Agatha Webb (8 page)

They did not share this feeling. A distinct and valuable clew
seemed to be afforded them by the fresh, crisp bill they saw in
his hand. Silently Dr. Talbot took it, while Mr. Fenton, with a
shrewd look, asked:

"What reasons have you for calling this mysterious customer old? I
thought it was so dark you could not see him."

The man, who looked relieved since he had rid himself of the bill,
eyed the constable in some perplexity.

"I didn't see a feature of his face," said he, "and yet I'm sure
he was old. I never thought of him as being anything else."

"Well, we will see. And is that all you have to tell us?"

His nod was expressive, and they let him go.

An hour or so later Detective Knapp made his reappearance.

"Well," asked the coroner, as he came quietly in and closed the
door behind him, "what's your opinion?"

"Simple case, sir. Murdered for money. Find the man with a flowing
beard."

There were but few men in town who wore long beards. A list was
made of these and handed to the coroner, who regarded it with a
grim smile.

"Not a man whose name is here would be guilty of a misdemeanour,
let alone a crime. You must look outside of our village population
for the murderer of Agatha Webb."

"Very likely, but tell me something first about these persons,"
urged Knapp. "Who is Edward Hope?"

"A watch repairer; a man of estimable character."

"And Sylvester Chubb?"

"A farmer who, to support his mother, wife, and seven children,
works from morning till sundown on his farm, and from sundown till
11 o'clock at night on little fancy articles he cuts out from wood
and sells in Boston."

"John Barker, Thomas Elder, Timothy Sinn?"

"All good men; I can vouch for every one of them."

"And John Zabel, James Zabel?"

"Irreproachable, both of them. Famous shipbuilders once, but the
change to iron shipbuilding has thrown them out of business. Pity,
too, for they were remarkable builders. By the by, Fenton, we
don't see them at church or on the docks any more."

"No, they keep very much to themselves; getting old, like
ourselves, Talbot."

"Lively boys once. We must hunt them up, Fenton. Can't bear to see
old friends drop away from good company. But this isn't business.
You need not pause over their names, Knapp."

But Knapp had slipped out.

We will follow him.

Walking briskly down the street, he went up the steps of a certain
house and rang the bell. A gentleman with a face not entirely
unknown to us came to the door.

The detective did not pause for preliminaries.

"Are you Mr. Crane?" he asked,—"the gentleman who ran against a
man coming out of Mrs. Webb's house last night?"

"I am Mr. Crane," was the slightly surprised rejoinder, "and I was
run against by a man there, yes."

"Very well," remarked the detective, quietly, "my name is Knapp. I
have been sent from Boston to look into this matter, and I have an
idea that you can help me more than any other man here in
Sutherlandtown. Who was this person who came in contact with you
so violently? You know, even if you have been careful not to
mention any names."

"You are mistaken. I don't know; I can't know. He wore a sweeping
beard, and walked and acted like a man no longer young, but beyond
that—"

"Mr. Crane, excuse me, but I know men. If you had no suspicion as
to whom that person was you would not look so embarrassed. You
suspect, or, at least, associate in your own mind a name with the
man you met. Was it either of these you see written here?"

Mr. Crane glanced at the card on which the other had scribbled a
couple of names, and started perceptibly.

"You have me," said he; "you must be a man of remarkable
perspicacity."

The detective smiled and pocketed his card. The names he thus
concealed were John Zabel, James Zabel.

"You have not said which of the two it was," Knapp quietly
suggested.

"No," returned the minister, "and I have not even thought. Indeed,
I am not sure that I have not made a dreadful mistake in thinking
it was either. A glimpse such as I had is far from satisfactory;
and they are both such excellent men—"

"Eight! You did make a mistake, of course, I have not the least
doubt of it. So don't think of the matter again. I will find out
who the real man was; rest easy."

And with the lightest of bows, Knapp drew off and passed as
quickly as he could, without attracting attention, round the
corner to the confectioner's.

Here his attack was warier. Sally Loton was behind the counter
with her husband, and they had evidently been talking the matter
over very confidentially. But Knapp was not to be awed by her
small, keen eye or strident voice, and presently succeeded in
surprising a knowing look on the lady's face, which convinced him
that in the confidences between husband and wife a name had been
used which she appeared to be less unwilling to impart than he.
Knapp, consequently, turned his full attention towards her, using
in his attack that oldest and subtlest weapon against the sex—
flattery.

"My dear madam," said he, "your good heart is apparent; your
husband has confided to you a name which you, out of fear of some
mistake, hesitate to repeat. A neighbourly spirit, ma'am, a very
neighbourly spirit; but you should not allow your goodness to
defeat the ends of justice. If you simply told us whom this man
resembled we would be able to get some idea of his appearance."

"He didn't resemble anyone I know," growled Loton. "It was too
dark for me to see how he looked."

"His voice, then? People are traced by their voices."

"I didn't recognise his voice."

Knapp smiled, his eye still on the woman.

"Yet you have thought of someone he reminded you of?"

The man was silent, but the wife tossed her head ever so lightly.

"Now, you must have had your reasons for that. No one thinks of a
good and respectable neighbour in connection with the buying of a
loaf of bread at mid-night with a twenty-dollar bill, without some
positive reason."

"The man wore a beard. I felt it brush my hand as he took the
loaf."

"Good! That is a point."

"Which made me think of other men who wore beards."

"As, for instance—"

The detective had taken from his pocket the card which he had used
with such effect at the minister's, and as he said these words
twirled it so that the two names written upon it fell under Sally
Loton's inquisitive eyes. The look with which she read them was
enough. John Zabel, James Zabel.

"Who told you it was either of these men?" she asked.

"You did," he retorted, pocketing the card with a smile.

"La, now! Samuel, I never spoke a word," she insisted, in anxious
protest to her husband, as the detective slid quietly from the
store.

The Hallidays lived but a few rods from the Sutherlands. Yet as it
was dusk when Miss Halliday rose to depart, Frederick naturally
offered his services as her escort.

She accepted them with a slight blush, the first he had ever seen
on her face, or at least had ever noted there. It caused him such
surprise that he forgot Amabel's presence in the garden till they
came upon her at the gate.

"A pleasant evening," observed that young girl in her high,
unmusical voice.

"Very," was Miss Halliday's short reply; and for a moment the two
faces were in line as he held open the gate before his departing
guest.

They were very different faces in feature and expression, and till
that night he had never thought of comparing them. Indeed, the
fascination which beamed from Amabel Page's far from regular
features had put all others out of his mind, but now, as he
surveyed the two girls, the candour and purity which marked
Agnes's countenance came out so strongly under his glance that
Amabel lost all attraction for him, and he drew his young
neighbour hastily away.

Amabel noted the movement and smiled. Her contempt for Agnes
Halliday's charms amounted to disdain.

She might have felt less confidence in her own had she been in a
position to note the frequent glances Frederick cast at his old
playmate as they proceeded slowly up the road. Not that there was
any passion in them—he was too full of care for that; but the
curiosity which could prompt him to turn his head a dozen times in
the course of so short a walk, to see why Agnes Halliday held her
face so persistently away from him, had an element of feeling in
it that was more or less significant. As for Agnes, she was so
unlike her accustomed self as to astonish even herself. Whereas
she had never before walked a dozen steps with him without
indulging in some sharp saying, she found herself disinclined to
speak at all, much less to speak lightly. In mutual silence, then,
they reached the gateway leading into the Halliday grounds. But
Agnes having passed in, they both stopped and for the first time
looked squarely at each other. Her eyes fell first, perhaps
because his had changed in his contemplation of her. He smiled as
he saw this, and in a half-careless, half-wistful tone, said
quietly:

"Agnes, what would you think of a man who, after having committed
little else but folly all his life, suddenly made up his mind to
turn absolutely toward the right and to pursue it in face of every
obstacle and every discouragement?"

"I should think," she slowly replied, with one quick lift of her
eyes toward his face, "that he had entered upon the noblest effort
of which man is capable, and the hardest. I should have great
sympathy for that man, Frederick."

"Would you?" he said, recalling Amabel's face with bitter aversion
as he gazed into the womanly countenance he had hitherto slighted
as uninteresting. "It is the first kind word you have ever given
me, Agnes. Possibly it is the first I have ever deserved."

And without another word he doffed his hat, saluted her, and
vanished down the hillside.

She remained; remained so long that it was nearly nine when she
entered the family parlour. As she came in her mother looked up
and was startled at her unaccustomed pallor.

"Why, Agnes," cried her mother, "what is the matter?"

Her answer was inaudible. What was the matter? She dreaded, even
feared, to ask herself.

Meantime a strange scene was taking place in the woods toward
which she had seen Frederick go. The moon, which was particularly
bright that night, shone upon a certain hollow where a huge tree
lay. Around it the underbrush was thick and the shadow dark, but
in this especial place the opening was large enough for the rays
to enter freely. Into this circlet of light Frederick Sutherland
had come. Alone and without the restraint imposed upon him by
watching eyes, he showed a countenance so wan and full of trouble
that it was well it could not be seen by either of the two women
whose thoughts were at that moment fixed upon him. To Amabel it
would have given a throb of selfish hope, while to Agnes it would
have brought a pang of despair which might have somewhat too
suddenly interpreted to her the mystery of her own sensations.

He had bent at once to the hollow space made by the outspreading
roots just mentioned, and was feeling with an air of confidence
along the ground for something he had every reason to expect to
find, when the shock of a sudden distrust seized him, and he flung
himself down in terror, feeling and feeling again among the fallen
leaves and broken twigs, till a full realisation of his misfortune
reached him, and he was obliged to acknowledge that the place was
empty.

Overwhelmed at his loss, aghast at the consequences it must entail
upon him, he rose in a trembling sweat, crying out in his anger
and dismay:

"She has been here! She has taken it!" And realising for the first
time the subtlety and strength of the antagonist pitted against
him, he forgot his new resolutions and even that old promise made
in his childhood to Agatha Webb, and uttered oath after oath,
cursing himself, the woman, and what she had done, till a casual
glance at the heavens overhead, in which the liquid moon hung calm
and beautiful, recalled him to himself. With a sense of shame, the
keener that it was a new sensation in his breast, he ceased his
vain repinings, and turning from the unhallowed spot, made his way
with deeper and deeper misgivings toward a home made hateful to
him now by the presence of the woman who was thus bent upon his
ruin.

He understood her now. He rated at its full value both her
determination and her power, and had she been so unfortunate as to
have carried her imprudence to the point of surprising him by her
presence, it would have taken more than the memory of that day's
solemn resolves to have kept him from using his strength against
her. But she was wise, and did not intrude upon him in his hour of
anger, though who could say she was not near enough to hear the
sigh which broke irresistibly from his lips as he emerged from the
wood and approached his father's house?

A lamp was still burning in Mr. Sutherland's study over the front
door, and the sight of it seemed to change for a moment the
current of Frederick's thoughts. Pausing at the gate, he
considered with himself, and then with a freer countenance and a
lighter step was about to proceed inward, when he heard the sound
of a heavy breather coming up the hill, and hesitated—why he
hardly knew, except that every advancing step occasioned him more
or less apprehension.

The person, whoever it was, stopped before reaching the brow of
the hill, and, panting heavily, muttered an oath which Frederick
heard. Though it was no more profane than those which had just
escaped his own lips in the forest, it produced an effect upon him
which was only second in intensity to the terror of the discovery
that the money he had so safely hidden was gone.