drawn by two of the finest horses I had seen in Washington for many a long day. As I was making my way around this equipage I came upon a plot in a condition of upheaval preparatory to new sodding and the planting of several choice shrubs. In the midst of the sand thus exposed a single head-stone rose. On his knees beside this simple monument I saw the figure of Uncle David, dressed in his finest clothes and showing in his oddly contorted face the satisfaction of great prosperity, battling with the dissatisfaction of knowing that one he had so loved had not lived to share his elevation. He was rubbing away the mold from the name which, by his own confession, was the only one to which his memory clung in sympathy or endearment. At his feet lay an open basket, in which I detected the remains of what must have been a rather sumptuous cold repast. To all appearance he had foregone none of his ancient customs; only those customs had taken on elegance with his rise in fortune. The carriage and the horses, and most of all, the imperturbable driver, seemed to awaken some awe in the boys. They were still in evidence, but they hung back sheepishly and eyed the basket of neglected food as if they hoped he would forget to take it away. Meanwhile the clattering of chains against the harness, the pawing of the horses and the low exclamations of the driver caused me the queerest feelings. Advancing quite unceremoniously upon the watcher by the grave, I remarked aloud;
"The setting sun will soon release you, Mr. Moore. Are you going immediately into town?"
He paused in his rubbing, which was being done with a very tender hand, and as if he really loved the name he was endeavoring to bring into plainer view. Scowling a little, he turned and met me point-blank with a look which had a good deal of inquiry in it.
"I am not usually interrupted here," he emphasized; "except by the boys," he added more mildly. "They sometimes approach too closely, but I am used to the imps and scarcely notice them. Ah! there are some of my old friends now! Well, it is time they knew that a change has taken place in my fortunes. Hi, there! Hands up and catch this, and this, and this!" he shouted. "But keep quiet about it or next year you will get pennies again."
And flinging quarters right and left, he smiled in such a pompous, self-satisfied way at the hurrah and scramble which ensued, that it was well worth my journey there just to see this exhibition of combined vanity and good humor.
"Now go!" he vociferated; and the urchins, black and white, flew away, flinging up their heels in delight and shouting: "Bully for you, Uncle David! We'll come again next year, not for twenty-fives but fifties."
"I will make it dollars if I only live so long," he muttered. And deigning now to remember the question I had put to him, he grandly remarked:
"I am going straight into town. Can I do anything for you?"
"Nothing. I thought you might like to know what awaits you there. The city is greatly stirred up. The coroner's jury in the Jeffrey-Moore case has just brought in a verdict to the effect that suicide has not been proved. Naturally, this is equivalent to one of murder."
"Ah!" he ejaculated, slightly taken aback for one so invariably impassive.
"And to whom is the guilt of this crime ascribed?" he presently ventured.
"There was mention of no name; but the opprobrium naturally falls on Miss Tuttle."
"Miss Tuttle? Ah!"
"Since Mr. Jeffrey is proved to have been too far away at the time to have fired that shot, while she—"
"I am following you—"
"Was in the very house—at the door of the library in fact—and heard the pistol discharged, if she did not discharge it herself—which some believe, notably the district attorney. You should have been there, Mr. Moore."
He looked surprised at this suggestion.
"I never am anywhere but here on the twenty-third of May," he declared.
"Miss Tuttle needed some adviser."
"Ah, probably."
"You would have been a good one."
"And a welcome one, eh?"
I hardly thought he would have been a welcome one, but I did not admit the fact. Nevertheless he seized on the advantage he evidently thought he had gained and added, mildly enough, or rather without any display of feeling:
"Miss Tuttle likes me even less than Veronica did. I do not think she would have accepted, certainly she would not have desired, my presence in her counsels. But of one thing I wish her to be assured, her and the world in general. Any money she may need at this—at this unhappy crisis in her life, she will find amply supplied. She has no claims on me, but that makes little difference where the family honor is concerned. Her mother's husband was my brother—the girl shall have all she needs. I will write her so."
He was moving toward his carriage.
"Fine turnout?" he interrogatively remarked.
I assented with all the surprise,—with all the wonder even—which his sublime egotism seemed to invite.
"It is the best that Downey could raise in the time I allotted him. When I really finger the money, we shall see, we shall see."
His foot was on the carriage-step. He looked up at the west. The sun was almost down but not quite. "Have you any special business with me?" he asked, lingering with what I thought a surprising display of conscientiousness till the last ray of direct sunlight had disappeared.
I glanced up at the coachman sitting on his box as rigid as any stone.
"You may speak," said he; "Caesar neither hears nor sees anything but his horses when he drives me."
The black did not wink. He was as completely at home on the box and as quiet and composed in his service as if he had driven this man for years.
"He understands his duty," finished the master, but with no outward appearance of pride. "What have you to say to me?"
I hesitated no longer.
"Miss Tuttle is supposed to have secretly entered the Moore house on the night you summoned us. She even says she did. I know that you have sworn to having seen no one go into that house; but notwithstanding this, haven't you some means at your disposal for proving to the police and to the world at large that she never fired that fatal shot? Public opinion is so cruel. She will be ruined whether innocent or guilty, unless it can be very plainly shown that she did not enter the library prior to going there with the police."
"And how can you suppose me to be in a position to prove that? Say that I had sat in my front window all that evening, and watched with uninterrupted assiduity the door through which so many are said to have passed between sunset and midnight—something which I did not do, as I have plainly stated on oath—how could you have expected me to see what went on in the black interior of a house whose exterior is barely discernible at night across the street?"
"Then you can not aid her?" I asked.
With a light bound he leaped into the carriage. As he took his seat he politely remarked:
"I should be glad to, since, though not a Moore, she is near enough the family to affect its honor. But not having even seen her enter the house I can not testify in any way in regard to her. Home, Caesar, and drive quickly. I do not thrive under these evening damps."
And leaning back, with an inexpressible air of contentment with himself, his equipage and the prospect of an indefinite enjoyment of the same, the last representative of the great Moore family was quietly driven away.