point to that raid. No one had told me, and I had met with no encouragement to ask. I felt myself sliding amid pitfalls. My own act might precipitate the very doom I sought to avert. Yet I must preserve my self-possession and answer all questions as truthfully as possible lest I stumble into a web from which no skill of my own or of another could extricate me.
"Fastening my horse to one of the pine trees in the thickest clump I saw—he is there now, I suppose—I crept up to the house, and tried the door. It was on the latch and I stole in. There was no light on the lower floor, and after listening for any signs of life, I began to feel my way about the house, searching for the intruder. As I did not wish to attract attention to myself, I took off my shoes. I went through the lower rooms, and then I came upstairs. It was some time before I reached the—the room where a fire had been lit; but when I did I knew—not," I hastily corrected, as I caught his quick concentrated glance, "what had happened or whom I should find there, but that this was the spot where the intruder had been, possibly was now, and I determined to grapple with him. What—what have I said?" I asked in anguish, as I caught a look on the coroner's face of irrepressible repulsion and disgust, slight and soon gone but unmistakable so long as it lasted.
"Nothing," he replied, "go on."
But his tone, considerate as it had been from the first, did not deceive me. I knew that I had been detected in some slip or prevarication. As I had omitted all mention of the most serious part of my adventure—had said nothing of my vision of Carmel or the terrible conclusions which her presence there had awakened—my conscience was in a state of perturbation which added greatly to my confusion. For a moment I did not know where I stood, and I am afraid I betrayed a sense of my position. He had to recall me to myself by an unimportant question or two before I could go on. When I did proceed, it was with less connection of ideas and a haste in speaking which was not due altogether to the harrowing nature of the tale itself.
"I had matches in my pocket and I struck one," I began. "Afterwards I lit the candle. The emptiness of the room did not alarm me. I experienced the sense of tragedy. Seeing the pillows heaped high and too regularly for chance along a lounge ordinarily holding only two, I tore them off. I saw a foot, a hand, a tress of bright hair. Even then I did not think of her. Why should I? Not till I uncovered the face did I know the terrors of my discovery, and then, the confusion of it all unmanned me and I fell on my knees—"
"Go on! Go on!"
The impetuosity, the suspense in the words astounded me. I stared at the coroner and lost the thread of my story—What had I to say more? How account for what must be ever unaccountable to him, to the world, to my own self, if in obedience to the demands of the situation I subdued my own memory and blotted out all I had seen but that which it was safe to confess to?
"There is no more to say," I murmured. "The horror of that moment made a chaos in my mind. I looked at the dead body of her who lay there as I have looked at everything since; as I looked at the police when they came—as I look at you now. But I know nothing. It is all a phantasmagoria to me—with no more meaning than a nightmare. She is dead—I know that—but beyond that, all is doubt—confusion—what the world and all its passing show is to a blind man. I can neither understand nor explain."
VI
COMMENTS AND REFLECTIONS
There is no agony and no solace left; Earth can console, Heaven can torment, no more
The coroner's intent look which had more or less sustained me through this ordeal, remained fixed upon my face as though he were still anxious to see me exonerate myself. How much did he know? That was the question. How much did he know?
Having no means of telling, I was forced to keep silent. I had revealed all I dared to. As I came to this conclusion, his eyes fell and I knew that the favorable minute had passed.
The question he now asked proved it.
"You say that you were not blind to surrounding objects, even if they conveyed but little meaning to you. You must have seen, then, that the room where Miss Cumberland lay contained two small cordial glasses, both still moist with some liqueur."
"I noticed that, yes."
"Some one must have drunk with her?"
"I cannot contradict you."
"Was Miss Cumberland fond of that sort of thing?"
"She detested liquor of all kinds. She never drank I never saw a woman so averse to wine." I spoke before I thought. I might better have been less emphatic, but the mystery of those glasses had affected me from the first. Neither she nor Carmel ever allowed themselves so much as a social glass, yet those glasses had been drained. "Perhaps the cold—"
"There was a third glass. We found it in the adjoining closet. It had not been used. That third glass has a meaning if only we could find it out."
A possibility which had risen in my mind faded at these words.
"Three glasses," I dully repeated.
"And a small flask of cordial. The latter seems pure enough."
"I cannot understand it." The phrase had become stereotyped. No other suggested itself to me.
"The problem would be simple enough if it were not for those-marks on her neck. You saw those, too, I take it?"
"Yes. Who made them? What man—"
The lie, or rather the suggestion of a lie, flushed my face. I was conscious of this, but it did not trouble me. I was panting for relief. I could not rest till I knew the nature of the doubt in this man's mind. If these words, or any words I could use, would serve to surprise his secret, then welcome the lie or suggestion of a lie. "It was a brute's act," I went on, bungling with my sentences in anxiety to see if my conclusions fitted in with his own. "Who was the brute? Do you know, Dr. Perry?"
"There were three glasses in those rooms. Only two were drank from," he answered, steadily. "Tomorrow I may be in a position to answer your question. I am not to-night."
Why did I take heart? Not a change, not the flicker of one had passed over his countenance at my utterance of the word man. Either his official habit had stood him in wonderful stead, or the police had failed so far to see any connection between this murder and the young girl whose footprints, for all I knew, still lingered on the stairs.
Would the morrow arm them with completer knowledge? As I turned from his retreating figure and flung myself down before the hearth, this was the question I continually propounded to myself, in vain repetition. Would the morrow reveal the fact that Adelaide's young sister had been with her in the hour of death, or would the fates propitiously aid her in preserving this secret as they had already aided her in selecting for the one man who shared it, him who of all others was bound by honour and personal consideration for her not to divulge what he knew.
Thus the hours between two and seven passed when I fell into a fitful sleep, from which I was rudely wakened by a loud rattle at my door, followed by the entrance of the officer who had walked up and down the corridor all night.
"The waggon is here," said he. "Breakfast will be given you at the station."
To which Hexford, looking over his shoulder, added: "I'm sorry to say that we have here the warrant for your arrest. Can I do anything for you?"
"Warrant!" I burst out, "what do you want of a warrant? It is as a witness you seek to detain me, I presume?"
"No," was his brusque reply. "The charge upon which you are arrested is one of murder. You will have to appear before a magistrate. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the evidence against you is very strong, and the police must do their duty."
"But I am innocent, absolutely innocent," I protested, the perspiration starting from every pore as the full meaning of the charge burst upon me. "What I have told you was correct. I, myself, found her dead—"
Hexford gave me a look.
"Don't talk," he kindly suggested. "Leave that to the lawyers." Then, as the other man turned aside for a moment, he whispered