small head but a very bright eye, was leaning on the newel-post in the front hall, and when he saw me, started up so alertly I perceived that he had business with me, and so waited for him to speak.
“You are Miss Butterworth?” he inquired.
“I am, sir.”
“And I am a reporter from the New York World. Will you allow me——”
Why did he stop? I had merely looked at him. But he did stop, and that is saying considerable for a reporter from the New York World.
“I certainly am willing to tell you what I have told every one else,” I interposed, considering it better not to make an enemy of so judicious a young man; and seeing him brighten up at this, I thereupon related all I considered desirable for the general public to know.
I was about passing on, when, reflecting that one good turn deserves another, I paused and asked him if he thought they would leave the dead girl in that house all night.
He answered that he did not think they would. That a telegram had been sent some time before to young Mr. Van Burnam, and that they were only awaiting his arrival to remove her.
“Do you mean Howard?” I asked.
“Is he the elder one?”
“No.”
“It is the elder one they have summoned; the one who has been staying at Long Branch.”
“How can they expect him then so soon?”
“Because he is in the city. It seems the old gentleman is going to return on the New York, and as she is due here to-day, Franklin Van Burnam has come to New York to meet him.”
“Humph!” thought I, “lively times are in prospect,” and for the first time I remembered my dinner and the orders which had not been given about some curtains which were to have been hung that day, and all the other reasons I had for being at home.
I must have shown my feelings, much as I pride myself upon my impassibility upon all occasions, for he immediately held out his arm, with an offer to pilot me through the crowd to my own house; and I was about to accept it when the door-bell rang so sharply that we involuntarily stopped.
“A fresh witness or a telegram for the Coroner,” whispered the reporter in my ear.
I tried to look indifferent, and doubtless made out pretty well, for he added, after a sly look in my face:
“You do not care to stay any longer?”
I made no reply, but I think he was impressed by my dignity. Could he not see that it would be the height of ill-manners for me to rush out in the face of any one coming in?
An officer opened the door, and when we saw who stood there, I am sure that the reporter, as well as myself, was grateful that we listened to the dictates of politeness. It was young Mr. Van Burnam—Franklin; I mean the older and more respectable of the two sons.
He was flushed and agitated, and looked as if he would like to annihilate the crowd pushing him about on his own stoop. He gave an angry glance backward as he stepped in, and then I saw that a carriage covered with baggage stood on the other side of the street, and gathered that he had not returned to his father’s house alone.
“What has happened? What does all this mean?” were the words he hurled at us as the door closed behind him and he found himself face to face with a half dozen strangers, among whom the reporter and myself stood conspicuous.
Mr. Gryce, coming suddenly from somewhere, was the one to answer him.
“A painful occurrence, sir. A young girl has been found here, dead, crushed under one of your parlor cabinets.”
“A young girl!” he repeated. (Oh, how glad I was that I had been brought up never to transgress the principles of politeness.) “Here! in this shut-up house? What young girl? You mean old woman, do you not? the house-cleaner or some one——”
“No, Mr. Van Burnam, we mean what we say, though possibly I should call her a young lady. She is dressed quite fashionably.”
“The ——” Really I cannot repeat in this public manner the word which Mr. Van Burnam used. I excused him at the time, but I will not perpetuate his forgetfulness in these pages.
“She is still lying as we found her,” Mr. Gryce now proceeded in his quiet, almost fatherly way. “Will you not take a look at her? Perhaps you can tell us who she is?”
“I?” Mr. Van Burnam seemed quite shocked. “How should I know her! Some thief probably, killed while meddling with other people’s property.”
“Perhaps,” quoth Mr. Gryce, laconically; at which I felt so angry, as tending to mislead my handsome young neighbor, that I irresistibly did what I had fully made up my mind not to do, that is, stepped into view and took a part in this conversation.
“How can you say that,” I cried, “when her admittance here was due to a young man who let her in at midnight with a key, and then left her to eat out her heart in this great house all alone.”
I have made sensations in my life, but never quite so marked a one as this. In an instant every eye was on me, with the exception of the detective’s. His was on the figure crowning the newel-post, and bitterly severe his gaze was too, though it immediately grew wary as the young man started towards me and impetuously demanded:
“Who talks like that? Why, it’s Miss Butterworth. Madam, I fear I did not fully understand what you said.”
Whereupon I repeated my words, this time very quietly but clearly, while Mr. Gryce continued to frown at the bronze figure he had taken into his confidence. When I had finished, Mr. Van Burnam’s countenance had changed, so had his manner. He held himself as erect as before, but not with as much bravado. He showed haste and impatience also, but not the same kind of haste and not quite the same kind of impatience. The corners of Mr. Gryce’s mouth betrayed that he noted this change, but he did not turn away from the newel-post.
“This is a remarkable circumstance which you have just told me,” observed Mr. Van Burnam, with the first bow I had ever received from him. “I don’t know what to think of it. But I still hold that it’s some thief. Killed, did you say? Really dead? Well, I’d have given five hundred dollars not to have had it happen in this house.”
He had been moving towards the parlor door, and he now entered it. Instantly Mr. Gryce was by his side.
“Are they going to close the door?” I whispered to the reporter, who was taking this all in equally with myself.
“I’m afraid so,” he muttered.
And they did. Mr. Gryce had evidently had enough of my interference, and was resolved to shut me out, but I heard one word and caught one glimpse of Mr. Van Burnam’s face before the heavy door fell to. The word was: “Oh, so bad as that! How can any one recognize her——” And the glimpse—well, the glimpse proved to me that he was much more profoundly agitated than he wished to appear, and any extraordinary agitation on his part was certainly in direct contradiction to the very sentence he was at that moment uttering.
Chapter IV.
Silas Van Burnam
“However much I may be needed at home, I I cannot reconcile it with my sense of duty to leave just yet,” I confided to the reporter, with what I meant to be a proper show of reason and self-restraint; “Mr. Van Burnam may wish to ask me some questions.”
“Of course, of course,” acquiesced the other. “You are very right; always are very right, I should judge.”
As I did not know what he meant by this, I frowned, always