Agatha Webb (14 page)

The coroner looked thoughtful.

"You are right," said he; "he hadn't strength enough. But don't
expend too much energy in talk. Wait and see what a few direct
questions will elicit from Miss Page."

Frederick rose early. He had slept but little. The words he had
overheard at the end of the lot the night before were still
ringing in his ears. Going down the back stairs, in his anxiety to
avoid Amabel, he came upon one of the stablemen.

"Been to the village this morning?" he asked.

"No, sir, but Lem has. There's great news there. I wonder if
anyone has told Mr. Sutherland."

"What news, Jake? I don't think my father is up yet."

"Why, sir, there were two more deaths in town last night—the
brothers Zabel; and folks do say (Lem heard it a dozen times
between the grocery and the fish market) that it was one of these
old men who killed Mrs. Webb. The dagger has been found in their
house, and most of the money. Why, sir, what's the matter? Are you
sick?"

Frederick made an effort and stood upright. He had nearly fallen.

"No; that is, I am not quite myself. So many horrors, Jake. What
did they die of? You say they are both dead—both?"

"Yes, sir, and it's dreadful to think of, but it was hunger, sir.
Bread came too late. Both men are mere skeletons to look at. They
have kept themselves close for weeks now, and nobody knew how bad
off they were. I don't wonder it upset you, sir. We all feel it a
bit, and I just dread to tell Mr. Sutherland."

Frederick staggered away. He had never in his life been so near
mental and physical collapse. At the threshold of the sitting-room
door he met his father. Mr. Sutherland was looking both troubled
and anxious; more so, Frederick thought, than when he signed the
check for him on the previous night. As their eyes met, both
showed embarrassment, but Frederick, whose nerves had been highly
strung by what he had just heard, soon controlled himself, and
surveying his father with forced calmness, began:

"This is dreadful news, sir."

But his father, intent on his own thought, hurriedly interrupted
him.

"You told me yesterday that everything was broken off between you
and Miss Page. Yet I saw you reenter the house together last night
a little while after I gave you the money you asked for."

"I know, and it must have had a bad appearance. I entreat you,
however, to believe that this meeting between Miss Page and myself
was against my wish, and that the relations between us have not
been affected by anything that passed between us."

"I am glad to hear it, my son. You could not do worse by yourself
than to return to your old devotion."

"I agree with you, sir." And then, because he could not help it,
Frederick inquired if he had heard the news.

Mr. Sutherland, evidently startled, asked what news; to which
Frederick replied:

"The news about the Zabels. They are both dead, sir,—dead from
hunger. Can you imagine it!"

This was something so different from what his father had expected
to hear, that he did not take it in at first. When he did, his
surprise and grief were even greater than Frederick had
anticipated. Seeing him so affected, Frederick, who thought that
the whole truth would be no harder to bear than the half, added
the suspicion which had been attached to the younger one's name,
and then stood back, scarcely daring to be a witness to the
outraged feelings which such a communication could not fail to
awaken in one of his father's temperament.

But though he thus escaped the shocked look which crossed his
father's countenance, he could not fail to hear the indignant
exclamation which burst from his lips, nor help perceiving that it
would take more than the most complete circumstantial evidence to
convince his father of the guilt of men he had known and respected
for so many years.

For some reason Frederick experienced great relief at this, and
was bracing himself to meet the fire of questions which his
statement must necessarily call forth, when the sound of
approaching steps drew the attention of both towards a party of
men coming up the hillside.

Among them was Mr. Courtney, Prosecuting Attorney for the
district, and as Mr. Sutherland recognised him he sprang forward,
saying, "There's Courtney; he will explain this."

Frederick followed, anxious and bewildered, and soon had the
doubtful pleasure of seeing his father enter his study in company
with the four men considered to be most interested in the
elucidation of the Webb mystery.

As he was lingering in an undecided mood in the small passageway
leading up-stairs he felt the pressure of a finger on his
shoulder. Looking up, he met the eyes of Amabel, who was leaning
toward him over the banisters. She was smiling, and, though her
face was not without evidences of physical languor, there was a
charm about her person which would have been sufficiently
enthralling to him twenty-four hours before, but which now caused
him such a physical repulsion that he started back in the effort
to rid his shoulder from her disturbing touch.

She frowned. It was an instantaneous expression of displeasure
which was soon lost in one of her gurgling laughs.

"Is my touch so burdensome?" she demanded. "If the pressure of one
finger is so unbearable to your sensitive nerves, how will you
relish the weight of my whole hand?"

There was a fierceness in her tone, a purpose in her look, that
for the first time in his struggle with her revealed the full
depth of her dark nature. Shrinking from her appalled, he put up
his hand in protest, at which she changed again in a twinkling,
and with a cautious gesture toward the room into which Mr.
Sutherland and his friends had disappeared, she whispered
significantly:

"We may not have another chance to confer together. Understand,
then, that it will not be necessary for you to tell me, in so many
words, that you are ready to link your fortunes to mine; the
taking off of the ring you wear and your slow putting of it on
again, in my presence, will be understood by me as a token that
you have reconsidered your present attitude and desire my silence
and—myself."

Frederick could not repress a shudder.

For an instant he was tempted to succumb on the spot and have the
long agony over. Then his horror of the woman rose to such a pitch
that he uttered an execration, and, turning away from her face,
which was rapidly growing loathsome to him, he ran out of the
passageway into the garden, seeing as he ran a persistent vision
of himself pulling off the ring and putting it back again, under
the spell of a look he rebelled against even while he yielded to
its influence.

"I will not wear a ring, I will not subject myself to the
possibility of obeying her behest under a sudden stress of fear or
fascination," he exclaimed, pausing by the well-curb and looking
over it at his reflection in the water beneath. "If I drop it here
I at least lose the horror of doing what she suggests, under some
involuntary impulse." But the thought that the mere absence of the
ring from his finger would not stand in the way of his going
through the motions to which she had just given such significance,
deterred him from the sacrifice of a valuable family jewel, and he
left the spot with an air of frenzy such as a man displays when he
feels himself on the verge of a doom he can neither meet nor
avert.

As he re-entered the house, he felt himself enveloped in the
atmosphere of a coming crisis. He could hear voices in the upper
hall, and amongst them he caught the accents of her he had learned
so lately to fear. Impelled by something deeper than curiosity and
more potent even than dread, he hastened toward the stairs. When
half-way up, he caught sight of Amabel. She was leaning back
against the balustrade that ran across the upper hall, with her
hands gripping the rail on either side of her and her face turned
toward the five men who had evidently issued from Mr. Sutherland's
study to interview her.

As her back was to Frederick he could not judge of the expression
of that face save by the effect it had upon the different men
confronting her. But to see them was enough. From their looks he
could perceive that this young girl was in one of her baffling
moods, and that from his father down, not one of the men present
knew what to make of her.

At the sound his feet made, a relaxation took place in her body
and she lost something of the defiant attitude she had before
maintained. Presently he heard her voice:

"I am willing to answer any questions you may choose to put to me
here; but I cannot consent to shut myself in with you in that
small study; I should suffocate."

Frederick could perceive the looks which passed between the five
men assembled before her, and was astonished to note that the
insignificant fellow they called Sweetwater was the first to
answer.

"Very well," said he; "if you enjoy the publicity of the open
hall, no one here will object. Is not that so, gentlemen?"

Her two little fingers, which were turned towards Frederick, ran
up and down the rail, making a peculiar rasping noise, which for a
moment was the only sound to be heard. Then Mr. Courtney said:

"How came you to have the handling of the money taken from Agatha
Webb's private drawer?"

It was a startling question, but it seemed to affect Amabel less
than it did Frederick. It made him start, but she only turned her
head a trifle aside, so that the peculiar smile with which she
prepared to answer could be seen by anyone standing below.

"Suppose you ask something less leading than that, to begin with,"
she suggested, in her high, unmusical voice. "From the searching
nature of this inquiry, you evidently believe I have information
of an important character to give you concerning Mrs. Webb's
unhappy death. Ask me about that; the other question I will answer
later."

The aplomb with which this was said, mixed as it was with a
feminine allurement of more than ordinary subtlety, made Mr.
Sutherland frown and Dr. Talbot look perplexed, but it did not
embarrass Mr. Courtney, who made haste to respond in his dryest
accents:

"Very well, I am not particular as to what you answer first. A
flower worn by you at the dance was found near Batsy's skirts,
before she was lifted up that morning. Can you explain this, or,
rather, will you?"

"You are not obliged to, you know," put in Mr. Sutherland, with
his inexorable sense of justice. "Still, if you would, it might
rob these gentlemen of suspicions you certainly cannot wish them
to entertain."

"What I say," she remarked slowly, "will be as true to the facts
as if I stood here on my oath. I can explain how a flower from my
hair came to be in Mrs. Webb's house, but not how it came to be
found under Batsy's feet. That someone else must clear up." Her
little finger, lifted from the rail, pointed toward Frederick, but
no one saw this, unless it was that gentleman himself. "I wore a
purple orchid in my hair that night, and there would be nothing
strange in its being afterward picked up in Mrs. Webb's house,
because I was in that house at or near the time she was murdered."

"You in that house?"

"Yes, as far as the ground floor; no farther." Here the little
finger stopped pointing. "I am ready to tell you about it, sirs,
and only regret I have delayed doing so so long, but I wished to
be sure it was necessary. Your presence here and your first
question show that it is."

There was suavity in her tone now, not unmixed with candour.
Sweetwater did not seem to relish this, for he moved uneasily and
lost a shade of his self-satisfied attitude. He had still to be
made acquainted with all the ins and outs of this woman's
remarkable nature.

"We are waiting," suggested Dr. Talbot.

She turned to face this new speaker, and Frederick was relieved
from the sight of her tantalising smile.

"I will tell my story simply," said she, "with the simple
suggestion that you believe me; otherwise you will make a mistake.
While I was resting from a dance the other night, I heard two of
the young people talking about the Zabels. One of them was
laughing at the old men, and the other was trying to relate some
half-forgotten story of early love which had been the cause, she
thought, of their strange and melancholy lives. I was listening to
them, but I did not take in much of what they were saying till I
heard behind me an irascible voice exclaiming: 'You laugh, do you?
I wonder if you would laugh so easily if you knew that these two
poor old men haven't had a decent meal in a fortnight?' I didn't
know the speaker, but I was thrilled by his words. Not had a good
meal, these men, for a fortnight! I felt as if personally guilty
of their suffering, and, happening to raise my eyes at this minute
and seeing through an open door the bountiful refreshments
prepared for us in the supper room, I felt guiltier than ever.
Suddenly I took a resolution. It was a queer one, and may serve to
show you some of the oddities of my nature. Though I was engaged
for the next dance, and though I was dressed in the flimsy
garments suitable to the occasion, I decided to leave the ball and
carry some sandwiches down to these old men. Procuring a bit of
paper, I made up a bundle and stole out of the house without
having said a word to anybody of my intention. Not wishing to be
seen, I went out by the garden door, which is at the end of the
dark hall—"

"Just as the band was playing the Harebell mazurka," interpolated
Sweetwater.

Startled for the first time from her careless composure by an
interruption of which it was impossible for her at that time to
measure either the motive or the meaning, she ceased to play with
her fingers on the baluster rail and let her eyes rest for a
moment on the man who had thus spoken, as if she hesitated between
her desire to annihilate him for his impertinence and a fear of
the cold hate she saw actuating his every word and look. Then she
went on, as if no one had spoken: