The House of the Whispering Pines by Anna Katharine Green (best novels for beginners txt) 📕

"Are you going back into town?" he asked, as I paused and looked down at the umbrella swinging in his hand. I was sure that he had not held this umbrella when he started by me on the run. "If so, will you allow me to walk beside you for a little way?"

I could not refuse him; besides, I was not sure that I wanted to. Homely as any man I had ever seen, there was a magnetic quality in his voice and manner that affected even one so fastidious as myself. I felt that I had rather talk to him, at that moment, than to any other person I knew. Of course, curiosity had something to do with it, and that community of interest which is the strongest bond that can link two people together.

"You are quite welcome," said I; and again cast my eye at the umbrella.

"You are wondering where I got this," he remarked, looking down at it in his turn. "I found it leaning against the fence. It gives me all the clue I need to our fleet-footed friend. Mr. Ranelagh, will you credit me with good intentions if I ask a question or two which you may or may not be willing to answer?"

"You may ask what you will," said I. "I have nothing to conceal, since hearing Miss Cumberland's explanation of her presence at The Whispering Pines."

"Ah!"

The ejaculation was eloquent. So was the silence which followed it. Without good reason, perhaps, I felt the strain upon my heart loosen a little. Was it possible that I should find a friend in this man?

"The question I am going to ask," he continued presently, "is one which you may consider unpardonable. Let me first express an opinion. You have not told all that you know of that evening's doings."

This called for no reply and I made none.

"I can understand your reticence, if your knowledge included the fact of Miss Cumberland's heroic act and her sister's manner of death at the club-house."

"But it did not," I asserted, with deliberate emphasis. "I knew nothing of either. My arrival happened later. Miss Cumberland's testimony gave me my first enlightenment on these points. But I did know that the two sisters were there together, for I had a glimpse of the younger as she was leaving the house."

"You had. And are willing to state it now?"

"Assuredly. But any testimony of that kind is for the defence, and your interests are all with the prosecution. Mr. Moffat is the man who should talk to me."

"Does he know it?"

"Yes."

"Who told him?"

"I did."

"You?"

"Yes, it was my duty."

"You are interested then in seeing young Cumberland freed?"

"I must be; he is innocent."

The man at my side turned, shot at me one glance which I met quite calmly, then, regulating his step by mine, moved on silently for a moment—thinking, as it appeared to me, some very serious thoughts. It was not until we had traversed a whole block in this way that he finally put his question. Whether it was the one he had first had in mind, I cannot say.

"Mr. Ranelagh, will you tell me why, when you found yourself in such a dire extremity as to be arrested for this crime, on evidence as startling as to call for all and every possible testimony to your innocence, you preserved silence in regard to a fact which you must have then felt would have secured you a most invaluable witness? I can understand why Mr. Cumberland has been loth to speak of his younger sister's presence in the club-house on that night; but his reason was not your reason. Yet you have been as hard to move on this point as he."

Then it was I regretted my thoughtless promise to be candid with this man. To answer were impossible, yet silence has its confidences, too. In my dilemma, I turned towards him and just then we stepped within the glare of an electric light pouring from some open doorway. I caught his eye, and was astonished at the change which took place in him.

"Don't answer," he muttered, volubly. "It isn't necessary. I understand the situation, now, and you shall never regret that you met Caleb Sweetwater on your walk this evening. Will you trust me, sir? A detective who loves his profession is no gabbler. Your secret is as safe with me as if you had buried it in the grave."

And I had said nothing!

He started to go, then he stopped suddenly and observed, with one of his wise smiles:

"I once spent several minutes in Miss Carmel Cumberland's room, and I saw a cabinet there which I found it very hard to understand. But its meaning came to me later. I could not rest till it did."

At the next moment he was half way around a corner, and in another, out of sight.

This was the evening's event.

O if you rear this house against this house,
It will the wofulest division prove
That ever fell upon this cursed earth.

Prometheus Unbound.

In my first glance around the court-room the next morning, I sought first for Carmel and then for the detective Sweetwater. Neither was visible. But this was not true of Ella. She had come in on her father's arm, closely followed by the erect figure of her domineering mother. As I scrutinised the latter's bearing, I seemed to penetrate the mystery of her nature. Whatever humiliation she may have felt at the public revelation of her daughter's weakness, it had been absorbed by her love for that daughter, or had been forced, through the agency of her indomitable will, to become a ministrant to her pride which was unassailable. She had accepted the position exacted from her by the situation, and she looked for no loss of prestige, either on her daughter's or her own account. Such was the language of her eyes; and it was a language which should have assured Ella that she had a better friend in her mother than she had ever dreamed of. The entrance of the defendant cut short my contemplation of any mere spectator. The change in him was so marked that I was conscious of it before I really saw him. Every eye had reflected it, and it was no surprise to me when I noted the relieved, almost cheerful aspect of his countenance as he took his place and met his counsel's greeting with a smile—the first, I believe, which had been seen on his face since his sister's death. That counsel I had already noted. He was cheerful also, but with a restrained cheerfulness. His task was not yet over, and the grimness of Mr. Fox, and the non-committal aspect of the jurymen, proved that it was not to be made too easy for him.

The crier announced the opening of the court, and the defence proceeded by the calling of Ella Fulton to the witness stand.

I need not linger over her testimony. It was very short and contained but one surprise. She had stated under direct examination that she had waited and watched for Arthur's return that whole night, and was positive that he had not passed through their grounds again after that first time in the early evening. This was just what I had expected from her. But the prosecution remembered the snowfall, and in her cross-examination on this point, she acknowledged that it was very thick, much too thick for her to see her own gate distinctly; but added, that this only made her surer of the fact she had stated; for finding that she could not see, she had dressed herself for the storm and gone out into the driveway to watch there, and had so watched until the town clock struck three.

This did not help the prosecution. Sympathy could not fail to be with this young and tremulous girl, heroic in her love, if weak in other respects, and when on her departure from the stand, she cast one deprecatory glance at the man for whom she had thus sacrificed her pride, and, meeting his eye fixed upon her with anything but ingratitude, flushed and faltered till she with difficulty found her way, the sentiments of the onlookers became so apparent that the judge's gavel was called into requisition before order could be restored and the next witness summoned to testify.

This witness was no less a person than Arthur himself. Recalled by his counsel, he was reminded of his former statement that he had left the club-house in a hurry because he heard his sister Adelaide's voice, and was now asked if hers was the only voice he had heard.

His answer revealed much of his mind.

"No, I heard Carmel's answering her."

This satisfying Mr. Moffat, he was passed over to Mr. Fox, and a short cross-examination ensued on this point.

"You heard both your sisters speaking?"

"Yes, sir."

"Any of their words, or only their voices?"

"I heard one word."

"What word?"

"The word, 'Elwood.'"

"In which voice?"

"In that of my sister Adelaide."

"And you fled?"

"Immediately."

"Leaving your two sisters alone in this cold and out-of-the-way house?"

"I did not think they were alone."

"Who did you think was with them?"

"I have already mentioned the name."

"Yet you left them?"

"Yes, I've already explained that. I was engaged in a mean act. I was ashamed to be caught at it by Adelaide. I preferred flight. I had no premonition of tragedy—any such tragedy as afterwards occurred. I understood neither of my sisters and my thoughts were only for myself."

"Didn't you so much as try to account for their both being there?"

"Not then."

"Had you expected Adelaide to accompany your younger sister when you harnessed the horse for her?"

"No, sir."

"Had not this younger sister even enjoined secrecy upon you in asking you to harness the horse?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yet you heard the two together in this remote building without surprise?"

"No, I must have felt surprise, but I didn't stop to analyse my feelings. Afterward, I turned it over in my mind and tried to make something out of the whole thing. But that was when I was far out on the links."

A losing game thus far. This the district attorney seemed to feel; but he was not an ungenerous man though cursed (perhaps, I should say blessed, considering the position he held) by a tenacity which never let him lose his hold until the jury gave their verdict.

"You have a right to explain yourself fully," said he, after a momentary struggle in which his generosity triumphed over his pride. "When you did think of your sisters, what explanation did you give yourself of the facts we have just been considering?"

"I could not imagine the truth, so I just satisfied myself that Adelaide had discovered Carmel's intentions to ride into town and had insisted on accompanying her. They were having it out, I thought, in the presence of the man who had made all this trouble between them."

"And you left them to the task?"

"Yes, sir, but not without a struggle. I was minded several times to return. This I have testified to before."

"Did this struggle consume forty minutes?"

"It must have and more, if I entered the hold in Cuthbert Road at the hour they state."

Mr. Fox gave up the game, and I looked to be the next person called. But it was not a part of Mr. Moffat's plan to weaken the effect of Carmel's testimony by offering any weak corroboration of facts which nobody showed the least inclination to dispute. Satisfied with having given the jury an opportunity to contrast his client's present cheerfulness and manly aspect with the sullenness he had maintained while in doubt of Carmel's real connection with this crime, Mr. Moffat rested his case.

There was no testimony offered in rebuttal and the court took a recess.

When it reassembled I cast another anxious glance around. Still no Carmel, nor any signs of Sweetwater. I could understand her absence, but not his, and it was in a confusion of feeling which was fast getting the upper hand of me, that I turned my attention to Mr. Moffat and the plea he was about to make for his youthful client.

I do not wish to obtrude myself