Agatha Webb (15 page)

"I ran down the hill recklessly. I was bent on my errand and not
at all afraid of the dark. When I reached that part of the road
where the streets branch off, I heard footsteps in front of me. I
had overtaken someone. Slackening my pace, so that I should not
pass this person, whom I instinctively knew to be a man, I
followed him till I came to a high board fence. It was that
surrounding Agatha Webb's house, and when I saw it I could not
help connecting the rather stealthy gait of the man in front of me
with a story I had lately heard of the large sum of money she was
known to keep in her house. Whether this was before or after this
person disappeared round the corner I cannot say, but no sooner
had I become certain that he was bent upon entering this house
than my impulse to follow him became greater than my precaution,
and turning aside from the direct path to the Zabels', I hurried
down High Street just in time to see the man enter Mrs. Webb's
front gateway.

"It was a late hour for visiting, but as the house had lights in
both its lower and upper stories, I should by good rights have
taken it for granted that he was an expected guest and gone on my
way to the Zabels'. But I did not. The softness with which this
person stepped and the skulking way in which he hesitated at the
front gate aroused my worst fears, and after he had opened that
gate and slid in, I was so pursued by the idea that he was there
for no good that I stepped inside the gate myself and took my
stand in the deep shadow cast by the old pear tree on the right-
hand side of the walk. Did anyone speak?"

There was a unanimous denial from the five gentlemen before her,
yet she did not look satisfied.

"I thought I heard someone make a remark," she repeated, and
paused again for a half-minute, during which her smile was a
study, it was so cold and in such startling contrast to the vivid
glances she threw everywhere except behind her on the landing
where Frederick stood listening to her every word.

"We are very much interested," remarked Mr. Courtney. "Pray, go
on."

Drawing her left hand from the balustrade where it had rested, she
looked at one of her fingers with an odd backward gesture.

"I will," she said, and her tone was hard and threatening. "Five
minutes, no longer, passed, when I was startled by a loud and
terrible cry from the house, and looking up at the second-story
window from which the sound proceeded, I saw a woman's figure
hanging out in a seemingly pulseless condition. Too terrified to
move, I clung trembling to the tree, hearing and not hearing the
shouts and laughter of a dozen or more men, who at that minute
passed by the corner on their way to the wharves. I was dazed, I
was choking, and only came to myself when, sooner or later, I do
not know how soon or how late, a fresh horror happened. The woman
whom I had just seen fall almost from the window was a serving
woman, but when I heard another scream I knew that the mistress of
the house was being attacked, and rivetting my eyes on those
windows, I beheld the shade of one of them thrown back and a hand
appear, flinging out something which fell in the grass on the
opposite side of the lawn. Then the shade fell again, and hearing
nothing further, I ran to where the object flung out had fallen,
and feeling for it, found and picked up an old-fashioned dagger,
dripping with blood. Horrified beyond all expression, I dropped
the weapon and retreated into my former place of concealment.

"But I was not satisfied to remain there. A curiosity, a
determination even, to see the man who had committed this
dastardly deed, attacked me with such force that I was induced to
leave my hiding-place and even to enter the house where in all
probability he was counting the gains he had just obtained at the
price of so much precious blood. The door, which he had not
perfectly closed behind him, seemed to invite me in, and before I
had realised my own temerity, I was standing in the hall of this
ill-fated house."

The interest, which up to this moment had been breathless, now
expressed itself in hurried ejaculations and broken words; and Mr.
Sutherland, who had listened like one in a dream, exclaimed
eagerly, and in a tone which proved that he, for the moment at
least, believed this more than improbable tale:

"Then you can tell us if Philemon was in the little room at the
moment when you entered the house?"

As everyone there present realised the importance of this
question, a general movement took place and each and all drew
nearer as she met their eyes and answered placidly:

"Yes; Mr. Webb was sitting in a chair asleep. He was the only
person I saw."

"Oh, I know he never committed this crime," gasped his old friend,
in a relief so great that one and all seemed to share it.

"Now I have courage for the rest. Go on, Miss Page."

But Miss Page paused again to look at her finger, and give that
sideways toss to her head that seemed so uncalled for by the
situation to any who did not know of the compact between herself
and the listening man below.

"I hate to go back to that moment," said she; "for when I saw the
candles burning on the table, and the husband of the woman who at
that very instant was possibly breathing her last breath in the
room overhead, sitting there in unconscious apathy, I felt
something rise in my throat that made me deathly sick for a
moment. Then I went right in where he was, and was about to shake
his arm and wake him, when I detected a spot of blood on my finger
from the dagger I had handled. That gave me another turn, and led
me to wipe off my finger on his sleeve."

"It's a pity you did not wipe off your slippers too," murmured
Sweetwater.

Again she looked at him, again her eyes opened in terror upon the
face of this man, once so plain and insignificant in her eyes, but
now so filled with menace she inwardly quaked before it, for all
her apparent scorn.

"Slippers," she murmured.

"Did not your feet as well as your hands pass through the blood on
the grass?"

She disdained to answer him.

"I have accounted for the blood on my hand," she said, not looking
at him, but at Mr. Courtney. "If there is any on my slippers it
can be accounted for in the same way." And she rapidly resumed her
narrative. "I had no sooner made my little finger clean I never
thought of anyone suspecting the old gentleman when I heard steps
on the stairs and knew that the murderer was coming down, and in
another instant would pass the open door before which I stood.

"Though I had been courageous enough up to that minute, I was
seized by a sudden panic at the prospect of meeting face to face
one whose hands were perhaps dripping with the blood of his
victim. To confront him there and then might mean death to me, and
I did not want to die, but to live, for I am young, sirs, and not
without a prospect of happiness before me. So I sprang back, and
seeing no other place of concealment in the whole bare room,
crouched down in the shadow of the man you call Philemon. For one,
two minutes, I knelt there in a state of mortal terror, while the
feet descended, paused, started to enter the room where I was,
hesitated, turned, and finally left the house."

"Miss Page, wait, wait," put in the coroner. "You saw him; you can
tell who this man was?"

The eagerness of this appeal seemed to excite her. A slight colour
appeared in her cheeks and she took a step forward, but before the
words for which they so anxiously waited could leave her lips, she
gave a start and drew back with, an ejaculation which left a more
or less sinister echo in the ears of all who heard it.

Frederick had just shown himself at the top of the staircase.

"Good-morning, gentlemen," said he, advancing into their midst
with an air whose unexpected manliness disguised his inward
agitation. "The few words I have just heard Miss Page say interest
me so much, I find it impossible not to join you."

Amabel, upon whose lips a faint complacent smile had appeared as
he stepped by her, glanced up at these words in secret
astonishment at the indifference they showed, and then dropped her
eyes to his hands with an intent gaze which seemed to affect him
unpleasantly, for he thrust them immediately behind him, though he
did not lower his head or lose his air of determination.

"Is my presence here undesirable?" he inquired, with a glance
towards his father.

Sweetwater looked as if he thought it was, but he did not presume
to say anything, and the others being too interested in the
developments of Miss Page's story to waste any time on lesser
matters, Frederick remained, greatly to Miss Page's evident
satisfaction.

"Did you see this man's face?" Mr. Courtney now broke in, in
urgent inquiry.

Her answer came slowly, after another long look in Frederick's
direction.

"No, I did not dare to make the effort. I was obliged to crouch
too close to the floor. I simply heard his footsteps."

"See, now!" muttered Sweetwater, but in so low a tone she did not
hear him. "She condemns herself. There isn't a woman living who
would fail to look up under such circumstances, even at the risk
of her life."

Knapp seemed to agree with him, but Mr. Courtney, following his
one idea, pressed his former question, saying:

"Was it an old man's step?"

"It was not an agile one."

"And you did not catch the least glimpse of the man's face or
figure?"

"Not a glimpse."

"So you are in no position to identify him?"

"If by any chance I should hear those same footsteps coming down a
flight of stairs, I think I should be able to recognise them," she
allowed, in the sweetest tones at her command.

"She knows it is too late for her to hear those of the two dead
Zabels," growled the man from Boston.

"We are no nearer the solution of this mystery than we were in the
beginning," remarked the coroner.

"Gentlemen, I have not yet finished my story," intimated Amabel,
sweetly. "Perhaps what I have yet to tell may give you some clew
to the identity of this man."

"Ah, yes; go on, go on. You have not yet explained how you came to
be in possession of Agatha's money."

"Just so," she answered, with another quick look at Frederick, the
last she gave him for some time. "As soon, then, as I dared, I ran
out of the house into the yard. The moon, which had been under a
cloud, was now shining brightly, and by its light I saw that the
space before me was empty and that I might venture to enter the
street. But before doing so I looked about for the dagger I had
thrown from me before going in, but I could not find it. It had
been picked up by the fugitive and carried away. Annoyed at the
cowardice which had led me to lose such a valuable piece of
evidence through a purely womanish emotion, I was about to leave
the yard, when my eyes fell on the little bundle of sandwiches
which I had brought down from the hill and which I had let fall
under the pear tree, at the first scream I had heard from the
house. It had burst open and two or three of the sandwiches lay
broken on the ground. But those that were intact I picked up, and
being more than ever anxious to cover up by some ostensible errand
my absence from the party, I rushed away toward the lonely road
where these brothers lived, meaning to leave such fragments as
remained on the old doorstep, beyond which I had been told such
suffering existed.

"It was now late, very late, for a girl like myself to be out,
but, under the excitement of what I had just seen and heard, I
became oblivious to fear, and rushed into those dismal shadows as
into transparent daylight. Perhaps the shouts and stray sounds of
laughter that came up from the wharves where a ship was getting
under way gave me a certain sense of companionship. Perhaps—but
it is folly for me to dilate upon my feelings; it is my errand you
are interested in, and what happened when I approached the Zabels'
dreary dwelling."

The look with which she paused, ostensibly to take breath, but in
reality to weigh and criticise the looks of those about her, was
one of those wholly indescribable ones with which she was
accustomed to control the judgment of men who allowed themselves
to watch too closely the ever-changing expression of her weird yet
charming face. But it fell upon men steeled against her
fascinations, and realising her inability to move them, she
proceeded with her story before even the most anxious of her
hearers could request her to do so.

"I had come along the road very quietly," said she, "for my feet
were lightly shod, and the moonlight was too bright for me to make
a misstep. But as I cleared the trees and came into the open place
where the house stands I stumbled with surprise at seeing a figure
crouching on the doorstep I had anticipated finding as empty as
the road. It was an old man's figure, and as I paused in my
embarrassment he slowly and with great feebleness rose to his feet
and began to grope about for the door. As he did so, I heard a
sharp tinkling sound, as of something metallic falling on the
doorstone, and, taking a quick step forward, I looked over his
shoulder and espied in the moonlight at his feet a dagger so like
the one I had lately handled in Mrs. Webb's yard that I was
overwhelmed with astonishment, and surveyed the aged and feeble
form of the man who had dropped it with a sensation difficult to
describe. The next moment he was stooping for the weapon, with a
startled air that has impressed itself distinctly upon my memory,
and when, after many feeble attempts, he succeeded in grasping it,
he vanished into the house so suddenly that I could not be sure
whether or not he had seen me standing there.

"All this was more than surprising to me, for I had never thought
of associating an old man with this crime. Indeed, I was so
astonished to find him in possession of this weapon that I forgot
all about my errand and only wondered how I could see and know
more. Fearing detection, I slid in amongst the bushes and soon
found myself under one of the windows. The shade was down and I
was about to push it aside when I heard someone moving about
inside and stopped. But I could not restrain my curiosity, so
pulling a hairpin from my hair, I worked a little hole in the
shade and through this I looked into a room brightly illumined by
the moon which shone in through an adjoining window. And what did
I see there?" Her eye turned on Frederick. His right hand had
stolen toward his left, but it paused under her look and remained
motionless. "Only an old man sitting at a table and—" Why did she
pause, and why did she cover up that pause with a wholly
inconsequential sentence? Perhaps Frederick could have told,
Frederick, whose hand had now fallen at his side. But Frederick
volunteered nothing, and no one, not even Sweetwater, guessed all
that lay beyond that AND which was left hovering in the air to be
finished—when? Alas! had she not set the day and the hour?