think better of this, too, for he ended by putting it back into the drawer and taking instead a bit from one of his mother’s old aprons which he had chanced upon on the stairway. This he placed as carefully in his watch pocket as if it had been the picture of a girl he loved. Then he undressed and went to bed.
Mrs. Sweetwater said afterwards that she never knew Caleb to talk so much and eat so little as he did that next morning at breakfast. Such plans as he detailed for unmasking the murderer of Mrs. Webb! Such business for the day! So many people to see! It made her quite dizzy, she said. And, indeed, Sweetwater was more than usually voluble that morning,—perhaps because he could not bear his mother’s satisfied smile; and when he went out of the house it was with a laugh and a cheery “Good-bye, mamsie” that was in spiking contrast to the irrepressible exclamation of grief which escaped him when the door was closed between them. Ah, when should he enter those four walls again, and when should he see the old mother?
He proceeded immediately to town. A ship was preparing to sail that morning for the Brazils, and the wharves were alive with bustle. He stopped a moment to contemplate the great hulk rising and falling at her moorings, then he passed on and entered the building where he had every reason to expect to find Dr. Talbot and Knapp in discussion. It was very important to him that morning to learn just how they felt concerning the great matter absorbing him, for if suspicion was taking the direction of Frederick, or if he saw it was at all likely to do so, then would his struggle be cut short and all necessity for leaving town be at an end. It was to save Frederick from this danger that he was prepared to cut all the ties binding him to this place, and nothing short of the prospect of accomplishing this would make him willing to undergo such a sacrifice.
“Well, Sweetwater, any news, eh?” was the half-jeering, half-condescending greeting he received from the coroner.
Sweetwater, who had regained entire control over his feelings as soon as he found himself under the eye of this man and the supercilious detective he had attempted to rival, gave a careless shrug and passed the question on to Knapp. “Have you any news?” he asked.
Knapp, who would probably not have acknowledged it if he had, smiled the indulgent smile of a self-satisfied superior and uttered a few equivocal sentences. This was gall and wormwood to Sweetwater, but he kept his temper admirably and, with an air of bravado entirely assumed for the occasion, said to Dr. Talbot:
“I think I shall have something to tell you soon which will materially aid you in your search for witnesses. By to-morrow, at least, I shall know whether I am right or wrong in thinking I have discovered an important witness in quite an unexpected quarter.”
Sweetwater knew of no new witness, but it was necessary for him not only to have a pretext for the move he contemplated, but to so impress these men with an idea of his extreme interest in the approaching proceedings, that no suspicion should ever arise of his having premeditated an escape from them. He wished to appear the victim of accident; and this is why he took nothing from his home which would betray any intention of leaving it.
“Ha! indeed!” ejaculated the coroner with growing interest. “And may I ask——”
“Please,” urged Sweetwater, with a side look at Knapp, “do not ask me anything just yet. This afternoon, say, after I have had a certain interview with—What, are they setting sails on the Hesper already?” he burst out, with a quick glance from the window at the great ship riding at anchor a little distance from them in the harbour. “There is a man on her I must see. Excuse me—Oh, Mr. Sutherland!”
He fell back in confusion. That gentleman had just entered the room in company with Frederick.
Chapter XXIII.
A Sinister Pair
“I beg your pardon,” stammered Sweetwater, starting aside and losing on the instant all further disposition to leave the room.
Indeed, he had not the courage to do so, even if he had had the will. The joint appearance of these two men in this place, and at an hour so far in advance of that which usually saw Mr. Sutherland enter the town, was far too significant in his eyes for him to ignore it. Had any explanation taken place between them, and had Mr. Sutherland’s integrity triumphed over personal considerations to the point of his bringing Frederick here to confess?
Meanwhile Dr. Talbot had risen with a full and hearty greeting which proved to Sweetwater’s uneasy mind that notwithstanding Knapp’s disquieting reticence no direct suspicion had as yet fallen on the unhappy Frederick. Then he waited for what Mr. Sutherland had to say, for it was evident he had come there to say something. Sweetwater waited, too, frozen almost into immobility by the fear that it would be something injudicious, for never had he seen any man so changed as Mr. Sutherland in these last twelve hours, nor did it need a highly penetrating eye to detect that the relations between him and Frederick were strained to a point that made it almost impossible for them to more than assume their old confidential attitude. Knapp, knowing them but superficially, did not perceive this, but Dr. Talbot was not blind to it, as was shown by the inquiring look he directed towards them both while waiting.
Mr. Sutherland spoke at last.
“Pardon me for interrupting you so early,” said he, with a certain tremble in his voice which Sweetwater quaked to hear. “For certain reasons, I should be very glad to know, WE should be very glad to know, if during your investigations into the cause and manner of Agatha Webb’s death, you have come upon a copy of her will.”
“No.”
Talbot was at once interested, so was Knapp, while Sweetwater withdrew further into his corner in anxious endeavour to hide his blanching cheek. “We have found nothing. We do not even know that she has made a will.”
“I ask,” pursued Mr. Sutherland, with a slight glance toward Frederick, who seemed, at least in Sweetwater’s judgment, to have braced himself up to bear this interview unmoved, “because I have not only received intimation that she made such a will, but have even been entrusted with a copy of it as chief executor of the same. It came to me in a letter from Boston yesterday. Its contents were a surprise to me. Frederick, hand me a chair. These accumulated misfortunes—for we all suffer under the afflictions which have beset this town—have made me feel my years.”
Sweetwater drew his breath more freely. He thought he might understand by this last sentence that Mr. Sutherland had come here for a different cause than he had at first feared. Frederick, on the contrary, betrayed a failing ability to hide his emotion. He brought his father a chair, placed it, and was drawing back out of sight when Mr. Sutherland prevented him by a mild command to hand the paper he had brought to the coroner.
There was something in his manner that made Sweetwater lean forward and Frederick look up, so that the father’s and son’s eyes met under that young man’s scrutiny. But while he saw meaning in both their regards, there was nothing like collusion, and, baffled by these appearances, which, while interesting, told him little or nothing, he transferred his attention to Dr. Talbot and Knapp, who had drawn together to see what this paper contained.
“As I have said, the contents of this will are a surprise to me,” faltered Mr. Sutherland. “They are equally so to my son. He can hardly be said to have been a friend even of the extraordinary woman who thus leaves him her whole fortune.”
“I never spoke with her but twice,” exclaimed Frederick with a studied coldness, which was so evidently the cloak of inner agitation that Sweetwater trembled for its effect, notwithstanding the state of his own thoughts, which were in a ferment. Frederick, the inheritor of Agatha Webb’s fortune! Frederick, concerning whom his father had said on the previous night that he possessed no motive for wishing this good woman’s death! Was it the discovery that such a motive existed which had so aged this man in the last twelve hours? Sweetwater dared not turn again to see. His own face might convey too much of his own fears, doubts, and struggle.
But the coroner, for whose next words Sweetwater