How do I know this? From a very simple fact. Abel here has been to inquire, among other things, if Mr. Crane remembers the tune we were playing at the great house when he came down the main street from visiting old widow Walker. Fortunately he does, for the trip, trip, trip in it struck his fancy, and he has found himself humming it over more than once since. Well, that waltz was played by us at a quarter after midnight, which fixes the time of the encounter at Mrs. Webb’s gateway pretty accurately. But, as you will soon see, it was ten minutes to one before James Zabel knocked at Loton’s door. How do I know this? By the same method of reasoning by which I determined the time of Mr. Crane’s encounter. Mrs. Loton was greatly pleased with the music played that night, and had all her windows open in order to hear it, and she says we were playing ‘Money Musk’ when that knocking came to disturb her. Now, gentlemen, we played ‘Money Musk’ just before we were called out to supper, and as we went to supper promptly at one, you can see just how my calculation was made. Thirty-five minutes, then, passed between the moment James Zabel was seen rushing from Mrs. Webb’s gateway and that in which he appeared at Loton’s bakery, demanding a loaf of bread, and offering in exchange one of the bills which had been stolen from the murdered woman’s drawer. Thirty-five minutes! And he and his brother were starving. Does it look, then, as if that money was in his possession when he left Mrs. Webb’s house? Would any man who felt the pangs of hunger as he did, or who saw a brother perishing for food before his eyes, allow thirty-five minutes to elapse before he made use of the money that rightfully or wrongfully had come into his hand? No; and so I say that he did not have it when Mr. Crane met him. That, instead of committing crime to obtain it, he found it in his own home, lying on his table, when, after his frenzied absence, he returned to tell his dreadful news to the brother he had left behind him. But how did it come there? you ask. Gentlemen, remember the footprints under the window. Amabel Page brought it. Having seen or perhaps met this old man roaming in or near the Webb cottage during the time she was there herself, she conceived the plan of throwing upon him the onus of the crime she had herself committed, and with a slyness to be expected from one so crafty, stole up to his home, made a hole in the shade hanging over an open window, looked into the room where John sat, saw that he was there alone and asleep, and, creeping in by the front door, laid on the table beside him the twenty-dollar bill and the bloody dagger with which she had just slain Agatha Webb. Then she stole out again, and in twenty minutes more was leading the dance in Mr. Sutherland’s parlour.”
“Well reasoned!” murmured Abel, expecting the others to echo him. But, though Mr. Fenton and Dr. Talbot looked almost convinced, they said nothing, while Knapp, of course, was quiet as an oyster.
Sweetwater, with an easy smile calculated to hide his disappointment, went on as if perfectly satisfied.
“Meanwhile John awakes, sees the dagger, and thinks to end his misery with it, but finds himself too feeble. The cut in his vest, the dent in the floor, prove this, but if you call for further proof, a little fact, which some, if not all, of you seem to have overlooked, will amply satisfy you that this one at least of my conclusions is correct. Open the Bible, Abel; open it, not to shake it for what will never fall from between its leaves, but to find in the Bible itself the lines I have declared to you he wrote as a dying legacy with that tightly clutched pencil. Have you found them?”
“No,” was Abel’s perplexed retort; “I cannot see any sign of writing on flyleaf or margin.”
“Are those the only blank places in the sacred book? Search the leaves devoted to the family record. Now! what do you find there?”
Knapp, who was losing some of his indifference, drew nearer and read for himself the scrawl which now appeared to every eye on the discoloured page which Abel here turned uppermost.
“Almost illegible,” he said; “one can just make out these words: ‘Forgive me, James—tried to use dagger—found lying—but hand wouldn’t—dying without—don’t grieve—true men—haven’t disgraced ourselves—God bless—’ That is all.”
“The effort must have overcome him,” resumed Sweetwater in a voice from which he carefully excluded all signs of secret triumph, “and when James returned, as he did a few minutes later, he was evidently unable to ask questions, even if John was in a condition to answer them. But the fallen dagger told its own story, for James picked it up and put it back on the table, and it was at this minute he saw, what John had not, the twenty-dollar bill lying there with its promise of life and comfort. Hope revives; he catches up the bill, flies down to Loton’s, procures a loaf of bread, and comes frantically back, gnawing it as he runs; for his own hunger is more than he can endure. Re-entering his brother’s presence, he rushes forward with the bread. But the relief has come too late; John has died in his absence; and James, dizzy with the shock, reels back and succumbs to his own misery. Gentlemen, have you anything to say in contradiction to these various suppositions?”
For a moment Dr. Talbot, Mr. Fenton, and even Knapp stood silent; then the last remarked, with pardonable dryness:
“All this is ingenious, but, unfortunately, it is up set by a little fact which you yourself have overlooked. Have you examined attentively the dagger of which you have so often spoken, Mr. Sweetwater?”
“Not as I would like to, but I noticed it had blood on its edge, and was of the shape and size necessary to inflict the wound from which Mrs. Webb died.”
“Very good, but there is something else of interest to be observed on it. Fetch it, Abel.”
Abel, hurrying from the room, soon brought back the weapon in question. Sweetwater, with a vague sense of disappointment disturbing him, took it eagerly and studied it very closely. But he only shook his head.
“Bring it nearer to the light,” suggested Knapp, “and examine the little scroll near the top of the handle.”
Sweetwater did so, and at once changed colour. In the midst of the scroll were two very small but yet perfectly distinct letters; they were J. Z.
“How did Amabel Page come by a dagger marked with the Zabel initials?” questioned Knapp. “Do you think her foresight went so far as to provide herself with a dagger ostensibly belonging to one of these brothers? And then, have you forgotten that when Mr. Crane met the old man at Mrs. Webb’s gateway he saw in his hand something that glistened? Now what was that, if not this dagger?”
Sweetwater was more disturbed than he cared to acknowledge.
“That just shows my lack of experience,” he grumbled. “I thought I had turned this subject so thoroughly over in my mind that no one could bring an objection against it.”
Knapp shook his head and smiled. “Young enthusiasts like yourself are great at forming theories which well-seasoned men like myself must regard as fantastical. However,” he went on, “there is no doubt that Miss Page was a witness to, even if she has not profited by, the murder we have been considering. But, with this palpable proof of the Zabels’ direct connection with the affair, I would not recommend her arrest as yet.”
“She should be under surveillance, though,” intimated the coroner.
“Most certainly,” acquiesced Knapp.
As for Sweetwater, he remained silent till the opportunity came for him to whisper apart to Dr. Talbot, when he said:
“For all the palpable proof of which Mr. Knapp speaks—the J. Z. on the dagger, and the possibility of this being the object he was seen carrying out of Philemon Webb’s gate—I maintain that this old man in his moribund condition never struck the blow that killed Agatha Webb. He hadn’t strength enough, even if his lifelong love for her had not been sufficient to prevent him.”
The coroner looked thoughtful.
“You are right,” said he; “he hadn’t strength enough. But don’t expend too much energy in talk. Wait and see what a few direct questions will elicit from Miss Page.”
Chapter XVIII.
Some Leading Questions