found missing—”
“And that the fastenings to the house were all found secure this morning; just so.”
“He did not tell me that. In that case”—and I shuddered—“the murderer must have been in the house all night.”
Mr. Gryce smiled darkly at the door-knob.
“It has a dreadful look!” I exclaimed.
Mr. Gryce immediately frowned at the door-knob.
And here let me say that Mr. Gryce, the detective, was not the thin, wiry individual with the piercing eye you are doubtless expecting to see. On the contrary, Mr. Gryce was a portly, comfortable personage with an eye that never pierced, that did not even rest on you. If it rested anywhere, it was always on some insignificant object in the vicinity, some vase, inkstand, book, or button. These things he would seem to take into his confidence, make the repositories of his conclusions; but as for you—you might as well be the steeple on Trinity Church, for all connection you ever appeared to have with him or his thoughts. At present, then, Mr. Gryce was, as I have already suggested, on intimate terms with the door-knob.
“A dreadful look,” I repeated.
His eye shifted to the button on my sleeve.
“Come,” he said, “the coast is clear at last.”
Leading the way, he mounted the stairs, but stopped on the upper landing. “Mr. Raymond,” said he, “I am not in the habit of talking much about the secrets of my profession, but in this case everything depends upon getting the right clue at the start. We have no common villainy to deal with here; genius has been at work. Now sometimes an absolutely uninitiated mind will intuitively catch at something which the most highly trained intellect will miss. If such a thing should occur, remember that I am your man. Don’t go round talking, but come to me. For this is going to be a great case, mind you, a great case. Now, come on.”
“But the ladies?”
“They are in the rooms above; in grief, of course, but tolerably composed for all that, I hear.” And advancing to a door, he pushed it open and beckoned me in.
All was dark for a moment, but presently, my eyes becoming accustomed to the place, I saw that we were in the library.
“It was here he was found,” said he; “in this room and upon this very spot.” And advancing, he laid his hand on the end of a large baize-covered table that, together with its attendant chairs, occupied the centre of the room. “You see for yourself that it is directly opposite this door,” and, crossing the floor, he paused in front of the threshold of a narrow passageway, opening into a room beyond. “As the murdered man was discovered sitting in this chair, and consequently with his back towards the passageway, the assassin must have advanced through the doorway to deliver his shot, pausing, let us say, about here.” And Mr. Gryce planted his feet firmly upon a certain spot in the carpet, about a foot from the threshold before mentioned.
“But—” I hastened to interpose.
“There is no room for ‘but,’” he cried. “We have studied the situation.” And without deigning to dilate upon the subject, he turned immediately about and, stepping swiftly before me, led the way into the passage named. “Wine closet, clothes closet, washing apparatus, towel-rack,” he explained, waving his hand from side to side as we hurried through, finishing with “Mr. Leavenworth’s private apartment,” as that room of comfortable aspect opened upon us.
Mr. Leavenworth’s private apartment! It was here then that it ought to be, the horrible, blood-curdling it that yesterday was a living, breathing man. Advancing to the bed that was hung with heavy curtains, I raised my hand to put them back, when Mr. Gryce, drawing them from my clasp, disclosed lying upon the pillow a cold, calm face looking so natural I involuntarily started.
“His death was too sudden to distort the features,” he remarked, turning the head to one side in a way to make visible a ghastly wound in the back of the cranium. “Such a hole as that sends a man out of the world without much notice. The surgeon will convince you it could never have been inflicted by himself. It is a case of deliberate murder.”
Horrified, I drew hastily back, when my glance fell upon a door situated directly opposite me in the side of the wall towards the hall. It appeared to be the only outlet from the room, with the exception of the passage through which we had entered, and I could not help wondering if it was through this door the assassin had entered on his roundabout course to the library. But Mr. Gryce, seemingly observant of my glance, though his own was fixed upon the chandelier, made haste to remark, as if in reply to the inquiry in my face:
“Found locked on the inside; may have come that way and may not; we don’t pretend to say.”
Observing now that the bed was undisturbed in its arrangement, I remarked, “He had not retired, then?”
“No; the tragedy must be ten hours old. Time for the murderer to have studied the situation and provided for all contingencies.”
“The murderer? Whom do you suspect?” I whispered.
He looked impassively at the ring on my finger.
“Every one and nobody. It is not for me to suspect, but to detect.” And dropping the curtain into its former position he led me from the room.
The coroner’s inquest being now in session, I felt a strong desire to be present, so, requesting Mr. Gryce to inform the ladies that Mr. Veeley was absent from town, and that I had come as his substitute, to render them any assistance they might require on so melancholy an occasion, I proceeded to the large parlor below, and took my seat among the various persons there assembled.
II. THE CORONER’S INQUEST
“The baby figure of the giant mass Of things to come.”
FOR a few minutes I sat dazed by the sudden flood of light greeting me from the many open windows; then, as the strongly contrasting features of the scene before me began to impress themselves upon my consciousness, I found myself experiencing something of the same sensation of double personality which years before had followed an enforced use of ether. As at that time, I appeared to be living two lives at once: in two distinct places, with two separate sets of incidents going on; so now I seemed to be divided between two irreconcilable trains of thought; the gorgeous house, its elaborate furnishing, the little glimpses of yesterday’s life, as seen in the open piano, with its sheet of music held in place by a lady’s fan, occupying my attention fully as much as the aspect of the throng of incongruous and impatient people huddled about me.
Perhaps one reason of this lay in the extraordinary splendor of the room I was in; the glow of satin, glitter of bronze, and glimmer of marble meeting the eye at every turn. But I am rather inclined to think it was mainly due to the force and eloquence of a certain picture which confronted me from the opposite wall. A sweet picture—sweet enough and poetic enough to have been conceived by the most idealistic of artists: simple, too—the vision of a young flaxen-haired, blue-eyed coquette, dressed in the costume of the First Empire, standing in a wood-path, looking back over her shoulder at some one following—yet with such a dash of something not altogether saint-like in the corners of her meek eyes and baby-like lips, that it impressed me with the individuality of life. Had it not been for the open dress, with its waist almost beneath the armpits, the hair cut short on the forehead, and the perfection of the neck and shoulders, I should have taken it for a literal portrait of one of the ladies of the house. As it was, I could not rid myself of the idea that one, if not both, of Mr. Leavenworth’s nieces looked down upon me from the eyes of this entrancing blonde with the beckoning glance and forbidding hand. So vividly did this fancy impress me that I half shuddered as I looked, wondering if this sweet creature did not know what had occurred in this house since the happy yesterday; and if so, how she could stand there smiling so invitingly,—when suddenly I became aware that I had been watching the little crowd of men about me with as complete an absorption as if nothing else in the room had attracted my attention; that the face of the coroner, sternly intelligent and attentive,