The Project Gutenberg eBook of Footprints
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Footprints
Author: Kay Cleaver Strahan
Release date: March 10, 2025 [eBook #75577]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Doubleday, Doran & Compnay, Inc, 1928
Credits: Brian Raiter
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOOTPRINTS ***
Footprints
by Kay Cleaver Strahan
published 1929 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
Copyright, 1928, 1929, by The Butterick Publishing Co.
CHAPTER I
I
The heavy glass and bronze door revolved, and released from its
sections, out of the grizzly November mist and into the rosy and
fragrant hotel lobby, malice and envy, joy and enthusiasm, vanity and
greed. Fear, masked with dignity, wrapped in sealskin and topped with
a charming bright red hat, came quickly and alone.
Two egg-shaped matrons glanced, lengthened and set their glances.
Purple-and-henna breathed, “Beautiful wrap.”
“I’ll tell you about her in a minute.” Brown-and-gold spoke from her
throat.
Their gazes followed the sealskin down the long strip of Mosul to the
mahogany desk behind which a glossy clerk suddenly discovered
reverence and added it to his attitude.
“She’s one of the Quilters,” Brown-and-gold informed. “They are among
the best-known families here in Oregon. They have an enormous ranch
over east of the mountains in Quilter County; half of that country
over there seems to be named for them. They’re millionaires. Ken says
everything they touch turns into money.
“I’ve never met her—exactly; that’s why I didn’t speak. But she was at
a tea where I was, two years ago; it was given for the blind. Quilters
are supposed to be very charitable; but why shouldn’t they be? As I
told Ken, a dollar doesn’t mean any more to them than a thin dime does
to us.” She paused to sigh.
“Does she live here at this hotel?”
“No. No—she lives out at the ranch. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to
live away from things, like that. The ranch is beautiful, though;
quite a show place. Too bad you’re leaving so soon—we might motor over
to see it. Her brother, Neal Quilter, has been stopping here for a
couple of days. I suppose she is here to see him. I’ve seen him twice
lately in the dining room. He is awfully handsome—a bachelor, too.
Will you look at the bellhop sliding to ring the elevator bell for
her? I’m always allowed to ring it for myself. I hope she has to wait
as long for that elevator as I usually do. The service here seems to
be getting worse and worse; and, considering the prices they ask——”
“She’s as slim as an old maid. Or is she married?”
“She’s a widow. Judith Quilter Whitefield. Has been, for years and
years. Funny she’s never married again, with her money. She’s kind of
sweet looking yet, don’t you think? I guess she just didn’t want to
marry. I don’t blame her; why should she? She toured Europe last year
with her sister, Lucy Quilter Cerini, and her husband——”
“Oh! Is that who she is? I didn’t connect the names at all. I reviewed
one of Lucy Quilter Cerini’s books for our ladies’ literary society,
back home, last year. I remember I found then that she was born in
Oregon, but I didn’t place her at first. So she’s her sister?”
“Yes. I’ve never read any of her works. Was the book you read good?”
“Well—yes. You know she’s very highly spoken of——”
The elevator door slid open, clinked shut.
Judith looked into the panelled mirror. She was too pale. She ducked
her head and pinched pink into her cheeks with trembling fingers.
“Fifth floor, madam. To your right.”
Five hundred and two—buckle my shoe. Five hundred and four—shut the
door. Five hundred and——How slyly, furtively soft these felt-padded
carpets were. They had turned her into a sleuth, creeping, sneaking up
on Neal. She wished that her advent might have been heralded by at
least the smart clicking of heels. One could not, of course, whistle
down hotel corridors. Perhaps she should have asked the clerk to
telephone. But no, last night and again this morning she had thought
and thought of that, and had rejected it.
Five hundred and sixteen. She paused, unfastened her fur collar and
set it back from her firm white throat. She unclasped her handbag,
took from it a gold locket of the sort that dangled from long bead
chains in the eighteen nineties, and snapped it open. In one of its
circles was the picture of an old gentleman with a white, squarely cut
beard, a wide brow, small sensitive nostrils, and a humorous quirk
near the eyes that miraculously saved the face from the frailty of
saintliness. In the opposite circle, printed in tiny letters, was,
Judith had long thought, a truer portrait of her grandfather. He had
called it a rule of conduct, and had given it to her during the
happiest period of her life: just after she and Gregory Whitefield had
announced their engagement; months before the suspicion that “Greg’s
bad cold” could be serious.
“Judith Quilter,” the words read. “Achieve tranquillity.”
Greg had never fully understood. Once, during those tremulous months
in Colorado, when all life’s worth hung on the slender thread of
mercury in the clinical thermometer, he had asked, when she had opened
the locket: “What’s the magic of it, dear? How does it make things
better for you?”
“It doesn’t,” she had declared. “Not a bit. All it does is to make me
better for things.”
Twenty-eight years ago; and now, still: “Judith Quilter. Achieve
tranquillity.”
She closed the locket, tucked it into the perfumed silk of her bag,
pulled off her glove. At any rate, her knock should not sound
surreptitious.
She snatched her hand from the door and put its knuckles to her parted
lips. “Oh, dear!” she whispered. How could she have done that? How
could she have produced that insultingly authoritative racket, which
must, because of its very quarrelsomeness, be met with the rebuke of
this smothering silence?
“Judy! You doggone pesty little hound!” The kiss prickled at the
sides, but it was heavily, satisfactorily, smokily Neal.
“Golly, but you’re pretty, Jude. Been pinching your cheeks, I’ll bet a
dollar——”
“Look, dear. My new hat.”
“Yes, at your age! Running around buying gaudy red hats and smelling
of violets—no, of one violet. Stand off; let’s have a look at you—you
friendly little Jezebel, you!”
“But, Neal, don’t you like the new hat?”
“Not much. It’s too shockingly becoming. But, whither, Judy? I thought
I left you at home forcing Lucy’s babies to entertain your guest?”
“I brought Ursula with me, silly. We felt the need for some shopping
so we motored over yesterday evening. We got in late, and rose rather
late this morning. But there’s been time for the hat, and some toys,
and luncheon. Then I happened to think you might have tea with us,
later; so I’ve run up to ask you.”
“Your naïveté is faultless, darling.”
“Neal! If you have to be a killjoy, you might try to be a humane one.”
Achieve tranquillity. Do not notice the shadow, dimming the splendid
blondness, the averted eyes, the contracted shoulders.
“Judith, how did you know that I was here?”
“But, dear, where should you be? You have never stayed at another
hotel in Portland, have you? I felt a traitor myself. But I did wish
to impress Ursula with the glories of the Trensonian. I think, though,
Neal, that before you left you might have stuck a note on your
pincushion, or——”
“Drop it, Jude. Is Ursula going back to Q 2 with you?”
“Did she bore you? Was it she who drove you away, silly?”
“Heavy tact. You know and I know; so, what’s the use? I’m mad about
her. Repellent, isn’t it? A man of my age. I’m forty-six damn years
old.”
“Yes, so you say. But Ursula isn’t a young girl. She has been a widow
for eight years. She loves our West, and our Q 2, and——”
“You’re as sentimental as a hammock.”
“I don’t care. She does. And she loves you, too, and has for the past
three years. You’d have known it if you hadn’t been blind. Neal—— What
is it?”
Merely a dream: a preposterous dream, about an absurd play in which a
man, who looked like Neal, went towering, shaking blond fists at his
own shoulders; went muttering, giving an amusingly over-acted
performance of rage. Neal, who was always gentle and funny and kind,
would laugh at such exaggerations and say, “the cross-patch,” or
something of the sort. Though, if Neal were ill, he might—— Lucy said
that Neal was ill, very ill. Lucy was a genius. She should be here.
Judith was a simple, stupid old woman. Judith Quilter. Achieve
tranquillity.
“Sorry, Neal, if I was inept. Something seems to be quite the trouble.
Perhaps, if you’d care to tell me, I might understand.”
“Understand?” he accepted the word and seemed for a moment to caress
it. “Understand!” he snarled it to pieces and flung it back, a
shattered brutality. “Try understanding this, then. And, when you’ve
finished with it, give it to the graceful Ursula, and see whether she
can understand——”
“Neal, dear! Don’t!”
“Don’t! I thought not. You’ve guessed it, of course. You and Lucy
guessed it years ago, together. And now you tell me—don’t. Don’t tell
the truth. Keep my secret, since I’ve kept it only a lifetime. God,
what I’ve lived through! Sorry. Almost began on that foxy Spartan
stuff. No matter. I’ve kept my mouth shut. I promised. Or—did I?
Sometimes I think my life has been pinned shut with a promise.
Sometimes I think it has been fear, pride—— Take your choice. I’ve
kept my secret. And I would have kept it if you’d let me alone. It’s
your fault. You brought Ursula. Bent on your matchmaking mummery. I
came away, didn’t I? Here you are, with Ursula in the offing. Tracking
me down, sneaking—— Sorry. You’re sweet, Judy. But I tell you, you’ve
forced a confidence. You’ve forced me, and I’m glad of it, into the
luxury of a confession. Take it!
“I killed Father. I did, I tell you. I knew about the insurance. It
seemed the only way out. I fooled them all. I cut the red mask from
Olympe’s satin frock. I—— Judy, don’t look like that. Put your new hat
on. Stop rumpling your hair. Lovely gray hair you have, Judy. See,
dear, it needn’t matter a lot now—about the murder. We’ll never tell
it—you and I? It needn’t matter at all—except for Ursula. I can’t
marry her. I can’t ever marry, Jude. That needn’t matter. I’ve never
cared a lot about marrying. Loathed women, mostly. All but you girls,
and—Ursula.
“Think we’d better tell Ursula? Think that’s the immediate decency
required? She’ll run away back to her Italy, then, and thank her stars
she’s well out of this. She wouldn’t tell on me, do you think? I’d
hate being hanged, you know. All the aspects—personal and public, is
that the way it goes?—of hanging I’d hate——”
“Neal——”
“Wait, Judy. I want the straight of this. The low-down on it. Am I
mad? Wasn’t that why Lucy had the psychiatrist visiting at Q 2? No,
not what you are thinking. I committed the murder. I’m guilty—guilty
as a dog. But am I mad? I might well be, having done in a member of
the family. Do you remember, wasn’t Aunt Gracia a bit mad? All that
bunk of her religion—that Siloamite stuff? We none of us ever admitted
it, of course. And Father—— I wonder whether normal, sane people ever
do kill? What I’m getting at is, there may be a strain of insanity in
the family. Oh, for the Lord’s sake, Judy, won’t you stop pushing the
waves all out of your hair?”
“Yes, dear, of course. I was trying to think about this madness. I’m
sure that you are mistaken. Aunt Gracia was a mystic. But you must
remember how sane and wise she was. There may have been something a
bit bleak about her wisdom, but it was deliberate. Father killed the
man exactly as he might have killed a rattlesnake coiled to strike at
Mother. But you, Neal, forgive me, don’t seem entirely sane to me
to-day.”
“Convenient insanity?”
“No, no, Neal. Why be cruel? You suggested it; but I did say it
stupidly. I should have said that you are quite sane, but that your
memory isn’t. The whole trouble is merely a question of memory. If you
will remember, it is absolutely impossible that you could have killed
Father. I don’t mean morally impossible—that, too, of course—but
physically impossible. Remember. You were locked in your room at the
time. Within two minutes after the shot was heard, Lucy came running
from her room into yours, through the connecting door, and found you
trying to batter down your door, that led into the hall, with a
chair.”
“Lucy was only a kid at the time. She was much too frightened to know
what she saw.”
“Not at all, Neal. Lucy was twelve, and unusually precocious.”
“Yes, and I was eighteen, and—unusually precocious. I tell you, I did
it. But I’m not going to tell even you how I managed it. If the thing
should be raked up, and come to a trial, you wouldn’t wish to know.
And, in the event of a trial, I’d like my little alibi.”
“Dear me, Neal! Really, you are talking now like a book; a third-rate
detective thing.”
“Third rate, nothing of the sort. They are sweeter than the sex stuff,
and a pile more interesting. I’ve been going in for them lately; and
pausing to thank my lucky stars that we didn’t have a French or a
Thorndike at Q 2 Ranch in 1900. It wouldn’t have taken one of those
birds long to see through seven doors being locked with ten keys, or
the rope from our own attic being swung out of Father’s window, or
Olympe’s being killed the same way Father was——”
“See, Neal, how false your memory is? Olympe was not killed that
night. She lived for years after that. Since your memory has begun to
play tricks of this sort, why won’t you trust our memories—my memory?
I know, and all the others know, that there is no possibility of your
having had anything to do with Father’s murder.”
“You weren’t there, Judy; so, naturally, you’d remember all about it.
Yes, you bet. But that’s what I want you to know, just the same. You,
and the others. It hasn’t mattered much, until Ursula——”
“Marry Ursula, and it won’t matter then.”
“Chris’s duplex psychology?”
“I suppose so. I’m not clever with it. Come home with us this
afternoon. Tell Chris what you’ve told me. He’ll straighten it out for
you.”
“For me—or for Irene?”
“Shame on you, Neal.”
“Surely. Sorry. But it has always bothered Chris a lot, you know,
having that dapper honour of his sort of uncreased, as it were, by the
fact that Irene was out straying around loose in the hall that night
when the rest of us were locked up. If you don’t mind, that is, a lot,
I think I’ll ask you not to mention this to Chris—nor to anyone.”
“I shouldn’t have, in any case.”
“Ursula?”
“I think not. Since it is unimportant and false, it couldn’t interest
her particularly. I regard it, rather, as a wave you’ve done, or had
done, to your memory. You know, exactly like those horrid permanent
kinks that Irene had put in her hair a few years ago. It is artificial
and false and ugly. But, like the hair kinks, it will grow out
straight in time. Until then, the less attention we call to it the
better, I should say.”
“I should say so, too; for that reason, or—another.”
“About going home, dear. We had planned to leave shortly after tea,
have dinner at that delightful new place on the highway, and spend the
night there. Then, with easy driving, we should be at the ranch in
time for luncheon to-morrow. Would that suit you?”
“On the square, Judy, I am sick of it here. But, if I go back with
you, will you ship Ursula as soon as you can?”
“Yes, Neal. If that seems fair to you, I will.”
“Damn that red hat, Jude. It is the same colour that the mask was. I
hate red, anyway.”
“Sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll have to endure it. It cost too much.
Will you join us for tea?”
“I think not. Thanks, all that. Did you drive over, or did you bring
George?”
“We brought George. He was so avid to show off Irene’s conception of a
proper uniform for a chauffeur that I hadn’t the courage to refuse
him. He’s a perfect guy in it, Neal; but as happy as Hallelujah.”
“Fine. I’ll ride in front with him, then. Be sure to fix it that way,
will you, honey?”
“Yes, I will. Shall we come by for you at half-past five?”
“Wait, Judy, listen. No, I mean really listen. You remember the snow
the night Father was killed? Well, if anyone from the outside had done
it, there’d have been bound to be footprints——”
“Neal, dear, that was twenty-eight years ago. Need we go over it all,
again, right now? I’ve always believed that, by the time any of you
had regained your senses enough to look for footprints, the
new-falling snow had covered them.”
“It won’t go, Jude. The snow had stopped before we heard the shot. We
looked within half an hour. The footprints Chris made, going to the
barn, were there plain as print in the morning. That is—— Weren’t
they?”
“So you wrote to me, Neal. In all your letters you made a particular
point of the absence of footprints in the snow. Do you think you would
have written like that if you’d been trying to hide your own guilt?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything; except that, sometimes, I think
I’ve brooded over this too long. I admit that I do get hazy about it
now. Only——There is this, Judy. If I didn’t do it, who did?”
“Well, Neal, I believe that is what we are going to have to find out.”
“Golly, Judy, you’re the prettiest thing I ever saw when you poke up
pert like that.”
“You’d be especially fit to look at yourself, dear, if you would
shave. Half-past five, then? Good-bye.”
No, she could not stop and lean against the wall. She must walk
steadily, oblivious of reeling worlds. She must keep her chin high;
she must point her toes out—no, straight in front; she had been
mistaught about toes. She must not snatch the hideous, vivid thing
from her head and throw it on the elevator’s floor. She must———What
was that thing? Achieve tranquillity. But how was that possible? What
did tranquillity mean?
II
If the taxicab would stop bouncing her up and down through the
streaming city she could make up her mind what she must say, or, more
important, what she must not say to Dr. Joe. “We are concerned about
Neal.” No. “Neal, of late, hasn’t seemed quite well.” No. Neal. Neal.
Neal.
The not too tall, very fat man, whose white hair crowned his pink
baldness childishly like a daisy wreath, took her shivering hands into
a grasp that was tight, and warm, and secure.
She said: “Dr. Joe, I’ve found Neal. I mean—Neal has been here in the
city for the past two days. I mean—Neal.”
“Sure, I know, Judy. Here, let me help you with that coat. Too hot in
this office for a fur coat. Pretty lining. That’s a pretty hat, too.
Cheerful, but small—that’s the rule for a hat.”
Ten twirling minutes later he said: “Look, Judy. What is it you want
me to do? I’ll drive over to Q 2 for the week-end, and only too glad
of an excuse. But Neal will be fit as a fiddle. I guess you know that
his trouble is mental, not physical.”
“But, Dr. Joe, after all, is there a difference?”
“Hello, there! Been taking up Watson?”
“He is so beautifully utilitarian. Sort of in defence, you know,
against Chris’s everlasting Freud, and Jung, and the rest.”
“Now you let your cousin Christopher alone. He’s a good boy. He’s
getting better all the time. How old is Chris by now?”
“In his late fifties. He doesn’t look it.”
“He couldn’t. He’s a Quilter. Judy, here’s what I’ve been thinking.
You had that psychiatrist—the Vienna man—at your place for quite a
while last year, didn’t you?”
“For six weeks. He was a friend of Lucy’s, you know. But we weren’t
positive, then, that anything was really wrong with Neal. So we
wouldn’t allow Dr. Koreth to hector him. He and Chris had a splendid
time together; but, as far as Neal was concerned, Dr. Koreth’s visit
was useless.”
“You can’t blame him for that, Judy. I couldn’t cut out a man’s
tonsils if I wasn’t allowed to let him know that anything was the
matter with him.”
“I know. But what could we do? Neal’s prejudices are so strong that he
never would have submitted to an analysis, nor to any treatments along
that line. That is what is going to make it so frightfully difficult
now. I—I——”
“Now, now, now, Judy. Keep a stiff upper lip. There’s more than one
way into the woods—and out of them. That’s what I’ve learned by being
an old mutt of a general practitioner for forty-five years. We were
talking about a certain Watson just now. Since then I’ve been thinking
of another one—better known. Sherlock Holmes’s Dr. Watson.
“Look. What I believe is that this murder business in 1900 has just
plum got the best of Neal. He was eighteen. Adolescence is a tricky
time. What I’m betting is, that if we could find out who did kill
Dick, and prove it to Neal, he would come through with banners flying.
That’s common sense, so I guess it is good psychology.”
“But——”
“Yes, I know, Judy. But you wait a minute. There’s a woman down in
’Frisco, and from what I’ve read about her I think she’s all right. I
think she’s a good woman; a real nice one. She’s a Miss Lynn
MacDonald, and she calls herself a crime analyst. Now suppose we could
get her to come up to Q 2? Lot of us oldsters are still hanging around
who could post her up. Look, Judy. Neal doesn’t believe in
psychoanalysis, but I’ll bet a cooky he believes in Craig Kennedy.
Last time I saw him, about three months ago, he was down at Gill’s
Bookstore buying mystery by the pound like it was bacon.
“Why not have her up to the ranch, Judy? Get her to outline a good
case—you know how they do it. Getting evidence, and piling up proofs
from here, there, and everywhere. Then give the result to Neal. He’ll
be satisfied, and behave himself and get married, like he should have
done twenty years ago, and have some babies.”
“Father was killed twenty-eight years ago last month, Dr. Joe.”
“I know it. But, look, how I mean—— In some ways that will make it
easier instead of harder.”
“You mean imaginary proofs to find an imaginary culprit? No, Dr. Joe,
that wouldn’t do. It is difficult to understand, but most of the time
Neal is the keenest one of the family—the most clear-headed and
sensible. These queernesses of his come on in flashes—and are gone.
Entirely gone. One moment he will be—well, odd. And, in the next
moment, he will be wholly himself again.”
“No, that isn’t hard to understand, Judy. Most of them—lots of them
are like that. We couldn’t fool Neal on anything he was sane about.
But I think we could fool him on something he is——”
“Finish it, Dr. Joe. Do you think that Neal is actually insane?”
“Look, my girl. We can’t say that Neal is sensible on the subject of
Dick’s death, can we? Jehoshaphat, Judy, I wish we could get him
straightened out pretty quick now! Jehoshaphat, but I do!”
“He’ll not get better, you think, Dr. Joe?”
“Well, look, Judy. You’re asking me. He has been getting steadily
worse for two—almost three—years now. Of course, you haven’t told me
what he said to you to-day. But I’ve made my living by guessing for
the last forty-odd years. Man ought to be a good guesser by that time,
if he’s ever going to be. So I guess I know what Neal said to-day that
sent you up here in the condition you were in when you came. That’s
what I’ve been getting at. I want you to bring this Lynn MacDonald
woman up to the ranch, and have her prove to Neal that he didn’t
murder his own father.”
“He didn’t, Dr. Joe.”
“Bless my soul to glory, Judith Quilter! What are you telling me that
for? Telling me like that, I mean?”
“Dr. Koreth had much to say about a faculty called empathy. You
know—putting one’s self in the place of another. Identifying, I think
he called it. That is what Neal has done; has overdone. He has put
himself in the place of some other member of the family.”
“Talk’s cheap. You could never make me believe that. Boy and man, I’ve
known the Quilter family for the last fifty years. Of course, lots of
people wouldn’t agree with me; but, you know, I think I’m a darn good
man. I think I’ve poked along, slow, and done a lot of good in the
world. I think I’ve led a darn decent life. Most of my goals have been
pretty flat, I guess. Most of my Rubicons—ditches, maybe. But what I’m
getting at is this: The reason I am any good on earth is because your
grandfather, Thaddeus Quilter, took me in hand when I was a lad. It
should begin a biography, or be put in a preface, or something. ‘I
owe——’ You know how they do it. Well, he was in the house that night.
Do you think that he killed Dick?”
“Dr. Joe!”
“That’s the worst blasphemy I ever uttered, Judith. I ask the Lord’s
and your forgiveness. But, look. Your Aunt Gracia was there that
night. Think that she——”
“Dr. Joe!”
“What did I tell you, Judy? It isn’t right for you to say what you
said. It’s damn wicked for you to think it. It’s worse than wicked;
it’s unhealthy. You’ll be getting yourself where Neal is. What makes
you think like that, talk like that, my girl?”
“Because—— How well do you remember the details, Dr. Joe?”
“Well enough. Well enough.”
“Well enough to remember that the ground was covered with freshly
fallen snow, and that no footprints leading away from the house were
found that night, or later? That Aunt Gracia and Grandfather, with all
the others, searched the house with their thoroughness, all during the
night?”
“Yes, yes. I remember that footprint stuff. Fooey, for your
footprints! I’m sorry to say it, Judith, but I thought better of you
than this. The house at Q 2 is bigger than six barns. Couldn’t some
damn scoundrel have hidden there, before and after, even if those poor
souls, sick with grief and useless from shock and fear and excitement,
did search the house, or try to? I don’t know what’s got hold of you.
But it would take more than the absence of footprints to make me, an
outsider, doubt a member of your family, or any friend of theirs.”
“It would take more than that to make me doubt, too, Dr. Joe.”
“You don’t say! Look, Judith, you’re getting me sore. I’m warning you.
By Gad, I wouldn’t let another person sit there in my chair and say
what you’re saying. I’d slap them over!”
“Yes, I’m sure you would, Dr. Joe. But—— No matter. I think that your
suggestion about engaging this crime analyst is an excellent one. She
was the woman who got to the bottom of that dreadful Hollywood affair,
wasn’t she? I remember the name. Only—I’ll want the truth from her.
Neal, mentally disabled, is so much keener than most mentally sound
people that he’d reject a falsity. I know it.”
“Like you said just now, Judy, it was all over twenty-eight years ago.
Look, we couldn’t go to anybody—not to Sherlock Holmes himself—and
say, ‘There was a murder on the Q 2 Ranch back in 1900. Some few
oldsters are living yet who were around at the time and could tell you
something about it—what they can remember. The house is still there,
though it has been remodelled and refurnished a couple of times. A
good many people studied over the case in 1900, but they all had to
give it up. People have been studying over it ever since, for that
matter; but they can’t get any place with it at all. What we want from
you, now, is for you to get the thing straightened out as soon as
possible, and produce, or anyway name, the guilty wretch or
wretches.’”
“Dr. Joe, Greg and I went to Colorado in March, 1900. Lucy, with her
passion for writing, wrote long letters to me until late September.
Father was killed on the eighth of October. On the tenth of October,
Neal took up the letter writing. (I couldn’t leave Greg alone, and, of
course, I couldn’t bring him home to the horror there.)”
“I should say you couldn’t. You were a good wife, Judy. Greg was a
fine, true husband. But you should have married again—had babies.”
“Perhaps. About the letters, Dr. Joe. I have read and reread them. To
me they seem tremendously significant. Significant, maybe, by
omission; but significant, nevertheless. This is particularly true of
Lucy’s letters. Queer things, very queer things began to happen at Q 2
long before Father was killed. The family discord—— But I won’t go
into that. There were other things. The accident, in which Father
narrowly escaped with his life. The absurdity of his baptism——”
“How old was Lucy when she was writing you all this truck?”
“She was twelve years old. Yes, I know—but you must remember that Lucy
was a genius, even then. Dr. Koreth said, one evening, that modern
criminologists are coming to value the accuracy of children’s
testimony. From Lucy I may well have what may have been the motivating
factor, or factors. From Neal, with a man’s intelligence and a boy’s
honesty and eagerness, I have the results. A day-by-day account, for
several weeks, of all the findings, the suspicions, the theories,
and—well, the clues.
“Like Lucy and Chris, Neal was a born scribbler. He never had time to
give to it, but he loved even the physical act of writing. He began
his letters to me with the avowal that he was writing them in order
that I might, with the facts placed before me, help him to discover
Father’s murderer. He thought it was the truth. But the letters show
that his real reason for writing to me was to have an outlet for the
stuff that was torturing his mind. What I am trying to say, Dr. Joe,
and am saying so stupidly, is that Neal gave me, unconsciously, more
than a bare recountal of facts. It seems possible, at least, that a
mind trained in criminal analysis could take these letters, and
Lucy’s, and read the truth from them. I can’t decipher the most simple
code. But the Rosetta stone has been deciphered.”
“Didn’t the other folks write you letters during that time, too?”
“None that I kept. They were all troubled at home, and their letters
weren’t like them. I kept Lucy’s because—well, because they were
Lucy’s, I suppose. At the time, it seemed more loyal to destroy the
others. Then, after Father’s death, none of them told me the truth—so
I destroyed them. But I have Lucy’s, and I have Neal’s. Three hours
ago I wouldn’t have given them to a stranger—no, not to a friend—to
read for anything in the world. But now——”
“I don’t believe you need to, Judy. Look. If we, backed up by this
crime analyst, could make believe that something was the truth—why
wouldn’t that do? No, you won’t have it? Well, look, I’m going to have
to be pretty mean. I’m going to have to tell you that I think that
will be the best we can do. I don’t believe anybody, trained analyst
or not, could get at the fact of Dick’s murder at this late date; not
from a packet of letters, twenty-eight years old, written by a couple
of kids.”
“You wouldn’t diagnose the simplest case without seeing the patient.
Those letters are here in my safety-deposit vault at the bank. I’m
going now and get them and bring them to you. Will you read them? And
will you come to Q 2 over the week-end, and tell me what you think of
them? I’d come to the city, but I don’t like to leave Neal——”
“Look, Judy. I’d read the complete works of Ouida if you asked me to,
and you know it. I’ve been dying to come to the ranch all fall. I’ve
been kind of bashful, though, hanging back and waiting for an
invitation. There, there, never mind about that. Run along, and be a
good girl. You’ll have to hop to it to make the bank before three——”
“Thank you, Dr. Joe. Thank you, and——”
“You run along now, like I told you, or I’ll send you a bill!”
III
Judith watched the fire twisting around the oak logs in the
living-room fireplace and wondered why Dr. Joe had created a niece for
himself since she had seen him in his office last Wednesday.
Irene, faultlessly blonde, buoyantly obtuse, appeared in the doorway,
shook an arch forefinger, chirped, “Oh, you two——” and disappeared.
Dr. Joseph Elm said: “Her legs are too fat. She ought to wear longer
skirts. Old lady like her. But, as I was saying, Judy, this niece of
mine has been fussing and fussing—you know how it is—to have me come
down to ’Frisco to see her. Look, I think I’ll go down to-morrow or
the next day; and, while I’m there, I might just as well hunt up this
Miss MacDonald. Save you a trip down. You can post me up on what to
say——”
“You’ve read the letters, Dr. Joe. What do you think of them?”
“Well, now, Judy—I hardly know.”
“But honestly, Dr. Joe?”
“Judy, since you want it, I believe that somebody real smart might get
something or other out of the letters. They give a lot of facts, and
they seem to give them pretty straight.”
“You think, as I think, Dr. Joe, that it must have been one of us?”
“Bless my soul to glory, if I do! Look, Judy. It does seem like
whoever did it must have been in the house before—and quite a while
afterward. But those were the days of lamps and candles out here on
the ranch. Somebody might have hidden in the house for a couple of
days—cellar, attic. Anyway, look! What’s the sense of amateurs like us
tinkering around and worrying over this thing when we can get a
professional, a specialist, to take it in hand? I don’t examine a
man’s teeth; I send him to his dentist. Since I’m going to be in
’Frisco anyway, I might as well stop in and make a dicker with this
crime analyst. I’ve been thinking. It might be a good plan to fetch
her right up here. She could get the lay of the land then. And while
she was studying over the letters she could talk to you and Lucy, and
you could answer any questions for her. What do you think?”
“I’d agree, except for Neal. He has been himself since we came home on
Thursday. But I am afraid that it wouldn’t do to have him know we were
delving into the thing again. I’m sure it wouldn’t be safe. I fancy,
though, considering her profession, that this woman would be willing
to come as a friend of Lucy’s, or as—your niece.”
“Or as a hired girl, something along that line?”
“It would be much easier to explain a guest at Q 2 than it would be to
explain a new servant, after all these years of Tilda, and Lily, and
George, and Gee Sing.”
“Look, Judy. I’ll size her up. If she’s ornery ordinary, I’ll wire
you, and you’ll have to sandwich her in as help for Tilda or
something. If she’s just common ordinary, the niece racket would be
all right. And if she should happen to be extraordinary, we’ll work
the friend of Lucy’s stunt.
“Never mind. I’ll take it you’ve said it, and thanks. Look, Judy, you
don’t need to compliment my relatives, though, because I’m going to be
pretty mean about one of yours right now. Irene’s a doggone
chatterbox. And, like most of that kind, she isn’t smart enough to
show, either. Seems to me it would be better not to let Irene in on
this. I don’t mean that she’s malicious. But she’d spill the beans,
sure as fate, some place where Neal would find them.”
“I know. But I’m afraid Chris would resent it if we didn’t tell her.”
“Look. There’s no law been passed that we have to tell Chris, either.
Did you mean to go tearing the lace off your silly handkerchief,
Judy?”
She dropped the nervous fluff into her lap. “This is going to be hard
to carry through, Dr. Joe.”
“You’re right. It is going to be hard. Hard as blazes. Are you sure
you want to, my girl?”
“I haven’t any choice.”
“I hate to say this, Judy; but you know there is a chance, or half a
chance that you, or even Neal, might be partly right about this: that
some one of the family——”
“I know. That’s why I think we should tell Chris the truth about this
woman, if she comes here. You see, Lucy and I will know who she is.”
“Lucy was a kid. You were in Colorado. Look, Judy. Chris is a good
boy, and he’s getting better all the time. But he’s been married to
Irene for twenty-odd years—and, bless my soul to glory, he’s been in
love with her all the while, and is yet. Tell Chris, and you’ve told
Irene.”
“I suppose so.”
“Here’s another thing. If there can be anything comparative about one
Quilter’s feelings for another Quilter, I’d say that Neal and Chris
were less partial to each other than any other members of the family.
It would bust Chris all up to have Neal get worse. But he’d have that
happen even before he’d haul what he calls the Quilter honour down
from the flagstaff where he keeps it hoisted.”
“I’m not sure; but I believe that isn’t fair to Chris.”
“You bet it is. Look, Judy. It is a matter of taste whether you’d
rather have one cousin wind up in a nice, comfortable sanitarium
somewhere, or whether you’d rather have it proved that your aunt, or
your uncle (by Jolly, Judy, Phineas was a great old boy, wasn’t he!
Letters seemed to bring him right back to me), or another cousin,
or—yourself, or your wife, maybe, killed a member of the family. I’m
for you, Judy. I’m with you to the finish. Always have been. I’m in
love with you, you know. If I wasn’t, I’d send you a bill. But yet you
can’t blame Chris for the stand he’d be bound to take, either.”
“No.”
“Want to change your mind, my girl? We could drop this thing right
here, flat as a pancake.”
“Neal is my little brother. I mean—— Well, when I was seven years old,
Neal was three. He had fat little legs, and he followed me about
wherever I went. I mean—I always did take good care of him. He knew I
would. Forgive me, Dr. Joe. I’m naturally sentimental; but you and
Neal seem to be the only people who tempt me to display it. All I was
trying to say was that I have determined to go through with this.
And—I wish I could think of some way to thank you. It seemed almost
impossible for either Lucy or me to go to San Francisco just now.”
“Going to ’Frisco anyhow. Funny fellow if I couldn’t do a little
neighbourly errand for a friend.”
“I understand about the trip, and the niece.”
“Judy, you’re flirting with me. Shame on you—an old lady like you!”
“I’m not. I’m adoring you.”
“You’re darn right. You’d better, or I’d send you a bill.”
“Do you think this crime analyst will come up to Q 2, Dr. Joe?”
“Come? She’ll jump at the chance.”
CHAPTER II
I
Dr. Joseph Elm said: “Look, Miss MacDonald, I’m not asking you to say
whether or not you’ll take the case. All I’m asking you to do is to
read these letters.”
“Letters,” Lynn MacDonald explained, “that pertain to a murder
committed twenty-eight years ago. Many of them, you have told me,
written by a twelve-year-old child. Yes, I admit the fact that the
child was Lucy Quilter does make some difference—but not enough. The
remainder written by a boy who since has confessed to the murder. At
the very best, I could form a theory or two. Any possibility of
proving those theories has been removed by time. I am sorry, Dr. Elm,
but——”
“Will you read these letters, just read them, I mean, for five hundred
dollars?”
“My time——”
“Yes. I know about time. Everybody’s time. Will you read them for a
thousand dollars?”
“I am not a highway robber, Dr. Elm.”
“No? Well, bless my soul to glory if I know what you are. You’re a
darn good crime analyst, or so I hear. But if you’re not a better
analyst than you are a woman, you’ve nothing to show. Look. As a
woman, you’re a mess. You haven’t any kindness, or patience, or
sympathy—not even pity. You haven’t any courage—afraid to take a
chance. You haven’t much of anything but lack of time.”
He settled back patiently in his chair. If he had guessed rightly
about that red hair and those clear gray eyes, something was going to
happen in half a minute now.
Lynn MacDonald stood, tall, behind her desk.
“Perhaps you are right,” she said. “Certainly you are right about my
lack of time. I have no time to sit here and listen to insults from
importunate strangers.”
Dr. Elm added to his patience an air of solid permanence.
“Funny thing,” he offered, “about women. Tell them the truth and
ninety-nine out of a hundred will think you are insulting them. I kind
of figured, maybe you’d be the hundredth. But I see now where I made
my mistake. I should have tried to wheedle instead of——”
“Bullying,” supplied Miss MacDonald.
“All right. Look. I’ve found out one thing you’ve got—that’s a temper.
Glad to see it. Makes you a person. You’re Scotch-Irish, I judge. Best
debtors in the world. Never had a Scotch-Irish bill yet that wasn’t
paid. Look. You won’t read those letters for love or money. Will you
read them to pay a debt?
“Hold on. Let me tell you. I’m a professional man, same as you’re a
professional woman. I’ve got a consulting room, too. It isn’t near as
stylish as this one of yours. One thing, I’ve had it forty-odd years,
and it’s kind of worn down some, and rubbed off. Another thing, I
don’t much favour elegant consulting rooms. Patients likely to get
impressed. ’Tisn’t a good thing to impress your patients. Many a
stomachache has turned into appendicitis just from the patient being
ashamed to own up to an ordinary stomach ache in the midst of walnut
furniture and Persian rugs. Look. Here’s what I’m getting to.
“I’ve been sitting up there, afternoons, for the past forty years.
I’ve had time and patience, all that while, to listen to women—two
thirds of them nervous, hysterical things, poor souls—telling me about
their backaches, and their numb spells, and their throbbing heads.
Until the last ten years or so about all I could do was to listen, and
then pat them on the shoulders, and tell them they were fine, brave
girls, and give them some healthy advice, and send them home. About
all I can do yet, for that matter. Say psychiatrist to most women and
they’ll up and act like you did just now when I was trying to tell you
something. No. I sit and cluck, like an old hen eating, and listen. I
suppose the time I’ve wasted listening to and pitying your
sister-women would aggregate about twenty years. Money doesn’t pay for
it—if I got paid with money, which I generally don’t, because I can’t
cure them. Thanks might pay, but I’ve never got thanked—much. (‘Old
Dr. Elm simply could not find what my trouble was. So I went to young
Dr. Sawbones, and he cut it right out. I wouldn’t have lived three
months without the operation.’) But I’ve kept along. I’ll go back,
when I leave here, and sit up there and listen, and cluck, till I die.
But I’ve always kind of thought, maybe, sometime I’d get paid back.
I’ve never asked a favour of a woman in my life, Miss MacDonald. Never
even asked a girl to marry me. Well, I’m asking a favour now. You can
read these letters in less than the time you could read a novel. How
about it? A couple of evenings, as pay for twenty years? And if you
tell me there’s no reason why you should pay for all the time I’ve
given to your sister-women, I’ll tell you that, come to it, there
generally isn’t a reason for most of the fine, grand things folks have
done. Florence Nightingale, Father Damien, or——”
Lynn MacDonald, sitting behind her desk, resting her chin on her
bridging fingers, smiled. “Or,” she questioned, “Dr. Joseph Elm?”
“I get you. It’s below the belt, all the same.”
“But, no, you didn’t ‘get’ me. I meant, any real reason for him to
come here and offer me what he has just offered me. Oh, yes. I know
what it is. In spite of your opinion of me, I have some of it
myself—in payment for a service, not for himself, but for friends of
his?”
“Well, of course, if it comes to that, the Quilters have always seemed
a lot more like relations than friends.”
“I see. Now, then, Dr. Elm, since I am to read the letters, perhaps if
you could give me just the outlines of the case? None of the details,
but facts enough to allow me to study the letters with some
understanding from the beginning?”
“Yes, you bet. That’s what I thought, too. If we could kind of whittle
through the thing together, before you began on the letters, it might
save you a lot of time.”
Miss MacDonald’s pink palms met meekly in her lap. Her face was quiet,
but the comprehension in her gray eyes was visible.
II
“Here,” said Dr. Elm, “we are.” He produced a derelict notebook from
his pocket, and flicked through it with a dampened forefinger. “Yes.
I’ve made out a list of characters—like in a play——”
“First, if you will,” suggested Miss MacDonald, “I’d rather hear,
again, the outlines of the case. Where the murder was done, when, and
how. Later, perhaps, the people who were on the premises at the time
would be helpful. I have understood you to say that Richard Quilter
was shot when he was in bed in his room at night. That the absence of
a weapon precluded all possibilities of suicide. That a rope was found
hanging from his window, out across a porch roof beneath the window,
and to the ground. That the freshly fallen snow on the roof and the
rope indicated that the rope had not been used as a means for escape.
That careful searching of the grounds that night, particularly in
front of each window and door, seemed to prove that no one had left
the house after the shot was heard.”
“That’s right, so far; exactly right. Now let me see. Yes, here it is.
The time was Monday around midnight, on the eighth of October, in the
year 1900. The place was the Quilters’ big cattle ranch, Q 2 Ranch, in
Quilter County, eastern Oregon.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Miss MacDonald, with a last clutch at her dinner
engagement, “if you have it all written in the notebook, you might
leave it, with the letters?”
Dr. Elm squeezed the book shut and sunk it into his pocket. “You
couldn’t,” he explained, “make heads or tails of that. Let me see.
Where was I?
“Oh, yes. On Monday night, October the eighth, the Quilter family went
to bed early, as usual. Irene Quilter, the young bride of Christopher
Quilter (Chris was Richard’s—Dick’s—cousin) couldn’t sleep, so she got
up about ten o’clock, put on her slippers and her wrapper, took a
candle and went downstairs to the sitting room. She lighted the
hanging lamp down there, and poked up the fire, and read until a
little after eleven o’clock. Then she went back upstairs. When she
tried to go into her room and Chris’s, she found that the door was
locked.
“Now Irene, like most people who haven’t much pride, was awfully
precious with what she did have. She was too proud to knock. Also, it
made her mad all over to think Chris had locked her out. She turned
around and sneaked straight downstairs again, and fixed herself a bed,
with Indian blankets, on the sofa in the sitting room.
“I judge that the more she thought about it the madder she got. You
see, she and Chris had had a little tiff before he went to sleep. She
decided that Chris would be ashamed of himself pretty soon—as he would
have been, sure enough, if he’d played such a mean trick on his
wife—and come downstairs to find her and to try to make it up. So what
does she do but bolt the door to the back stairway—it came down into
the sitting room—and go into the front hall and bolt the door to the
front stairway. (It comes out in the letters how the Quilters were
never much for locking doors. But they had to have bolts on these
stairway doors so that they wouldn’t blow open and bang in the winter,
when they tried to keep the upstairs shut off.) Locking Chris
out—showing him two could play at that lock-out game, as she put
it—made Irene feel enough better so that she cozied right up in her
sofa bed to cry, but, by mistake, she dropped off to sleep. The next
thing she knew she heard a revolver shot upstairs. It sounded,
everybody said, like a cannon in the quiet of the place.
“She jumped up, lighted her candle, got into her wrapper and slippers,
and ran upstairs. When she reached the upper hall, she must have
thought everybody had gone crazy, for they were all pounding on their
doors, on the inside, and shaking them, and shouting. They were, like
I told you a while ago, all locked in their rooms. She ran down the
hall toward Chris’s and her room. When she came to Dick’s room she saw
that the door was open and a lamp was lighted in there, so she ran in.
She found Dick in bed, shot though the left chest.
“She ran to him. The window was wide open. That wasn’t the custom in
those days—three inches down from the top—and she said he turned his
eyes toward the open window and muttered something that sounded like
‘Got away.’ At first Irene was sure he had said ‘Got away.’ Later,
when folks quizzed her, she admitted that he might have said, ‘Go
away.’ But his next words, she declared up and down, were, ‘Red mask.’
“She kind of lifted him up—worst thing in the world to do, of course,
but Irene was an awfully stupid woman—and then he said the names of
his three children: ‘Neal, Judith, Lucy.’ It was then, Irene said,
when she was stooping over him, that she got blood on the front of her
wrapper and on her sleeve.
“She thought he wanted the children brought to him; but she didn’t
like to leave him, and she didn’t know what to do. She had it firmly
fixed in her mind, in spite of what he had tried to say when he
glanced toward the window, that he had shot himself; so she never
thought of asking him even one question. She wouldn’t. Well, anyway,
she finally started to go for Neal and Lucy—Judith wasn’t at home—and
he spoke out again and said, ‘Wait, Father.’ He meant his own father,
Thaddeus Quilter.
“Irene went back to Dick and he said, clearer this time, putting all
his strength into it, ‘Bring Father. I must tell him.’ He repeated,
‘Must tell Father,’ and that was the end.
“Sometime, during all of this, it had dawned on her what the trouble
in the hall was. I mean, that the family were all locked in their
rooms. Right there on Dick’s bedside table, under his lamp, she saw a
scatter of keys. She put them in her wrapper pocket and ran out and
unlocked the doors. All the locks upstairs were the same; otherwise
Irene never would have got the keys sorted out and the doors unlocked,
I guess. Lucy’s door was opposite Dick’s, so Irene unlocked it first.
Neal was in Lucy’s room. They ran across the hall—Irene had said,
‘Your father,’ to them—but it was too late. Dick was dead when Lucy
reached him. That’s the story, as briefly as I can tell it.”
“He lived and was conscious for some few minutes after he was shot.
How about the position of the bed? Would there have been any
possibility that he could have thrown the revolver from him, through
the open window?”
“Look. The bed was ten or twelve feet from the window. The gun would
have had to land on the porch roof, just beneath the window. The snow
on the roof was unbroken. There was nothing on it, or in it, except
the rope. The only other gun in the room was on the top shelf of a
closet, the length of the room, at least twenty feet, from the bed. It
was found fully loaded. Now about the rope——”
“Forgive me, Dr. Elm. You got your details from the letters, didn’t
you?”
“Yes. Of course I’d heard a lot of talk at the time. I got to Q 2 as
fast as I could after they sent me word. I got there early Wednesday
morning. But I’d forgotten some, and most of the details I never had
any too straight, anyway. I was too busy looking after the family to
take the interest I should have, maybe. Anyhow, what I really thought,
in spite of heck and high water, was that some dirty cur had got into
the house and killed the boy and got out again—some way or other. It
was what I wanted to believe, so I’ve kept at believing it until—here
recently.”
“These letters, nothing else, have forced you to change your mind?”
“That’s about the size of it, I guess.”
“The letters, that is, which recount all the findings of the murder,
and which were written by the person who has since confessed to it?”
“Yes. Neal wrote them, thank the Lord. If he hadn’t written these
letters when he was eighteen, it might be a lot harder for us now when
he is forty-six.”
“I see. Now, then, if you will, tell me about the people who were in
the house at the time. Then, when I begin to read the letters, I can
recognize the members of the family, and the others, in their proper
relationships.”
III
Dr. Elm said: “Miss MacDonald, I’ve never won any fame for driving a
hard bargain, and I don’t care about starting to this late in life.
You’ve agreed to read the letters; nothing else. If you say the word,
I’ll begin right here with descriptions of the family. But, look; you
mentioned relationships. There’s another relationship that is mighty
important. I mean the relationship of the Quilter family, for the past
two hundred and some years, to their environment. You can’t snatch a
parcel of folks away from their backgrounds and then account for the
way the folks act. People live in a pattern. Whether the pattern is
entirely of their own formation, or whether it isn’t, hasn’t much of
anything to do with it. The pattern is there—just as sure as it is
here in this pretty rug of yours. And, to see folks honestly, you have
to see them with relation to their pattern. This is so true that, if
you haven’t their right pattern, you’ll give them another. That’s why
I quarrel with the Behaviourists.
“Now as soon as you begin to read Lucy’s letters you’ll begin to
wonder. They don’t sound like the letters of a little back-country
ranch girl. And Neal’s don’t sound like the letters of a country
bumpkin, nor yet of a buckaroo in eastern Oregon in 1900. From start
to finish of these letters, you’ll be bothered finding the original
Quilter pattern. I can give it to you in five minutes, if you’ll let
me. Will you?”
“But,” began Miss MacDonald, and amended a quick, “of course.” She
refused herself a glance at her wrist watch and repeated, by way of
improvement, “But of course.”
“Well, then, in 1624 James the First made a big land grant in Virginia
to Sir Christopher Quilter—tenth great grandfather, the children call
him. You know your American history well enough to know that the fact
that Sir Christopher and his wife Delidah stayed right there and
succeeded in laying the foundations for a great family estate means
something. I could spend all afternoon telling you Quilter history,
but I won’t. Right from then on it is a history of decent, striving,
successful men and women, with heroes scattered thick as fleas on a
dog’s back. One of the Quilters was a warm personal friend of
Washington’s—so on.
“In 1848 the original grant, or most of it, was still owned by a
Christopher Quilter. He had three sons: Christopher, Thaddeus, and
Phineas. When Christopher and Thaddeus had come of age, the old man
had given them free leases on plantations of their own—slaves and all.
These two lads had been educated at Oxford. That gave them a chance,
maybe, to get a perspective on the question of slavery.
“Christopher, the eldest son, was thirty years old in 1848. Thaddeus,
the second son, was twenty-eight years old. Phineas, the youngest, was
fifteen. He was in England. Well, the two older boys put their heads
together and decided to leave the South. They hated slavery, like most
decent men did. Also, they hated the sectional differences; and being
as smart as some and smarter than most, both of them saw pretty well
what was going to happen in the nation, sooner or later.
“They talked it over with their father, of course, and he agreed with
them, right down to the ground. He was less of an abolitionist, maybe,
than his sons were. But he thought that the South would secede and get
away with it—and he hated the idea worse than poison. He’d have come
with the boys to the Oregon territory, I think, but for the question
of the slaves on the plantation.
“Maybe you’ve heard about fine, grand abolitionists in the South who
freed their slaves and went North? Yes. Look, maybe you’ve heard, too,
about people who moved and left their cats, free as air, to starve.
Decent Southerners, in those days, didn’t free their slaves and walk
off. No more than a decent father, nowadays, frees his children and
walks off.
“No, siree. Great-grandfather Quilter sold the two plantations that
his sons had been managing, and gave them the money he got for them.
Christopher and Thaddeus took the money, and their wives, and came out
to Oregon in 1848. Great-grandfather stayed in Virginia, and took care
of the slaves until he died, during the last year of the Civil War.
“Sure, Christopher and Thaddeus came as wealthy men. But I don’t need
to tell you that they gave up lives of luxury and ease for the
hardships of pioneering. They had two reasons. I don’t know which
loomed larger to them. One was to get clear shed of the wickedness of
slavery. The second was to found another family estate in a safe land.
Phineas and Thaddeus both fought on the side of the North during the
war. When the war was over, they came home to the Q 2 Ranch. And there
they’ve lived and raised their families; and there their children and
their children’s children are living up to now, 1928. Pretty
decent-looking pattern? Nearly as I can judge it’s made of material
that hasn’t any wrong side to it, nor any seams. That is, until this
cussed murder business ripped through it in 1900.
“Christopher, the eldest brother, and his wife had both died by that
time, and Thaddeus Quilter was the head of the family. He was eighty
years old in 1900. Eighty years of the finest, cleanest, most
holy-honest living that a man ever put through. He was the father of
the murdered boy, Richard Quilter. He was the father of the lady
called Aunt Gracia in the letters. And he was the grandfather of
Richard’s three children: Neal, Judith, and Lucy. Their grandmother,
Thaddeus Quilter’s wife, had been dead a good many years.
“Taking them in the order of their ages, Phineas Quilter, the youngest
of the three brothers, you know, comes next. He was sixty-seven years
old in 1900, and he was a great old boy. He’d spent a good part of his
time hunting for gold mines in Oregon and Nevada; he never fared very
far, but he fared often. It was his diversion. He was a
happy-go-lucky, but good—good as his gold all the way through. He was
a cut-up, strong for practical jokes—all like that. A little gay and
fizzy in his youth, maybe; but he came out fine and mellow in his old
age. His wife called him Pan when she was in a real good humour. He
liked it. That gives a slant, maybe. But don’t forget that, like
Thaddeus Quilter, he was a fine, honourable old gentleman. Phineas
loved Dick like he would have loved his own son, if he’d had one.
“Olympe, Phineas’s wife, comes next in order of age. She was all
right, a real nice lady. Phineas met her when he went South, after the
war, to try to settle up the estate. She was what they used to call a
reigning beauty. She was studying elocution, and hoping to be a great
actress. So Phineas met her, and married her a few weeks later, and
brought her out to Oregon to live on a cattle ranch—de luxe, but a
frontier ranch, just the same. Nowadays the marriage might have wound
up in a divorce court, in spite of the fact that they loved each other
a lot, right up to the end. Anyway, Olympe did what women in those
days generally did do, she stayed married, and made the best of it. I
can sort of imagine her thinking it over, those first months on the
ranch, looking far across the sage and the bunch grass to the hills,
and saying to herself something like this: ‘I wished to be a famous
actress. I could have been, too, if I hadn’t fallen for this young
Lochinvar-came-out-of-the-West stuff. Well, I did. Here I am, stranded
on an eastern Oregon cattle ranch. By Jolly, I’ll be a great actress
anyway.’ And then she went to it.
“From that day on she used the Q 2 Ranch for her stage, and acted on
it, with the family and their friends for her lifelong audience. Now
here’s the catch in it. This acting business made her seem like more
or less of a fool. Yet the whole family loved her and respected her.
Folks will give love free, sometimes, but they won’t give respect
free. Olympe had to earn that. Bless my soul to glory, if I know how
she earned it—but she did. She was selfish. She didn’t know much about
gratitude. She was vain. She slipped up on a lot of the virtues. And
yet, I respected her, and I respect her memory. I used to puff all up
with pride when she’d deign to be nice to me.
“That covers the oldsters. Did you get them? Thaddeus Quilter, father
of the murdered man; Phineas Quilter and his wife Olympe, uncle and
aunt of the murdered man?”
“Yes. I have them straight.”
“Dick himself would be next of age. Do you want to hear about him?”
“By all means; yes.”
“Well, he took after his father, Thaddeus Quilter. Dick was more of a
plodder, not quite so brilliant nor quite so interesting as the old
gentleman, maybe, but not dull; not by a long shot. Bone-good, Dick
was—a fine, honourable, hard-working lad. He married young, and he
loved his wife enough to make her happy. It busted Dick all up when
she died. But he didn’t brood. He took what energy he might have put
into grieving and used it toward being a darn fine father to the three
children she’d left him. Dick worshipped his own father—but all the
Quilters did that. I’m bound to say that it was Dick, more than the
old gentleman, who pulled the Q 2 Ranch through the lean years and
kept it from going under. Dick loved Q 2 like a mother. He had to
mortgage, but he never sold an acre of it. Not even when young
Christopher, Dick’s cousin, was spending a small fortune off it,
gallivanting around back East and in Europe.
“Gracia Quilter comes next—Dick’s sister, the old gentleman’s one
daughter. She was a healthy, sweet-hearted, normal girl until she got
kind of soured because of a mighty unfortunate love affair. Right
after that, by cracky, she embarrassed the family a lot by up and
joining a new-fangled religious sect that called themselves
Siloamites. You never hear anything at all about them any more, but
they were pretty strong in Oregon and Idaho and around there for a
while. They were all right, a fine class of people. I never knew
better folks, anywhere, than the general run of them. A couple of
handsome young missionaries came along and caught Gracia on the
rebound from this love affair. She was emotional, and something of a
mystic—she took after her mamma in that. So she up and joins the
church, and gets baptized and everything. Never did her nor anybody
else a mite of harm that I could see. One of the Siloamite tenets was
never to thrust their religion on other folks. But the Quilter family,
including even the old gentleman, felt pretty sorry about the whole
thing.”
“Did her religion amount to fanaticism? Did it in any way seem to
affect her mind?”
“No, not a bit of it. Not a bit of it. I’m mentioning it because it
seems to me to be the one rift in the Quilters’ lute. The one thing
that any Quilter ever did that all the other Quilters didn’t root for.
You know, like Chesterton’s neighbours, sitting on the fence and
shouting ‘Hooray!’ Something about Chesterton always reminded me a
little of Phineas. Great old boys, both of them—though Phineas
certainly kept his figure better.
“Well, that brings us to Christopher. He was the elder Christopher’s
son. Makes him a nephew of Thaddeus Quilter’s, and a cousin of Dick’s.
Chris was the real showy member of the family. Handsome, as ladies
used to say, as a Greek god. He took more after his Uncle Phineas than
he did after his father. Though instead of dreaming he’d find a gold
mine, Chris dreamed he could write plays. I don’t know, yet, why he
couldn’t. He’d had a fine education, here and abroad, and he was real
smart. But he couldn’t; and he wasted a pile of the family’s money
trying to. Chris was selfish, and too easily influenced. Still, you’d
go far before you’d find a better lad than Chris was. He is a fine
man, too; and, as I always say, he’s getting better all the time.
“Just like his Uncle Phineas, though, he went and married an Eastern
girl who didn’t have a mite of talent for an isolated ranch. Her name,
Irene, didn’t live up to its Greek meaning. I can’t say that I ever
liked Irene much; still, there was always something amiable about my
dislike for her. She was one of these irritatingly helpmate-ish sort
of women. Never knew a stupid woman to marry a real smart man and not
try to run him.”
“You think, then, that Irene—Mrs. Christopher Quilter—was a stupid
woman? And, also, an egotistical woman?”
“Was and is. Look. She, as they say nowadays, goes in for it. She’s
sort of deliberately arch—if you know what I mean. One of the
poor-little-me type. But she has more to show than I have—a couple of
fine sons and a sweet little daughter, so I don’t know why I should be
running her down. She’s been a true wife to Chris.
“Judy, Mrs. Judith Quilter Whitefield, Dick’s eldest daughter, comes
next. She was in Colorado at the time, taking care of her invalid
husband. Married only a year——”
“Perhaps, Dr. Elm, to avoid confusion, if we could keep to the people
who were at the ranch on the night of the murder?”
“That’s right. But here I went and told you all about Phineas, and he
wasn’t at the ranch the night Dick was murdered, either.”
“It doesn’t matter. Now, the others?”
“Neal Quilter was next of age. Dick’s son. The one who wrote the
letters to Judy. The one on whose account we need to get this thing
straightened out. He took after his father and grandfather. Bone-good.
Smart as a whip. Never had any real schooling to amount to anything.
His grandfather and his Aunt Gracia taught him. The kid was reading
Latin better than I could when he was ten years old. When he was
eighteen he passed the entrance examinations for Oregon Agricultural
College and was graduated from it just two years later, with all the
honours. He was keen about writing, always scribbling things at odd
minutes. But he couldn’t serve two masters, and Q 2 was his passion.
His grandfather was his idol; but he loved his father better than most
boys do. Chris’s sons think a pile of Chris, but it isn’t like the way
Neal thought of Dick.
“Lucy Quilter, the little girl who wrote the letters, comes next. She
was twelve years old at the time, small and dainty, and pretty as a
peach—is yet. At twelve she was the bud of what she’s bloomed into
since. I guess, from what you said, I don’t need to tell you what she
is now.”
“Scarcely. It must be marvellous to know her as you do.”
“That’s what I think, when I’m away from her. Soon as I get with her I
forget that she’s a famous lady, and start trying to boss her about
her babies, or to advise her about taking care of her health better,
or something of the kind. She’s as simple as common sense—and as rare.
Let me see—Neal, Lucy. Yes, that finishes off the list.”
“No servants? No visitors?”
“From 1893 to 1900 were the seven lean years on the Q 2 Ranch. They
had a Chinese house boy, Dong Lee. But, aside from him, Gracia and
Judy—until she went away—with Lucy’s help were doing all the inside
work. Dick and Neal were doing most of the outside work. They had to
have help, of course; but they got the neighbouring men to come in
when they needed them. So many of the ranches went under in ’93 and
’94 that help was easy enough to get that way, in those days. But Dong
Lee wasn’t there the night Dick was killed. He’d been having trouble
with his teeth—Dong Lee, that is—and he’d gone to Portland to see a
dentist.
“Now as to visitors. Gracia had had a couple of her church friends,
missionaries, there on the place for ten days. There was one room
built in the attic, and the boys had occupied it. But they’d left the
day before. Nice, clean lads, both of them. I always thought it was a
lucky thing for them that they were well out of it.”
“You are certain that they both had left?”
“Look. Dick was killed on Monday night, around midnight. Late Monday
afternoon the two lads were in my office in Portland, a matter of two
hundred miles distant (remember we didn’t have automobiles in those
days), delivering a message from Dick to me. He wanted a prescription
refilled and sent to him.”
“Was he ill at the time?”
“Yes. Dick had been having a lot of trouble with his stomach.”
“Had it made him unpleasant, difficult to live with?”
“It had not. Quieted him down a mite. I think that is an
over-exploited theory, about pain making folks mean. If they’re
naturally mean, it gives them an excuse for indulging. In my
experience, I’ve found that real suffering is anyway as apt to make a
saint as a sinner. But that’s beside the point, I guess.”
“No, I think not. But about these visitors. I suppose you are certain
that the two men who came to your office, with the message, were the
same two men who had been visiting at the farm?”
“At the ranch? Yes, dead certain. I’d known the lads before. I knew
them afterward. Not a shadow of doubt about it.”
“I see. Now, then, Dr. Elm, the situation you have presented to me
amounts to this:
“First, you give me stately, unassailable traditions. That is,
traditions based on proven performances of integrity, stability,
courage, reaching through two hundred years. Then you give me the
Quilter family of 1900, true to these traditions—wise, honourable,
cultured people, with strong family loyalty and affection. A dearly
loved member of this family is found murdered in his room at night.
That a member of the Quilter family, which you have presented to me,
could be guilty of such a crime seems to be entirely without the
bounds of reason.
“But there was newly fallen snow that night. No one could have gone
away from the house without leaving footprints in the snow. You
declare that there were no footprints. Someone might have hidden in
the house, and remained there until escape was possible. One of your
first insistences was that, because of the reliability of the people
who searched the house, no one could have been hiding there. Also, the
house was so carefully guarded that an escape, after the first hour,
would have been impossible.
“Do you see it? You have precluded all possibility that the murder was
committed by a member of the Quilter family. You have precluded all
possibility that the murder was committed by anyone who was not a
member of the Quilter family. And you state that it happened
twenty-eight years ago.
“Wait. You are a reasonable, sensible man. Why didn’t you tell me, at
first, that you didn’t expect, nor entirely desire, me to arrive at
the truth? That you wanted a sound-seeming theory, which could be
evolved from the letters, and which might, by fixing on some guilty
stranger, cure your friend of his delusion? I may be able to do that
for you. If I can do it, harmlessly, I will. I know, as you know, that
I can’t do better than that.”
“I hate to hear you talk that way, my girl. Quitting before you’ve
begun. I sized you up as having more spunk than that. One thing I
admired the most about you was your spunk and——”
“Temper your admiration, Dr. Elm. You aren’t in your consulting room
just now, you know.”
“I don’t think that’s very nice of you, Miss MacDonald, trying to
abash an old, white-haired man like me.”
“I only wish that I thought I had, or could. Your methods shame
Machiavelli. I’m in terror of you. You’ve bullied me into reading your
letters. You’ve bullied me into promising a harmless lie. If the
harmless lie seems inadequate, you’ll doubtless bully me into a
pernicious one, and the penitentiary.”
Dr. Elm said, “Bless your heart,” stood, put his overcoat across his
arm, bowed; and, though his two hundred and fifty pounds would seem to
necessitate a definite solidity of carriage, Lynn MacDonald was left
with the impression that some gentle breeze had wafted him delicately
away.
She smiled, the rueful smile of grudging admiration confronting the
confusion of charm and guile. She looked at her watch. It was too late
to go home and dress and keep her dinner engagement; it was too early
for anything else. An hour’s reading should take her far through the
letters. Then home, and dinner, and the restful evening she had been
needing for so long. First, the list of people, again:
1. Richard Quilter: the murdered man.
2. Thaddeus Quilter: Richard’s father.
3. Phineas Quilter: Richard’s uncle.
4. Olympe Quilter: Richard’s aunt. Phineas’s wife.
5. Gracia Quilter: Richard’s sister.
6. Christopher Quilter: Richard’s cousin.
7. Irene Quilter: Christopher Quilter’s wife.
8. Neal Quilter: Richard’s son.
9. Lucy Quilter: Richard’s daughter.
Dr. Elm had told her that Phineas Quilter was not at the Q 2 Ranch on
the night of the murder. She put a check beside his name, and reached
for the smaller packet of letters.
CHAPTER III
I
March 12, 1900.
Dearest, dear Judy-pudy: Uncle Phineas’s dictum, “Never begin a letter
or end a love affair with an apology,” has been a hindrance to me in
the starting of this letter. Perhaps if I state that Dong Lee has had
another toothache, and that Christopher sent us a telegram that came
two days after you and Greg left, and that said he had been married
the week before and would arrive at Q 2 on Saturday, March ninth, with
his wife, you may understand why I have not had time to write to you.
All the preparations were exciting and much fun. Grandfather himself
helped me shine the best silver on Friday afternoon. Dong Lee had been
compelled to lie down with a bag of hot salt on his face. Aunt Gracia
made new curtains for Chris’s room, and Olympe put her best cloisonné
rose jar on the lowboy. The one drawback was that something so
pleasant going to happen made us miss you and Greg more tensely. We
couldn’t say, once, as we had said the day of the hailstorm and rain
after you left, “Thank goodness, Judy and Greg aren’t here.”
Father and Uncle Phineas met Chris and Irene at the train with the
carriage. Neal had worked hard getting it mended and washed and
polished; but, of course, there had been no time to paint it. Bread
and Butter were not as dashing as I wished they might be. Though Neal
had curried them carefully, they somehow did seem to betray the fact
they were generally used for ploughing. I hoped that Irene might not
notice it. I fear that she did.
Irene is pretty. Her hair is yellow. Her cheeks are pink, and her eyes
are turquoise blue. But, though it is hard to explain, her prettiness
seems inexpensive: like the things we don’t buy in the shops because,
though attractive, we feel sure they won’t be durable. I should add
that this is not very noticeable except when she is close to Aunt
Gracia, and that, even then, Irene’s clothes do much to counteract the
impression.
Her clothes are very beautiful, and she rustles in them as if she were
walking knee-deep in autumn leaves. Her trains make Aunt Gracia’s and
Olympe’s seem like something they just happened to be dragging about
behind them. On just one hat she has eight plumes, and she said the
shortest one was sixteen inches long.
She was very enthusiastic over all of us, and the place, on Saturday
evening. She has a way of expressing appreciation by saying “oo,” with
rising and falling inflections. Sometimes it sounds as if she were
running a scale. She showed all sorts of deference to Grandfather by
constantly calling him “sir,” and acting humble. I am sure that
Grandfather disliked it.
Olympe came downstairs rather late, as she usually does when we have
company. She looked beautiful in her old white lace ball gown and with
her “Prince of Wales” magenta plumes in her gray hair. Irene seemed
much astonished at Olympe; but then, you know, strangers often do.
Olympe was at her best. She lifted her lovely chin (not once all
evening did she forget and droop her chin) and told Irene how great
artists had painted her portraits. It seems that a great artist once
wished to paint Irene’s picture, too. It is interesting, I think, to
have two beauties in the family at one time. It is a pity that Irene
uses so much White Rose perfume that, whenever Olympe stays close to
her, Olympe begins to sneeze with hay fever as she usually does only
in August. But, excluding that, and a few other things, I think the
general exchanged impressions on Saturday evening were all at least
moderately favourable. Irene made me happy by saying that I looked
like a Reginald Birch child. I was glad to be able to repay her at
once, and honestly, by saying that she looked like a Penrhyn Stanlaws
lady. But it was not original. She said that so she had often been
told.
On Sunday morning, when Father, Chris, and I were showing her about
the ranch she said, “But, Booful!” (She calls Chris “Booful” in
public. I thought, for some time, that she would spell it “Boofel,” or
“Boofle,” and that it was a joke with perhaps interesting origins. I
have since discovered that she means “Beautiful.” I should think Chris
would abhor it.) “But, Booful!” she said, “I didn’t know that your
funny farm was a truck farm.”
Yes, Judy dear, I quote exactly. I was extremely glad that Grandfather
had not come with us to be wounded.
Darling Father, as usual, met the situation superbly. He explained to
her that, during the hard times, it had seemed wise to him to put in
enough garden to supply the family table, with perhaps a bit over, for
occasional trading at the stores, until the worst pressure was past.
He told her, of course, we still had cattle and horses, and that, now,
the South African War was raising the cattle prices, so that the
stockmen would soon come into their own again. He added that after
this he would always have a family garden, however, and a large one.
She said, “It is a large family, isn’t it?” She has a syrup-sweet
voice; but, someway, the things she says with it often seem to ruin
its timbre.
When I told Aunt Gracia what Irene had said about the family, she
asked me why I repeated it. She said, “We are a large family, aren’t
we, honey-baby?”
“Aunt Gracia,” I said, “we are. But we are not a large patch of loco
weed that has got a start in the best bunch grass.”
Father came in, just then, and when he found I was writing to you he
asked me to convey this message. Your last letter, he said, has
distressed him. You must spare no expense when it is a question of
comfort for Greg. Quilters, he thought, had not yet reached the place
where they found it necessary to practise economy on their invalids.
He sends you and Greg his dearest love. He will write you, at length,
in a few days.
Just overnight, almost, economy has stopped here. Chris insisted on
having all the stoves right out and the fireplaces reopened. They eat
up wood. He says that before next winter we must have the old furnace
repaired. Probably, before next winter he will understand better. He
and Irene brought us all presents from the East. I have no enthusiasm,
as yet, for describing them. Perhaps, when you receive yours, my
difficulty will be clear to you. I think that Olympe is going to send
you the ice-wool fascinator they brought to her. It is beautiful, but
Olympe will never wear lavender. It was an experience and a lesson to
watch Grandfather being grateful for _Richard Carvel_ when he had so
desired a Miss Tarbell’s new Life of Lincoln.
I must run now and help Aunt Gracia with supper. Dear Judy and Greg, I
love you so much that when I stand on tiptoes I can touch it in the
stars.—Lucy.
II
March 19, 1900.
My dear, sweet Sister Judy: This morning I found out an amazing thing.
Did you know that Q 2 Ranch belonged entirely to Christopher? Neal
says that he had known it, but that it was so unimportant he had
forgotten it. I had never thought about who owned it. If I had, I
should have supposed that we all did. But to-day I happened to hear
Irene say to Chris, “But, Booful, the farm belongs entirely to you.”
She seemed to be wishing him to do something, I don’t know what, about
the ranch.
I went at once to Grandfather. I suppose that no one could question
the assertion that Grandfather has one of the most beautiful
characters that ever was in the world. No matter what great man I read
about from Da Vinci to McKinley, I always decide that Grandfather is
superior to him. Sometimes I wonder whether any of us are grateful
enough for the opportunity of having Grandfather for an ancestor.
To-day, though I interrupted him when he was deep in his new
translation of Schiller, he treated me with kingly courtesy. That is
not an exact description. Grandfather, I think, is much more of a
gentleman than are most kings.
“Grandfather,” I said, respecting his liking for directness in all
things, “does Q 2 Ranch belong to Cousin Christopher?”
“It does,” he replied. And then, I suppose, he read my feeling in my
face, for he asked, quickly, “But, my darling, need that trouble you?”
I told him that if it did not trouble him it would not trouble me; but
that I should like to understand about it.
He placed a chair for me. He explained that, since Cousin Christopher
had been Uncle Christopher’s eldest son, naturally he would inherit
the estate. He said that when he and Uncle Christopher, and, later,
Uncle Phineas, had founded this second family estate they had agreed
that divisions were unwise. So, though both Grandfather and Uncle
Phineas had put their fortunes into the ranch, they had desired it to
be inherited, though not entailed, as the estates in England are. He
explained to me why that is the wisest way. I am sure you know about
that; so I shan’t bother you with a repetition. Grandfather also said
that, of course, mine and thine never had, and never could, mean
anything to the Quilter family.
We have often heard that. I suppose we have always believed it. At any
rate, I stopped questioning Grandfather and went and looked up the
word “bounty” in the dictionary. It meant what I had thought. So, when
Aunt Gracia and I were ironing, I asked her why if _meum_ and _teum_
really meant nothing to a Quilter, it could be true that we had been
living on Christopher’s bounty all these years.
She seemed shocked, but controlledly so, and said what a very funny
baby I was, and where had I managed to pick up so mad an idea.
I told her Irene had said to Chris that, after all, the “farm”
belonged to him, and that all these people had been living on his
bounty for years and years.
Aunt Gracia said that, of course, I had to do what seemed best to me;
but that she was sorry my ideas of rectitude, and of being
Grandfather’s granddaughter, seemed to allow me to eavesdrop. She
finished ironing one of Irene’s beautiful corset covers, trimmed with
yards of lace ruffling, before she said another word. I ironed plain
pillow shams in silent humiliation. Oddly, the next thing she said
was, “What did Christopher say?”
“He called her a delightful little imbecile,” I said, “and that ended
the conversation.”
“Necessarily, one would think,” Aunt Gracia smiled. But I explained
that they stopped conversing in order to begin kissing. They kiss
constantly. Uncle Phineas says that is entirely good form for
honeymoons. Perhaps he is joking. It seems strange. You and Greg
didn’t. At least, not lavishly and in public.
Olympe came into the kitchen to see whether her second-best taffeta
petticoat had split from being laundered. (It had.)
Aunt Gracia said, “Olympe, dear, why do some women like to be called
imbeciles?”
“Because they are,” Olympe answered. “It is an acid test. However, if
that young person doesn’t stop calling me Aunt Olympe, I shall find
something to call her that won’t please her.”
We have told Irene that Olympe objects to the “Aunt,” but Irene says
she can’t remember. I think Olympe and Irene do not love each other,
as yet. I believe I haven’t told you of an odd mannerism of Irene’s.
She talks all the time—incessantly is the exact word. It is
particularly hard for Olympe. Since all the rest of the family are so
busy—Chris has pitched right in and is helping Father and Neal with
the ranch work—it leaves only Olympe for Irene to talk to. We could
say now, though we do not, how fortunate it is that Greg is not here.
Olympe does not have to sit quietly in a chair. She can walk away. She
often does.
Your letter telling of Greg’s improvement brought us all bright joy. I
love you so much that if it were planted as a clover seed it would
grow as a meadow.—Lucy.
III
March 26, 1900.
Dearest, dearest Judith: You asked me in your letter that came last
Monday to write to you more about Grandfather. Grandfather, of late,
has spent more time than usual in his room, and has been more subdued.
There seemed to be not much to write about him. So, after I had read
your letter, I decided to have a talk with him in order to gather
material for my next letter to you.
Olympe—this is not changing the subject—has developed deafness. As you
know, she has been very slightly deaf for some time; but, of late, she
pretends to be totally deaf. I say pretends, because she is deaf only
when she is with Irene. My problem was: is that wise of Olympe, or is
it wrong?
For several months I have felt that it would be beneficial for me to
discuss the question of right and wrong, again, with Grandfather. Last
year, when I wished to discuss it, he gave me a rule of conduct, you
know, “Search for beauty,” and said we would better postpone the other
for a while.
Yesterday, then, after a quick ride with Neal over the south range
(Neal was so adorable. He let me ride Tuesday’s Child for the first
time, and took Thursday’s Child for himself), to pink my cheeks as
Grandfather likes to see them, I went and rapped on his door.
I suppose a man would have to be as great as Grandfather is to be able
to make other, quite unimportant, people feel almost great themselves
when they enter his presence.
I gave my problem to him. He laughed very heartily and then said that,
according to Hume, whom he had been reading when I came in, Olympe was
justified. Hume, he told me, was an Eighteenth Century historian and
philosopher—a better philosopher than historian—who held that utility
was the chief element of all virtue.
“You see,” he explained, “according to this gentleman, Olympe’s act,
since it is so useful, could not be wrong.”
Disappointingly, with that he changed the subject and began to talk
about loyalty. It was all interesting, as related by Grandfather; but,
since it was mostly the same history of the Quilter family, and their
courage and loyalty since the time of Cromwell, you would not care to
have me repeat it here. Grandfather, of course, knew that I had heard
it many times before, and explained that he was using it to make his
point—since Irene was now a Quilter we owed loyalty to her.
“Then,” I questioned, “if you didn’t laugh, you’d really think it was
wrong of Olympe to pretend to be deaf?”
Again Grandfather disappointed me by saying that I was a bit young to
penetrate Hume.
I picked up my notebook and started to go away. Grandfather asked me
what I had there. I told him I had brought my notebook to write in it
what he would tell me about right and wrong. He asked me what I had
written. I had not written anything. He was troubled. I hurried to
explain that it did not matter. He was still troubled. I suggested
that it might be wise for me to ask Aunt Gracia about right and wrong.
She has them both so neatly.
Grandfather said, “Heaven forbid.” And, again, he said that I was too
young to be delving into moral issues. He said, perhaps, I would allow
him to write a few simple rules of conduct in my notebook for me to
use until I was older. He took my book and wrote:
“Darling little Lucy Quilter. Be proud. Be loyal. Be gay. Be generous
rather than just.”
After I left Grandfather’s room I met Uncle Phineas and Irene in the
hall. She had been talking to him. She went away. I said to Uncle
Phineas, because Irene had looked so pink and blue and gold, “How
lovely she is!”
He pulled my top curl and made up a face at me.
“I mean,” I explained, feeling that lovely had been a little
extravagant—you know, one would call Aunt Gracia lovely, “how pretty,
how delicate.”
“Yes,” Uncle Phineas said, “pretty and delicate as a somersault.”
Uncle Phineas does not like Irene at all.
I told him then, since I thought he should know, what Grandfather had
been telling me about our owing Irene our loyalty. How family loyalty
was one of our strongest traditions. Uncle Phineas said: “Thad goes
about brandishing Quilter loyalty like a club.” You may imagine what a
terrible humour Uncle Phineas must have been in to criticize
Grandfather.
Later that evening, when I was showing Neal my new rules of conduct,
Uncle Phineas came up. Neal showed them to him, after asking my
permission, which it seemed rude to withhold.
Uncle Phineas said he would give me one more. He took my notebook, and
wrote, scrawlingly, right under Grandfather’s beautiful, patient
lettering: “Be wise. Use Wisdom’s Robertine.” That, as you may not
know, is a cosmetic which comes in dark blue glass bottles. Irene has
one, and she gave one to Olympe. I thought it generous of her. Neal
says that Irene will never miss one bottle.
It is difficult to explain, but here of late, hatefulness seems to
have got hold of all of us. I should say, all of us except
Grandfather, who is too perfect, and Father, who is too busy. Darling
Father, not busy, wouldn’t be hateful, either, I am sure. But the
thought of work as a producer of virtue has given me an idea for a
story. I have put it in my notebook, and shall write it when I am
grown up. It is to be about two men; one who has all the virtues, and
one who has none of them, but who is egotistic and avaricious. He has
to work so hard to satisfy his vanity and his avarice, and he has to
do such good things to get the glory and admiration he wants, that he
leads as virtuous a life as does the good man. When they both die,
they are regarded with equal respect by their neighbours. _Two Roads_
would be the title for it.
As I finished writing that last paragraph, Neal came in. I told him
that I had come to the end of my letter, but that I was trying to
think of some extra special way to express my love for you and Greg. I
asked him how he liked, “I love you so much that, just from what
spills over, I love the whole world.” He evaded, and teased, and said
he did not want to be loved from leakage, and so on. But, finally,
though he was very sweet, he reminded me of Grandfather’s rule about
simplicity, and he said that it seemed to him that love, more than
anything else, should be simply expressed. I suppose he is right. So,
I love you. I love Greg.—Lucy.
CHAPTER IV
I
April 12, 1900.
Dearest, dearest Judy-pudy: “Begin at the beginning,” like many other
rules, seems very simple. It is not. How is one to know where the
beginning is?
I have decided that, probably, the beginning of this very long letter,
which I am planning to write to you this afternoon and evening, should
be that Irene does not like Q 2 Ranch. She does not wish to live here,
or to have Christopher live here.
When they came last month, they came only for a visit. But when Chris
found that we had been sending him all the ready money we could get,
and had been forced to practise rigid economy, he refused to take
Irene back to New York. Father agrees with Chris that he and Irene
should stay here for the present.
Chris says certainly, that nothing else is to be considered. He says
if he had had the least notion of how things were with us here at
home, he would have come home two years ago when he returned from the
Continent. He said that, of course, by staying in New York and
attempting to get his play produced, he felt that he was doing his
share. Because, if _Gold_ had been successful, we never would have had
another money worry again. He says effort must weigh, as well as
accomplishment.
Irene said that Booful had worked very hard and lived most frugally in
New York. Chris said that he had not lived half as frugally as he
would have had he known that his living was literally coming out of
our pantry and off our backs.
Irene and Father both said “Nonsense” to that, but they said it
differently. Just the same, Judy, in spite of Father’s “Nonsense,” can
you ever remember a time when about all the ready money we had did not
have to be sent off to Cousin Christopher?
Chris said that he had had his chance, and that you had not had yours
(he meant about your not going to a university), but that now we must
all pull together to see that Neal and I had ours.
Father agreed with him. He rather overagreed with him. He said that
Chris had had a bit more than his chance, he thought. That he had two
degrees, and two years of European travel. He said that Chris was a
sophomore at Princeton when he was Neal’s age.
Neal began to say, as he always says, that he did not care for a
classical education; that all he needed was a few years at a good
agricultural college. Father spoke almost abruptly to him. Neal walked
right away out of the room.
When Neal was gone, that left Grandfather, Father, Chris, Irene, and
me in the sitting room. I was reading in the window nook. I think that
the others did not know I was there. I was not eavesdropping because,
if any of them had turned around and looked at me, I was plainly there
to be seen.
Irene said that if an agricultural college was all Neal cared about,
why couldn’t he be sent to the Oregon one, which she had heard was
fairly possible.
Darling Father has been having that stomach trouble again. You know
how quiet and patient it makes him. He just sat there, white, and did
not answer Irene at all.
Grandfather told her that, just now, even the state agricultural
college was a bit more than we could manage.
Irene said, “Couldn’t you mortgage some more of Chris’s land?”
Grandfather explained to her that the ranch was over-mortgaged now. He
went on and told her about how bad ranching conditions had been, and
how in 1895 cows were selling for from five to seven dollars, and
calves for two, and horses about the same. He told how it had been
necessary to disperse most of the herds because we could not afford to
keep them. And then he told how timber and teams had kept us going.
And how, after that, the mortgages had been necessary to buy new
herds, and to pay debts contracted when we couldn’t even mortgage. He
finished by telling her how, if we could devote the coming two or
three years to keeping up our interest, and our herds, and so on, we
were bound to win through with flying colours.
I don’t know why that should have made Irene angry. It did. It made
her so angry that her voice trembled as she asked Grandfather whether
he actually meant that the place was so deeply in debt that no more
money could be raised on it.
Grandfather told her that he doubted whether another hundred dollars
could be borrowed on the place. He said that now it need not be
borrowed. He said she had spoken of raising money. We were now, he
told her, engaged in raising money—cattle and horses.
She has a queer way, I think I may have mentioned it before, of
seeming to hear only a part, the first part of whatever one says to
her. She has another odd mannerism. She interrupts. She interrupted
Grandfather then, and said that, in other words, the place was
worthless.
Grandfather said to Christopher, “Sir, can you explain to me how your
wife happens to be labouring under such a misconception?”
Usually, when anybody asks Christopher a question, Irene answers it.
“I know,” she said, “that when a farm of this size is mortgaged up to
the hilt, so that not even a hundred dollars can be raised on it, that
it is a failure. I don’t believe in throwing good money after bad. It
seems to me that the only thing to do is to sell the place, if
possible, and invest the money more wisely.”
Judy, did you ever consider how much worse things words can say than
people can ever do? I think that must be because actions can be met
with actions, but some words have no words for answers.
For quite a long time no one said anything. I felt my heart drop into
my stomach, and then—I actually could feel this—my stomach closed
around it somewhat as a sea anemone closes—and stuck to it. It was
painful.
“Uncle Thaddeus, Dick,” Christopher managed to say, “Irene doesn’t
understand.”
Grandfather stood up. He looked majestic. “That, Christopher,” he
said, “is, I think, your fault and not your wife’s. You should have
explained to her that men do not sell their inheritance. That it is
not theirs to sell.”
Grandfather and Father went out of the room together.
Christopher said to Irene, “Uncle Thaddeus is right, sweetheart. It is
my fault. I should have explained——”
“Explain!” she burst out. “If there is anything in the world that you
haven’t explained to me concerning Quilter precedents and traditions,
I hope I may never have to hear it. You go about, every one of you,
buttered with precedent, greased with traditions. Like the pig at the
circus. One tries to get hold of you, and traditions slip you through
one’s hands. What I need to have explained now is why a farm,
admittedly worthless, should be kept as a home for the aged and
infirm. We could better afford to put them all into institutions for
indigent old age. As for the younger generation, your cousins are
strong and capable—let them earn their livings elsewhere. Why should
we keep them with our lives? Them, and their children, and——”
I made a dreadful sound. It was like the first part of an enormous
hiccup. It was drawing my breath in after smothering for so long.
Christopher turned and saw me. He was glad, I think, to have me there
to vent his wrath upon. He lowered his voice and became aggressively
polite—you know the way Quilter men do when they are angry. He begged
my pardon for intruding on my privacy, and so on; and, at last, he
said that he was bound to ask for my promise that I would not repeat a
syllable of what I had, surely inadvertently, overheard.
Irene said bother promising anything. She said I might run and tell
every word she’d said, for all she cared. She said she wished I would,
and save her the trouble; because, if I didn’t, she meant to.
Christopher, looking exactly like the man in the Gibson picture,
“Hearts Are Trumps,” said, “No, I think not, Irene.”
“I have already,” she declared, like a dare. “Long ago, I spoke to
your Uncle Phineas about the possibility of selling the farm. I’ve
mentioned it, since, to your Aunt Olympe and your Cousin Gracia.”
Perhaps if Irene knew it was like cracking us on our crazy bones every
time she said “farm,” she might stop it. Perhaps she might not.
“I am sorry to hear that, Irene,” Christopher said, very much in
Grandfather’s manner. “Because such talk succeeds only in making my
family dislike and distrust you, and accomplishes no other end
whatever. Possibility of my selling Q 2 Ranch ranks, in the range of
possibilities, exactly on a par with my selling one of the children,
or committing a murder or a robbery—something of the sort.”
“You are robbing,” Irene declared. “You are robbing us of our chance
for happiness. Not murder, perhaps. But you are condemning yourself
and your wife to a sort of everlasting suicide. You prefer that, I
suppose, to——”
“Infinitely,” Christopher interrupted (he got the habit from Irene, I
think). “But that must be said for you alone, Irene. I love Q 2: I
haven’t been as loyal to it as the others have been; but I love it,
and them. If you would give me a chance, I could be very happy here.”
“Pleasant,” Irene said, “and interesting to hear you, after we have
been married seven weeks, talking about me alone. Dividing us. Leaving
me alone, while you step to the other side with your precious family.”
“If there is a division,” Christopher said—I am sure that they had
both forgotten all about me—“you are making it.”
“No,” she said. “Not yet. But understand this, Christopher, I will not
plan a life here—not even with you.”
At that moment Olympe came into the room. She has been wearing all her
silk petticoats for everyday, since Irene came, so she rustles almost
as crisply as Irene does. She was well into the room, she had come
down the back stairway, before she noticed us near the fireplace. I
was crying. Irene looked as if she were burning, and Christopher
looked like her ashes—gray-white.
Irene flamed out at Olympe: “I was telling Christopher that I will not
stay here in this hole. That, if he plans to live the remainder of his
life here, he will plan to live it without me.”
Think, Judy, what a wonderful opportunity it would have been for
Olympe’s “Quilter men” speech, the one she does like gray velvet, or
even her “God help the Quilter wives” speech. But she remained stone
deaf. She came to me, and put her arm around my shoulders, and said,
“Come with Olympe, sweetheart,” and gave me one of her exquisite
handkerchiefs and led me out of the room.
We met Uncle Phineas and Aunt Gracia. Uncle Phineas, of course, began
to hug and kiss me and quote the Queen: “Consider what o’clock it is!
Consider anything, only don’t cry!” Aunt Gracia tried to get me away
from Uncle Phineas to find out whether I’d been bumped or burned, and
everyone was all excited and concerned as they always are when I cry.
I wish they wouldn’t do that way. I wish I might indulge more often in
the luxury of tears. It should be, I think, one of the recompenses for
the length of time one has to be a child. Neal says they fuss so
because I open my mouth so wide and make such a noise. I can’t help
it. I believe no one can be heartbroken and fastidious at the same
time.
Olympe was very angry. She said a great deal. Among other things she
said that Q 2 was no longer a fit place for a child, and that I had
been forced to witness a disgusting scene, and that Irene was
threatening to leave Christopher.
Uncle Phineas said: “Hoop-la! That’s the best news I’ve heard since
McKinley beat Bryan.”
Olympe said, “Pan!”
After supper Irene apologized to Grandfather before all of us. She
said that she had not understood about Q 2, but that now Christopher
had made things plain to her. Of course, she went on to say, she had
never intended that the entire “farm” be sold. Her idea had been to
sell small sections of it, here and there; just enough to supply us
with what money we needed for the present.
Uncle Phineas told the story about the man who loved his dog so much
that, when he had to cut his tail off, he chopped it in small chunks,
so as not to hurt the poor creature so much. Aunt Gracia suggested
that we go into the back parlour and have some music.
Uncle Phineas played and Irene sang some of the new coon songs she
brought from the East. Then Irene and Christopher did a queer new
dance that is called a “Cake-walk.” They say it is much more effective
when there are several couples. Aunt Gracia sang for the rest of us.
While she was singing Irene sat by me and talked.
She told me about the new moving photography. She says every face is
recognizable, and that every motion is made. I should love to see it;
but, probably, they will never have it in Oregon. She told me, too,
that she and Christopher had seen several of the new horseless
carriages in New York. She says it is positively eerie to see them
gliding along by themselves. No one here, except Grandfather, thinks
that they will ever be more than a fad; but Grandfather predicts that,
in time, they will at least share equal honours with the horse.
I love you, dear, and I love Greg.—Lucy.
CHAPTER V
I
May 1, 1900.
Dearest Judy: Neal says that when you say for me not to write anything
about people unless I can write good things about them you are
displaying the worst sort of Quilter sentimentality. Uncle Phineas
says that your dictum would deplete the libraries. He says to tell you
that, if you don’t know your Plato, you should know your Boswell and
your Pepys. But Grandfather says that the whole secret of the art of
letter writing lies in writing not what one wishes to chronicle, but
what the recipient can find delight in reading. So, I shall try to
write only good things about everyone in your letters. Just now that
may be difficult. It can’t be helped. And, if you should change your
mind, after having Neal’s and Uncle Phineas’s opinions, please let me
know.
You ask what has happened to my lessons. It was necessary to
discontinue them for a while, after Chris and Irene came home. Aunt
Gracia was too busy to hear them. But now I am having them every day
with Chris. And, of course, my Latin twice a week with Grandfather,
and my music and French with Olympe.
Chris has time now for my lessons. He has stopped helping Father and
Neal with the ranch work and has begun his writing again. He was no
real help, anyway, to Father and Neal. And, when he writes, there is
always a possibility that he may make a great deal of money and also
achieve fame. He has begun a new play and has the cast of characters
all made out. The leading man’s rôle is to be for Nat Goodwin.
Irene is happier now that Christopher stays in the house all the time
with her. We have tried to get her to ride with us, but she is afraid
even of Wednesday’s Child. She says she would not be afraid to ride in
a ladies’ phaëton, if we had one. She has sent to New York for some of
her household things that she left there. When they come she is going
to fix up her room and Chris’s so that it can be called a studio.
Yesterday was Olympe’s sixty-first birthday. We had dinner in the
evening and a celebration. Olympe sat in Grandfather’s chair at the
head of the table, and remembered her chin, and was superb. Especially
superb when everyone stood and drank her toast with the table claret
we had left over from your wedding. Dong Lee baked a triumph of a
cake, and we put one tall wax taper in its centre. (White wax tapers
always remind me of Aunt Gracia.) I wish we might celebrate for Olympe
several times each year. She is so transcendent when she is happy.
Even Irene said, last night, that Olympe was not unlike Sarah
Bernhardt. We missed you and Greg so much that not one of us mentioned
either of you all evening.
I fear that what you suggest about my sense of humour may be just. It
has often troubled me. But Grandfather says humour is a faculty which
develops late. He says one should not blame me for not having a fully
developed sense of humour, unless one is willing to blame me for not
having a fully developed stature. He says that my sense of humour is
coming on nicely; that I have a sense of wit and a sense of the
ludicrous, and that the more subtle sense will develop as I develop. I
hope it is true. But I know that Grandfather is inclined to overrate
my abilities. Irene says he greatly overrates them. She has a little
girl friend, only fourteen years old, who is a reporter on one of the
big New York daily papers. Grandfather said that he presumed the child
was an orphan. Irene said no indeed she was not. Are orphans supposed
to be brighter than other children?
Dear sister, I send very much love to you and Greg.—Lucy.
II
May 30, 1900.
Dearest Judy dear: I am glad that you have given me some leeway about
writing. Until your letter came, it seemed impossible for me to write
at all.
It is Uncle Phineas’s fault. He wishes to join the new gold rush to
Nome, Alaska, and he is trying to get Chris to go with him. Uncle
Phineas, while he doesn’t seem old, is edging close to seventy. Chris
has had no training for hardships, and would not know a gold mine from
a gopher hole. We could not raise money anywhere for them to go
properly equipped. If we could, according to the warnings in the
newspapers, the expedition would be, as Grandfather says, criminal
folly. (Of course, all I have been writing about this is gleanings
from the elders.) The _Oregonian_, a few days ago, had an account of
the dreadful dangers and hardships that gold seekers are having to
endure. But, in spite of everything, Uncle Phineas and Chris forge
right ahead with their plans. It makes one think that Aunt Gracia is
right about the childishness of men—though Grandfather and darling
Father would have to be the exceptions that prove that rule.
Olympe is wearing her dreariest gowns and is more tragic than I have
ever seen her. She has added ever so many clauses to her Quilter men
speech (none of them pleasant), and has revised the Quilter wives’
speech until it is almost heartbreaking. But Irene has reformed. She
offers quite often to dust the rooms. She reads Elbert Hubbard, and
Neal says that she is conspicuously living, loving, laughing, and
doing things worth while. That seems well enough to me. Neal says that
it is wormy. Everything is wormy for Neal, lately. It is an unpleasant
new word of his. Marriage, he says, is wormy. He has resolved never to
marry. Even love, he says, is wormy. He says it does to men what
barnacles do to ships. He says to look at what a fine, free-sailing
craft Chris was, before Irene barnacled him all over with her messy
love. Neal is growing cynical and pessimistic. Grandfather says it
doesn’t matter; it is an unavoidable phase of male adolescence.
Some of Irene’s household things have come. She has not unpacked them
yet, as she doesn’t care to have the room called a studio if Chris
goes to Nome. Possibly, then, she would like a _boudoir_. (She has
been asking me how to spell French and Latin words for her, when she
writes to her friends. I have told her for weeks. But, after thinking
it over, I decided, one day, it would be kinder to tell her what
Grandfather said about using foreign words in one’s letters. She
cried, and told Chris that I had said she was vulgar. I had not. I
apologized, though, to please her. I didn’t mind at all.) She has
unpacked some of her linen, to put it in the blue closet so it won’t
turn yellow. It is not as handsome as our best linen, but better than
our third best and much more fancy. She has big initials embroidered
on it. The initial is “B.” I asked her why, since I had thought her
name had been Irene Guildersen.
She was much astonished to discover that the others had not told me
Christopher was her second husband. She seemed proud of it. She told
me very admirable things about her first husband, who is still living.
She divorced him.
Later, when discussing the matter with members of the family, I found
that all of them, except Aunt Gracia, approve of divorce and think
there is nothing even odd about it if, they said, it was procured
because of genuine provocation. These opinions of theirs make it hard
for me to understand why none of them had told me about Irene’s
divorce. Sometimes, though rarely, I agree with Neal, who is
declaring, of late, that there is no accounting for Quilters.
I love you dearly. I love Greg dearly, too.—Lucy.
CHAPTER VI
I
June 9, 1900.
Dearest Judy-pudy: Dr. Joe came out last Thursday to see Father and,
as Neal says, to sit and worship at Grandfather’s feet. Neal himself
worships Grandfather, you know. That is why it makes him angry for
anyone else to do so. I made an epigram about it: “Gods are not
jealous. It is people who are jealous of them.” Grandfather says it is
creditable for a twelve-year-old.
I love Dr. Joe. I think if he couldn’t dispense any medicine he would
still be a splendid doctor. When he steps in, and smiles, everything
always seems to improve. He told Uncle Phineas there was no
possibility that, with his blood pressure, he could survive the
hardships of Nome. So that worry is off our minds. Chris has decided
to finish his play. He has it well in hand, and the cast of characters
all written.
On Saturday, Uncle Phineas started off on a prospecting trip by
himself. It was a blow to us, because we had hoped that Uncle Phineas
had given over prospecting with that last unfortunate trip of his in
1897. But he was so offended about his blood pressure that he drew
thirty dollars from the bank and went down into Malheur County. (Irene
thinks it odd that the checking account at the bank is a joint one for
all the elders. She said so.)
Irene has stopped living, loving, laughing, and doing things worth
while. She broke a Spode cup on Friday. Aunt Gracia cried. Irene said
such a fuss over a cup, when Haviland was prettier, and one of the
Portland department stores had advertised a sale of Haviland china
cups and saucers for eight cents each only last week. She said for
Aunt Gracia to dry her tears and she would send ninety-six cents and
get a dozen. Doesn’t it seem strange that anyone, even Irene, should
not comprehend real Spode? It must mean that her backgrounds are
murky.
Something of the sort would need to be the matter with a person who
could do what Irene did yesterday. She asked Olympe to give her and
Christopher the room that is Uncle Phineas’s and Olympe’s. Olympe was
so amazed that she forgot to be deaf. Besides being amazed she was
angry, and scornful, and amused, and several other feelings. She,
herself, did not seem to have her emotions well sorted.
Aunt Gracia asked Olympe what answer she had given to Irene.
Olympe replied that she had told Irene it seemed to her that
Grandfather’s room was, perhaps, even more attractive; and that, since
Grandfather had had his longer, he was, doubtless, more tired of it
than she and Pan were of their room. She suggested that Irene offer to
exchange rooms with Grandfather.
Aunt Gracia put down the chopping bowl and went running right out of
the kitchen. When she came back she, too, was angry and laughing. She
said she had caught Irene on her way to Grandfather’s room.
Olympe shrugged, in that sophisticated foreign manner of hers, which
Neal so derides, and asked why Aunt Gracia had stopped her. It was
time, Olympe declared, that Grandfather was beginning to see that
young person in her true colours.
It is odd about words, isn’t it, dear? Now “young,” by itself, is a
pleasant word; and “person,” though lacking in charm, is surely
respectable and blameless. But by putting the two words together as
Olympe does, they make an insult. Neal says so it is with people. He
says, take a pleasant girl and a respectable and blameless man, and
marry them and, likely as not, the result will be a joke, or an
insult, or even a curse or a crime. But, as I have told you, Neal is
developing into a regular Timon.
Olympe asked how Aunt Gracia had managed to halt Irene. Aunt Gracia
answered cryptically (this is the exact word because I have just
looked it up in the dictionary), “Blackmail.”
Olympe laughed one of those ruffling lacy laughs of hers and went
away, because the kitchen was steamy and unpleasant. I do not know
whether she understood what Aunt Gracia meant by blackmail. I
understood. Aunt Gracia did not know that I understood.
Irene, you, see, had told me all about it. Her first husband, whose
name is Archie Biggil (isn’t that too bad?) was still madly,
devotedly, ardently, tenderly in love with her. He is an importer, and
had been in Brazil when she had married Chris. Now he has returned to
New York. He has found out about Irene’s second marriage, and where
she is living. He is writing her passionate letters. There is much
more to it than that; but nothing, I think, that you would care to
hear. Irene was worried for fear Chris would find out about her
receiving the passionate letters. She told me because she had to tell
someone. I don’t know why she told Aunt Gracia. I trust that Chris
will not find out about the letters. I feel certain they would annoy
him. He acts, lately, as if he were as much annoyed as a man could be
and remain in health. I think he was disappointed about Nome and the
gold mine.
I love you and Greg very dearly.—Lucy.
II
June 25, 1900.
Dearest, dear Judy: I thought it very sweet of you to be sorry for
Irene, and to have her remind you of Ruth, sick for home, standing in
tears among the alien corn. Neal does not agree with me. He says
misplaced sympathy is the trademark of the sentimentalist, and that
anyone who could be sorry for Irene here, on Q 2 Ranch, would be sorry
for the Black Hole of Calcutta because it had to have all those people
packed into it. I am giving you Neal’s opinion, not because I think it
is very smart, but because I fear it is true.
I believe, if you really feel like being sorry for anyone in
particular now, it would be wise to be sorry for Christopher because
he is the only one here who deeply loves Irene. Not loving, and not
being loved, does give one such a satisfactory removed feeling. You
know, we were so miserable when we thought Whatof was killing the
chickens; but when we found that it was a coyote and not Whatof,
nearly all of the heavy, hurting feeling went away. I suppose, though,
if we were to think that through, as Grandfather always advises, we
should discover that it made no difference to the chickens, the real
sufferers in the event, whether they were killed by a dog or a coyote.
To carry out the analogy, we on the Q 2 Ranch, now, are in the
positions of the chickens. Losing Q 2 would be a little worse than
dying, don’t you think?
Christopher has had an offer from one of the big land companies for
the ranch. They buy the big ranches and divide them and sell them as
small farms to the settlers who are coming in from Nebraska and
Missouri and Utah. At first Christopher was indignant about the offer.
It was an insultingly small sum, he declared. But, in a day or two, he
was saying that suppose he did sell a part of Q 2, leaving the direct
home place and forty or fifty acres surrounding it——Darling Father
said that if Christopher would show him how to make a living for
eleven people from forty acres of land, particularly the forty
surrounding the house, he would not have another word to say.
Christopher said if he and Irene left the place they would never take
another penny from it, but would go on their own from that time on.
Neal, who was present, asked, “Own what, Chris?”
Irene answered, “Not our own property.”
Aunt Gracia said, the other evening, “Christopher, do you ever stop to
think that right up to now you have never wanted anything, education,
travel, leisure, that Q 2 hasn’t given you?”
Christopher said: “I’m not forgetting, don’t worry, Gracia. Though
that is over, now. I’ll never take another dollar from the place that
I don’t earn right here.” (He is working hard on his new play. He has
it well in hand, and the cast of characters all written. The principal
part is to be for Mr. Sothern.) “What is troubling me now is Irene’s
health.”
“Not Dick’s health?” Aunt Gracia asked.
“Dick’s health, too, and of course,” Christopher said. “But I am not
responsible for Dick. I can’t do anything about his health.”
“Can’t you?” Aunt Gracia inquired.
“Meaning, my dear?” Chris answered.
“That Dick is ill. That he is doing the work of six men. That you
could stop worrying him, and insist that your wife stop it.” Aunt
Gracia, talking like that, gives you an idea of the conditions here.
Irene mopes around all the time and says she does not feel well. She
doesn’t look well, either. But she eats—well, at least heartily and
often—and she will never go outside the house, not even in this new
June weather. Dr. Joe says that he is damned if he knows what is the
matter with her. Christopher said, “Sir, do you mean to suggest that
my wife is malingering?”
“No,” Dr. Joe said. “Do you?”
I must run now and help Aunt Gracia. I love you both, Greg and you,
dear, very dearly.—Lucy.
CHAPTER VII
I
July 6, 1900.
Dear, dear Sister Judy: Last night I had a terrible nightmare. I
screamed and woke. I found unhappiness sitting like a giant on my
chest. I began to cry. Neal came in, wrapped in his dressing gown. You
know how Neal seems to lose command of himself when I cry, so almost
at once I had to stop. I hoped he might go back to bed again. He would
not. He insisted on sitting on the foot of my bed until we could, as
he said, discover together what troubled me until I woke crying in the
night. Finally, after quite a talk, we found that it was, probably,
fear. Fear, you know, of our losing Q 2.
Speaking of fear usually makes Neal impatient. Last night he said—he
is often sarcastic of late, but Grandfather told me, privately, that
was but another manifestation of his age—of course crying was the best
thing to do in the face of fear or danger. He said when Teddy charged
up San Juan Hill he got afraid they were going to lose the battle,
about midway up the hill, and put his head down and wept salt tears
into his horse’s mane. He said that was the way to win battles—to sit
and cry, as Olympe did, and make plans for the poorhouse.
I told Neal that, if we called it a battle, Irene must be the foe, and
that she cried most of the time—always when either Christopher or
Father was present.
Neal said tears were her weapons, not ours, he hoped.
I explained that I was not using tears for weapons. I was using them
for lamentations over having to leave Q 2.
Neal said, who was going to leave? He wasn’t. If worst came to worst,
he would stay in Q 2 as a stableboy for some Swede farmer. He said he
would stay just as he would stay in America and be an American if some
foreign power, even Spain, should conquer us. He said, too, that just
as there was nothing he wouldn’t do, including the shedding of blood,
to save his country from foreign usurpation, so there was nothing he
would not do to save Q 2 for the Quilters. (For one thing, I think, it
was the Fourth of July only day before yesterday.)
What we must do, Neal said, was what Uncle Phineas had tried to do
with the Nome scheme: separate Irene and Christopher. He thinks
Christopher would stop thinking about selling Q 2 if he were removed
from what Neal calls the venom of Irene’s proximity.
I thought separating them would be wrong, since they loved each other.
Neal said it was not love. It was infatuation. He called me an idiot.
I did not like it, so perhaps I am not one.
I told Neal that it was difficult for me to understand how so much
trouble could be caused about nothing but money. Money is real. It can
be handled and earned, and lost. People have it, to save or to spend.
I have always fancied that real trouble had to be about vague things,
such as love, or hate; or about unobtainable things, like health for
darling Father and Greg, or a baby for Uncle Phineas and Olympe; or
unpreventable things, like war and death.
Father just came in. Aunt Gracia needs me, so I must end this letter.
Father looks very tired most of the time lately. He told Neal the
other day that he could not work and fight both, and that he had to
work. He said for you not to worry about Bryan’s nomination. That he
would have been elected in 1896, if he had ever been going to be. He
sends you and Greg his dearest love, and a check, and says there is
plenty more of both where these came from.
I hope what I have written about money won’t worry you, dear. Aunt
Gracia said the other day that what we send to you and Greg to live on
would not be pin money for Chris, let alone Chris and Irene.
I love you, Judy. I love dear Greg. I love you both together.—Lucy.
II
July 31, 1900.
Dearest dear Judy-pudy: Olympe says that she wrote to you several days
ago and told you about darling Father’s narrow escape from death. All
of me goes empty, even yet, when I think of it. Fancy the wagon’s
tongue breaking when Father was driving Bell and Zebub over Quilter
Mountain! Grandfather had advised against the team, but Father was in
a hurry and Bread and Butter are so slow.
If Indian Charles, from 3 O X, had not happened to be right there,
Father would certainly have been killed. Aunt Gracia thinks that God
put Indian Charles at that particular curve to stop the horses,
though, as Grandfather says, that bears thinking through. It does seem
that the simpler way would have been to have had Neal notice the
tongue when he was overhauling the wagon. Darling Father would be
angry if he knew I had written that. He says overhauling the wagon was
his job and not Neal’s, and that Neal is in no way responsible for the
accident. Poor Neal keeps declaring that the tongue was in good shape
a week ago, and everyone is being so exaggeratedly nice to him that I
scarcely see how he can endure it. Even Dong Lee baked Neal’s special
tart for supper that evening.
Father makes light of the whole affair, though he strained the
ligaments in his wrist and has to wear his arm in a sling. About all
that Father is, is thankful. Irene and Christopher were going with him
and, at the last moment, decided against it. If three people had been
on the seat, Father thinks none of them could have stayed there. Aunt
Gracia attributes Christopher’s and Irene’s decision to God, too.
Isn’t it strange how trying to see the hand of Providence in things
does confuse them? I have been thinking a great deal, lately, about
God. I wrote a poem about Him. It is the accident, I think. Until
Uncle Phineas came home, the accident had a most sobering, almost
religious effect on all of us.
This is odd. When you and Greg went away, it seemed as if the
happiness we had had because of having you with us never had equalled,
nor made up for, the unhappiness we had to endure because you were
gone. But, when Uncle Phineas came home on Wednesday, it seemed as if
the unhappiness of having him away had been nothing compared to the
fun of having him home again. Uncle Phineas, I believe, is one of
those people whom his family appreciate more after they have been
without him for rather a long time.
He is in splendid high spirits. Perhaps he has found another gold
mine. No one, I think, has remembered to ask him. While he was away,
Olympe kept longing for his return in order that he and she might make
their plans together for the poorhouse. But she has been so happy
since he came that she has forgotten all about the poorhouse. She is
wearing her gayer frocks, and giving only her lighter, more whimsical
speeches.
Since the accident, I haven’t heard either Irene or Chris mention
selling the place. Chris is working hard on his new play. Mr. Joseph
Jefferson is to have the leading rôle. Also, Chris has done another
sonnet to Irene. He did it yesterday during our lesson time. It is
fortunate that Irene has so many splendid rhymes: green, serene,
sheen, queen, been (as Grandfather pronounces it), clean, and dozens
of others. Greg would have a hard time rhyming you into a sonnet. But
Greg would never think of writing a sonnet to you. Aren’t you glad?
Not, of course, that I disapprove of authors, since I am planning to
be one. But I am going to be a writer, rather than an author. When I
told Chris that, and that I was going to cover pages and pages with
real written words, and then stack them up and sell them, he said:
“Precisely. You are going to be a hardy perennial author.” And then he
gave me quite a lecture about ambitions and bandbox zeniths. But
Grandfather said, not at all. That he had yet to associate real genius
with the ability for being enterprisingly unproductive.
It is past bedtime. I love you both very dearly, and I send my love to
you both in this letter.—Lucy.
CHAPTER VIII
I
August 1, 1900.
Dearest Judy dear: Father and Uncle Phineas and Chris have all gone to
Portland for a few days. They left here last Thursday. I think that
they will return to-morrow. Father had to see Dr. Joe. I don’t know
why the others went, unless it was, perhaps, for the trip.
Christopher was no sooner out of sight than Irene began to move
Father’s belongings out of his room, preparing to unpack her boxes and
to instal herself and Christopher in Father’s room. She said she
positively had not asked Father to exchange rooms with her. She said
he had offered to do so, because he had heard that she wanted a cupola
room in order to fix the cupola up as an Oriental cozy corner.
Olympe asked her why she had not made the exchange while Christopher
had been at home. Irene said because she wished to surprise him. (It
is only by remembering Grandfather’s sixth rule, under “B,” that I am
restraining myself from underlining almost every word in this letter,
and clubbing it all up with ! ! !)
Aunt Gracia and Olympe tried to reason with Irene. She kept right
along dumping things out of Father’s room and tugging her things in. I
ran and told Grandfather. He would not budge. Grandfather, of late,
budges less and less. The only thing he has said about the entire
affair he said this morning when Irene took him into the room to show
it to him. He said: “My word! My wordless word!”
Neal declares that he and I should try to be broad-minded and
receptive toward the new. He says that forward steps should be made in
house furnishings as well as in other things. He says that perhaps the
ultra-moderns are right in attempting to get away from the austerity
of the early colonial furnishings. He says that perhaps we do need
more colour, more daintiness, more luxury, and more invitations to
relaxation.
Aunt Gracia says that if Neal and I find daintiness in that room, her
imagination pales before our conception of a really honest, cleanly
junk heap. She said that a fishnet stuck full of trash was not merely
inartistic, it was also a wall-wide inducement to dirt. She said she
could get all the colour she needed from the Turkey carpets in the
front and back parlours that Great-great-grandfather had bought in the
Orient, or from the pulled rugs that Great-grandmother and her
sister-in-law had made. She said the Oriental cozy corner was not an
invitation to relaxation. She said it was an invitation to
assassination.
Poor, lovely Aunt Gracia has grown bitter of late. For one thing, I
think that her blackmailing, as she called it, has turned into a
boomerang. Irene told me about it. That is, Irene said that if Chris
knew she didn’t have to stay here, that Archie was pleading with her
to return to him, and that he would send her the money for the trip at
any time, she thought that Chris would act very differently.
I asked Irene why, then, if she wished Chris to act differently, she
did not tell him about Archie? She said that she was tempted to, every
minute of the day; but that Gracia advised so strongly against it she
was afraid to. She said that Gracia had known Chris longer than she,
Irene, had known him; and that Gracia was afraid such a disclosure
might result in tragedy.
I asked Irene what sort of tragedy. Irene did not know. So I went and
asked Aunt Gracia.
I could not get any satisfaction from her because she was indignant
with Irene for having told me about Archie Biggil and his passionate
letter, and the rest. Aunt Gracia is sweet but odd. She does not
understand that I know all there is to know about at least the
theories of love and passion from having read widely about them in
books.
She said that unless I would promise her never again to listen to
Irene when she talked on subjects of the sort, she would take the
matter up with Grandfather. I told her I would not promise, because it
was unreasonable for her to ask me to. Not, you understand, Judy dear,
that I liked listening to the sort of thing Irene was always telling
me. Dr. Joe did not like to cut up cadavers when he was in medical
college, either. It was a part of his education that he had to endure.
So I thought that, since live men did actually say to live women: “My
God! The haunting beauty of your white body never leaves me day or
night!” I should, as a prospective writer, know it. That is what I
told Aunt Gracia.
She put her arm around me and said let us go and talk to Grandfather.
We did so. Aunt Gracia and I were both astonished to find that he knew
all about Archie Biggil. Irene had told him, he said, because she was
troubled and needed to confide in someone.
Grandfather said that I had been quite right in refusing to promise
not to listen to Irene; that is, if I wished to be a writer of the
Laura Jean Libby or Marie Corelli school. He had thought, he said,
that I cared more for Dickens, Thackeray, and Scott; but, evidently,
he had been labouring under a misconception.
I had a feeling that Grandfather was what Chris calls “spoofing” me;
but I could not be sure. Perhaps I was mistaken. At any rate, quite
soon, we got it straightened out tidily.
An author, Grandfather says, must go about collecting material
constantly. But, despite that, an author must use a definite
discrimination about the sort of material he chooses to collect.
Grandfather says that no person can gather all the sorts, because it
is a physiological fact that one’s brain has room for only a certain
amount. It was necessary, he said, to decide quite early on one’s
standards, and then collect in line with them, to the exclusion of
other material, in order that one’s mind should not become hopelessly
cluttered.
I feel that Grandfather should have given me this information long
ago. I am thankful to have obtained it now before it is entirely too
late.
It took us some time, you see, to get to the explanation of the
tragedy that Aunt Gracia feared.
Grandfather said to her that he, like Lucy, was not quite clear on
this point. He could not, he said, visualize Christopher running about
menacing fatuous ex-husbands.
Aunt Gracia replied that it seemed to her the real tragedy impending
was for Christopher to discover Irene.
Grandfather smiled that heavenly smile of his that usually means a
pearl. “He won’t, dearest. Set your mind at rest. He won’t. That, in
itself, constitutes the tragedy—or the triumph—of marriage.”
I think that I do not fully understand this. But, since I am sure it
is a pearl, I am quoting it for you. You are married. You may
understand it. At any rate, no matter what it means, exactly, it must
mean that no tragedy, like _Hamlet_, with everyone lying about dead,
is apt to happen.
Judy dear, I love you. Will you tell Greg that I love him, too?—Lucy.
II
August 28, 1900.
Dear, dear Judy-pudy: It was good of you to take so long to explain to
me what Grandfather meant about the tragedy, or the triumph, of
marriage. I think it rather bold of you to say that Grandfather, who
is eighty years old, is wrong about it. You are only twenty-two years
old. But it does not matter. I am no longer interested in marriage. I
have decided, with Neal, never to marry.
Though, of late, I dislike to be on Neal’s side about anything. Some
great change, terrible, grewsome, seems to have occurred within him.
(I know that is a poor sentence, and that it is of a literary flavour
which I despise. But I have tried several drafts on scratch paper and
it seems to be the best I can do.) Or, to put it simply as Grandfather
always advises: If Neal had been a dog for the past few months we
should have been afraid he would bite us. Now he acts as if he had
bitten us and were glad of it.
I do not know what has caused this change in Neal, but I know who has.
The person is Uncle Phineas. When Uncle Phineas came home from his
prospecting trip last month, he came home with a secret. He told Neal
the secret. I am sure of this. They got off alone together and
whispered about the secret.
When I said this to Neal he was angry. He said to have a person like
me in it was a scourge to any family. He did not mean that, I am sure.
But he was very polite, and talked in a low voice, even when he called
names, such as “rubberneck” and threatened. After the many years of
deep study that I have devoted to character, I hope I have at least
discovered that no one gets as angry over anything as Neal got unless
it is the truth. If I had been making a childishly simple mistake,
Neal would have teased me and laughed at me.
Neal said that it was crumby—everything is crumby with Neal, just now,
but that is an improvement over wormy—for me to think that Uncle
Phineas would share a secret with him and with no other member of the
family. It isn’t—crumby, I mean—because, if it were rather a naughty
or mischievous secret, as it probably would be since Uncle Phineas had
it for his, Neal would be more in sympathy with it than would any
other member of the family. Not, of course, that either Neal or Uncle
Phineas would do any wrong thing, but—well, you understand what I
mean. For instance, Uncle Phineas, I believe, is the only member of
the family who would join Neal in his plan to separate Irene and
Christopher. Of course I have no proof that Uncle Phineas has not
shared his secret with some other member of the family. All I know
about that is, if he has shared it with someone else it has not
affected the someone as it has affected Neal.
Father has changed a bit since he returned from Portland, but, if
possible, for the better. I think that is because Chris has stopped
worrying him. Did I tell you that Christopher went to Portland to try
to raise some money? He couldn’t. He has come home again and is
working hard on his new play.
Uncle Phineas has remained in Portland. Even though he is not running
up hotel bills, but is visiting Dr. Joe, it does seem strange for him
to remain in the city for so long. Olympe is furious about it. She
does fury beautifully—not at all in an ordinary fashion, but with
dignity and hauteur. She manages it so nicely, I think, because she
blames Irene and not Uncle Phineas. She pretends that no person in his
senses would stay on the same ranch with Irene if he could stay
elsewhere. I should think that she might blame Chris because he is
responsible for Irene. She does not. She pities him. That is worse
than blaming, of course. Though poor Chris does seem to deserve to be
pitied.
Judy, dear, he was stunned when he discovered that Irene had exchanged
rooms with Father. He came downstairs alone, looking faded and like a
poor photograph of himself.
“Dick, old boy,” he said to Father, “I’m tremendously sorry about this
fracas upstairs. It isn’t that Irene is selfish. She’s the most
generous little thing in the world, really. She doesn’t understand——”
Father said of course she didn’t, and neither did he. He said there
was no tradition that he was aware of which would keep the various
members of the family from making an exchange of rooms, when the
exchange was advantageous.
It may be advantageous for Irene. For all the rest of us it is an
irritation. A dozen times a day, beginning with the morning towels and
ending with the evening lamps, some one of us makes a mistake about
the rooms. We stand and knock at the door of the room that is now
Father’s thinking that Irene or Christopher may be in it. And, since
we know that Father is never in his room in the daytime, we open that
door and walk right in, intruding on Irene and Christopher in a most
humiliating fashion.
Father himself forgets. He came from his bath, the other evening—he
was very tired—and opened the door to his old room and walked right
in. He came so quietly, in his slippers, that Irene had not heard him.
She was in the room alone and she was frightened. (She said it was
partly because she had never seen Father in his dressing gown before.)
She screamed and screamed and screamed. She cried, and had what she
calls a heart attack. Chris was frantic, and poor, darling Father was
stunned from the shock of having caused a lady such distress.
During the heart attack, Irene said that any decent house would have
keys to the doors. Wednesday, Aunt Gracia went to the attic and found
the keys for the doors, and shined them up with Sapolio and put them
in the keyholes. None of us use them, except Irene. Neal is very smart
about them. He says they open a new era on the Q 2 Ranch. He has made
up a song, to the tune of “Bringing in the Sheaves,” which he calls
“Turning Quilter Keys,” and which he sings about, objectionably.
I send my love to you, dear, and to Greg.—Lucy.
CHAPTER IX
I
September 10, 1900.
Judith dearest: Christopher, I think, is going to sell Q 2 Ranch. It
seems odd and perhaps not right that a private disaster like this
should completely overshadow, for us, the terrible disaster in
Galveston day before yesterday. But it has. I think that Christopher
gave us credit for more altruism, and so told us yesterday when we
were all so troubled over the Galveston sufferers. I think that he
thought our own trouble would diminish by comparison. It has not.
When all the mortgages are paid, Christopher will have about $9,000
left over. If he and Irene take half, that will leave $4,500 for
Grandfather, Father, Olympe, Uncle Phineas, Aunt Gracia, you, Greg,
Neal, and me.
Christopher says that we can buy a pleasant Willamette Valley farm for
less than half of that, and start free and clear. That will be much
better, he says, since this place is too large for Father and Neal to
handle, especially since Father’s health is so uncertain.
Indeed, Christopher declares, Father’s health is one of his chief
reasons for selling. He thinks it is not fair to expect Father to
carry on this struggle under a load of debt. Aside from the sentiment
attached to the place, Christopher says, a smaller place, clear of
debt, would be better for everyone. However, he says he will not act
hastily, nor counter to our wishes in the matter. The offer is open
for sixty days.
No one says anything. No one will say anything. I mean, not anything
at all. I mean, not one single word. Not, “Yes, Christopher,” or, “No,
Christopher.” I believe that Uncle Phineas might talk, if he were
here. Uncle Phineas is lost.
Neal and I are the only ones who know this. After Christopher broke
the news to us yesterday morning, Neal and I rode to Quilterville. We
sent a telegram to Uncle Phineas, in care of Dr. Joe. Neal had to tell
me what he was going to do because he had to borrow my pocket money,
to put with his money, to send the telegram. We stayed in Quilterville
several hours waiting for the reply. When it came it was from Dr. Joe.
It said: “Phineas not here. Mum’s the word. No occasion for worry. He
is O. K. Joe.”
We had no money to answer that telegram. Neal says he thinks that
Uncle Phineas has gone on another prospecting trip. It is odd, because
Olympe got a letter from him this morning, written in Portland and
mailed from there. I picked up the envelope and looked to see the
postmark.
Neal thinks that Uncle Phineas wrote several letters, and left them
for Dr. Joe to mail in regular order. It would not be unlike Uncle
Phineas. The fact that Olympe had sent him her garnet set to be
cleaned, and that he did not mention it in this letter, might seem to
prove Neal right. Olympe has written, now, to have him sell the set
instead.
Aunt Gracia is going to sell Great-great-great-grandmother’s silver
tea set. It is hers, you know. Olympe says the Turkey carpets belong
to Uncle Phineas and have ever since he settled the estate in
Virginia. She is going to have him sell them. The amount should keep
you and Greg in comparative comfort for a long time, she thinks. Aunt
Gracia is hoping for a teacher’s position. She is hunting out old
books to bone up for the examinations. Neal plans to stay right here
and work for his board only, if necessary. Grandfather will apply for
his pension after all these years. It will be about seventeen dollars
a month.
Aunt Gracia has asked me to come and help her now, so I must go. Dear,
I love you and Greg very, very much.—Lucy.
II
September 21, 1900.
Dearest, dearest Judy-pudy: If you have worked out, in your philosophy
for living, any special thing to say or to do to prepare you for a
shock, it would be wise to say or do it right now. I have very bad
news to tell you.
The stress and worry of the last several months, combined with darling
Father’s ill health and the final news that Q 2 is to be sold, has
unhinged his mind. Just a little bit, Judy dear. Not enough so that
any of us had noticed it. Truly, truly. We had no idea of such a
thing, before the blow fell. And, if the blow had not fallen, we would
not know it now. He seems just the same as always. Truly he does,
Judy. Perhaps a little sweeter and kinder—but really just the same.
So, when you think of dear, darling Father, think of him as acting
just as he acted when you and Greg left home in March. If you were to
walk right into the room this minute, you would not see a bit of
difference in Father’s mentality. Truly, truly you wouldn’t, Judy.
But, dear, the truth is that Father is now a baptized Siloamite. But
remember quickly, Judy, before this makes you ill or anything: _Father
is just the same wonderful man._
Wednesday those two pleasant young missionaries, Mr. Cordinger and Mr.
Withmore, came to the house. Since they knew nothing about our
troubles, and were jolly and interesting, it was almost a blessing to
have them. If they had not unhinged dear, darling Father’s mind, it
would still be better than not to have them here. They are staying on,
in the attic room, for a week or so. You know they never force their
religious views on anyone, or even ask anyone to join their church; so
how it could have happened that they unhinged Father’s mind, I cannot
understand.
To-day, when they and Aunt Gracia and darling Father started to drive
to Quilter River, we had no idea that Father was not in a normal
state. Judith, when they got to Quilter River, Father allowed himself
to be baptized in it. They all came home and deliberately told us.
Knowing Father as we know him, and knowing his opinions of even less
ornamental nonconformist religions, of course such an act can mean but
one thing. I have not found courage yet to discuss the matter with
anyone except Neal, not even with Grandfather.
Neal says that he thinks there is some dark, sinister meaning behind
it, like blackmail. Neal says that Christopher thinks so, too. If
Christopher does think this, it seems odd that he has now ridden to
Quilterville to mail a letter asking Dr. Joe to come to Father.
I do not believe that it was blackmail. Those two young missionaries
are the sort that Grandfather calls clean, wholesome chaps. And, if
they were wicked, how could they blackmail a man like darling Father
who has led a perfect life?
Judith, dear, I think I am not able to write more now. If I had found
any consolation for myself, I would give it to you. But I have found
none. I have nothing to give to you but my love.—Lucy.
III
September 22, 1900.
Dearest Judy dear: If only I had not sent that letter to you
yesterday! Or if only I had not spent all my money with Neal’s
telegraphing to Uncle Phineas, and could telegraph to you now to
disregard letter, as Christopher did that time in the university when
he planned to commit suicide, and wrote to us about it, and then
changed his mind.
Neal and I have discovered that Father is not, and never was for one
moment, insane. I can write that word now. I could not write it
yesterday.
Last night Neal decided to go straight to Father and ask him why he
had been baptized. I advised against it, fearing that it might make
Father worse again. Neal, fortunately this time, paid no more
attention to my advice than he usually does.
Neal was excited and frightened, though he denied it. He went rushing
upstairs and followed his own quick knock straight into Irene and
Christopher’s room. Christopher had forgotten, again, to lock their
door. Irene had her hair done up in kid curlers. Neal apologized and
pretended not to see. Irene had a slight heart attack. I think because
she has assumed, without actually saying it, that her hair waved
naturally. It was unlike Neal to tell about the kid curlers. He would
not have told a month ago. Sometimes it seems as if Christopher were
selling more of the Quilters than just their family estate. Yesterday,
I thought, he had sold darling Father’s sanity. That is not true,
because this is what Father told Neal.
He said that he liked to pay his debts. He said that the accident had
frightened Aunt Gracia and had started her to worrying, again, about
his immortal soul. She thought that if he had died not in a state of
grace, as she calls it, he would have been doomed to whatever Avernus
the Siloamites had manufactured. He did not have their conception of
it clearly in his mind, but he was sure that it was shockingly
unpleasant. He said that Aunt Gracia had been a mother to us children,
and had stood with him, shoulder to shoulder, all his life. He said
she had enough to trouble her, just now, without being troubled about
him. And for him to allow himself to be dipped, once, into Quilter
River seemed to him a very small payment to make to her.
Neal told Father that he could not go with him in that argument. Neal
said that he thought hypocrisy was never justified. Father said he had
tried to foil his conscience with the same casuistry, but that he
could not. Father said kindness was its own justification. He said
that the sacrifice he had made to please Gracia and to set her mind at
ease was so genuine that it cancelled hypocrisy. Neal said that he did
not believe in sacrifice. Father said, “Neither does Christopher.”
Neal had to admit, of course, that it always depended upon the
sacrifice and who made it. Neal could not understand why Aunt Gracia
should have worried about Father, in particular. Neal said he had
never heard of her worrying about any other Quilter’s immortal soul.
Father told him why. Father said that we children were old enough to
know, and that he had meant, for some time, to tell us.
Judy, a few months before Neal was born, a man who lived in these
parts then was courting Aunt Gracia. Aunt Gracia was infatuated with
him. Mother never did like him, and she had once complained to Father
that the man stared at her. But Father said Mother was so very
beautiful that he could not blame anyone for looking at her. Still,
Father kept an eye on the man; but he soon succeeded in convincing
Father that he was interested only in Aunt Gracia.
One evening, when Father knew that the man was on our place, Father
stopped work a bit early. He did not distrust the man in the least, or
he would not have allowed him to be courting Aunt Gracia. So he
doesn’t know why he stopped work early that evening—he just did so.
And, as he was coming through the oak grove, he heard Mother scream.
Father spurred his Cayuse, and got there just in time to shoot and
kill the man before he had harmed Mother.
Father went straight to the sheriff. In a few days they had a trial.
The jury acquitted Father without leaving the courtroom. And the judge
apologized to Father for having bothered him with the affair.
None of this has ever troubled Father’s conscience at all. He said
there was but one thing to do, and he did it. But he says that, since
Aunt Gracia deep in her own heart has never truly forgiven him, she
thinks the Lord has not forgiven him either. She even thinks that the
Lord would not forgive Father, unless Father made some special kowtow
in his direction. So Father made the kowtow to gratify Aunt Gracia.
Not long after the trouble, Father said, the missionaries of the
Siloamites came to the house, and Aunt Gracia became a convert to
their faith. The religion turned Aunt Gracia from a hard, bitter,
broken person into a useful, serene, lovable woman again. Because of
this, Father said, he felt that he also owed a certain debt to the
Siloamites—a debt that he was glad to pay.
Father said he told Aunt Gracia that he could not say her religious
beliefs were true, because he did not know. He could not say that they
were false, because he did not know. He knew nothing. But, since her
religion was a beautiful, kind, and just religion, he hoped that it
might be true. And that, if with nothing stronger for a foundation
than hope, his baptism would mean anything to her, he was willing to
go through with the ceremony. She told him that it would mean
everything to her. He was baptized.
Neal asked Father why Aunt Gracia’s foolish happiness meant more to
him than the humiliation of the rest of the family, particularly
yours, Judy, and Neal’s and mine.
Father answered that if an act, which was both kind and useful, could
humiliate his children, then he was sorry.
Since you have asked for it twice, I will send you my poem about God.
Grandfather says that it has a thought in it; but he says that he
thinks my medium will prove to be the stately splendour of English
prose. He named my poem for me.
Omnipotence
God was sad, and he sighed,
“How little the earth men know,
They think I am satisfied
With my work down there below.
So they blame me for blunders of hand,
And they scorn me for tasks ill done.
Why can’t they understand
That I have only begun?
Do they think I am unaware
That much I have wrought has been wrong?
My burdens are heavy to bear.
Why won’t they help me along?”
IV
A knock, demand nicely moderated by deference, tapped on the glass of
Lynn MacDonald’s office door.
Her secretary said, “Shall I have your car brought around, Miss
MacDonald, or shall I order your dinner sent up to you?”
Lynn MacDonald added the last page of Lucy’s final letter to the pile
of pages in front of her and smoothed it flat with her palms. Near the
telephone were Neal Quilter’s letters, a package of neatly taped
temptation.
“Neither just now, Miss Kingsbury. I think I shall stay here for half
an hour or so longer. But you must go straight home. I thought you had
gone some time ago.”
“I can’t help you?”
“Not now, thank you.”
The tape untied easily. From the envelope with the blue figure 1 on it
she took Neal Quilter’s first letter, and shook the thick folded pages
free from their creases.
CHAPTER X
I
Wednesday night,
October 10, 1900.
Dear Judy: I am just home from Quilterville where I got your telegram
asking me to tell you the truth about what has happened here. I told
Grandfather and the others that they had no right to lie to you, and
that they couldn’t fool you if they tried. I knew you could tell from
the crazy telegram we sent to you that we were hiding something from
you.
Judy, I’m going to do for you what I’d want you to do for me. I’m
going to tell you the truth. This business of sparing you and all that
is sentimental twaddle. It isn’t only your right to know, it is your
duty to know that Father did not die mercifully and peacefully and all
that rot last Monday night.
Father was murdered in his room. He was shot and killed. That would
seem horror enough, wouldn’t it? That isn’t the horror. That isn’t why
we have been lying to you. That isn’t what has beaten us. I’ll tell
you what the real horror is. And yet—it can’t be true. If it can’t be
true, it must be false. I’ll tell you why. I’ve thought it all out.
I’ve thought it all out carefully. It can’t be true. I mean, it can’t
be true that some one of us right here in the house that night, some
member of our family, the Quilter family, murdered Father.
That is the first thing we have to do, Judy, you and I. We have to
prove that no member of the Quilter family murdered Father. When that
is out of the way, we can think straight again. We can go ahead and
find out who did do it—damn him! And we’ll attend the hanging.
That’s why, before I tell you anything else, I’ll have to tell you
what I have thought out about the family. You know I’m not as crumby
about the family as the rest of you are. You know I can think more
clearly about them than you could. I know that we are a doggone faulty
bunch. I have accepted that. I think it wise to accept that, first.
Beginning with Grandfather, who is the best of the lot now Father is
dead. Grandfather is a sentimentalist, and something of a poseur,
and—— Let it go at that. What’s the use? Next to Father, Grandfather
is the decentest person, man or woman, that I have ever known or ever
shall know. He’s not perfect, I suppose. But he comes too darn near
being for me to point his imperfections. Any denial of wrongdoing for
Grandfather would be desecration. Grandfather’s world revolved around
Father—and Aunt Gracia and Lucy.
Now for the handsome Christopher. Chris is wormy with selfishness, and
lazy as a dog, and weak as water, and conceited. All right. But when
it comes to murder—he’s as clean out of it as Grandfather or Lucy, and
there’s no sense in dodging it. Chris would half kill Father with
worry—he’s been at that, hard, for six months now. But, in his way, we
are bound to grant that Chris loved Father. He wouldn’t shoot him, if
he had the best reason in the world for doing it. We know that. And we
know, too, that right now Chris needed to have Father alive, as an
excuse for selling Q 2 and to manage the smaller ranch Chris said he
was going to get for us. Father’s death puts a decided crimp in
Chris’s plans.
Olympe. She’s vain and affected, and has her share of common ordinary
faults. But could any living being, in his senses, suggest that Olympe
would shoot a dying kitten to put it out of its misery? If Chris has
sold us out, as he was threatening to do, Father’s ability to
establish us on another place was Olympe’s best chance for keeping out
of the poorhouse she’s been talking about all the time lately. Olympe
loved Father.
Aunt Gracia. She has had her mind all mussed up for years with that
fool religion of hers. She has gone a bit sour, of late, as the rest
of us have, from overwork and overworry. But anyone who would whisper
murder in the same breath with Aunt Gracia’s name would be a liar and
a criminal fool, and I know it, and you know it, and everyone who has
ever seen her knows it. Just writing it makes me hot. Aunt Gracia
loved Father.
Irene. She is one of the crumbiest specimens I ever saw. She’s at the
bottom of Chris’s threatening to sell the place—she has nagged him
into it. She has caused all sorts of trouble here from the first night
she came. I’ve hated her like a burr under the saddle. I hate her yet.
Partly because of that I know that she would not commit a murder—could
not have committed this murder. It took a smart person, and a plucky
person, and a darn tricky person to get away with this business on
Monday night. Irene is a first-rate idiot. She is a chatterbox, and a
coward. Tell me that a woman who is afraid of a cow will walk into a
room and shoot a man dead? Not on your life she wouldn’t. If she had
wanted Father out of the way, she might have tried slow poison. She
had no reason for wanting Father out of the way. She didn’t love him,
or anyone. But she liked Father; she couldn’t help it. Three months
ago Father gave up trying to influence Chris in any way about selling
Q 2. Irene needed Father alive for the same reason Chris needed
him—his ill health as an excuse for selling us out; his ability to
manage the new place for us.
Lucy and I were the only other people in the house on Monday night.
The missionaries who had been visiting here left Q 2 early Monday
morning, and old Dong Lee went in with them to Portland to see a
dentist.
I’ll be damned if I’ll defend Lucy. And Neal Quilter didn’t do it. I
know that. The others here may not know it. If I were any one of them,
I’d suspect Neal Quilter, and with good cause.
Read this, Jude. I’ve had plenty of reason to think, here lately, that
Father was losing his mind. His giving up, and allowing Chris to plan
to sell us out. And then that baptism junk. Lucy wrote it to you.
Father’s explanation satisfied her. It didn’t satisfy me—not by a long
shot; not from Father. Father was no sap. Well, then, suppose I knew
that he’d rather be cleanly dead than living with his mind worse than
dead—and he would. Suppose I knew that Father would rather die than to
have the Quilter name tainted with insanity? He would have. You know
Father, and Grandfather, and their “ten generations of sound-minded,
clean-bodied men and women.” All right. I am smart enough, and I have
pluck enough to have planned this thing, and to have done it.
Read this. Having Father dead doesn’t do any of us any good. Having
Chris die would have saved the Q 2 Ranch. Since Chris had no sons, the
ranch would have gone to Grandfather. Well, Father and Chris have
changed rooms lately. All of us were always butting into the wrong
rooms. I starred at it. Irene was downstairs in the sitting room when
Father was shot. Suppose I had meant to sneak in and kill Chris, and
had been so excited—I would have been excited, I suppose—that I got
into the wrong room. Suppose I had seen a man there in bed, and
suppose I’d shot on the instant, thinking that he was Chris. That is,
suppose I had meant to kill Chris and had killed Father, by mistake.
I am the only member of the family who is unsentimental enough to do
it. Or mean enough. Or, funny how we’ll stand up for our precious
selves, loyal enough to Q 2 Ranch. Not long ago I told Lucy that I’d
stop at nothing, including bloodshed, to save the place. I said it. I
meant it. I must have had murder in my mind—or the potentialities for
murder—to have said a thing of the sort.
You see, assuming that I did it, it works out smoothly enough. I
didn’t do it. I swear to God that I know I did not. If I had done it,
I’d know it. I didn’t do it. Lucy knows that I didn’t. Lucy knows that
within two minutes after we’d heard the shot, she came running into my
room, through our inside door, and found him—me, I mean—hammering at
the door into the hall, trying to break the damn thing down. But then
you know, Jude, that Lucy would lie herself into Hades to save me from
being suspected. This, though, isn’t a question of her needing to lie.
I mean, she did find me locked in my room. I know that. It is a fact.
I’ve got to keep hold of it, and of one or two other facts that I
have. You see, you and I have to prove, first, that I didn’t murder
Father. I mean, that none of the Quilters did do it. I mean——
II
Later, Wednesday night.
I stopped writing there and went out and walked to the road and back.
Breathed some sweet snow air into my lungs. Cleared my head. Time I
did, I guess. That last page or so seems to be rather raving. Sorry.
But I am going to send it along because I want you to have all this
straight, and because, as Grandfather always says, we do have to think
this thing through—straight through.
Straight thinking isn’t easy as yet. Writing does me a pile of good.
To write a thing you have to get it more or less into shape. That is
what I’m going to do. I’m going to sit here—I am staying up for a few
nights—and write the whole thing out, in black letters on white paper
to you. It will keep my thoughts in order—you’ve no notion what a
filthy mess they have been in for the past two days. It will do more
than that.
I said, in the beginning of this, that it was your duty to know the
truth. This is what I meant. It would be just like you not to think
so, but you’ve a long way the best of it, being off in Colorado and
not in the midst of this hell here. You should be able to think better
and to see more clearly than I can. I’ll give you a straight account
of facts from here. You’ll have the enormous advantage of perspective.
Together we’ll get the truth. We have to. You and I are young. The
others are old. I don’t wish to be crumby and sentimental about it.
But you and I won’t even have a right to die until we find who
murdered Father. Out in the air, just now, I decided that, if a member
of the family did do it—then we must find that out, too. You know,
Judy; if not for the sake of punishment, at least for the sake of
justice to the others.
Take a brace then, dear, and get ready for the facts. They aren’t
sweet, I’ll warn you.
On Monday evening we all milled around in the sitting room, about the
same as usual, as far as I can remember. I have been so darn grouchy,
lately, though, and so much interested in _Descent of Man_ that I
haven’t paid much attention to the folks. I have asked Chris about
Monday evening (one doesn’t quizz Grandfather), and he says that no
one acted nervous, or excited, or peculiar in any way. An opinion
worth nothing, I am afraid, since he was so busy spooning with Irene
that he probably would not have noticed a fit on the hearthrug. I
think perhaps Lucy will know whether anyone acted in an unusual way.
But Lucy, poor little kid, isn’t fit to be questioned just now. Aunt
Gracia agrees with Chris. So, for the present, we’ll record that
everyone acted as he usually does act.
Around nine o’clock Olympe went up to bed. Then Grandfather went, and
Aunt Gracia went with him, as usual, to turn down his bed and so on.
Chris and Irene ambled out together. I waited until I was sure I
wouldn’t meet them hugging in the hall, and then I went and suggested
to Lucy that it was time for her to come. She said she would when she
had finished the chapter she was reading. I heard her come into her
room, just before I went to sleep. I don’t know, nor does anyone seem
to know, what time Father came up to his room.
The next thing I knew I heard the shot, loud as a cannon, bang through
the house. I jumped out of bed and ran to my door. It was locked. I
ran back to the table and got the lamp lighted and began to hunt
around for the key. I don’t know why, but I thought that the door was
locked on the inside. I couldn’t find the key. I was scared. I grabbed
a chair and began to try to bang through the door with it. At about
the second bang, Lucy came running into my room in her nightgown,
screaming my name, and what was it, and that her door was locked. I
didn’t pay much attention to her. I was crazy by that time, for the
house was a bedlam. Everyone was trying to do what I was trying to
do—get doors open. And everyone was shouting and screaming to everyone
else.
I had busted two of the bedroom chairs before I realized what a fool I
was—trying to crash a heavy oak door with a frail maple chair.
I noticed that Lucy had gone. I ran into her room. Her lamp was
lighted, and she was showing more sense than I had shown by trying
nail files and hairpins in her keyhole. All the time the noise in the
hall kept up. Everyone was shouting and calling and rattling his door
and trying to bang it down—everyone, that is, but Olympe. I’ll tell
you about her later.
I ran to Lucy’s window. I had some wild idea of getting out that way.
For a second, then, I almost keeled over. Things seemed to break loose
and stampede in my head, and the only thought I could corral had to do
with Aunt Gracia’s judgment day. It took me fully half a minute to
realize that the new world out there meant merely a heavy fall of
snow. I opened the window. Snow was two inches deep on the sill. I
leaned out. A cloud uncovered a ghastly moon. The snow had stopped.
Lucy came and caught hold of me and said that we could not get out of
that window. All this seems unimportant; but I wish I had as definite
an account of everything that went on behind the other locked doors.
This may not seem unimportant to you. I am trying to give you facts.
You must try to interpret them.
I knew that Lucy was right about attempting to get out of the window.
I closed it. She was shivering from cold and fright, so I got her
wrapper and made her put it on. She went back to her job of trying to
unlock the door with a nail file. I looked on her bureau to find
something that might work better. I noticed the time by her little
clock. It said ten minutes to twelve. It had seemed much longer, but I
believe it had been less than ten minutes since we had heard the shot.
Chris said that he looked at his clock, as he lighted his lamp, and it
said a quarter to twelve. That tallies closely enough, I guess.
Chris missed Irene, for the first time, when the shot woke him, and he
admits that he was senseless from fright. If he hadn’t been, he could
have climbed out of his window and have run along the porch roof right
there to the window of Father’s room. He did not know, of course, that
the shot had been fired in Father’s room. But, if he’d had his
senses—something that none of us did have—he surely would have used
the window and the porch roof to get with some other member of the
family.
I found a glove buttoner on Lucy’s bureau and tried it in the
keyhole—fool’s work, of course. I think the others were trying the
same racket, though, for most of the noise had stopped by that time. I
suppose because Lucy and I were together was the reason that we didn’t
call to the others. All the rest of them called. Aunt Gracia, in
particular, kept shouting to Grandfather, over and over: “Father! Are
you hurt? Father! Are you all right?” Lucy and I could hear
Grandfather answering her, but Aunt Gracia seemed not to hear him. I
think she was too excited, and too frightened to listen. Chris kept
shouting like a Comanche for Irene.
I wonder, Jude, how we all knew that some terrible thing had happened?
Nothing terrible ever had happened on Q 2. Why, then, the minute we
all heard a gunshot in the house, late at night, did it throw us into
a panic? I suppose the locked doors would be the answer. Yes, of
course it was the locked doors and not the sound of the shot that
locoed all of us.
Lucy and I were still monkeying with the lock when Irene shoved the
key into it. She unlocked the door and said, or sort of mewed at us,
“Your father!” and ran across the hall to Chris’s room.
Lucy’s door was the first one that Irene unlocked. Lucy was in front
of me; so she was the first one into Father’s room—that is, since
Irene had left it. Father was lying in bed. Irene had pulled the
counterpane close under his chin. Lucy ran to him and caught him up in
her arms.
Lucy is a thoroughbred all the way through. She didn’t scream. She
didn’t faint. She didn’t utter a sound. She turned her head and looked
at me. That was all. The trouble is, the same paralyzed look is still
on her face. It has not worn off, not in two days.
CHAPTER XI
I
I can’t star myself, much, for the next few minutes. Chris,
Grandfather, Aunt Gracia, and Irene were in the room before I had
realized that Father was dead. Then I thought that he had shot
himself.
Grandfather took Lucy’s place beside Father. He looked up at us and
told us, “Richard has been shot and killed.”
It would be Grandfather, wouldn’t it, out of the whole herd of us, who
would know without any proof, simply and surely know, that Father was
not a suicide? I don’t mean to be crumby and sentimental about it; but
it is pretty rotten to think that, though Father had spent his life
earning such a surety, Grandfather was the only one of us who would
give it to him, then, on the minute and without proof. I wish I might
even say that, having been told, we accepted Grandfather’s statement
on the instant. We did not. No, not us.
Chris said something about where was the gun. He began to tear through
the bedding hunting for it. So did Aunt Gracia. So did Irene. So did
I. There was no gun to be found. Father was not a suicide. He was
shot, from a distance of at least several feet, with a .38 calibre
gun. Since every man in the county who has a gun has a .38 calibre
Colt’s, we are not, in spite of Chris’s contentions to the contrary,
going to be able to do much with that information. The point I am
making, now, is that Father was not a suicide. I’ll go into it more
fully, later.
It was Lucy who first called our attention to the open window and to
the rope. Now, Judy, read this carefully and see what you can do with
it.
The window was wide open from the bottom. There was a thick rope
hanging over the sill and out of it. One end of the rope had been tied
with a slip knot around one of the heavy legs of the bed. The rope
went across the carpet to the window, across the window sill, across
the porch roof beneath the window, and dangled to the ground.
Looks easy, doesn’t it? Some dirty cur had shot Father and had got out
of the window by means of the rope. But the rope was covered with
snow, and there was not a handprint in the snow on the window sill,
nor a footprint in the new snow on the roof.
When I saw that rope, I would have jumped right out on to the roof, if
Chris had not stopped me. He told me not to track the snow. He said
that we must have a lantern. I ran down to the kitchen and got one.
Read this, Jude. I have told you once, but I want to tell you again.
We swung the lantern out over the porch roof, and the snow was a
clean, unbroken sheet.
Chris looked at the clock on Father’s mantelpiece. It said ten minutes
past twelve. Twenty-five minutes, at the most, since we had heard the
shot. Not long enough for the snow, if it had been snowing hard, to
have covered the footprints. We went to the window again. No snow was
falling. And I know that none had been falling at ten minutes to
twelve. There is no dodging it: the rope had not been used. Or, as
Chris keeps insisting, it had not been used as a means of escape.
Since he can’t produce any sort of theory as to what it might have
been used for, I’ll leave you that, for what it is worth, and get
along.
The murderer had not climbed out of the window. There were, then, just
two things that he could have done:
1. He could have got out of the house some other way.
2. He could have stayed in the house.
Grandfather said: “He has not escaped this way. He has escaped some
other way.”
“If he has escaped,” Chris said. “If he hasn’t, he is not going to.”
Irene screamed, “He may still be right here in this room,” and would
have had a heart attack, if there had been time; but there wasn’t.
With Grandfather directing, we made a quick, thorough search of
Father’s room. Chris, clinging to the suicide theory, I suppose,
devoted his time to the bed. (He made one queer discovery; but, since
it cannot amount to anything, I’ll get along and tell you about it
later.) He found no gun, of course. The only gun in Father’s room was
in his clothes closet, twenty feet away from the bed. His gun was
fully loaded, and behind some boxes on the top closet shelf. You don’t
need this, but I’ll give it to you. With the wound, if he had had
strength to move, which he had not, Father could not have moved
without leaving a trail of blood. Irene had blood on the front of her
wrapper and on her sleeve. She got it there when she had been lifting
Father. Those were the only blood-stains anywhere that were not on the
bed covers.
The room was easy to search. There was nothing anyone could have got
under but the bed, and nothing to hide behind. We pounded through the
clothes closet, and that ended the search there.
Grandfather said that Chris, he, and I would go to search the house.
He said for Aunt Gracia, Irene, and Lucy to stay in Father’s room,
lock the door after us when we left, and close and lock the window.
Lucy said, “But where is Olympe?”
II
We all, including Grandfather, forgot the plan of having the ladies
lock themselves in Father’s room. We all went rushing like mad things
down to Olympe’s room. Irene kept mooing: “I unlocked her door. I
unlocked her door last of all.”
The door was unlocked. There, stretched straight on the floor in her
nightgown, was Olympe. Irene screamed as only Irene can scream. She
thought, I guess, as I thought—that Olympe had been murdered, too.
Aunt Gracia ran to her. She found that she was breathing all right,
that she had merely fainted.
Every second seemed precious to us, just then. So, after we had made a
quick but absolutely complete search of Olympe’s room, we left Lucy
and Irene with her, and went on to go through the rest of the house.
I had brought two lanterns from the kitchen. I had a notion of taking
one of them and running out to search the grounds. Grandfather pointed
that, if the fellow was outside he was, and far on his way. But, if he
was inside, we had a chance of finding him and keeping him here.
Aunt Gracia had insisted upon coming with us men. That made
Grandfather, Aunt Gracia, Chris, and I the ones who searched the house
that first hour. Grandfather said for Aunt Gracia and Chris to take
one of the lanterns and search the front of the house, and for him and
me to take the other lantern and search the back of the house. Chris
got the gun out of Father’s closet and, at Grandfather’s bidding, I
got Grandfather’s gun out of the commode drawer in his room. We
thought it fortunate, just then, that both guns had their chambers
full, ready for use.
While we had been getting the guns, Grandfather had been locking the
bedroom doors on the outside. Irene had left the keys in the locks, of
course. Grandfather explained, as he finished that job, that if the
man was hiding in any of those rooms he would stay there until we were
ready for him, or break his neck trying to get out of a window.
Grandfather and I went down the back stairway. We found the door at
the foot of it locked on the sitting-room side. (Irene had locked it
earlier in the evening. That comes in her story. Perhaps I should have
told her story to you first of all. But I think I shall do better if I
try to keep to the order of events as they came to me.)
As Grandfather and I ran back upstairs, to go down the front stairway,
I happened to think that the door to the attic stairway had had no
key, and that it should be locked. Grandfather told me that he had
locked it with the key to my door. I am telling you this, in
particular, to show you how quick, and fast, and straight Grandfather
was thinking that night. But for him and his alertness some loophole
might have been left, something might have been overlooked, as Dr. Joe
persists. I know that with Grandfather directing as he directed all
that night, nothing was overlooked.
We made a thorough search of every inch of space downstairs. Then
Grandfather insisted on going with Chris to search the cellar. He
asked me to stay on the first floor with Aunt Gracia. She and I went
all through the downstairs rooms and halls again, and found nothing.
We went back upstairs to Olympe’s room. She had revived, but had not
got hold of anything as yet. She looked old, years older than
Grandfather, lying there in her bed, asking over and over: “What is
it? Why are you all up? What is the trouble?”
I thought that we should tell her. The others wouldn’t let her be
told. They said we must wait until she was stronger. Aunt Gracia
skipped out to get some peach brandy for Olympe. I noticed, then, that
Lucy was fingering a gun, fooling with it as she might have been
fooling with a hairbrush. I went and took it away from her and asked
her where she had got it.
“It was under Olympe on the floor when we picked her up,” Lucy said.
“I hadn’t really noticed what it was.”
It was Uncle Phineas’s old .32 Colt’s. I broke it. The chambers were
all empty; so it could not have been either harmful or useful.
Grandfather came upstairs. He said that he and Chris had found no one
in the cellar, and no traces of anyone’s having been there. He had
left Chris downstairs, with Father’s gun, guarding the lower floor. He
said for me to go down and help Chris, while he searched the attic and
the upper floor. I couldn’t quite see Grandfather searching the most
dangerous parts of the house, alone, while I went to squire Chris.
Before I had time to object, Aunt Gracia, who had come back with the
peach brandy, said nonsense. She would go down with Chris, if he
needed someone, and I should go with Grandfather.
Since Uncle Phineas’s old gun was in my hands, I hunted around and
found some cartridges for it, and gave Grandfather’s gun back to him.
The attic was the same old story. We were pretty thankful up there for
Aunt Gracia’s housekeeping niceties. It was easier to search than the
parlour had been. All the trunks, chests, and boxes against the
wall—nothing but vacant spaces. Grandfather and I opened all the
chests and trunks that weren’t locked—that was all of them except
Irene’s three big trunks—and poked through all the boxes, big and
little. The partitioned room up there was as clean and as empty as a
dish in the cupboard. The bed covers were all put away, the mattress
rolled back, the wardrobe open to air.
We came downstairs. But before we had unlocked a bedroom door, Chris
shouted to us from the lower hall and asked us to come down.
He had got an idea, and a doggone good one. He had been to all the
downstairs windows and doors. Each window sill had rolls of unbroken
snow on it, and so had each of the three door sills. Unbroken, that
is, except for the slight crumbling caused by Chris’s having opened
the windows and doors. He had put candles into empty cans—they throw a
much better light than a lantern does, you know—and we used them at
each downstairs window and door. Read this, Judy. Nowhere near a
window, nowhere near a door, was there a footprint nor a break in the
snow of any kind. As far as we could throw the light, say eight to ten
yards at least, the snow was a clean unbroken sheet.
Put it like this, to make it clearer. The fellow had not got away
before the shot was fired. If he had got away since, he would have had
to leave some sort of tracks in the snow. There were no tracks in the
snow. Ergo: he had not got away. Ergo: he was in the house.
I said, “He is right here in this house!”
Chris cursed and said that he was. “What’s more,” he added, “we’ll
keep him right here. I think we’ll find a good use for him—later.”
III
Well, Jude, I guess we kept him here. I guess he is still here with
us. We spent all that night, or, rather, that morning, searching and
re-searching the house and guarding to keep anyone from leaving it. No
one left it. Up to the present, two o’clock Thursday morning, we have
found no one in hiding here.
About four o’clock Tuesday morning Chris took a notion to go to
Quilterville and inform the sheriff—Gus Wildoch still has the job,
you’ll remember—and telegraph to Dr. Joe. He started out of the back
door down toward the barn. Irene stood in the doorway and yelped until
she made Chris come back. I couldn’t blame her much. Grandfather
thought, too, that it would be wiser to wait until dawn.
When Chris came back, we tested our lights’ efficiency on his tracks.
They showed clearly. And, when daylight came, there they were—a deep
line of woven footprints going part way to the barn and coming back to
the house. Any other tracks, which had been made any time after the
snow had stopped, around midnight, would have shown as plainly as
those that Chris had made.
I didn’t think of it at the time, but I believe now that that fact had
something to do with curbing Chris’s enthusiasm for bringing Gus
Wildoch to the place. At any rate, instead of leaving at dawn, Chris
yielded to Aunt Gracia’s urging and waited for some of the hot coffee
she was making.
Shortly after six o’clock we gathered about the table in the dining
room. Lucy had finally crawled into bed with Olympe, and they had both
got off to sleep about five; so, naturally, we did not disturb them.
Aunt Gracia poured Grandfather’s coffee, passed it, and said:
“No one has left the place since Dick was killed last night. No one is
hiding in the house at present. That can mean just this: Whoever
murdered Dick is in this house and is not in hiding.”
How was that for a stunner, Judy, after the night we had all put in?
Irene stuttered something about not understanding.
Whether she did or not, and I’ll bet she did, Grandfather and Chris
and I understood right enough. For the first time in my life, I guess,
I heard Grandfather’s voice go harsh when he spoke to Aunt Gracia.
“My daughter,” he said, “that conclusion is premature.”
Aunt Gracia replied, “I’m sorry, Father; but I have been sitting quiet
for hours, praying for guidance and thinking. I can reach no other
conclusion.”
We had tried to get her to stay in Olympe’s room with Olympe and Irene
and Lucy, but we could not keep her there. So, at last, we allowed her
to sit in the lower front hall through the night. It seemed the safest
place, since we had the front stairway door locked. We thought that no
one would risk making a getaway through the front door. I gave her
Uncle Phineas’s old gun and I took my rifle. Grandfather stayed in the
back of the house with his gun. Chris kept making a steady round of
the house, using Father’s gun. Chris and I changed places—I was in the
upper hall—from three to four o’clock. At four, because she insisted,
and because we felt certain there was no danger by that time, we
allowed Aunt Gracia to make another thorough search with Chris. Irene,
who had come out of Olympe’s room when Chris had started for
Quilterville, tagged along with him and Aunt Gracia on this last
search of theirs. Except for not whistling up Whatof and Keeper, which
did not occur to any of us until they showed up for their breakfasts
on Tuesday morning, I can’t see that we overlooked a single bet. Can
you?
Returning to our coffee-cup conversation, Grandfather said, in answer
to Aunt Gracia’s reply about thinking: “I have been thinking myself,
dear—or attempting to do so. We have all been trying to think, I
fancy. I, too, have reached but one conclusion: that constructive
thinking is impossible for any of us, as yet. Minds in the states that
our minds are in just now are illy working machines, Gracia. We’ll do
well not to rely on them, for the present.”
“No, Father,” Aunt Gracia actually said, “that won’t do. Christopher
is going, in a few minutes, to town for the sheriff. Before he gets
here, with other outsiders, it is necessary for us to put our minds in
order. Seven people were in this house last night after Dick was
killed. No one could have left the house without making footprints in
the snow. There are no footprints. We knew that in the night. This
morning has proved it. There are no footprints. Whether we are willing
to admit it or not, each one of us here knows that no one is hiding in
this house. That brings us to this, and evasion is useless: One of us
seven must be the person who killed Dick.”
“Seven people, yes,” Grandfather said. “But seven people all locked in
their rooms. No judgment that does not take into consideration those
locked doors, is sound.”
Aunt Gracia said, “Six people locked in their rooms.”
Judy, if she had smashed a bomb down on the dining table she couldn’t
have caused a worse explosion. I don’t know what the others had
thought about Irene being out, wandering around alone in the halls at
midnight. I had not thought anything. I hadn’t had time to give it a
thought. Grandfather was right, as he always is, about our minds being
broken machines that night and morning. Mine is yet, for that matter.
I’d be crazy if it weren’t for the order I was getting by writing this
all out to you.
Irene began a bout of violent hysteria, screeching wedlock’s warcry at
Chris: “I told you so! I told you so!”
Chris lost his head completely. He cursed, and banged the table with
his fists, and shook his long forefinger, arm’s length, at Aunt
Gracia, and shouted.
Grandfather stood up, straight, at the head of the table. Gosh, but he
can tower! I’ll remember him like that. He said to Chris, “Sir,
restrain yourself, and comfort and quiet your wife.” He turned to Aunt
Gracia. “Daughter, explain to me the meaning of your last statement.”
“But I thought you knew, Father,” Aunt Gracia said, “that Irene was
not locked in her room last night.”
While Grandfather said: “I had not known that. I had thought that
Christopher had been the first to succeed in opening his bedroom door,
and that he had sent Irene to release us while he stayed with Dick,”
he kept on towering. Then he put his palms flat on the table and,
slowly, sat down again in his chair.
Chris roared, “Uncle Thaddeus, are you going to sit calmly there and
allow Gracia to accuse my wife of murder?”
Irene said: “She did it herself. That’s why she is accusing me.”
Yes, Judith, this conversation took place on the Q 2 Ranch, in the
year 1900.
By some blessed miracle, Grandfather did not hear this speech of
Irene’s. He spoke to Chris. “I think Gracia made no such accusation,
Christopher.” And to Aunt Gracia, “You meant to make none, did you,
Daughter?”
“No,” Aunt Gracia answered. “I said, only, that Irene was not locked
in her room last night. That she was in the hall, with the keys, and
that she let us all out of our rooms. I think that circumstance should
be explained.”
Chris started up a lot of con talk about his wife doing no explaining.
Grandfather said, “If you please, Christopher?” and little Chris
subsided.
“My dear,” Grandfather said to Irene, “if you will, please tell us
exactly what occurred last night with reference to yourself. I ask for
this, you all understand, not as an explanation of Irene’s actions,
but as a possible means for helping us all forward toward the truth.”
Irene lifted her head from Chris’s padded shoulder and looked first at
Aunt Gracia and then at me. I felt as if she were clawing those light
blue eyes of hers into my face. I thought: “She thinks I murdered
Father,” and looked up to see Grandfather following her stare. I met
his eyes. They didn’t claw, Judy. They did something worse than that.
Just for an instant, before they looked away, they speculated—they
doubted. You’ll say I imagined that. All right. Remember the time we
tried lying to Grandfather about the Evans kids’ bobsled? Did we
imagine that look, that time?
Say, Jude, wouldn’t it be horrible if a person could do some vile
thing and then, from the shock of it, or something, forget about it
right off? I mean—not know that he had done it. But Lucy was right in
my room, within two minutes after we had heard the shot.
No matter. What I am trying to get to is Irene’s story. This was the
first time that any of us, except Chris, I suppose, had heard it. That
is why I have waited to tell you. If I am to get this thing organized,
at all, I’ll have to keep the events in order as nearly as I can.
I think I’ll step outside again, and get another whiff or two of cold
air before I begin on Irene’s story. I don’t know how important it is,
or may be. But I want to present it to you as clearly as I can.
CHAPTER XII
One thing I am bound to say for Irene: she was eager to tell what she
knew. Chris did not wish her to tell. She insisted and got snaky with
him for trying to stop her.
She said that, on Monday night, she couldn’t sleep; so she got up—she
thought it was then about ten o’clock, though she was not certain—put
on her slippers and her wrapper, took a candle, and went downstairs to
the sitting room. She said she was going to read, and she was afraid a
light in the bedroom would disturb Chris. She said, also, that she was
cold, and she thought the fire might still be burning in the
sitting-room fireplace.
The fire was burning. She mended it, lighted the hanging lamp, and
finished reading her book. She thought that it was close around eleven
o’clock when she went upstairs again. The door to her room and Chris’s
was locked. She said that she and Chris had had a “trifling quarrel”
before Chris had gone to sleep. She thought, in consequence, that he
had misunderstood her reason for leaving the room and had locked her
out. (That gives a fair notion of her perceptions. She’d been married
to Chris for seven months, and yet she could fancy that he was capable
of a cad’s trick such as that. Chris is faulty, but he’s no mucker.)
She said that this made her very, very unhappy and a little bit angry.
She didn’t desire the family to know that Chris could do such a thing;
so without making a particle of noise, she tiptoed downstairs again
and made a bed for herself on the sofa, with the Indian blankets.
Her next move was to pull the bolts on the doors to the front and back
stairways. She did that because, she said, she felt sure Chris would
feel ashamed of himself before long and come down and try to make it
up with her. I guess she was pretty hot, all right, for she said she
thought the bolted doors would show him that two could play at that
lock-out game. Locked doors are a mania of hers, anyway. So is
insomnia, though she sleeps until noon often enough. This trick of
going downstairs to read was, as far as I know, a new one with her. I
fancy the trifling quarrel was responsible for that.
After she had locked the doors, she blew out the light, got into her
sofa bed, and settled for a long, comfortable weeping spell. Or, as
she explained it, she lay down and cried herself to sleep.
She was wakened by the sound of the shot upstairs. The room Father had
then—Chris’s old room—is right above the sitting room, you know. She
said she thought it was Chris shooting himself because she had been
unkind to him. (She is the sort of woman to whom such an action would
seem not merely reasonable but also admirable.) She jumped from the
sofa, got into her wrapper and slippers, lighted her candle, ran
through the rooms, unbolted the door to the front stairway, and ran
upstairs. All the noises had begun up there, she said, before she had
got the door unbolted. If anyone had been running through the upper
hall, or trying to come down the back stairway, there would have been
no chance of her having heard him.
She started straight down the hall for Chris’s and her room. She says
she is sure she did not get hold of the idea, then, that we were all
locked in our rooms. She said that she did hear Grandfather shout,
“Let me out of here!” but she was too badly frightened to make any
meanings at all.
She passed Olympe’s room and Grandfather’s room on her left, and Aunt
Gracia’s, and yours, and Lucy’s on her right before she came to
Father’s door. It was standing open. The light was burning, so she ran
in there. For the minute, and for the first time, too, she had
forgotten about the exchange of rooms.
She said that, when she saw Father lying there in bed, it took her a
minute to realize that he was not Christopher. Father was lying with
his head tipped back on his pillows, and with blood streaming out over
his nightshirt. She ran to him. She put her candle on the table there,
and sort of lifted him in her arms. That was when she got her wrapper
smeared with blood. She says he turned his eyes toward the open window
and murmured, “Got away.” At first, Irene was certain that Father had
said, “Got away.” But, when Aunt Gracia questioned her, she admitted
that Father spoke indistinctly and that he might have said, “Go away.”
But I know that her best impression is that Father said, “Got away.”
Then, she declares that Father said, quite distinctly, “Red mask.”
There was no shaking her certainty about that. She said that he used
his lips to say it, and that she was watching them, and that she would
swear that he said, “Red mask.”
It stands to reason, Judy, that Father did not say “Red mask.” Now
what could he have said that sounds like red mask? Repeat it over to
yourself. I have; but I can’t get it. “Dead” sounds something like
“red.” “Dead past.” That’s senseless, isn’t it? “May ask,” sounds like
“mask,” and takes the lip pressure that Irene insists he made. But
“may ask” is meaningless, isn’t it? I can’t get it. I am hoping that
Lucy may be able to, later. She is such a little word wizard.
Irene knew that Father was dying. She thought that he had shot
himself. She did not try to question him. We can’t blame her for that.
She wanted to do something for him, but she didn’t know what to do.
She attempted to ease his position; to stop the flow of blood with the
sheets.
He said our names: “Neal. Judith. Lucy.” She started to leave him,
then, to bring Lucy and me to him. He said, more loudly than he had
spoken before: “Wait. Father.” She ran back to him, and he said,
slowly and plainly: “Bring Father. I must tell _him_.” He repeated,
“Must tell Father.” That was the end.
Irene declares that there can be no doubt about it: Father had
something that he wished to tell Grandfather and no one else. It seems
to me that can mean but one thing: Father knew who killed him. He was
willing to tell Grandfather, no one else, who that person was. This
would seem to preclude an outsider. Though there may be still some
events in Father’s past life of which we children have not been
informed.
That ends Irene’s story, in so far as Father is concerned. She left
him, then, and ran to the door and back again to get her candle before
going into the dark hall. On the table, beside her candle, and in the
light ring from Father’s lamp, she saw the keys lying scattered. Then,
she thinks, for the first time she made the connection of the noise in
the hall with the doors. That is reasonable enough—for Irene. She said
she could not get the keys picked up. She kept dropping them. At last
she put them in the pocket of her wrapper and, with her candle, came
into the hall. Lucy’s door is directly across the hall from Father’s
room, as you know. Irene poked one of the keys into the lock and
unlocked it.
I asked her how she had known which key to use. She said that she had
never thought of that. She took the keys from her pocket, one at a
time, and each one fitted the lock she put it in. That is straight.
The locks on the upstairs doors are all alike, and so are the keys.
Chris made me go with him Tuesday while he proved this to me.
When Irene had finished telling her story, Tuesday morning, Aunt
Gracia asked her why she had unlocked Lucy’s door first. She added
that Lucy was the one child in the household. It was stupid of Aunt
Gracia to ask that, because Irene had just told us how it had
happened. I didn’t blame Chris for getting hot.
He said Aunt Gracia was assuming that Irene ran out of Father’s door
in full possession of all her faculties; that Irene was in a condition
to stop and reason quietly about which door it would be wise to open
first, establishing orders of precedence, giving us all a rating as to
age and importance. There was tragedy, Chris said. There was a duty
for Irene to perform. She performed it, and she deserved high
admiration for her composure and courage. We might, or not, give her
that admiration, he said. But he would brook no word of criticism.
In a way, I agree with Chris. I wish Irene had got us out sooner; but
I can see her position. Father was dying. She felt as if she should do
something for him, right there, instead of rushing off and leaving
him. When she did start to leave him, he called her back to him—that
is, told her to wait. I don’t like Irene. But I guess she did about as
well as any of us younger ones would have done.
Aunt Gracia seemed to pay no attention to Chris’s speech. Her next
question was downright crumby. She asked Irene why she had thought
Christopher had shot himself, when she must have known that
Christopher had no gun.
Grandfather settled that in a hurry. He apologized for Aunt Gracia;
and then he explained to her that sudden fright, as she knew,
precluded rationalization, and that it was natural that Irene’s first
anxiety should be for her husband.
Aunt Gracia said, “You haven’t a gun, have you, Christopher?”
“Beginning already?” Chris was ugly about it. “No, Gracia, I have no
gun. Have you?”
Aunt Gracia said: “No, I haven’t. But that is an honest question, and
you had a right to ask it.”
“Irene,” Grandfather said, “Christopher and Gracia were both locked in
their rooms, were they not? You unlocked both their doors?”
“I did, Uncle Thaddeus,” Irene answered. “I swear that I released
every member of this family from a locked room.”
It seems to me like this, Judy. Either we have to believe Irene’s
story, all of it, or we have to disbelieve it. I am here. I know her.
I heard her tell it. I believe it, word for word.
Grandfather believes it, I know. In spite of her actions, I think that
Aunt Gracia believes it. Or, perhaps I should say, against her own
will, I think Aunt Gracia believes it. Chris must believe it. But here
is the crumby thing about Chris. Instead of saying flat, as I can say,
that he knows Irene’s story is true, he keeps trying to prove it.
He got me off and showed me, on Tuesday, that the fire had been mended
after we left it the night before. He showed me the oil in the hanging
lamp, nearly burned out. He has said, “Irene had no opportunity to get
rid of a revolver.” As if Irene could not have done all the things she
said she had done—built the fire, burned the oil, made the bed, and
then come upstairs later and fired the shot. She could have hidden the
gun in the front of her wrapper, and have got rid of it since. Nobody
searched her. The only important thing about any of Chris’s “proofs”
for Irene is that he thinks it necessary to hunt for them and use
them.
On the square, though he is starring himself in the rôle of sleuth,
Chris seems to me to be more off his screw than any of us. But,
perhaps, I haven’t any right to say that. Chris told me that I should
try to brace up, that Lucy, poor little kid, was worrying desperately
about me. Grandfather told me that we must be careful for Aunt Gracia;
that it seemed to him the tragedy was affecting her more seriously
than any of the rest of us. Aunt Gracia thinks that Grandfather is
harder hit than any of us. And, of course, Olympe is still flat in
bed.
It is queer about Olympe. She must have heard the shot and jumped out
of bed and fainted from fright. But she has no memory of having heard
it at all. That shows the sort of tricks one’s memory can play. When
we found she didn’t know what had happened, we didn’t tell her until
Dr. Joe got here yesterday, Wednesday morning. (I started this letter
on Wednesday; but I’ve written all night, so it is four o’clock
Thursday morning now.) Dr. Joe thought it better to break the news to
her gently than to have her keep on fussing and worrying and asking
questions. He told her. Leave it to Dr. Joe to take for himself, and
put right through, any old disagreeable job that we are all afraid of
attempting.
After our merry little breakfast on Tuesday morning, Chris rode to
Quilterville to spread the news, send the telegram to Dr. Joe, and to
send the crazy lying telegram, which he and Irene had composed
together, to you.
Gus Wildoch and Hank Buckerman (he’s coroner now) and a couple of
other guys came out to the ranch with Chris. Gus and Hank were as
decent as they could be, I guess, under the circumstances. The other
guys went about issuing invitations to have their faces punched in;
but again under the circumstances—how handy those clichés are—I let
them get away with it.
Grandfather took charge of Gus and Hank. Gus’s attitude seemed to be
that, if Grandfather would tell him what he wanted done, he’d do it.
They stayed around about an hour, holding their sombreros like
stomachers and shaking their heads, and then they left. Hank was much
embarrassed because there would have to be an inquest. He kept
apologizing to Grandfather about it. When Grandfather suggested that,
perhaps, the inquest could be discussed later, Hank said sure,
whenever we said, and, furthermore, it was nothing but a damn lot of
red tape anyway.
Gus and Hank came out again to the ranch when Dr. Joe came, early
Wednesday morning. Slim Hyde came, too, with his hearse. Dr. Joe had
brought him because he, Dr. Joe, wished to take Father’s body to
Quilterville for an autopsy. Hank was a trifle worried about the
inquest by this time, but Dr. Joe told him that the family would not
be able to be bothered with anything of the sort for several days. The
time was finally set for Friday morning. Queer, especially since old
Hank is coroner, how I dread that inquest. If I were dog guilty, I
couldn’t dread it much more than I do. Hank was decent as could be
about it. Insisted, again, that it was a mere formality, and advised
Grandfather not to try to attend. Furthermore, he said, that went for
any of us who weren’t feeling up to snuff on Friday morning. All he
needed, he declared, were one or two folks who could kind of tell a
little about how things had happened.
Hank himself, as I nearly forgot to tell you, deduced a theory almost
at once which satisfied him completely. Someone, he declared, had shot
Father through the open window. Since it did not matter at all to Hank
that there is not a tree of any sort near Father’s room, nor that,
unless the murderer had been equipped with wings, he should have had
to stand on the porch roof to fire, nobody bothered to quarrel with
Hank about it, nor about how the fellow had got the window open, nor
any of it.
Dr. Joe stayed here until shortly after noon. He had his hands pretty
full, what with attending the entire family, and interviewing and
dismissing the busybodies who had been streaming up since the day
before, like ants to a sugar bowl.
Chris and I could not see much reason for an autopsy. We knew that
Father had been shot; and had died from that shot. But Dr. Joe was as
stubborn as a mule about it; so we gave in. He and Slim took Father’s
body to Quilterville on Wednesday afternoon. It will stay there, now,
until after the inquest, and then be brought home for the funeral,
which, I believe, the folks have decided to have on Saturday.
I have kept at this all night, in order that you and I can start even.
I want you to know, when you have read this letter, as much as I knew
when I wrote it. I’ll skip through it now and see whether I have left
out any points. If not, I’ll ride into Quilterville, as soon as Chris
gets up at six, and mail this on number Twenty-two.
I find several points I have not made in connection with Irene’s
story. As soon as she had heard the shot, she came through the
downstairs rooms and up the front stairway. The door was locked, until
she unlocked it. No one could have come downstairs the front way then,
or she would have met him. The door to the back stairs was also
locked, on the sitting-room side. Someone could have run down the hall
and have hidden on the back stairway, or in the bathroom, which was
unlocked. Someone could have gone to the attic. The door to the attic
was unlocked. Then, while we were all in Father’s room, just at the
first there, he might have managed to sneak through the hall, which
was dark, and past Father’s door in spite of the fact that it was
open, and get to some hiding place without any of us seeing him.
Whatever his previous plans had been, they had not included one member
of the family, not locked in a room, who could unlock the other doors.
Nor, of course, had his plans included the circumstance of his being
locked upstairs by means of the bolted stairway doors.
I know how this will be bound to seem to you: the problem was one of
discovering some fellow hiding in the house. It would seem so to me, I
am sure, if I were not right here. Judy, you’ll have to take my word
for it. No one was hiding in this house on Monday night or Tuesday
morning. A human being, even a child, takes a good-sized space to hide
in. There was not a foot of space, from cellar to attic, which we had
not gone over with idiotic thoroughness before it was light on Tuesday
morning.
I can see you sitting there and thinking of places where we did not
look. It won’t go, dear. Yes, we looked in the old furnace and poked
into it, though Lucy could not have crawled into the fire box. Yes, we
have looked in the broom closets and the fruit closets. We have looked
in the flour and sugar bins, and the wash boilers, and the churns, and
the bureau drawers. We have looked as if we were hunting for a collar
button instead of a man. And, remember, Aunt Gracia at the time, and
since, has been over every square inch of the house. You know that she
can always find any missing thing in this house more easily than we
can find a word in the dictionary. Irene, I think it was—it sounds
like her—who suggested secret passages and sliding panels. They would
be convenient, wouldn’t they?
The ground is still covered with snow. Except for the paths from the
front and back doors, and the necessary paths to the barns and
outhouses, and the tracks the dogs have made, the snow, as far as we
can see, is clean and unbroken. That would mean, wouldn’t it, that
anyone who had left the house since Monday night had left it through
the front or the back door? No one has stepped on the side porch, and
the snow from that door to the yard is still unbroken. We could not
keep the paths from getting beaten—people coming and going, all that.
We have kept the outside doors locked, and Chris has the keys in his
pocket. Nobody could pick those locks with a hairpin or a glove
buttoner. We have kept Whatof chained by the front door and Keeper
chained by the back door. You know, when those dogs have been told to
watch, what they would do to some sneaking stranger.
After this, it hardly seems worth while to bother about telling you
what Chris discovered when he was looking under Father’s bed that
night. But here it is. The bed had been moved three or four inches at
the foot—pulled along over the carpet, I mean, as if some fairly hefty
weight had been tugging on it. Chris keeps declaring that this must be
of importance. How can it be important? Remember, the rope was covered
with snow. The snow on the window sill and on the porch roof was
unbroken. The snow makes it a certainty that no one had got out of
that window during the past hour, let alone the past twenty minutes.
Chris maunders about the rope having been used for some purpose before
the snowstorm began. Irene suggested that the fellow might have come
in that way. Lassoed the leg of the bed, first, I suppose, and then
climbed right up.
I think that finishes it all then, except this. The folks here, for
some reason, seem to be getting comfort from keeping you and Greg in
the dark. Rather often somebody pauses to thank goodness that you two
don’t have to know the truth. I am not asking you to lie for me; but,
on the level, I wish you would. Things are bad enough around here as
it is, without having the folks all sore at me. In time, they will
have to tell you the truth. If you could, until they get ready to do
so, receive whatever hanky-panky they write to you, and not let them
know that you are on, it would help me a lot.
I’ll write you the truth every night—I’m night herding in the house at
present. You can write what you please to me, of course. As I have
said, I need the benefit of your thinking. Too, and again of course,
you can do as you please about giving me away. Perhaps I would better
say, you can do what you have to do. It doesn’t matter, really. What
does?
Your loving brother,
Neal.
CHAPTER XIII
I
Thursday night,
October 11, 1900.
Dear Judy: I said I’d write again to-night, so I shall, though I
haven’t much to add to what I wrote last night. All day I’ve been
troubled with doubts about the wisdom of this writing. But I have
started it, and you’ll want the developments, and I need your help; so
I’ll keep at it for a while, at any rate. Particularly, I am sure, you
will want news of the family.
They are all saying, now, how splendidly Grandfather is coming
through. He has got the cane that Chris duded with in the East, and he
totters about with it, defying any one of us to think that he needs to
use it. Physically, he is a dead game sport. But, mentally, darn it,
Judy, I don’t know. Think this over. Is it like Grandfather to insist,
in spite of everything, to insist without rhyme or reason, that
someone sneaked in from the outside and killed Father, and got away
again? No, sir, it is not like him. But that is what he is saying. I
have decided that either Grandfather does think that I did it, and is
putting up this con talk to save me, or else that, mentally,
Grandfather has weakened a bit.
That brings the interesting speculation as to whether or not
Grandfather would try to save me. I know this about him. He is the
finest, straightest, wisest man I have ever known. (If Father had
lived, he would have been as great as Grandfather, in the end. But
Grandfather had an edge on Father of thirty-odd years of living, and
experiencing, and acquiring knowledge and wisdom.) Giving that
character to Grandfather—or to any man—would he, if he felt fairly
certain that his grandson had killed his own father, even by mistake
for another man, try to cover traces, shield him, and allow him to go
free? I think that he would. You know, Grandfather has always been
strong for the idea of usefulness connected with morality and the
principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. He would think
that, by saving me from punishment, he was saving the entire family
from worse punishment. While my punishment would be a just one, theirs
would be fearfully unjust. The family name would be disgraced. You and
Lucy would be known as the sisters of a murderer—a parricide. Your
children—had an uncle hanged. No, Grandfather would not stick that. A
few months ago he wrote for Lucy, “Be generous, rather than just.”
That is what he would do. He would let justice slide for me in order
to be generous to the rest of the family. He would save me in order to
save our standards, our traditions, and the other Quilters’ futures.
And any one of us would do the same thing. I know it.
Olympe is still in bed. She quite simply lies there. I went in and
talked to her a few minutes to-day. Unless the family stops this darn
sentimental business of everyone trying to “spare” everyone else,
we’ll make a fine showing on Friday at the inquest. I asked Olympe,
straight, how she supposed it had happened that Uncle Phineas’s old
gun was under her when the ladies picked her up from the floor.
She said that, since I was asking for suppositions, she supposed she
had seized it—Olympe would never do less than “seize” a gun—and jumped
from her bed before she fainted. It seems, when Uncle Phineas is away,
that she always sleeps with his old gun under her pillow.
I told her that it had been unloaded. She said she knew it. She would
have been afraid to sleep with the horrible, dangerous thing beneath
her pillow if it were not unloaded.
Olympe’s guns would always be unloaded, wouldn’t they? As if her life
were nothing but motions—useless things pretending usefulness;
unrealities in the guise of reality. Her world is a stage, right
enough, and she is more merely a player than it seems entirely moral
for any living person to be.
She said she supposed it must have been the sound of the shot that
frightened her, though she does not remember having heard the shot.
(Dr. Joe says that is not at all unusual. That, often, when people
faint from sudden fright, they do not remember the cause of their
fright when they regain consciousness.) The last things that Olympe
remembers are rubbing lotion on her hands, getting into bed, and
blowing out the lamp on her bedside table.
I think that her prostration now is by way of being distinctive.
Sorry. That is a crumby way for me to write of Olympe. I am
tremendously fond of her, and she knows it.
Aunt Gracia is doing only fairly well. She looks ill. Her grief has
intensified her aloofness. Grief is the first word to use; but it is
grief plus horror with Aunt Gracia. She is convinced that some one of
us, right here in the house now, murdered Father on Monday night. As
always, she manages to be the most useful member of the family. She
would die for any one of us, I believe; but she hates to live with
us—excepting, of course, Grandfather and Lucy.
Lucy, poor little kid, is hit hard. She is up and around, and she
helps Aunt Gracia. But she looks—frightful. You’d hardly know her.
That shocked expression is still on her face, sort of stuck on it,
like a mask. She was too skinny, anyway, and I’ll bet she has lost ten
pounds since Monday night. She doesn’t cry. She slips about, working,
or staying close to Grandfather. She has stopped reading. She has
stopped writing. When she isn’t busy with the little duties Aunt
Gracia finds for her, she huddles close to Grandfather—Chris says—or,
when I am in the house, to me, and sits quietly with her tiny hands in
her lap, and with that expression on her face. She took a tablet early
this evening and began to write to you. She wrote about half a page,
and then she walked across the room and tossed the entire tablet into
the fire. I know why. Lucy will not write lies. She cannot write the
truth. So she has quit.
Irene and Chris, I think, have come through better than the rest of
us. Irene dared to say that she and Christopher still had their “great
love.” All the rest of us, Aunt Gracia and Grandfather, Lucy and I,
for instance, hate one another, I suppose. I should not suggest,
though, that Irene is not affected, or that Chris is not. Irene cries
most of the time. She is as shaky as an aspen, and hurt-seeming. She
is not withdrawn, as Aunt Gracia is; but, poor girl, she gives the
impression of trying to keep out of the way. I suppose grief is the
most jealous and the most selfish of all emotions, and Irene senses
it, even from Chris. We have no reason to expect her to feel as we
feel, now; and since she cannot she is excluded and alone.
It is hard to write about Chris, or to understand him. He
loved Father. He has something to endure that the rest of us
haven’t—remorse. He made the last few months of Father’s life a hell
on earth for him, and he knows it. When Chris thinks about our loss—he
is white all the way through. But Chris, like the rest of us, has gone
rather flooey. Judy, there is no good denying it—Chris is scared. And
fear seems to make Chris rather yellow. I think it often does that to
men and women.
Chris had got it into his head that, sooner or later, Irene is going
to be blamed for this, because she was the only one who was not locked
in a room on Monday night. So Chris has turned sleuth. An
objectionable rôle at best, and one that Chris plays badly. On the
square, Judy, it is a case of protesting too much. As nearly as I can
judge, the one thing against Irene is her husband’s eagerness to prove
that she is innocent. Everyone here except Chris knows that she is,
without proof. I tried to give that to Chris to-day, but he would not
have it.
He said it was charming of the family, but that after the inquest the
law might step in. If it did, or when it did, he thought it would be
well to have some proofs a bit more tangible, if less beautiful, than
sweet family faith.
He has been rounding up these proofs of his since Monday night. If he
has captured anything that is worth a cent for proof of anything, he
has not informed me. This is the sort of thing he produces:
The rope—his informant was Aunt Gracia—had been in the attic for a
year or more. It was bought to be used for a clothes-line. It was too
thick for the clothespins to straddle, so it was put in the attic.
This fact, that the rope was taken from our attic, Chris professes to
believe is of enormous import. Remember little sentimental Lucy, aged
four, when Uncle Phineas sneaked her off to the circus, inquiring as
she watched the clown, “If he weren’t tho thad, would he be funny?”
To-day, Chris has been directing his attention to the question of who
locked us all in our rooms. I told him that meant, merely, that he was
directing his attention to who murdered Father. Any boob would know
that whoever did the one thing did the other. He essayed shrewdness
with his “Perhaps.”
II
Later on Thursday night.
As I finished writing that last paragraph Aunt Gracia came into the
sitting room. I think she suspects that I am giving you the truth,
though she neither accuses nor questions. She had brought some darning
with her, and for the first time since Tuesday morning she seemed to
wish to talk. So I have put this aside for an hour, and we have been
talking.
It is Chris, I suppose, who has started Aunt Gracia to worrying about
the locked doors. She asked me if it didn’t seem strange to me that
anyone could have gone through the upper hall, locking all the doors,
and not have waked any of us.
I told her, perhaps a bit, but not very strange. She and Lucy and I
sleep like stones and always have. Olympe is slightly deaf. Chris is a
sound sleeper, too; and if he had heard someone monkeying around he
would have thought it was Irene. Irene, downstairs, with the doors
closed and locked, couldn’t have heard anyone who was trying to be
quiet in the upper hall.
“That is all very well,” she said, “but what about your grandfather?
Do you think that anyone could open his door, remove the key from the
inside lock, close the door and lock it on the outside, without his
hearing a sound? He sleeps like an Indian.”
“For that matter,” I said, “Father slept lightly, too. But the doors
were locked, and no one heard it being done. Why bother with
conjectures when we have facts?”
She declared that we had no facts, as yet. She said that I was wrong
about Father sleeping lightly. That is, he had not been sleeping
lightly of late, because there was something to make him sleep heavily
in the medicine Dr. Joe had been prescribing for him. She said she
meant to talk to Dr. Joe about that, later. Just now, she wished to
talk to me about the locked doors.
“What I believe,” she said, “is that the keys for the doors were
collected sometime early in the evening, or, perhaps, in the
afternoon. Then, when the murderer slipped through the hall that night
he had nothing to do but fit the keys into the locks and turn them. It
is possible that Father would not have heard so slight a sound as
that. It is not possible that anyone could have opened his door
without his hearing it. Not one of us, I think, except Irene would
have noticed if our key was not in its lock when we went to bed. Not
one of us used our bedroom key, except Irene.”
“Was her key in the lock when she went to bed?” I asked.
Aunt Gracia said, “I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you ask her?” I suggested.
“I have asked her.”
“Couldn’t she remember? Or wouldn’t she tell you?”
“Yes, she told me. She said that it was not in the lock. She said she
missed it, at once, and told Christopher that it was gone. He said, no
matter—something of the sort.”
“Well, Aunt Gracia?” I asked. I guess she could see the chip on my
shoulder. I don’t like Irene a bit better than Aunt Gracia likes her.
But I seem to like fair play a lot better than Aunt Gracia does.
“Well,” she sort of mocked, “since the key was missing at nine
o’clock, doesn’t it seem odd to you that when, at eleven or
thereabouts, Irene found the door locked against her, she should have
decided that Christopher had locked her out?”
“Not at all,” I said. “She was angry, and her feelings were hurt. Why
should she stop to wonder about the key? The door was locked, wasn’t
it? Irene and I seem, at least, to have a feeling for facts in common.
The door was locked. All right—Chris could have got up, found the key,
and locked it, couldn’t he? Keys aren’t stationary things.”
“Evidently not,” Aunt Gracia said, without lifting her eyes from her
sewing. “I’ve asked everyone but you, Neal. No one can say whether his
key was on the inside or outside of his lock, that night, or whether
it was missing entirely. Do you know about the key to your door?”
I didn’t, of course. I hadn’t touched the thing since she had put it
in the lock, weeks ago.
“No one,” she said, “in this house, ever touched keys, or thought
keys, but Irene. Understand, Neal,” she went on quickly, because, I
think, she saw that her injustice was making me hot, “I do not think
that Irene walked into Dick’s room on Monday night and shot him. I do
know this. We all know it. Irene was out in the hall that night, with
the keys to all the doors. She could lock or unlock as she chose. She
could have locked us all in our rooms. She could have spent the ten
minutes or so, after we heard the shot, in Dick’s room with him as she
says she did, or she could have spent that time in helping someone to
escape, or hide, or——(Dick’s last words, as quoted by Irene,
particularly the ‘red mask’ remark, did not carry conviction to me.
Did they to you?) Then, when she was certain that her—shall we say
friend?—her friend was safe, she could have unlocked our doors. Lucy’s
first—the child of the household.
“Fine!” I said. “Except that no one was hidden in the house, and that
no one has escaped. Irene unlocked Lucy’s door because it was straight
in front of her as she ran from Father’s room. If, as you’ve been
hinting, Irene had planned with somebody to kill Father, would she
have agreed to a plan that would put her in the position she is in
now—that is, the only one of us who was not locked in a room?”
“Irene is stupid. She might have agreed blindly, if the person who did
the planning was clever. But there is this, Neal. I repeat, I insist
that Irene is stupid. Suppose, this seems more probable, that whoever
planned to kill Dick did not tell Irene the truth about what he was
planning to do. Suppose he made her believe that something else—no, I
have no idea what—was going to be done that night. The rope might come
into it there. And the snow probably spoiled some extra plan. No one
could have reckoned on snow in October. In all my memory, snow in
October has come just once before this—that was when I was a little
girl. In other words, suppose that Irene helped, but unwittingly—as a
dupe, a cat’s-paw. That is possible, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said. “Irene couldn’t keep a secret to save her life. If she
had got mixed up in this, but was innocent of any wrong intentions,
she would have told Chris, either purposely or by mistake. It takes
stouter stuff than Irene has to keep a secret at a time like this. If
she had told Chris anything of that sort, he would have told us. You
may, or may not, have a right to doubt Irene’s honesty. You can’t
doubt Chris’s—not in an affair of this sort.”
“I can,” Aunt Gracia said. “I do. I doubt everyone in this house, for
one reason or another, except your Grandfather and, perhaps, Lucy.”
That “perhaps” made me see red. “And yourself?” I said. I was a mucker
for saying it as I did.
She answered me quietly: “No. Sometimes I doubt myself.”
“That’s all right,” I said, “but you can stop doubting Lucy, here and
now——”
“I have never thought,” Aunt Gracia interrupted, “that Lucy walked
into Dick’s room and shot him. Don’t be absurd, Neal.”
“Whatever you thought about her,” I said, “makes no particular
difference. She was in my room within two minutes, within a minute, I
should say, after the shot was fired. If you could have seen her
then——” I was too sore to try to talk about it.
“Yes. I knew about her coming directly into your room, Neal,” was what
Aunt Gracia said with words.
I got up and put a log on the fire. I didn’t dare trust myself to
answer her.
After a minute or two, she went on talking. She wished that I would
stop standing up for Irene. She said that it didn’t matter what I said
to the family; but, when outsiders, people in authority, came to
question me, she thought it unnecessary for me to make my defences of
Irene so angrily and so staunchly. She finished by saying: “You don’t
like her, Neal. You have never liked her. You have said to me that you
hated her. Why should you, now, take this attitude toward her? You
resent even her husband’s attempts to prove her story—resent them on
the grounds that Irene never could, under any provocation, do an
unworthy deed.”
“Rot!” I said. “Look here, there is a difference between an unworthy
deed, as you say, and murder—or even helping a murderer along.”
“To be sure,” she said.
I decided to answer her, this time. “Do you believe,” I said, “that I
murdered Father, and that Irene helped me?”
“I think,” she answered, straight, “that Irene had to help either you,
or Christopher, or Olympe—or someone from the outside who has eluded
us. My clear thinking forces me to give up hope of an outsider. You
notice that I have left out Father, myself, and Lucy. The madness of
the past few days has, sometimes, made me almost doubt myself; but I
know that is madness—nothing else. No one could doubt Father, or
Lucy—I suppose.”
“All right, Aunt Gracia,” I answered—I can’t explain it, but her
saying that she had had moments of doubting herself was mighty good
for me to hear—“let’s look at it this way. What reason would Chris, or
Olympe, or you—let’s include you—or I have for killing Father? I mean,
why would any one of us have done it?”
“Why does anyone ever murder?” she asked. “Because, since his mind his
not become one with his Creator’s mind, he can lose it—can be insane
for a longer or shorter time. Why did Dick murder Enos Karabass?”
“Because he tried to assault Mother,” I answered.
“So Dick said, and, I suppose—believed. Enos loved me. He worshipped
me, I tell you. I loved—worshipped him. Our punishment came because we
did worship each other, instead of our Creator. But, loving me as he
did, and loving all women because of me, do you suppose—— Oh, how mad
of me to talk to you like this! No matter. I will say it. Dick was
insanely, wildly jealous. You are Dick’s son. But vengeance is the
Lord’s. If you did do this thing, I hope you may go free, as Dick went
free; and that, before you die, you may be saved, forgiven, and ready
to enter one of the highest states of glory, as Dick was ready.”
I don’t know why that didn’t make me hot. It didn’t. It was as if I’d
had a curtain over a part of my mind, and Aunt Gracia’s accusation had
drawn it aside, and had shown me, in the light, that the dim, queer
things I had sort of halfway feared myself, were—cobwebs.
My own relief, I suppose, made me capable of sympathy for her. I was
dead sorry for her, and her doubts, and her poor, battered-up love
affair. I tried to say what I thought might comfort her.
“It was a wonderful thing, Aunt Gracia,” I proffered, “that, if Father
had to die, he should have died so soon after his baptism. That he
could go, as you say, saved, forgiven, and ready for one of the
highest states of glory——”
She interrupted me sharply: “Why do you talk to me like that? You
don’t believe any of it, and I know that you don’t. What are you
trying to do? Trap me?”
“Trap you?” I echoed like a fool. I didn’t get her at all. You know
how I am, Judy. I can use the old bean all right, but it takes
time—plenty and plenty of time. Mark Twain, wasn’t it, who said, “When
in doubt, tell the truth?” I tried it. “I was attempting to comfort
you, dear,” I said.
“No, you weren’t,” she rewarded me. “But you have. You have made me
remember. Sometimes I forget. What you have just said is the meaning
of it all. That is why I can endure it. Anything that has a meaning
can be endured.”
She went away quickly, and left me alone. I have been sitting here,
trying to think.
“Trap me,” she said. Can you beat it, Judy? You see her meaning, don’t
you? Chris, as a sleuth, has done much talking about motives. If Aunt
Gracia had wished to be sure that Father would attain one of those
highest states of her glory——— You see? Before Father had had time to
backslide. A motive for Aunt Gracia. But who would ever have thought
of it but Aunt Gracia herself?
Isn’t she the queerest proposition? Just when we get to thinking that
she is almost loony, she snaps around on us and is brighter than we
are. No mind that was not in excellent working condition could have
caught me up like that, “What are you trying to do? Trap me?” in half
a second.
Though, as you know, Judy, all this is rot. Suppose we got about it as
Chris has been going of late. Suppose we try to put salt on the tails
of nonexistent clues, and to materialize what Chris chooses to call
“proofs” out of the air.
Aunt Gracia’s voice was the one Lucy and I heard first, and all the
time on Monday night, calling and calling to Grandfather from behind
her locked door. Aunt Gracia has lived a good many years now with one
of her high states of glory as her own objective. Would she sacrifice
it for Father’s sake? She would not. If she had been guilty, would she
have revealed her motive, offhand, to me? She would not. All this, you
understand, would be Chris’s “proofs.” Mine would be that I know Aunt
Gracia. That I have known her all my life. That she is a
Quilter—Grandfather’s daughter and Father’s sister. These are good
enough proofs for me.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
CHAPTER XIV
I
Friday night,
October 12, 1900.
Dear Judy: We have been all day in Quilterville, attending the
coroner’s inquest. It was pretty bad. Worse than I had expected. Hank
Buckerman was all right, decent as could be. But a fly guy from the
district attorney’s office was there, trying to show off—make a name
for himself; Lord only knows what he was trying to do besides chivy
us. His name is Benjamin Thopson. He put the screws on, right enough.
The men on the jury were John Skrope, Roy Ulander, George Houndel,
Pete Garret, and a couple of Swedes that have just bought the livery
stable Jim Murtaine used to have, down near the river. It was the
Swedes, I’ll bet, who kept the jury out so long. Two hours and ten
minutes, Jude, while we hung around waiting, before they brought in
their verdict: Died on the night of October eighth, from the results
of a gunshot wound inflicted by person or persons unknown.
None of us said so while we were waiting. None of us has said so yet.
But I know what I was afraid of, and I know what the others were
afraid of: a verdict against Irene, or against Irene and Chris
together. That is what they would have handed us, Jude, just as sure
as I’m living to tell it, if it had not been for Aunt Gracia. But I
must tell you that later. It is early evening now. I have all night to
write in. I want to give you the thing straight, from beginning to
end.
I had never been in that courtroom before, and I know you have never
been there. It is a dirty, dark hole of a place, with the windows too
high and the ceiling too low. They kept the windows shut, and the big
coal stove in the centre of the room blazing away, red hot all the way
around part of the time, and eating up the air.
Hank, looking like a good-humoured eagle, sat up behind a desk where
the judge sits during trials. This smart aleck Thopson and Bruno
Ward—the Portland lawyer, you know, whom Father and Dr. Joe have been
consulting since Mr. White died—and Mattie Blaine sat at a long table
below and in front of Hank’s desk. (Mattie had to take the whole works
down in shorthand.) We Quilters sat together in a front seat, to the
side. The remainder of the room was filled, chiefly, with canaille.
While I was in the witness chair I had a chance to size up our
audience. I was pleased to see how many people we knew had enough good
taste and tact to stay away. None of the Beckers were there, and none
of the Youngs. Chris said Tod Eldon was there with his wife, but I
didn’t see them. None of the Binghams were there. But a quarter
section of the room was filled with the Dunlapper tribe.
Dr. Joe testified first. Death was caused by an intrathoracic
hemorrhage, due to a bullet shot into the left chest. The bullet
entered the left chest between the fifth and sixth ribs, pierced the
pericardium without injury to the heart, traversed the lung, and
lodged near the left scapula. (I’ve got this from Dr. Joe since then.)
Thopson asked, “Any possibility of suicide, Dr. Elm?”
Dr. Joe said, none. The absence of a weapon proved that suicide was
impossible. Also, absence of powder burns showed that the gun had been
fired from a distance of several feet.
Thopson asked Dr. Joe whether he knew what sort of gun had been used.
Dr. Joe told him that he had recovered the bullet. That it had been
fired, evidently, from a .38 calibre Colt’s.
Thopson said: “You were present in the house at the time of the
murder, Dr. Elm? You were among the first to discover the body?”
“No,” said Dr. Joe.
“Your testimony, then, regarding the absence of a weapon near the
bedside, was given from hearsay?”
Dr. Joe said, “If Dick had had a gun in his hand when they found him,
the absence of powder burns, and the position of the bullet, and the
whole thing would prove that he couldn’t have shot himself—if that’s
what you’re getting at.”
Thopson said he was through with the witness. Hank excused Dr. Joe and
called Irene to the stand.
The procedure, after that, was to call the witness, swear him or her
in, ask the name in full, where they lived, what the relationship was
to the victim, that sort of thing, and then Hank would say, “Tell the
jury what you know about the shooting.”
Irene seemed delicate, and pretty, and out of place stuck up there in
that dirty old hole.
She told her story straight, just as she had told it to us at home.
Except she said that, when she found the door locked she thought that
Chris was trying to play a joke on her. She omitted their quarrel, you
see—good job, too—and the part about having cried herself to sleep.
Thopson led off by asking, “Is your husband in the habit of locking
you out of your room at night, for a joke?”
Irene said, “No, he isn’t.”
“How many times has he locked you out?”
“He has never locked me out.”
“What gave you the idea, then, that it was a joke?”
Irene said, “It could have been nothing else.”
“It wasn’t a joke, though, in the end, was it?”
“It proved not to be. It also proved not to have been my husband who
had locked the door.”
“It never occurred to you to knock on your own door and find out why
your husband was—er—playing this joke on you?”
“I did not wish to disturb the family.”
“Very considerate. A light rap, with a dainty hand, on your own door,
would have aroused and disturbed the entire family, you think?”
Mr. Ward jumped up. “Mr. Coroner,” he said, “this is a deliberate
baiting of the witness, and a waste of time. This lady has explained
that, though she thought the locked door was a joke, she was not
entirely in sympathy with it. Mr. Thopson questions because she did
not pound on the door like a vixen. It depends, I suppose, upon one’s
experience with ladies. This lady slipped quietly away, arranged, as
she has told us, a neat little retaliation, and went to sleep.”
I had thought that Dr. Joe was making a sucker play when he had got
Mr. Ward to come over from Portland. I changed my mind. Mr. Ward
wasn’t particularly brilliant, not one, two, three compared to Aunt
Gracia, but he was as useful as a left leg. Whenever this fly Thopson
would get too smart, Mr. Ward would jump up and appeal to Hank, and
Hank would shut Thopson off. Then, if Thopson started hollering about
it, Hank would inquire: “What’s eating you, say? This ain’t a trial.”
Perhaps it wasn’t a trial. But it came too close to being one to suit
me. Though, in another way, a real trial might have been better. Right
at the beginning, if Mr. Ward could have defended Irene, it would, at
least, have carried the enormous advantage of straight dealing. He
couldn’t defend Irene, because no one had accused her. What he was
fighting was the accusation. But he had to hide even that.
He played the rope, which the fiend had been afraid to use, and the
weapon that the fiend had carried away with him, hard and fast. The
trouble, or the chief trouble was, I think, that he did not believe in
them himself.
Thopson chivied Irene, next, on what he called “the victim’s last
words.”
Irene had told that Father had said, “Got away,” and then, “Red mask.”
“You think the victim meant to indicate that some person, wearing a
red mask, had got away?”
“I don’t know what the words indicated. I only know that he said
them.”
“You have, perhaps, thought of some other meaning that the words were
meant to convey?”
“No, I have not.”
“You have given the matter no thought whatever?”
Mr. Ward stopped that. He asked whether the purpose of this
investigation was to discover the facts of the case or to allow Mr.
Thopson to torture a grief-stricken lady. He said that, clearly,
Richard Quilter’s last words had meant to indicate that the man who
had murdered him had been masked, and had escaped. Knowing, Mr. Ward
said, that the family’s chief future concern would be to apprehend the
fiend who had committed this heinous crime, Richard Quilter had, in
spite of the fact that he was a dying man, done his best to aid his
dear ones with the frightful task which he knew, even then, would soon
devolve upon them. “His duty, first, gentlemen, though Richard Quilter
performed it from the edge of the grave. Duty done, he called for his
children, for his aged father——” On and on. But Ward was no fool.
Remember, Judy, the men who were on the jury. Ward was merely heating
his wind for the shorn lambs, as it were; or, at least, that was the
way I sized him up.
Thopson asked Mr. Ward, directly, if he thought that red masks were
the customary apparel for murderers.
Mr. Ward said, “Dying men don’t lie, Mr. Thopson.”
Thopson said, “No. Dying men do not.”
But I think that went high over the heads of the jury.
Thopson then began on the keys. How had Irene happened to see them
there on the table?
“They were directly under the lamp and beside the candlestick I had
put down.”
“And what gave you the assurance that those particular keys were the
keys to the bedroom doors?”
“Nothing gave me that assurance. At last I understood what the noise
in the hall must have meant—was meaning, that the others were locked
in their rooms. I saw keys there. I took the keys and went to unlock
the doors.”
“Very well. How long would you say it was from the time you heard the
shot until you happened to see the keys on the table, put them into
your pocket, and went and unlocked the doors?”
“The others say it was about ten minutes—or a bit longer—after the
shot was heard, before I unlocked the first door.”
“I am not asking you what the others say. I am asking you for your own
opinion.”
“I should have thought it was longer than that.”
“Time passed slowly, dragged, between the time of the shot and the
time to unlock the doors?”
Irene didn’t get it. I think the jury didn’t, either.
“It seemed a long time,” she answered.
“During this long time,” Thopson said, “did you make any search, near
the bed, for the weapon you thought the victim had used to kill
himself?”
“No. I was very much frightened and shocked. I did not know what to
do.”
“Were any weapons—any guns, that is—discovered later in the house?”
“Dick’s own gun was in the closet of his room. But the closet was a
long distance from the bed. The gun was on a high shelf, behind some
boxes, and it was found fully loaded.”
“That was the only gun in the house?”
“No. There were others. But they were all locked in the rooms with the
people who were locked in.”
“Through with witness,” Thopson said, and sat down.
They called me next, swore me in, and so on.
I told my story; just about what I have written to you, though in less
detail. How I had heard the shot, jumped out of bed, tried the door——
I was scared stiff, Jude. I thought, after what Thopson had given
Irene, when she was a lady and a pretty one, there was no imagining
what he might do to me. When I stopped talking and he said he was
through with me, and Hank said, “Witness excused,” I was so amazed
that I kept right on sitting there until he said again, “Witness
excused.”
They called for Lucy, next. But Grandfather had not allowed her to
come. He said that it was no place for her, that she was not
physically fit to go through with anything of the sort, and that,
since someone must stay at home with Olympe, Lucy should stay.
Mr. Ward said, “Mr. Coroner, Lucy Quilter, a little girl, twelve years
old, ill herself from shock and grief, is not in the courtroom. I may
add that she is at home attending her aunt, who is seriously
indisposed.”
“And furthermore,” Hank said (“furthermore” is one of his pet words,
you know; he pronounces it “futthermore”), “anybody who tries to start
anything about that little motherless and fatherless child being kep’
at home where she belongs, will find theirselves in a contempt of
court—or worse.”
He called Chris as a witness.
II
Chris told the same story. He had heard the shot—so on. All the
same—his fright, the noises we were making.
About then one of the Swedes got a bright idea. He wanted to know if
there weren’t any windows in our house, and why none of us had tried
to get out of our room by way of the window.
Chris told him that the rooms across the front of the house had
windows out on to the sloping roof of the downstairs porch, but that
the windows across the back of the house faced a sheer drop of close
to thirty feet.
Mr. Swede then decided that he had to have a plan of the upstairs
rooms drawn on the blackboard, right then and there. Hank asked one of
us to draw it. Who volunteered? Who would? Aunt Gracia, of course. It
looked about like the sketch that I enclose.
[Illustration: Gracia Quilter’s Sketch of the Second Floor. A
hand-drawn plan of the upper floor of a house, consisting of eight
bedrooms and one bathroom. A hallway runs through the middle from
front to back, with stairs leading down on either end. There are also
stairs leading up to the attic in the back, behind a narrow door. The
porch roof runs along one side of the building, underneath the windows
of the four bedrooms on that side, belonging to Christoper, Richard,
Thaddeus, and Olympe. Opposite these are the bedrooms belonging to
Neal, Lucy, Judith, and Gracia.]
Some fools tittered. I could have killed them. She had no ruler, and
the sketch was shaky, of course. But it was plain enough, and gave the
Swede exactly what he had wanted. That is, it showed that Chris, or
Grandfather, or Olympe could have got out of a window and gone along
the porch roof to Father’s room.
Thopson asked Chris why he had not done just that.
Chris said: “I was out of my mind with fright. My wife was missing
from our room. Someone had been shot. I could tell from the noises
that others of the family were also locked in their rooms. My one idea
was to get my door opened. Possibly, in another five minutes or so,
the idea of the window might have occurred to me. I don’t know. I know
that I did not, at the time, give a thought to the window.”
Mr. Ward went to the blackboard and marked more plainly the situation
of the window with regard to the roof—showing the distance, about five
feet, of Chris’s cupola window from the roof. He drew a slanted line,
to indicate a third pitch roof. He made a speech, trying to convey the
impression that any thought of the roof, in connection with the case,
was an absurdity. I don’t know about the jury, but I do know that I
remained unconvinced.
You understand, Judy, I am not slurring at Chris, or anything of the
sort. But it is doggone queer that he did not think of that window at
all. What I really believe about it is this: Physically, Chris has
always been something of a coward. Three months ago I’d have denied
moral cowardice for him; but his planning to sell us out because Irene
nagged him, makes me less inclined to that denial. You remember the
time Chris didn’t pull Lucy out of the river when she had a cramp? The
time you jumped in with all your clothes on, and did? And the time he
fell out of the cherry tree into a a hammock and fainted from fright,
though he wasn’t even bumped? It seems a lot more probable to me that
Chris did think of the window—that he looked out of it. The fact that
a man doesn’t drop out of a window on to a slippery, slanted porch
roof, at night, by no means makes him a murderer. There are different
sorts of courage. Chris married Irene and brought her home to Q 2.
I was afraid that Chris was in for a bad few minutes concerning the
window; but while Mr. Ward had been talking, Pete Garret had,
apparently, laboured. He brought forth a mouse. He asked Chris why he
had locked Irene out of the room.
Chris said, “I did not lock my wife out of the room.”
Mr. Ward reminded the jury that the key to Chris’s door had been
found, along with the keys to the other locked doors, on the table in
Father’s room.
“The fiend,” said Mr. Ward, “having no idea that this little lady was
below stairs, had locked that door, when he locked the other doors, in
order to make sure of the time required to effect his escape.”
I don’t know why Thopson had waited so long to take up the subject of
footprints. I imagine a good look at the jury had decided him not to
crowd them with ideas. Though Mr. Ward had missed no opportunity to
mention escape, Thopson had stopped Irene’s story, and mine, when we
had come to the place about rushing into Father’s room after Irene had
unlocked the doors.
“Mr. Ward,” Thopson said to Chris, “keeps mentioning the escape of the
criminal. Will you tell the jury, Mr. Quilter, exactly how you think
this escape was made?”
Chris said, “I have no idea as to his method of escape.”
“Mr. Ward has made repeated mention of a rope hanging out of the open
window of the victim’s room. Will you please give us the exact
situation of that rope?”
Chris told them what I have written to you.
“Do you agree with Mr. Ward that this rope was not used as a means of
escape?”
“Yes, I agree.”
“Will you tell us why?”
Chris told them.
“Now, Mr. Quilter, will you please tell the jury where you did
discover footprints that you had reason to believe were made by the
escaping criminal?”
Chris is a good looker, all right, Judy. I wasn’t ashamed of him,
sitting up there so clean and so alien to that dirty hole, answering
the questions in that low, educated voice of his.
“There were no discoverable footprints,” he said, “anywhere about our
grounds.”
“Indeed? That makes your perplexity, your—er—vagueness about his
method of escape readily understandable.”
“Nevertheless,” Chris inserted, “that he did find some method of
escape is evinced by the fact that he has not been found in hiding in
our home.”
“You all searched the place pretty well, I suppose?”
“We have searched repeatedly, and with absolute thoroughness.”
One of the Swedes spoke up, in that slow, drawling, damnable way they
have, “Yoost a minute, Mr. Coroner. Maaybe the fella is in the Quilter
house yet, but not hiding behind a door—aye?”
Hank said, “Say, get tired, can’t you? You guys don’t seem to
understand the offices of this here inquiry. What we’re here for ain’t
to put up a lot of tall talk. Futthermore, it is to find out how the
dirty son of a sea cook got into the Quilter mansion and killed Dick
Quilter—one of the squarest men that ever lived—and got away. We’ve
got time, sure. But, at that, we ain’t got all week, either, to set
here and listen to you guys beef about what ain’t got anything to do
with the offices of this inquiry. Futthermore, witness testified that
there weren’t no footprints they could find. Well, then, either they
overlooked the footprints, the which would be easy enough on a place
of that size, or else the guy hid in the house somewheres.
Futthermore, to sit here and yappy-yap about him not hiding behind a
door is wasting everybody’s time. Nobody said he hid behind a door,
did they? Shut up! I’m talking, ain’t I? Present witness excused.
We’ll ask Mr. Quilter, Senior, to take the stand, if he feels able.
And we’ll try to listen to him with the respect his years merit, to
say nothing of his attainments. Shut up! Am I coroner of Quilter
County, or ain’t I? Am I supposed to run these proceedings, or had I
better quit and turn them over to a rah-rah boy? Thank you, Chris. You
done fine. Now, then, Mr. Quilter, if you’d as lief take the stand?”
I got that speech straight from Mattie’s notes. She and I were talking
together while we were waiting for the verdict. She’s a good kid. I’ll
admit that I was sort of assuming the light and airy for her
benefit—self-defence, Judy, not orneriness; I can’t advertise my
reserves—and I said that speech of Hank’s was a classic, and that I’d
like to have it to preserve, word for word. She said, “I’ll copy it
from my notes for you,” and sat down and got to work. An hour later,
she came up with a bunch of papers, torn from her notebook. “I thought
you might like to have Miss Quilter’s testimony, too,” she said. “She
was so wonderful,” and she handed me the papers and skipped. It made
me sort of think that somebody must have told her about me pushing
Lump Jones’s face in for him, the night of the Youngs’ straw ride.
Gosh, but that seems twenty years removed from this afternoon, and
Grandfather’s having to take the witness stand, and be questioned.
III
Except for his manner of telling it, Grandfather’s story was not very
different from Chris’s or mine.
He had been wakened from his sleep by the sound of a gunshot. (I think
Grandfather called it a revolver shot.) He had been mightily
disturbed. He had lighted his lamp, risen from his bed, and gone to
the door. He had found it locked—a circumstance that greatly increased
his anxiety. He had donned his dressing gown and slippers. He had
looked about him for a key, and he had made various futile attempts to
open his door without it. He had gone to his window and opened it—had
perceived that snow had fallen. Caution, which his increasing years
had put upon him, had warned him against the folly of attempting to
retain his balance on the sloping, snow-covered roof. He had turned
again to his room, in search of some heavy implement with which to
batter down his door. He had been unable to find anything of the sort.
The turmoil made by other members of the family in their varied
attempts to open their own doors had materially abetted his own
agitation. Several times he had heard his daughter Gracia’s voice,
calling to him from behind her locked door, to ascertain the state of
his welfare. He had answered, but had seemed unable to reassure her.
Finally, after what had seemed an interminable period of time, he had
heard the welcome sound of running feet in the hall. Shortly after
that, his niece, Mrs. Christopher Quilter, had unlocked his door.
She had said to him his son’s name, “Dick!” and had hastened up the
hall.
He had gone at once to his son’s room. His nephew, Christopher, and
his son’s children, Lucy and Neal, had been in the room when he had
reached it. His son was dead. “Gentlemen, I invite your questioning.”
Thopson came clear off his perch and asked Grandfather, most
respectfully, whether he knew of anyone who would benefit by the death
of Richard Quilter.
“Sir,” Grandfather answered, “my son’s death, far from proving a
benefit to any living person, has and will prove a severe loss to
many. I am speaking now merely of material loss. My son was the
manager of Q 2 Ranch. On his ability and acumen the fortune of our
entire family largely depended.”
“I had heard,” Thopson said, “that there had been some talk of selling
the Q 2 Ranch.”
“My nephew, Christopher, had been approached with offers of purchase.
Up to the present time, he has accepted none of them. However, is that
not beside the point? Had the present Quilter properties been sold,
others would have been immediately purchased as an estate for the
family. My son’s services would have been more necessary, if possible,
on the new ranch than they have been on the old.”
Roy Ulander spoke up from the jury. For a minute, when he began to
speak, I was crazy mad, remembering all Grandfather had done for him,
and thinking that Roy was going to quiz him. I was mistaken. Roy took
that minute to attempt to console Grandfather. He said that he knew
Neal and Phineas and he—Grandfather—would be able to carry the ranch
along all right. He added, not wholly to my delight, that I was a
good, steady lad and a fine worker, with an old head on young
shoulders.
Grandfather thanked him.
Thopson wanted to know whether Father had left a will.
Grandfather said that he had not.
Thopson commented, “Very strange.”
Grandfather begged leave to differ with him. He explained that, aside
from Father’s modest personal effects, Father had nothing to will to
anyone.
“No life insurance?”
“None, sir,” Grandfather said.
“I see.” But Thopson managed to put into those two words a commentary,
caustic, on the character of a man who ventures to die without life
insurance.
Grandfather rebutted with the information that, until 1893, both he
and Father had carried large policies. Since that time, Grandfather
said, they had been unable to keep up the premiums.
Thopson grew faintly argumentative. He stated that the better
companies carried their policy holders for several years.
“As did our company, sir, for six years,” Grandfather replied.
Thopson observed that it was difficult for him to understand why a
family, who had ample means for all the luxuries of life, including
education in Eastern universities, foreign travel, and what-not, could
not afford the necessity of keeping up small life-insurance premiums.
“The premiums,” Grandfather informed him, “amounted to well over
fifteen hundred dollars a year. However, my understanding is, that the
purpose of this inquiry was to discover, if possible, where, when, and
by what means Richard Quilter came to his death. That its purpose was
not to inquire into the details of our domestic financial managements
and expenditures.”
“Precisely, Mr. Quilter,” Thopson accepted. “Precisely. Our purpose is
to discover, as you have said, where, when, and by what means Richard
Quilter came to his death. Now, Mr. Quilter, I think I may say,
without fear of contradiction, that you more than anyone else in this
room are desirous of discovering, also, the person who is responsible
for the death of your son. May I, then, offer you the results of my
experience?” (Hot lot of experience that guy has had. He is still
downy.)
His question, of course, was rhetorical. But Grandfather answered it,
when Thopson stopped to breathe.
“You may, sir.”
“In cases of this sort, the logical approach is to find, if possible,
the reason for the crime. That is to say, before we can discover who
committed the crime it is necessary to discover why the crime was
committed. Now, if your son had left money to some person, there we
would have what we professional men call a motive for the murder.”
“You have made yourself clear,” Grandfather said. “However,
unfortunately, perhaps, for you professional men, my son left not one
cent on earth.”
“You are positive of that?”
“No, sir.”
“You aren’t?”
“No, sir. I am confident of it. I am positive of nothing.”
“Then,” Thopson produced, “perhaps it won’t surprise you greatly when
I tell you that Richard Quilter did leave a neat little sum of money.”
For one flickering instant Grandfather exposed his complete
stupefaction to the rabble. Then, as he often does, he built a blind
of his Johnson and got behind it.
“You do not surprise me, sir. You do astonish me. Proceed, if you
please, to enlighten me.”
Up to this time, as I have said, Thopson had been as decent as a
mucker of his sort could be toward Grandfather. But now that he was to
enlighten, he assumed an oily, confidential, between-you-and-me manner
that made me have to hang on to my chair to keep from lifting myself
out of it and giving him a swift kick. Chris, who was sitting between
Irene and me, saw that I was getting hot, I think, because right then
he caught hold of my arm with a firm grip.
In this new manner of his, Thopson informed Grandfather, and all of
us, that, by the merest chance, he had discovered that Father had
carried an accident policy for the past eight years. A friend of
Thopson’s was an underwriter for the firm that Father had been insured
with. This agent—that’s a good enough word for me—had told Thopson
that, if Richard Quilter’s death proved to be accidental, their
company would have to pay the heirs ten thousand dollars.
“Sir,” Grandfather said, “I can but wish that your informant had been
himself correctly informed. My son did carry such a policy.
Unfortunately, it was allowed to lapse only last year.”
Thopson forgot himself. “Not on your life it wasn’t. The premium was
only forty dollars a year. If Richard Quilter himself didn’t keep up
the payments, then somebody else has kept them up. Undoubtedly, some
member of the family. Now, if we can find who made the last payment——”
Dr. Joe stood up. “I made that last payment,” he said, and sat down.
Thopson chose to get suddenly solemn. “Mr. Quilter, were you aware of
the fact that Dr. Elm had made this payment?”
Hank said, “Don’t answer him, Mr. Quilter. You’ve told him once. If
he’s deaf, we can’t fiddle-faddle around with him all week.
Futthermore, he’s a waste of time.”
“Mr. Thopson,” Grandfather said, “I was not aware of the fact that
anyone had made the payment. My belief was that the policy had been
allowed to lapse.”
“Mr. Quilter, can you give any reasonable explanation of the fact that
your son had not told you of Dr. Elm’s having paid this premium?”
“I trust, sir,” Grandfather replied, “that I should not attempt an
unreasonable explanation. I give you what seems to me a most
reasonable one when I state that I fancy my son was not cognizant of
the fact that his friend, Dr. Elm, had met this obligation for him.”
And again Thopson forgot himself. “You mean he didn’t know it? You bet
he knew it. Last August he went to the company’s office, in Portland,
and tried to collect damages for a sprained wrist, or something.”
Dr. Joe stood up, emphatically.
Thopson said, “One moment, Dr. Elm.”
Hank said, “Go on ahead, Doc, if you’ve got something to say.”
Dr. Joe said, “Oh—plenty of time.”
“Mr. Quilter,” Thopson had retrieved himself, solemnity and all,
“would ten thousand dollars make any particular difference to anyone
on the Q 2 Ranch at the present time?”
“The answer to the question, which I infer you are trying to put, is:
Yes, sir, it would.”
“To whom?”
“To all of us.”
“Then,” Thopson shot out, “if this ten thousand dollars is
collectible, every person on the Q 2 Ranch at present would benefit
because of it?”
“That is true,” Grandfather said.
Thopson said he had finished with the witness. Mr. Ward stood.
“Mr. Quilter,” he asked, “in all matters you were your son’s
confidant, were you not?”
“So I believed,” Grandfather answered.
“Since he had not told you that this policy was still operative, is it
probable that he had told any other member of the family?”
“It would seem not. However, I cannot be certain. My son had never
attached importance to that policy. He believed that the company was
an unreliable one. My son’s failure to tell me of Dr. Elm’s kindness
might have been because he knew of my dislike for monetary dealings
with our friends. It might have been that so trivial an episode passed
out of his mind. Or, it might have been that Dr. Elm himself asked
Richard not to mention his act of kindness. In any of these events, it
would seem unlikely that Richard had mentioned the affair to any other
member of the family. I have expressed myself poorly. My meaning is,
that the same considerations which would have kept Richard from
telling me of this would have kept him, also, from telling anyone
else.”
“Thank you, Mr. Quilter. One more question, if you will be so good.
You have told Mr. Thopson that your family would benefit from the
payment of the ten thousand dollars’ indemnity. There are few
families, I should think by the way, to whom ten thousand dollars
would be of no benefit whatever. The same question, put to any member
of the jury, would, I am certain, be answered as you have answered it.
My point is this: Would the money, for any reason, be more acceptable
to you now than it would have been at any time in the past ten years?
Or, to put it still more clearly: One year ago your son’s life was
insured for a large amount—twenty, thirty thousand dollars. Would not
thirty thousand dollars have been more useful to Q 2 Ranch than ten
thousand dollars?”
You see what he did, Judy? He asked the first question, and then he
would not allow Grandfather to answer it. He kept right on going. And
the question which Grandfather finally had to answer was: Which is the
larger amount, ten or thirty thousand dollars?
Do you know why Mr. Ward did that? I know. It was because he believes
that one of us Quilters is guilty. It is because he was afraid of
Grandfather’s honesty.
I thought that Grandfather might scorn the loophole. He did not. He
answered, “Sir, thirty thousand dollars would surely have been more
useful to the Q 2 Ranch than a problematical ten thousand dollars. I
may add, that my son’s life insurance was with an old, reliable
company. Have I correctly answered your question?”
“You have; and thank you, Mr. Quilter.”
I told you why Mr. Ward had asked the question as he had. I think I
don’t need to tell you why Grandfather answered it as he did. Or,
perhaps I should say, I have told you before this why Grandfather
answered it as he did.
Grandfather came back to his seat beside Aunt Gracia. Dr. Joe was
called to the stand.
IV
Thopson elected sternness. “Dr. Elm, where were you on the night of
Monday, October eighth?”
“I was attending Mrs. H. F. Ferndell, in Portland, Oregon. She gave
birth to an infant daughter at one o’clock in the morning.”
“You can, of course, produce witnesses to substantiate this alibi?”
“Not an alibi,” Dr. Joe said, with perfect gravity. “A birth.”
“You can prove that you were where you claim at have been on the night
of Richard Quilter’s death. And allow me to remind you, Dr. Elm, that
this is no place to indulge in forced witticisms.”
Dr. Joe said, “How does it go? ‘“There’s nae ill in a merry wind,”
quo’ the wife when she whistled through the kirk.’ Well, get on. Get
on!”
“I have asked you whether you could prove that you were where you
claim to have been in Portland, on the night of October eighth.”
“I don’t know. There were two grandmothers, three or four uncles and
aunts, the father, the patient, and, of course, the infant. The whole
thing hinges on whether or not those people could be got to confess
that they had me for their physician. I should say it was doubtful.
Oh, get on, you—you. Of course I can prove it.”
“Very well. Will you, then, tell this jury how it happened that a man
in your circumstances should have undertaken to keep up an insurance
policy for another man?”
Dr. Joe said, “I paid my board bill last month. Did you?”
Thopson turned to Hank. “Mr. Coroner, I appeal——”
Hank said, “He asked you a civil question. Can’t you answer it?”
One of the Swedes found voice. “Maaybe, I tank the doctor he don’t
want to tell about paying oop the insurance.”
Dr. Joe said, “Sure, I’d just as lief tell. I was out at Dick’s
house, early last year, when the bill came for his premium on this
policy. Dick said that he thought he would drop it—that it was a
shyster company. And it was—there’s something else I can prove,
Mr.—What’s-your-name—though I didn’t know it at the time. I had a
policy of my own with the same company. I told Dick I thought it was
foolish to drop a thing like that, for forty a year. He said forty was
too much to waste, and that he had spent his last available cent for
the month, anyway. I asked him to let me pay it this year—said he
could count it against what I owed him.”
“You were in debt to the deceased?”
“Yes. To him and his family.”
“What was the amount of this debt?”
Dr. Joe said, “I was afraid I might be asked that, so I reckoned it up
in cold figures here lately. It came to a million and four dollars and
twenty cents. Or, though likely you won’t understand, I am in debt to
these people for friendship, for a place that feels like home, for——”
“It is not a question, however, of actual monetary debt?”
“No, I don’t suppose you’d think so. Well, anyhow, I asked him to let
me send the check in for him this year, or until he was in cash again.
“He refused, point-blank. And there, as he thought, the matter ended.
When I left the ranch, I swiped the bill; and, later in the month, I
sent in a check with a letter telling the company to be sure to send
the receipt to me. Warning them, under no circumstances, to send it to
Q 2. Consequently, they mailed Dick the receipted bill in the next
mail.
“In the meantime, he had told Mr. Quilter here that he had decided to
allow the policy to lapse. Mr. Quilter agreed with him that it was as
well to have done so. Time will probably prove that he was right about
it. He usually is.
“When Dick got the receipted bill, he knew what I had done. I can’t
say that he was particularly grateful to me. He insisted that I take
his note—all that sort of stuff. He said that he wouldn’t say anything
to his father about it, because his father hated being under
obligations to friends. I told him he had better not tell his father.
Threat—you see. I guess that ends the story.”
Dr. Joe started to walk away. Thopson winged him with: “One minute,
please. Did the deceased tell any other member of his family about
this somewhat unusual proceeding?”
“They are here,” Dr. Joe said. “Do you want me to ask them?”
Hank said, “This ain’t a trial. I’ll ask them. Save time. Miss
Quilter—never mind leaving your seat for a little informal matter like
this—did you know Dick had this fake accident policy?”
Aunt Gracia said that she had known of it, several years ago. But that
Father had told her, when he had told Grandfather, that he had decided
to let it lapse.
“What about you, Neal?” Hank asked.
I told him I had known nothing about it. I had known that Father was
all cut up about having to let the life insurance go; and I had
supposed that it left him entirely uninsured.
Hank began to ask Chris, next; but Thopson got funny and said that he
insisted on having these answers under oath. I didn’t think Hank would
allow him to get away with it, but he did. I suppose he had to.
Thopson took Irene first. He asked her whether she had known about the
policy. She said that she had not. The witness was excused.
Chris was called, and sworn in. “Yes,” he said, “I knew that Dick was
carrying some sort of an accident policy. When we were in Portland
together, last August, my Uncle Phineas and I went with Dick to put in
his claim for payment because of his injured wrist.”
“How did all three of you happen to go? Did he think he’d need to be
backed up?”
“Not at all. We had been lunching together. After luncheon, Dick said
he was going to stop at the company’s office. We stopped with him.”
Chris then went on to say that they had been treated to various
insults, had been asked to produce witnesses to the accident, among
other extraordinary demands, and had finally been curtly dismissed
with instructions to call again. Chris said that he and Uncle Phineas
were both angry. But that Father had merely said it served him right
for attempting to deal with crooks, and that he would never go to
their office again, nor pay another premium. In so far as he was
concerned, Chris said, he had not given the matter of the policy
another thought. He had not known that it had carried any such
indemnity in case of accidental death. He had known nothing more
concerning it.
“Did you,” Thopson questioned, “happen to mention this matter to your
wife?”
“You have heard my wife’s testimony. I did not.”
“Not in the habit of confiding in your wife, eh?”
Chris kept his temper like a gentleman. It was more than I could have
done, but I was proud of him for doing it. “I am not in the habit of
burdening my wife with exhaustively trivial details which could
neither amuse nor interest her.”
“Did your uncle, Phineas Quilter, feel the same way about confiding in
his wife?”
“I should assume that he did. However, I am unable to answer for the
feelings of my uncle.”
“You don’t know, then, whether the lady who is at home sick in bed was
aware of the ten-thousand-dollar indemnity?”
“I think not. My aunt is not a secretive person. Had she known, I
fancy she would have told some one of us, at least. Also, my Uncle
Phineas had not known of the policy prior to the day when we called at
the office of the company with my Cousin Dick. Since that time, my
Uncle Phineas has not returned to Q 2 Ranch.”
“Your uncle, I suppose, never writes any letters to his wife?”
“He writes to her, certainly.”
“And if he had written to her about the policy, you think she would
not agree with you that the ten-thousand-dollar indemnity was too
trivial to mention?”
“I have told you, under oath, that I had not known of that indemnity.”
“It makes quite a difference as to the policy’s importance, doesn’t
it?”
“It does.”
“By the way, Mr. Quilter, have you tried, recently, to put another
mortgage on Q 2 Ranch?”
“I have.”
“Were you attending to that when you were in Portland, last August?”
“I was.”
“Did you succeed in raising the money you wanted?”
“I did not.”
“Mr. Quilter, how long have you and your wife been residing on Q 2
Ranch?”
“We came there last March.”
Thopson counted on his stubby fingers. “Seven months. You were not at
the Q 2 Ranch at any time last year, were you?”
“We were not.”
“Finished with the witness.”
I hoped that Mr. Ward would take Chris, then. He did not. He sat
still.
They called Aunt Gracia to the stand.
CHAPTER XV
I
I had been as nervous as an old woman about Aunt Gracia all during
these everlasting proceedings. She and I had ridden to Quilterville
together to keep from crowding the carriage.
We were no sooner mounted, and off, than she began to talk to me about
hoping I’d be “discreet” at the inquest. I did not understand her, at
first. We had held sort of a family council before we had left home
and Grandfather had talked to us. Over and over—you know how unusual
it is for Grandfather to be reiterative—he had impressed upon us the
necessity for telling the absolute truth.
He explained, of course, that he did not suppose any of us would lie,
but that affairs of this sort were apt to invite attempted diplomacy,
finesse. None of us, Grandfather went on to say, had any reason to
fear the truth. Truth, he asked us to remember, was the one thing that
could not ultimately be defeated. He gave us rather a sermon,
insisting that truth bred truth as surely as cabbages bred cabbages,
or as lies bred lies. Grandfather, as you know, would neither dictate
nor appeal; but he came closer to each, in this talk to us, than I had
ever heard him come.
I was still thinking of his last statement (Lucy would call it a
pearl), “One cannot bargain with truth,” when Aunt Gracia began her
talk about discretion. It seemed to me that she was unsaying most of
the things Grandfather had said; but it was easier to doubt my own
understanding than it was to doubt either Aunt Gracia’s dutifulness or
her rigid integrity. It wasn’t long, though, until she gave me no
opportunity for choice; so then I asked her, straight, if she was
disagreeing with what Grandfather had said to us in the parlour.
She answered that Grandfather was old, very old, and at present
frightfully weakened from shock, grief, and the impending horror of
disgrace. She said that, fundamentally, what Grandfather had been
telling us about truth was sound; but, in many circumstances, truth
should become a delicate thing, to be handled delicately, not swung as
a bludgeon. She said that truth might breed truth, if it were planted
in the proper soil. If it were tossed carelessly to the four winds it
might breed nothing—as cabbage seeds sown in the sagebrush would breed
nothing—or it might breed anything: destruction, disgrace.
Grandfather’s idealism, she remarked, like many other beautiful
things, was not always the most practical asset in a time of
emergency.
You will understand, Judy, that I actually had to turn in my saddle
and look to make sure that it was Aunt Gracia, of the nonadjustable
moralities, who was riding beside me.
She misread my look, because she said: “Exactly, Neal. We are to use
the truth to-day, but we are to use it carefully, with discretion. For
instance, dear, the fact that I can find comfort in the knowledge that
Dick died in a state of perfect grace, need not be brought out. Unless
we are directly questioned, I should think the entire circumstance of
Dick’s recent baptism might better be omitted from the testimony. Too,
I can see no reason for telling anyone who may be there to-day about
the fact that Dick and Christopher had recently exchanged rooms.”
“Aunt Gracia,” I asked, “do you think that some one of us meant to
kill Chris, and blundered into Father’s room, by mistake?”
She evaded that by saying it was more important, now, to plan for the
future than it was to probe into the past.
I told her that I agreed with her. But, I fancy, we did not mean the
same thing. It was a peach of a morning, Judy. The snow had melted.
The air was sweet. Hiroshige had done the sky, and our brown old hills
lay softly in front of it. It was not the realization of death, it was
the realization of life—of a world alive; even our hills were only
napping—that made me go suddenly rabid.
Aunt Gracia interrupted my ravings. “Don’t, Neal. Don’t,” she
commanded. “You sound like Jasper in _Edwin Drood_.”
That was plain enough, wasn’t it? “Aunt Gracia,” I said, “it is
bothering you, isn’t it, to decide whether I shot Father because I
thought that he was going insane, or whether I meant to go into
Chris’s room that night, and shot Father by mistake?”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Because you say we must mention neither the baptism nor the changed
rooms at the inquest to-day. Because I know that you have suspected
me, from the first. Would it help you any to have me swear to you, out
here in the open, that I am as innocent as you are?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I swear it, Aunt Gracia.”
We rode along and had made the ford before she said another word. She
came up beside me on the east river path.
“Neal,” she said, “this is an irreligious community. Consequently,
there are two words they like to roll around their tongues—‘Religious
fanatic.’ I am hoping they won’t think of those two words to-day.”
She grew intense. She does, you know, once in a blue moon. She said
that she wasn’t a coward. She said she would be glad to say that she
had killed Father, and then go to join him, and Mother, and the others
in one of the highest states of glory. But, she said, such a false
confession could do nothing but bring added shame and grief to the
family. If only, she said, she were not a Quilter—then how eagerly she
would sacrifice her own life and honour for the honour of the
Quilters.
I felt, of course, like asking her not to be an idiot. I didn’t.
I produced some banality about the uselessness of such a
sacrifice—allowing the real criminal to go free, all that.
“I know,” she answered, “but—the ecstasy of it! The exquisite, vivid
ecstasy of such a sacrifice. Or—of any sacrifice. Isn’t it odd, Neal,
that no one ever pities Isaac?”
You can understand, Judy, that that just about knocked me a twister.
You can understand, too, why I had been dreading Aunt Gracia’s turn as
a witness. I tell you what, Jude, every one of the family has got the
rotten habit of thinking that, because Aunt Gracia’s mind is different
from our own, it is inferior—deformed. We have no right to the
comparison. It is as unfair as comparing—well, say ice and water. I’d
be bound to muddle a metaphor here—but Aunt Gracia’s mind is surely
more fluid in its mysticism than are ours in their set materialism.
This is all pretty poor. I wish you might have been there, to-day, to
see and hear Aunt Gracia.
II
When I saw her gather up the skirt of her long black riding habit and
walk across that dirty room and take her place in the witness chair,
the thought flashed through my mind that it was a wonder that Olympe,
ill or not, would have forgone such an opportunity. Only, and I’m not
meaning to knock Olympe, either, Aunt Gracia’s dignity and distinction
were natural, untrimmed: the difference between one of our Percherons
in a meadow or decked out in a circus parade.
Hank put her through the usual preliminaries, and then asked her, as
he had asked us, to tell the jury what she knew about the murder.
Sitting there, dressed in black in that gloomy room, with her face a
white oval and her long hands, white and still in her lap, she needed
a Rembrandt. She is old, past thirty, but she is beautiful; especially
beautiful with her head tipped as she had it this afternoon, so that
her thin features are a bit foreshortened. And as for her voice—they
can extol soft, velvety, throaty voices for women. But I’ll take Aunt
Gracia’s voice every time—it is like a clear glass bell being rung
with decorum.
“My story,” she said, “would be precisely the same as the stories the
others have told you. My fright, my efforts to open my door, my
release, could further in no way the purposes of this inquiry. You
have listened, patiently, to three accounts of the sort; but you are,
I believe, no nearer the truth than you were in the beginning. It
seems wise to me, now, to bring several matters to your attention.
“You have not taken into account the fact that whoever was in my
brother’s room on Monday night must have been there for sometime
before the shot was fired. The rope was not put in place after the
shot was fired. From the position of the rope in the snow, and from
the amount of snow that had fallen on it, we were able to tell that
the rope must have been lying, for at least an hour, exactly where we
found it.
“My brother was a light sleeper. Does it seem reasonable, even
possible, that anyone could come into his room, open a window, tie a
rope around his bedstead, toss the rope out of the window, while he
slept? Or, while he lay there in bed and calmly watched the person
making these preparations? If, for some reason, my brother had been
unable to move—though he was not unable to move—don’t you know that he
would have called, cried out for help? You have listened to the
testimony that members of the family could be plainly heard shouting
to one another through the closed locked doors. Would my brother,
would any man, lie in silence, motionless, and allow some intruder to
remain in his room?
“No; not unless he were forced to do so. What could have forced him?
The gun that killed him—nothing else. But not the gun alone. The gun
in the hands of some strong, powerful person of whom my brother would
have been afraid.
“I wonder how many people in this county would testify that Richard
Quilter was a brave man? Every person, I think, who knew him. I wonder
how many people would have dared to sneak into my brother’s room and
menace him with a gun. Very few, I believe.
“It has been suggested, or, perhaps, I should say insinuated, that my
cousin, Irene Quilter, shot my brother. Look at her. Do you think she
would have dared? Assume that she did dare. Do you think that she
could have frightened my brother—a man six feet tall and afraid of
nothing? How long do you think it would have taken him to leap from
his bed and seize any weapon held in her trembling hands? She is a
frail woman, bred in an Eastern city. Probably she has never
discharged a gun in her life. She, as you must know, could not menace
a coward for five minutes. Could she have menaced Richard Quilter for
an hour—two hours?
“It took a man who was expert with a gun to be able to keep my brother
covered while he stooped to tie that rope around the foot of the bed.
True, he had it in readiness, or so it would surely seem. He had one
loop made, shall we say? But, gentlemen, to draw fifty feet of rope
through a loop is not the work of an instant. The murderer had to
stoop to fasten the rope. He had to do it with his left hand, while
his right hand held the gun that cowed my brother.
“Dr. Elm has told me, and will testify under oath, that my brother was
not drugged at the time of his death; that he had been given no drug
of any sort before his death. Can you see Dick Quilter, as you knew
him, alert, active, fearless, lying there in bed while some weak,
inadequate person crouched to place that rope? I think you cannot.
“Three women were in the house that night: an old lady, past sixty—my
aunt, Olympe Quilter—Irene Quilter, and I. Also, there was my little
niece, Richard’s daughter, a twelve-year-old child. Do you think that
Richard would have allowed any one of us to threaten him with a gun
for a longer time than it took him to reach us and take the thing away
from us?
“My father was in the house that night. You know him. But, aside from
that, you have seen him on the witness stand to-day. He is eighty
years old. Would Richard have been afraid to unarm him, do you fancy?
Would Richard have been afraid to unarm this eighteen-year-old son of
his? Or, could Richard have been afraid of our cousin, Christopher
Quilter?
“I dislike saying this, here, but I will say it because I must. My
brother loved our Cousin Christopher; but he scorned him. He thought,
perhaps rightly, that Christopher was a weakling. Though Richard had
been ill for some time, he could work all day at tasks that tired
Christopher in a few hours. What opportunity in an Eastern university,
in his studies abroad, had Christopher had to develop prowess with a
gun? He was never a sportsman. As a boy he never went hunting. I doubt
that he has fired a gun half a dozen times in his life. All of which
would mean nothing, perhaps, but for the fact that Richard knew it as
well as I know it. Do you think that Christopher, a man of much
frailer physique than my brother, could have frightened him for five
minutes; could have kept him cowed and silent for an hour? Do you
think that Dick Quilter, with any one of these seven people, would not
have made an attempt to save himself?”
Thopson interrupted and wanted to know if Aunt Gracia was not
overlooking the fact that, perhaps, Richard Quilter was in the act of
making that attempt when he was shot.
“I will remind you,” Aunt Gracia said, “that the rope had been in the
position we found it for at least an hour. Nothing but knowledge that
such an attempt would mean certain death could have held my brother
passive for an hour. As you suggest, it is possible that at last, in
desperation, he did make an attempt to save himself. You know the
result.
“There is another point that has not been touched upon: the lighted
lamp in Richard’s room that night. I had put the small bedside lamp,
newly filled, as usual, in his room that evening. At midnight, the
lamp was burning low; the oil was all but exhausted. Since, I have
refilled the lamp and tested it for time. It took two hours and a half
to consume as much oil as had been consumed on Monday night. It had
never been my brother’s practice to read in bed. There was no book or
magazine near his bed. Why should the lamp have burned throughout the
night?
“Assume that when Richard went into his room that night, the murderer
was hiding there—probably in the clothes closet—and, after Richard had
got into bed, but before he had reached to extinguish the light, the
man had stepped out, with the gun levelled on him——”
“Wouldn’t you say, Miss Quilter, that two hours and a half was a long
time for the murderer to have spent in your brother’s room?”
“I should, indeed.”
“A long time, too, for such a man as your brother to have allowed
himself to be ‘menaced’ without making an attempt to disarm the
fellow, without raising his voice in outcry?”
“It seems to me that is precisely what I have been contending, Mr.
Thopson. I presume, however, that you have thought ahead to the second
point which I was about to make. This:
“We have no way of knowing what went on in Dick’s room that night.
None of us, I am sure, knows all there is to be known about any other
person. We think that there was no hidden chapter, no hidden page or
paragraph in my brother’s life. We cannot know it. Suppose some
ruffian was making a blackmailing demand from Richard. Suppose that
Richard was as eager as was the man himself to keep the rest of us
from knowing that he—the murderer, I mean—was in the house; had any
reason for being there.
“We know nothing of these possibilities now. I hope we may know, in
time. What we do know now is that no member of this family could have
caused Richard one moment’s alarm. That he could have and would have
disarmed any one of us in the snatch of a second, and sent us ashamed
away from him.
“My brother’s corpse is lying in the adjoining room. I ask the jury to
look at it. To see the size of the man, the breadth of his shoulders.
I ask them to see what can be seen in his dead face—the strength, the
purpose, the courage. I ask them to return and look at us, here. Then
they will know, since they are just, wise men, that I have spoken the
truth.”
Impressive? Golly, Jude, it was a knockout. On the square, it is
thanks to Aunt Gracia—the family disgrace because she happens to be a
mystic—that Irene, or Chris, or, probably, both of them aren’t going
to have to appear before the Grand Jury. And, if you will forgive the
old wise crack, it wasn’t so much what she said as the way she said
it. Sitting there, so aloof and so lovely, speaking in that clear,
unafraid voice of hers, she conveyed the impression that no man’s
doubt could damage her; that any man’s doubt would prove him a fool or
a monster. One doesn’t, you know, look at the white moon in a black
night’s sky and remark, “I don’t believe it.” And yet, after all, the
moon is not a large and luminous dinner plate.
Note, Judy: Aunt Gracia had made a special point, to me in private, of
the fact that Father was taking medicine that made him sleep heavily.
Dr. Joe knew it. Would he have called a sleeping medicine “drugs”?
Possibly, almost certainly, not if he had had a talk with Aunt Gracia
before the inquest. Because, you see, if Father had been drugged into
a heavy sleep, all Aunt Gracia’s arguments would amount to nothing.
The person could have crept into the room, made the arrangements with
the rope without waking Father; could have fired the shot, and could
have got away. Smash goes the fact of Father’s lack of fear; smash
goes the fact of his disarming any one of us; smash goes the expert
gunman—smash for all of it. Not much bravery is required to shoot a
sleeping man.
It doesn’t seem reasonable to suppose that, even if Father had been
drugged and asleep, some guy would have had the nerve to stick around
in the room for a couple of hours with the lamp burning. But it is
possible, anyway, that Father got into bed and was so dopey, and tired
that he dropped off to sleep and forgot to blow out the light.
Here is another thing, Judy. If the guy had been hiding in Father’s
room before Father came into it, couldn’t he have fixed the rope then?
Sure he could. Father didn’t look under his bed at night, did he? He
would have noticed if the window had been open and the rope stretched
across to it as we found it. But he wouldn’t have noticed a loop of
rope around the leg of his bed. The fellow did not, necessarily, have
to pull the fifty feet of rope through the loop with one hand while he
used the other hand to keep Father covered with a gun.
Since I didn’t think through to any of this until I was riding home
from Quilterville this evening, I am fairly certain that the jury
hasn’t come to it yet. For one thing, as I have said, Aunt Gracia
obviated doubt by making it seem idiotic and indecent. For another
thing, the jury, at the last, was straining every nerve to live up to
her description and look like wise and just men.
When Aunt Gracia had finished her speech, which I’ve copied straight
from Mattie’s notes for you, she began to gather her skirts into one
hand, preparatory to leaving the witness chair.
Chris whispered to me, “Bless her, she’s turned the tide!”
Thopson said, “One moment, please, Miss Quilter.”
Aunt Gracia sat back in her chair, and dropped her hands, quiet as
dead things, into her lap again.
III
Thopson started off with a lot of con talk about how helpful she had
been, and about how she had his gratitude and the gratitude of the
jury for her plain speaking. It was only through such methods as hers,
extolled he, that the guilty wretch could ever be brought to justice.
It sounded great. But I felt, like the carpenter, that the butter was
spread too thick. Aunt Gracia sat, pale and placid, and looking about
as susceptible to flattery as my but recently mentioned moon.
“You have implied,” Thopson finally came to it, “that your brother
might have had an enemy. By a rigorous searching of your memory, would
it be possible for you to recall who this enemy might be?”
“But, of course,” Aunt Gracia answered, “I thought that you knew.
Seventeen, nearly eighteen years ago, my brother killed a man as he
would have killed a mad dog, or a rattlesnake, or any dangerous thing
that was attacking his wife. He was tried, and acquitted. The jury did
not leave the room. The judge apologized to Richard—or so I have been
told—explaining that the trial had been merely a conformance to the
letter of the law.”
“Do you know the name of the man whom Richard Quilter killed?”
“Enos Karabass. The Pennsylvania Dutch, I believe, are unfortunate
people to anger.”
“His family lives in this vicinity?”
“No, they do not.”
“Were they informed concerning the manner of his death?”
“We were unable to find that he had any people.”
Thopson gave himself over to pity. “But, my dear Miss Quilter——”
“You asked me if it could be possible that my brother had an enemy.
Any man who has ever killed another man might, it seems to me, have
dangerous enemies from that time forth.”
“I see. I see. Granted, then, for the sake of argument that that man
had a brother, or a son, who wanted to avenge his death. Would it have
been possible for him to enter your home without detection?”
“Quite possible. Our outside doors are never locked until the last
thing at night. While we were at supper, in the dining room, anyone
could have walked in, quietly, and gone upstairs.”
“You have no watchdogs on your place?”
“We have two dogs. I mentioned suppertime because, usually at that
hour, the dogs are at the back of the house waiting for, or eating,
their suppers.”
“Very well. He could have gotten into the house. He could have hidden
in your brother’s bedroom. But—— Could he have gotten out of the
house? That is, could he have gotten out of the house without leaving
any footprints in the snow? This does seem to bring us back to the
beginning, doesn’t it?”
Aunt Gracia said, “He could have got out of the house, because he did
get out. How he escaped we have not, as yet, been able to discover.
That is the problem to be solved. We have one fact. He is not in our
home at present. That leads to another fact, unexplained, but not
conjectural. He has escaped. It is stupid, and so it is an insult to
the intelligence of this jury for us to keep insisting that the man
could not have got out of the house, when we all know that he _has_
got out of the house.”
The jury shone from the sensation of having their intelligences
mentioned.
“Very well,” Thopson assumed acceptance, “we’ll rest that for the
present. Now, if you please, I’d like to take up, with you, the matter
of the locked doors.”
Aunt Gracia invited, “Yes. I wish you would.”
I am asking you, Judy, is she a clever woman, or isn’t she?
“All of the outside doors were locked, on the inside, I presume, on
the night of October eighth?”
“No. We have three outside doors. The side door was locked, on the
inside. Both the front and back doors were unlocked. Anyone could have
come downstairs and have walked straight out of the house through
either of those doors.”
“Without leaving footprints in the snow?”
“I am sorry,” Aunt Gracia said, “I thought that we were speaking now
only of the doors.”
“Whose duty was it to lock those outside doors at night?”
“It was no one’s duty. Usually, the last person downstairs, in the
evening, attended to locking the house.”
“Who was the last person downstairs that night?”
“My brother. That is, he was the last person to retire. It should have
been his care to lock the doors.”
“Would it have been possible for him to have forgotten to lock them?”
“Very possible. Locked doors are given, or were given, very little
attention on our ranch. I fancy that we slept many nights with the
doors unlocked.”
It seemed to me that, if I had been in Thopson’s place, I should have
asked, then, how it happened, in a house where locked doors were given
no attention, that there were keys for all the upstairs doors. (Aunt
Gracia’s statement was truthful enough. She had said, “were given.” A
month or so ago, not one of our bedroom doors had a key to it. Aunt
Gracia had had to hunt them all out from the hardware box in the
attic.) Thopson missed it, however, and went on to ask her to tell him
exactly which doors were locked that night.
“Except for the seven bedroom doors, which were locked on the
outside,” she said, “and for the side door, downstairs, I think every
door in the house was unlocked, including the inside and outside
cellar doors. To be sure, I had almost forgotten, the door to the back
stairway was locked. Irene Quilter has told you how that came to be
locked.”
“Into what downstairs room,” Thopson inquired, “does the back stairway
lead?”
“Into the sitting room.”
“Not the room in which Mrs. Christopher Quilter was sleeping that
night?”
“Yes.”
“Why, then, did Mrs. Christopher Quilter not unlock that door, and go
up the back stairway, instead of going through the several downstairs
rooms, in order to use the front stairway?”
“That question is easily answered, Mr. Thopson. The back stairway is
crooked and narrow. We none of us ever use it. In her terrorized
state, my cousin would surely act according to habit. Her habit was to
use the front stairway.”
Can you sort the truth out of that, Judy? Irene, who never did any
work, and who was never in a hurry, generally did use the front
stairway. The rest of us used the back stairway as often as we used
the front one. Do you know why Aunt Gracia deliberately lied about it?
I don’t know, entirely. And I don’t know why Irene did not run right
up the back stairway that night. I wish that I did know. Though,
surely, Aunt Gracia might have been right about Irene’s acting
according to habit. It was her habit to go upstairs the front way, and
she was badly frightened. I guess we’ll have to let it go at that.
Thopson’s next question was a stunner. “Could you swear, Miss Quilter,
that no member of your family could have gone into Richard Quilter’s
room, committed the murder, slipped out through the hall and back into
his own room? I understand that the turmoil in the hall would have
covered any slight noise that night.”
For the first time, Aunt Gracia hedged. “I think that I understand
your question, Mr. Thopson; but may I ask you to state it a bit more
directly, so that I may give a direct answer?”
“Would you swear that there was not time for any member of your family
to have gone into your brother’s room, committed the murder, and got
back into his own room, before Irene Quilter came into the upper
hall?”
“No. I could not swear to that, because there was time. I could and do
swear, however, that no member of our family did do what you have
suggested because, though there was time, there was not opportunity. I
make this oath for two reasons. The one reason, I have given you: No
member of our family could have kept Dick Quilter cowed for five
minutes—much less for an hour or longer. The second reason I have not,
as yet, given to you. It is this: Each member of the Quilter family
was locked in his or her room that night at the time of the murder.
All seven bedroom doors were locked on the outside. One of the
bedrooms was unoccupied—but that door was also locked. Irene Quilter
found seven keys in my brother’s room, and used one key to unlock each
door. No, Mr. Thopson, we have more than Irene’s word for that. The
keys were left on the outside of the locks. Only a few minutes later
my father and I turned all those keys again. We did this, hoping that
the murderer might be hiding in one of these rooms, and that we could
keep him locked there while we searched the remainder of the house.”
“Granted,” Thopson said, “that six of you were locked in your rooms on
that night. There still remains a seventh, Miss Quilter, who was not
locked in her room.”
Aunt Gracia said: “Mr. Thopson, please be fair about this. Can you
imagine anyone who would plan a murder by carefully establishing
alibis for every person in the house except herself? Do you suppose
that if Irene Quilter had planned to kill my brother, she would have
arranged to be the one person in the house who was not locked in a
room at the time?”
“Am I unfair when I suggest that plans sometimes miscarry?”
“No, you are not. That is a fair thing to say. But no person ever
plans a murder so that the burden of suspicion, even stupid suspicion,
falls upon himself. It would seem, too, Mr. Thopson, that in this
instance the murderer’s carefully laid plans had not miscarried. My
brother is dead. The murderer has escaped—got clear and away, and, as
yet, no one of us has one clue as to his identity.”
She put it over, Judy. All honour to Aunt Gracia! Mr. Ward knew better
than to say a word when Thopson signified that he was ready to excuse
her. It was she, the family misfortune, who got the verdict for us—the
verdict that allowed us all to go free.
Thopson called Dr. Joe again. Dr. Joe testified, under oath, that
Father had been given no drug of any sort that night. Do you suppose
that Dr. Joe could salve his conscience, if he needed to, with the
difference between “had been given no drug” and “had taken no drug”?
As Dr. Joe came back to sit with us, Gus Wildoch and the two guys who
had been at the ranch with him came sneaking in at the back of the
room. They had been subpœnaed for witnesses, and had been called right
after Dr. Joe—as I should have mentioned. But Hank had explained that
they had sent in word that they might be a little late, owing to a
rush of duties, and he had proceeded to go along without them. I fancy
that Hank was trying to keep them out of it. Or, perhaps Gus himself,
with his regard for the elder Quilters, was trying to evade
testifying. Their evidence, however, was certainly not damaging.
Since each of them said the same thing, in almost the same way, I’ll
lump their testimony to save your time and my space.
They had come with Christopher Quilter, at his request, to Q 2 Ranch
on the morning of Tuesday, October the ninth. They had seen and had
carefully examined the body of Richard Quilter. He had been shot
through the left chest. Rigor mortis had been complete when they had
arrived. They had inspected the Quilter mansion and grounds. They
couldn’t say as to footprints—the place was pretty well tracked up by
the time they got there. Gus didn’t “go much on these here footprints,
anyhow—too many ways to get around them, such as wearing the other
fellow’s shoes.” They had been unable to form any opinions as to who
the murderer might be.
Thopson tried none of his baiting with them. The two deputies, I was
later informed, were Gus’s two brothers who have come recently from
Texas, and the three made rather a formidable trio: combined heights
about nineteen feet; combined weights close to six hundred pounds.
They were excused, and Hank grew confidential with the jury. He told
them that if they wanted to go into the other room and talk things
over for a few minutes, they could—he guessed. But he reminded them
that they and he should get home and get their milking and other
chores put through. He guessed that they saw, as he saw, that a lot of
time had been wasted, and that, “futthermore,” there wasn’t sense nor
reason in fiddle-faddling much longer. Some dirty son of a sea cook
had broken into the Quilter mansion and shot Dick Quilter and made a
getaway. Hank finished by expressing his deep regret that the law
wasn’t able to help the Quilters out in any way, right now; and,
adding his fervent hope that soon it might be able to lay hands on the
Dutchman, or whatever dirty crook had done it, he turned the case over
to the jury.
If I had been writing a book, I’d have kept their verdict a dark
secret until now. But since I have sacrificed my literary style to
your peace of mind, I have had to miss my climax.
However, perhaps this will serve: What Aunt Gracia told the jury, with
my comments appended.
1. Father was the strongest member of the family.
True a year ago. Not true a week ago.
2. Father could have disarmed any member of the family.
Doubtful, certainly, a week ago. But, say that he could have
disarmed any one of us. Would he have tried to? Can you see
Father jumping at any one of us, and snatching a gun from us? I
can’t. Judy, you and I know that he would have lain there in bed
and tried to shame us out of our nonsense. Aunt Gracia was right
about that. He couldn’t have feared a one of us. He would have
thought that we were staging a bluff. Would he have called it?
Yes, and for any length of time. I can imagine him lying there in
bed and laughing at us.
3. Father had not been drugged. He was in full possession of
all his faculties.
Is this the truth? Did Dr. Joe lie helpfully?
4. None of us ever used the back stairway.
We all used it, except possibly Irene.
5. Since the murderer was not in our house, he must have
escaped from it.
You don’t need me to point the sophistry of that.
6. We were all locked in our rooms. Proof: Irene found seven
keys, unlocked seven doors, and left seven keys on the outside
of the doors.
There are ten doors in our upper hall. Irene found and used
seven keys. You can think that out. I’m not going to write it.
Remember that all the keys to the locks in the upper hall are
interchangeable. The attic door had had no key. It has now. I
have brought it down from the hardware box in the attic. My one
bit of sleuthing. But whether that was its first or second trip
downstairs within the week, it did not say.
IV
Judy, I’m not crazy—though sometimes I feel, almost, as if I were. I
am not trying to prove, with this quibbling, that some member of the
Quilter family shot and killed Father. It seems to me that the single
hope I have left, for anything, is to prove that no member of the
family is a murderer. But I am bound to be with Grandfather concerning
truth. I have to get my proof through truth—nothing else can satisfy
me. I have to establish Quilter innocence, and reëstablish Quilter
honour, before I can begin to try to establish anything else.
Aunt Gracia proved Quilter innocence to the six good men and true. I’d
give a thousand of the best grazing acres on Q 2 to have had her prove
it to me. I’d give more than that. My own life, of course—but it is
not worth shucks. I’d give Lucy’s life, or Grandfather’s, just as they
would give them, for that certainty.
Do you know, I have found one way I can almost get it. My way hasn’t
anything to do with ropes, or keys, or coal oil. It hasn’t anything to
do with footprints, or motives, or drugs.
I do this. I take us, one at a time. I begin with Grandfather, and I
come straight through the list to Lucy. I stop at each name. I think.
I put into that thinking every particle of knowledge I have concerning
each person, and I keep out of it every particle of prejudice and
every atom of affection or of admiration. I judge them as objectively
as I judge cattle for buying or breeding. Each time I do it, I come
out with a clean slate. That method, and nothing else, gives me my
certainty, my sure knowledge that not one of the Quilter family could
be guilty of crime.
And that, after consideration, I am bound to state is a lie. It gives
me my certainty—with one exception. That is why I don’t go after it
more often. That is why I am afraid of my certainty. Each time, more
positively than the last, it omits one person. Probably you don’t need
to have me tell you who the one person is. Neal Quilter.
Neal Quilter could have done it. Suppose that he had. Suppose that he
had planned the thing keenly, as it was planned, from beginning to
end. And then, as Aunt Gracia said, since we are dealing with
suppositions, suppose that the horror of having done such a thing
should have driven him clear out of his mind; should have caused a
real brain storm—so that, when the storm had cleared, he had forgotten
every incident connected with the crime.
I wish I knew more about minds. I wish I knew whether a thing of the
sort ever had happened or ever could happen. Chris says that great
strides in psychology are to be made within the next decade. I tried
to pump him about it, since he is interested in the subject. But of
course, since I was unwilling to say to him what I have said to you, I
got no real satisfaction. Still, since it is recognizedly possible
that a man may forget his entire past, including his own name, and
continue to go about as a fairly normal person, I don’t see why it
should be impossible for him to forget, entirely, some one particular
horror.
Granting the amnesia, I could have done it. I could have gone upstairs
some time in the late afternoon and fixed that rope on the bed, and
collected the keys from the inside of the doors. (Where I got a gun,
and what I did with it afterwards, are, of course, other things I
would have forgotten. I can reconstruct with the material now at hand.
I cannot remember.) Then, on Monday night, before Father put out his
light, I could have stepped across the hall to his room. If I had gone
in there, threatening him with a gun, do you think he’d have jumped
out of bed and taken the gun away from me? I think not. Aunt Gracia
was night about that. Father would not have been afraid of any one of
us. Why, even I would laugh if any member of our family came dodging
into my room flourishing a gun. Or, perhaps I should say, even I, a
week ago, would have laughed.
But we’ll say I didn’t show my gun. We’ll say that I kept it in my
back pocket for an hour or so while we talked, Father and I. If I had
decided to kill him rather than allow him to go insane, I might have
desired a long, confirmatory talk. Unless the rope is clear outside
the whole affair of the murder—as Chris still insists—we can no longer
suppose that I had meant to shoot Chris, and shot Father by mistake.
That hour, with the rope out across the porch roof, has to be
accounted for.
I might have fixed the rope at eleven o’clock, deciding that I would
use it in the next five minutes. And, after that, something might have
caused me to delay for another hour. The rope hocus-pocus certainly
would not have caused Father to take either me or my threats any more
seriously. Can’t you imagine the conversation?
“What are you planning to do with the clothes-line, my son?”
“I am going to use it to escape out of the window after I have shot
you.”
We know that Father would have laughed at me; unless, of course, he
had decided that I had gone mad. In that case, he might have started
to get out of bed to take the gun away from me.
Well, then, I had the rope fixed, we’ll say. I shot Father. I went to
the window and discovered the snow. I knew that the rope could not be
used, then, because the footprints on the roof would betray me. What
might I have done? It is absurdly simple. I might have stepped across
the hall to my own room and locked myself in—_with the key to the
attic door_. Yes, as I have said, I have since found the key in the
hardware box in the attic. But if Grandfather, or Aunt Gracia, had
discovered an extra key in my room, when they were searching the
house, would they have declaimed concerning it, or would they have
hidden it away in the box?
Why I should have had the key, if I had planned the rope escape, I
can’t think. Why I should have planned the rope, I can’t think. I
might have had some wily scheme, involving both the key and the rope.
Or the entire idea of the rope might have been one of the fool
mistakes that murderers, according to the best traditions, always
make. Leaving the door between my room and Lucy’s unlocked would seem,
certainly, to have been another mistake.
The question of time is a nice one. I needed, after the shot was
fired, to have looked out of the window, crossed the full width of
Father’s room, got across the hall and into my own room, locked the
door, picked up a chair, and battered the door with it. Lucy needed to
have got out of bed, put on her slippers, lighted her lamp, run across
her room to my door, opened it. It might work out. I don’t know. I
think that I couldn’t have done my part of it in two minutes. Then I
remember how long two minutes were when you were taking Greg’s
temperature.
On the whole, the time seems to be against me. What I could have done
with the gun seems to be for me. When I remember how this house was
searched, it seems impossible that I could have hidden a gun anywhere
in it. It certainly would have been found. I could not have thrown it
out of a window. We’d have seen it in the snow. Though, after all, I
have a good baseball arm; I might have thrown it out of Father’s open
window. No, that’s nonsense. It would have been found, long before
this. However, the fact that the gun is gone doesn’t weigh very
heavily against the facts that no one got out of the house that night
and that no one was hiding in the house that night.
I suppose you might suggest that Chris was as capable of the crime as
I was. It won’t do. Chris loved Father: not enough to kill him rather
than have him lose that splendid mind of his, but too much to kill him
for any other reason. Father had stopped opposing the sale of the
ranch. Chris had Father’s ill health and overwork on this place to use
as an excuse for selling us out. He had Father’s ability as a rancher
to salve his conscience if he stuck us on some dinky valley truck
farm. Also, Chris is a rank sentimentalist and—may I say
consequently—something of a coward.
Yet, when I go to calling Chris names, I suspect that I should go
softly. I have wondered, these last few days, whether instead of
fighting what I have always decried as Quilter sentimentality, I have
been fighting, merely, a subtle sensitiveness, an ability for loving,
which I have been too boorish to possess or to understand. The thought
of marrying some queen and giving her a right to paw over me and call
me “Boofel,” nauseates me. Look at Uncle Phineas tethered to Olympe.
Look at Chris deeded to Irene! You and Greg are different; but you are
friends. You bake your bread, instead of feasting on the yeast.
And—you are a Quilter woman. But what I started to say was, that I
have wondered whether this lack of sentimentality in me denoted simply
a hard streak, a streak of yellow, perhaps a streak of cruelty.
I’ve wondered, too, if the fact that Father killed that cur a few
months before I was born, and that Mother saw him do it, might have
made me different. People seem to think that prenatal influences are
important. I have never believed it, because it seems to me if that
were true of people it would be true of animals. Still, what do I know
about it? Or about anything? There is this: I don’t feel as if I were
incapable of love, if love is the rather tremendously serious, and
yet, someway, the very humorous, clutching feeling I have for the
family and for Q 2. But I do feel as if talking about it, showing it
off as Irene and Chris show it off, defiled it.
There is Aunt Gracia, to-day, and the feeling I have about her. She
sat there, lying under oath, to save the Quilter family; to save, I
know, either Irene and Chris or Irene and me. There isn’t one of us, I
suppose, who would not have been willing to sacrifice his own honour,
peace of mind, and the rest, to such a cause. But, by Jove, I think
Aunt Gracia is the only one of us who is brave enough to sacrifice
eternity. I know exactly what she did to-day. Should I go to her and
spiel a lot of mushy stuff about loving her for it? Should I cheapen
her magnificence to gratify my own emotionalism? Should I write my
name in red pencil on the base of a marble column?
In other words—what a good boy am I! Sitting here, teetering with
tragedy, and revelling in congratulatory self-analysis. Ask me this,
Judy. Ask me why I have not mentioned again the important fact that
was brought out during to-day’s inquisition? That is, why I have so
carefully avoided further discussion of the fact that Father’s death
may bring to his family a payment of ten thousand needed dollars?
Should you believe me if I told you that, for the last several hours,
I had forgotten it? I hope you are too sensible to believe that. Ask
me why, just now, when I was making out the case against myself, I did
not mention a ten-thousand-dollar motive? Ten thousand dollars would
mean enough money for Irene and Chris to go where they please, with
enough left over to carry Q 2 through to safety. I remarked, during
the inquest, that I had not known about the accident policy. I seemed
to be believed. I seem to have believed myself——
V
Later.
Sorry, Judy dear. I am a fool. Even this forgetting business would, I
suppose, need to stop somewhere. I had not known about the policy. And
talking is rot. My apology, if you’ll have it, is that Father’s death
has been a knockout. I’ve been feeling too much—unaccustomed feelings.
I have been thinking, or trying to think, until my brain has worn out
from effort.
I am all right again now. I’ve been out with Uncle Phineas walking and
waiting for the sunrise. He is all cut up, torn up about Father. And
yet, somehow, the fact that he was not here on Monday night, and that
he didn’t have the horror of that first hour, seems to make him more
wholesome, saner than any of us.
He was here at home when we got back from the inquest last evening. He
came running down the path to meet us, with tears washing out of his
eyes and all over his cheeks, but he was paying no more attention to
them than he would have paid to rain. He is one of us—a Quilter
straight through—and neck deep in trouble with us. But it is as if he
had come in, on purpose, while the rest of us have been chucked in.
Olympe was out of bed, when we came from Quilterville yesterday, as
chipper as you please in Aunt Gracia’s best kitchen dress with a
little doily of an apron. She actually had helped Lucy prepare supper
for the three of them. Olympe would be correctly costumed for the
frying of ham and eggs.
(Dr. Joe has envoys scouring Chinatown for Dong Lee, but he is not to
be discovered. He was to have stayed a week; so we know that he’ll be
back on Monday; but we could do with him sooner. It is tough for Aunt
Gracia, this having him gone just now.)
While the rest of us were getting a pick-up supper in the kitchen,
Olympe disappeared. Sure enough, in a few minutes, here she came,
wearing that black lace rig of hers, with the red roses and red velvet
loops ripped off of it. A pity, since, by that time, Lucy and I were
the only ones who had stayed downstairs.
Olympe stopped in the kitchen doorway and asked us where Pan was. We
told her that he had gone to Grandfather’s room with him. She trailed
forward to the table, delivered the first part of her “God help the
Quilter wives” speech, and turned to sweep from the room. Lucy
laughed.
You see, in her haste to get into mourning, Olympe had forgotten the
back of her gown. Do you remember its long, square train, caught up in
two places with great blobs of a horrible shade of red velvet and red
roses? She had forgotten to remove them.
It was not amusing. Lucy laughed, as you know, not in spite of our
trouble, but because of it. If Lucy had not been all to pieces,
unnerved and half hysterical, she could no more have laughed at
anything about Olympe than she could have cat-called in church. I
don’t recall that any of us children were taught that we must never
laugh at Olympe. And yet, of course, laughing at her has always been
one of the major Quilter heresies.
Olympe wheeled about. She was so white that the little dabs of rouge
on her cheekbones looked as if they might tumble off. I went and stood
close to Lucy.
Olympe said, “Are you laughing at me?”
I tried to tell her that Lucy was not laughing. That she was all to
pieces, hysterical, and did not know what she was doing.
“She may not know,” Olympe said, “but I know that she is laughing at
me. Why? Because I am old, and weak, and no longer beautiful; because
my husband humiliates me, and neglects me.”
She trailed away then, riding the trimmings on her train. Lucy, of
course, burst into tears.
I have gone well around Robin Hood’s barn, with all this. I wanted to
give you something as a sample, perhaps as an excuse for what I am
going to ask you to do.
Judy, I want you to write and insist on having Lucy come to you for a
time. Don’t hint that it is for Lucy’s sake. Lucy is too game to
desert. Say that it is for your sake. Say that you need her to help
you with Greg—so on. I don’t need to dictate your letter, but make it
strong. I’ll manage her railway fare, somehow or other. She has to get
away from here for the present.
She is twelve years old, imaginative and impressionable. We have been
fools to leave her alone so much with Olympe, here of late. I don’t
need to tell you how brave and sensible Lucy usually is. She will come
through even this all right, if we give her half a chance. She won’t
get the half chance, here, now, with Olympe treating her to scenes
like the one last evening, and telling her—the Lord knows what, and
making her promise not to tell. The kid has something extra on her
mind. And, though Lucy won’t tell me, I am darn sure it was Olympe who
loaded it there. I couldn’t insist that Lucy break a promise. But can
you imagine anyone who would be fool enough to add the burden of a
secret and a promise to Lucy’s troubles right now?
When this afternoon is over—the funeral is to be this afternoon—I am
going to Olympe about it. Not that I think it will amount to a hill of
beans; but, since we won’t be able to get Lucy to you for a week or
so, I’ll have to get things straightened out for her in the meantime.
She is scared, Judy, Lucy is. When I got her quieted down, last night,
I urged her to go upstairs to bed. She wouldn’t go. She said that she
was lonesome alone, and that she wanted to stay with me. Then, of a
sudden, you know how she lights and flashes, she said: “That is a
story, Neal. I’ve turned coward. Please don’t tell Grandfather. I am
afraid to go upstairs and stay alone in my room.”
I fixed her a fine bed, and screened it off from the light, on the
sitting-room sofa. And, gosh knows, I shouldn’t have thought it
strange, even from Lucy, if she had begun to be afraid a bit
sooner—the first night or the second. I can’t pretend that any of us
has been entirely without something that at least approximated fear.
Grandfather has locked the place himself, each night. And, as you
know, I have stayed up all night, on guard, every night this week.
(Chris offered to spell me, but I’ve liked the quiet nights for
writing to you. I have needed the job badly, so I have liked it.) No,
Lucy’s fear would have been natural enough, if it had begun sooner.
Coming now, it must mean that whatever fool thing Olympe told her
yesterday, and made her promise not to tell, has frightened her. With
this added to the rest, I am sure you’ll agree with me that we must
get Lucy right away from here.
Aunt Gracia is in the kitchen attending to breakfast. I’ll go and
cadge an advance snack, and then I’ll ride into Quilterville with this
in time to get it off on Number Twenty-four.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
Saturday, October 13, 1900.
Dear Judy: We buried Father to-day. To gratify Aunt Gracia, we had the
Siloamite ceremony. They did the best they could to re-break our
hearts, if that could have been possible. Since mummery is not always
ineffective, there should be a law decreeing that no one but a man’s
enemies be allowed to attend his funeral.
The entire county was there, I think. There were ponderously perfumed
flowers, tortured into unnatural shapes, over which furry,
caterpillarish-looking letters writhed into words, “At Rest,” and such
originalities.
When we came home neighbours had been here and had done strange,
geometrically unfamiliar things to the rooms, and had left a table
spread with an astonishing repast in odd dishes, which we never use.
Nothing was lacking, you see, from the best funereal traditions—not
even the baked meats. Nothing was lacking, except any sense of the
fitness of things, or of the comfort of finality, or the dignity of
death, or the realization that we are a supposedly civilized people,
living in the year 1900 A. D.
Sorry, Judy. I am not fit to write this evening. I am going to bed
to-night. If Chris wishes to keep up this fool night herding he may. I
am through.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
CHAPTER XVI
I
Sunday, October 14, 1900.
Dear Judy: Dr. Joe came home with us last evening, and spent the night
here. This afternoon he talked to Grandfather, Uncle Phineas, Chris,
and me.
He had heard from Mr. Ward, who had been to see the insurance people.
He said that they were inclined to hedge. They had hoped to have it
proved that Father’s death was suicidal. Mr. Ward writes, however,
that they haven’t a legal leg to stand on, and that he thinks he will
have the money for us within two weeks.
Grandfather asked me whether I had thought about what you and Lucy and
I would do with the money. I had not, of course. I hadn’t realized
that the money would come to the three of us. I told Grandfather we’d
do whatever he advised. He said we should have to think it over. We
dropped the discussion there.
This evening, when he got me alone, Chris said, flat, that I should
have to let him have five thousand dollars. That is, he said if I’d
pay the Brindley mortgage so that he could get another mortgage to the
extent of five thousand dollars, that would satisfy him. But, in some
way, he had to have at least five thousand at once—enough for Irene
and him to get back to New York and live until he had made a success
of his writing. Otherwise, he said, he should be forced to accept the
offer he had for selling the place. He was certain that I would
understand why he could not ask Irene to remain on Q 2 Ranch. No man,
he said, could ask any sensitive woman to continue life in a place
where such a horror had occurred.
I said, “Shall we cast lots for the garments, Chris?” and walked away.
But it isn’t as decent as that. It is refined blackmailing—though I
don’t know why I modify it.
If we do get the money, he’ll get his five thousand, won’t he, Judy?
Cheap at the price, to be rid of them. The other five thousand will
carry us along to safety.
In passing, I wonder whether Irene knew that Chris wouldn’t expect or
ask her to stay on a place where a horror had occurred? Sorry. That is
spite—cad’s talk—nothing else.
Thank the Lord we’ll get Lucy away from this rotten, spite-ridden,
fear-ridden hole before long. I wish we might get Grandfather away for
a while, too. He has aged, in the past week. I wish, also, that I
could keep him from finding out about this last brash move of Chris’s,
but I don’t know how to do it.
I’m foundered on this writing business, Judy. It is doing no good. I
think I shall pass it up. But I do want to tell you that I have
decided I was clear off about Grandfather’s suspecting me. I surely
had a brainstorm, right, there for a few days.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
II
Monday, October 15, 1900.
Dear Judy: Your letter in answer to my first one to you came this
morning. I’m glad that you think I did right when I told you the
truth. But I am sorry that you thought my purpose in writing to you
was to gain comfort and consolation for myself.
It is gratifying, of course, to know that you are sure I did not go
into Father’s room and murder him in cold blood. Gratifying, too, to
be assured that you can’t believe I murdered Father, not even by
mistake for Chris. As a matter of fact, I had reached both conclusions
some time ago.
Your judgment, from a few thousand miles of distance, that we were all
mistaken about nobody hiding in the house, and, probably, all mistaken
about there being no footprints in the snow, is also reassuring. And
nothing could be more inspirational than your repeated assertion that,
until I come to my senses and realize that no member of the family
_could possibly_ have done such a wicked thing, I’ll be useless as an
aid in discovering the real criminal. Too, your persistent demands
that I stop being foolish, hysterical, and begin to think calmly and
sanely and search for “clues” (Lord, Jude, that searching for clues
came near to being the last straw!), and evolve some sensible theory
and some reasonable plan of action, have been carefully noted.
Sorry, but to date I have evolved no such theory or plan. However,
other members of the family have been less dilatory. I shall give you
the two theories in vogue at present. You may have them to play with,
but I should advise against your putting them in your mouth, because,
I fear, they might rub off and give you a tummy ache.
The first theory was constructed by Olympe and is, I believe,
exclusively her own. It was this theory which succeeded in frightening
Lucy—I had given the child credit for much better sense—out of her
wits. At Lucy’s earnest solicitation, Olympe graciously allowed Lucy
to repeat the production to me. The author, modestly, declined a
direct discussion of it.
Lucy tells me that she has enlightened you, to some extent, concerning
a gentleman unfortunately named Archie Biggil—ex-husband of Irene’s.
That she has told you of his, perhaps belated, ardency; of his
jealousy, his passion, and other interesting emotions. Sweet stuff for
a kid like Lucy to have been consuming!
Olympe thinks that this Archie Biggil came, armed to the teeth, with
great stealth, in the deep darkness of the night, to Q 2 Ranch. She
thinks that he wore a red mask; that he crept into Father’s room and
shot him, not, as you may be supposing by mistake for Chris—though
that, too, would involve one or two minor discrepancies, such as the
fact that Archie, not having known of the changed rooms, would have
been unapt to make such a mistake—but out of revenge for the
unhappiness that Irene had undergone on Q 2.
Olympe advances that Archie, thoroughly provoked, had intended a sort
of holocaust, or general slaughter of the Quilters. But, possibly due
to his astonishment at having the first murder prove such a noisy
undertaking, he had temporarily, though immediately, desisted. He had
rushed into the hall. He had met Irene, who, overcome with some
emotion (joy? fright? horror? astonishment?), had experienced but one
impulse—to wit, the getting of Archie under cover. She had herded him
into the attic. She had locked him in one of her trunks for
safekeeping! (Your penchant for underscoring permits me only the
modest exclamation point. That sentence bravely deserves more.)
Irene’s three large trunks in the attic were locked. They were not
searched. They have never, to my knowledge, been searched. Since
Olympe has never helped in our searchings, I do not know how she
happened to be aware of the locked, unsearched trunks. Evidently,
someone has told her of them.
To continue, and to repeat, Irene locked the irritable Archie in one
of her trunks and returned below stairs to discover, for the first
time, what it was that Archie had been up to. Again, the range of her
possible emotions is a wide one. We may assume that her sense of tact
soon predominated. Disliking to be involved in the affair, she simply
left Archie locked in the trunk. Though, in due time, Olympe seems to
prophesy, Irene will relent and unlock Archie.
You may judge what the past week had done to Lucy, when you realize
that she could admit junk of this sort into that straight-thinking
mind of hers. It makes me ill. Almost as ill as it makes me to wonder
why Olympe was so badly in need of a theory that she should proffer
this one.
The second theory, given as the joint production of Grandfather and
Uncle Phineas, is more ingenuous.
They say they believe that the murderer came to the house sometime
shortly after dark, probably while we were all at supper. That he came
in the front door and went upstairs. This, I admit, would have been
risky, but possible. The front of the house, the hall, the upstairs,
were all dark. They have provided the man with a dark lantern of the
type that burglars are supposed to carry.
At that time, he could have collected the keys in the upper hall, and
gone upstairs to the attic. It was, they think, while he was hiding in
the attic that the idea of the rope swung out of the window first came
to him. Uncle Phineas makes the picture: The villain crouching, the
coil of rope near at hand. He had, so the story goes, while he was
making his other plans about locking us all in our rooms, made also
his plan of escape. But the coil of rope brought fresh inspirations—a
plan for misleading us. He took the rope, crept downstairs again, tied
it around the leg of the bed, moved the bed a bit to make us believe
that the rope had been used as a means of escape down the side of the
house to the ground. He counted on it to send us all rushing from the
house in hot pursuit of him. And, they say, but for the snow this plan
of his would, probably, have accomplished his purpose. (Yes, you bet.
But for the snow. And but for the man’s forehandedness in tossing the
rope out of the window at least an hour, perhaps two hours before he
got around to the shooting.) However, since the rope had been merely
an afterthought, the snow made no difference in his original plan of
escape.
This plan, they have decided, must have been to get out of Father’s
room into some safe, previously arranged hiding place in the house.
Why, with us all locked in our rooms, and with no snow to betray him
with footprints, he should have planned to stay in hiding in the
house, instead of planning to run right down either stairway and out
of the house and away, I don’t know. The fact that he could not have
done this, that Irene was downstairs with the stairway doors locked,
need not make any difference in the speculations as to what his
original plans may have been. He had not, certainly, planned to have
Irene locked out of her room. But Grandfather and Uncle Phineas,
wedded to the notion of the rope as a “false clue,” insist that,
because he wanted us out of the house hunting for him he must have
planned to stay in the house.
After the deed, the murderer returned, posthaste, to the attic. He
left the attic door unlocked. You may choose your answer to that from
the following suggestions:
1. He had left the key in the hardware box by mistake.
2. He thought that an unlocked door would allay suspicion.
3. His hiding place in the attic was so secure that an unlocked
door, or two, made no difference to him.
Here, Jude, is where you can come into your own. You are certain that
we left some part of the house unsearched. You are right. Until late
this afternoon, no one had searched—the roof.
Since the fact that there is no way to get up on the roof except
through the trapdoor, directly in the centre of the attic roof and
about eleven feet from the floor, seems to bother no one, it need not
bother you.
The stepladder, that Monday night when we searched the attic, was
nowhere near the trapdoor. There was no box, or chest, or anything
else that could have been used to reach the trapdoor, anywhere near
it. In answer to Uncle Phineas’s question as to whether I could swear
that none of these things had been moved beneath the trapdoor and,
afterwards, put back into place—of course I could not. I could swear
that nothing appeared to be out of place that night in the attic. I
could swear that, if any object, large or small, had been directly in
the centre of the attic, beneath the trapdoor, both Grandfather and I
should have seen it instantly. But, that, also, is of no consequence;
because, according to our most popular theory, this is what happened:
The murderer had moved the stepladder, had ascended it, had opened the
trapdoor and got out on the roof. Since the trapdoor claps shut when
it is not held, he had fastened it open and had left—— What? Why, a
rope, of course, dangling. He had then descended the ladder and had
replaced it against the wall of the room up there. Next, he had stolen
downstairs and committed the murder. He had then returned to the
attic, climbed up the rope to the roof, pulled the rope up after him,
and closed the trapdoor. In short, just give that guy enough rope and
there was nothing he could not do with it, from fixing “false clues”
to climbing eleven feet of it, dangling loose, and excluding, only,
hanging himself with it.
Once he found himself on the ten-by-twelve flat piece of roof, he
regarded his escape as having been perfectly effected. All that
remained for him to do, after that, was to wait until he got ready,
climb down his rope again, come down through the house and walk out of
it.
In case you don’t like to have him walk out through the locked and
doubly guarded doors, you may have this: He stayed above, fluctuating
between the roof and the attic, for four or five days. That is, until
Friday, when we all except Olympe and Lucy had gone to the inquest; or
until Saturday, when we all had gone to the funeral. On either of
those days, the snow was melted; so he could have got out of a window,
or jumped off the roof, or climbed down his rope from the
roof—couldn’t he?—and walked away.
The question of his food and water for five days has, also, a nice
variety of answers. I prefer my own: That he ate his rope, and washed
it down with snow water from the roof—the special snow that did not
come down through the open trapdoor into the attic. You see, if the
trapdoor had been left open for any length of time from ten minutes to
two hours, during the snowstorm, there would have been snow or melted
snow on the attic floor. Do you think that would have escaped both
Grandfather and me when we were searching the attic? I know that it
would not. I know that if anyone had got down off that dirty, wet
roof, even once, he would have left footprints on Aunt Gracia’s
spotless floor up there. The floor that night looked as it usually
looks; that is, very much like the bread board.
Unfortunately—I quote the elders—Aunt Gracia this morning thought that
the weather was threatening and chose to have Dong Lee (he came home
last night, garishly dentilated, politely sympathetic, but, seemingly,
unperturbed) hang the washing in the attic instead of in the yard.
This necessitated the usual cleaning and dusting of the attic. This
late afternoon it was impossible to tell, by coatings of dust or the
like, whether ladder, chests, boxes, had been recently moved.
Much as she disliked the admission, Aunt Gracia was forced to say that
nothing in the attic seemed to have been disturbed; that no traces,
even of the most immaculate intruder, had been discoverable. Said
Uncle Phineas, no traces of the criminal were to be found in the
attic. Said he, any halfway clever criminal would, of course, have
removed all traces before leaving the attic.
Finis, then? The attic itself could scarcely be neater and cleaner
than this explanation. All that remains to be explained is why
Grandfather, Uncle Phineas, Aunt Gracia, and Chris declare that they
credit such sort of stuff. And why do they leave me out in the cold
with Olympe, Irene, and Lucy?
Stretching a long, long bow I might give Uncle Phineas and, perhaps,
Chris credit for honesty when they declare their belief in this
nonsense. I know darn well that Aunt Gracia does not believe in it,
not for one of her clear-sighted seconds. I know that Grandfather
cannot believe it; unless—well, Grandfather is eighty years old, and
this week has been a week of steady torture for him.
Reverting, again, to your letter. What I seem to have said about
attending the hanging of Father’s murderer has, apparently, shocked
you severely. I was one little bloodthirsty lad, wasn’t I, when I
wrote that first letter to you? The scarcely gradual tapering of my
tone from vengeance to vacuity must prove at least amusing to you.
But, at least, I am not a clutching backslider. I state, conclusively,
that I no longer have any desire either to discover Father’s murderer
or to attend any hanging whatsoever. Quite, quite the contrary. I
won’t subscribe to the darn fool lies the others are propounding. But
I’d give the spring heifers if I could concoct some lucid, logical lie
that would clear the Quilter family.
You say that I asked you to help me in ferreting out the criminal.
That should speak volumes for my own condition at the time I wrote. I
judge that the sheer shock of the thing reduced me on the instant to a
drooling, chattering idiot—swearing my innocence to you, beseeching
for your reassurance. You have given it, Jude; lots of it and
lavishly—the reassurance. Shall we let it go at that? But, as for the
help, I shall have to change my order. Can you, by any effort of wits,
produce the lie we are all so seriously needing at present?
Remember, any compound must include that rope. Do you know, sometimes
I almost incline to agree with Chris’s ex-theory—that the rope was,
somehow, coincidental. Deserting fiction, for the moment, and
attempting fact: Can you think of any conceivable reason that Father
himself might have had for tossing that rope out of the window early
in the night? Suppose that Aunt Gracia’s suggestion about a
blackmailer was truer than she thought. Might it have been possible
that Father helped him—or anyone—to _get into_ his room that night by
means of the rope? Someone, with a fair amount of agility, might have
been able to get from the ground to the porch roof by means of the
porch pillars and the rope. This would have had to be, of course,
before the snowfall started. It is at least possible that, since the
rope had been effectual for an entrance, it might have been left in
place as an exit. The window’s having been left open would seem
peculiar, on so cold a night; peculiar, but not impossible. The
impossible element in any of this is the implication that Father could
have been induced to stoop to underhandedness or secrecy of any sort.
Aunt Gracia spoke about unknown paragraphs and pages in men’s lives.
It went with the jury. Let it go. But it brings us back again to
fiction. My thinking machine—I realize that this is in no sense an
admission—is not, at present, in working order. You take the rope as a
means of access instead of exit and see whether you can produce
something that will serve for our present needs.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
CHAPTER XVII
I
Wednesday, October, 17, 1900.
Dear Judy: When I wrote to you, day before yesterday, I thought that I
was through with this letter writing. I wrote, then, in the rôle of
Mr. Wise-guy, scorning you and the rest of the family for not serenely
knowing that one of the Quilters was a murdering cur. Scorning even
Grandfather; or, if not quite as brash as that, accusing him of
senility for using that brave old mind of his to reach for the truth.
No use of my trying it; no use of my loyalty to the family being
stronger than the absence of footprints in the snow. I was going on
nineteen years old, wasn’t I? Why shouldn’t I be the only wise, honest
one in the group? Even poor old Olympe did better than I. She tried to
think of an explanation. It was no good, and she was ashamed of it.
But she tried, and hoped that Lucy’s clear little mind might help with
it. Not smart-aleck Neal. He knew. There is no good in raving, Judy.
But, gosh, I am so sick of myself that I feel exactly as I did that
time when Whatof and I got in a mix-up with the skunk.
No, we haven’t found the murderer. But something happened last night
that proves, about as clearly as anything but finding him and hearing
his confession could prove, that not one of the family was involved in
the dirty business. Go on, Judy dear, crow! You can’t crow any louder
than I wish I had a right to.
Here is the story: Yesterday afternoon Uncle Phineas left, again, for
Portland. This may seem sort of queer to you; but it isn’t. I can’t
explain it, right now. It is a secret that Uncle Phineas and I have
had together for a long time. But next week, at the latest, he hopes
to be able to tell the family. As yet he hasn’t told even Grandfather
or Olympe.
I was sorry he couldn’t see his way clear to confiding in Olympe,
because his going right away again hurt her feelings like everything.
He couldn’t take her with him on account of our being so hard up for
ready money, just now. Uncle Phineas shares Dr. Joe’s room in
Portland. If he had taken Olympe they would have had to go to a hotel,
and we couldn’t afford it. All this, then, to explain why Olympe
returned to her bed, to stay, after Uncle Phineas left yesterday
afternoon.
At six-thirty Aunt Gracia was going to send Olympe’s supper tray up to
her by Lucy, but I carried it instead. I am darn glad that I did, for
now I know what I know. She seemed so forlorn that I sat down and
talked to her while she ate her supper.
She was not in a sunny humour. She has been a bit miffed with me, for
one thing, ever since I questioned her about the gun. Too, she was all
cut up about Uncle Phineas’s leaving her alone again, as she said, “at
a time like this.” She has fully determined that he goes solely and
wholly because he cannot bear to be on the place while “that young
person,” as she calls Irene, is here.
I didn’t stay with her any longer than seemed necessary. When she had
eaten her supper, she asked me to search her room before I left her
alone in it. To humour her, I made a thorough job of it. I looked
under the bed and the sofa, in the closet, behind the curtains, and I
even opened her old Flemish chest and stirred through it. She asked
me, next, to put her wrapper handy, so that she could slip into it
when she got up to lock the door after me. I told her that someone
would be coming up, directly after supper, to keep her company and
then she’d have to get out of bed and unlock the door again. She said
that she would not stay a moment alone in the house unless she were
certain that every window and door was locked. (I grinned to myself.
One of her windows was three inches down from the top, right then, as
Uncle Phineas always has it when he is at home. I had left it like
that because I thought the fresh air would be good for her headache.
That stuffy, purple and brown, verbena and liniment atmosphere that
always pervades Olympe’s room would give me a headache at any time.)
She said, also, that she was in no humour for company this evening.
You know Olympe’s “Tired, ill, and old” speech—or perhaps you don’t.
It seems to me that has been devised since you left. At any rate, she
was unfit for companionship. She was, as soon as I left her, going to
take some of the drops Dr. Joe had given her. She hoped, merely hoped,
for a little sleep. So, if I would please, ask the others to walk
quietly when they came through the hall on the way to bed?
I promised to deliver the message, took her tray and went into the
hall. I put it on the stand, and went into the bathroom to clean up a
bit. As I walked through the hall I noticed—I am certain of this—that
all the doors were standing ajar except the attic door, your door, and
the door to Father’s room. When I came out of the bathroom, I picked
up the tray and went downstairs, using the back stairway.
The folks were sitting down to supper when I went into the dining
room. I apologized to Grandfather for being late. Dong Lee came in
with a tray of muffins, and hung around to hear them praised. Aunt
Gracia and Lucy remarked on their excellence. Chris asked how Olympe
was feeling. I answered, and delivered her message about quiet in the
hall. Irene produced a none too gentle remark concerning Olympe’s
deafness. Chris, as usual—one does sort of have to feel sorry for
Chris at times—tried to cover it with an observation about the mantel
clock’s being slow. Aunt Gracia thought not, and asked Grandfather for
the correct time. Grandfather took out his watch, opened it, said that
it was two minutes after seven——
Just at that moment, with every last one of us right there around the
dining table, the sound of a gunshot crashed through the house. It was
precisely and exactly one too many shots for most of us.
II
The next thing I knew, I was running up the back stairs, listening to
a beast growling in my own throat. Since running down the hall,
straight to Olympe’s room, was the sensible thing to have done, I
can’t understand why I did it, then; but I did. I was the first one to
reach her door. It was open. I ran into her room. She was in bed. Her
night lamp was lighted on the table beside her. She is all right,
Judy; don’t be frightened. She is as sound as she ever was, untouched
by anything worse than a bad scare.
But I did not know it when I ran to her. The others, who came crowding
in, didn’t know it, either. I thought that, like Father, she had been
shot and killed. I thought it so certainly that, when I touched her
she felt cold; and, for one wild, red second, I saw soaking blood. I
am stopping to tell you this in order to show you what sort of tricks
my mind and senses will play on me. It is a lesson about trusting
either of them too far. Even yet, I find myself thinking that Olympe
is dead, and I have to stop and remember painstakingly that she is
not.
I heard Aunt Gracia’s voice declaring that Olympe was not hurt. I
heard the words, but for all the meaning they conveyed she might have
been reciting the multiplication tables. The experience has surely
taught me much concerning cowardice. How can a fellow be blamed for
anything when fear, through no volition of his, throttles him and robs
him of all his faculties? Not, you understand, that I was afraid the
fellow was going to pop out from somewhere and shoot me; such a
thought never entered my mind, then. I wasn’t afraid, either, that he
was going to appear and shoot some one of the others. I was afraid of
what had happened, I suppose—if you can find sense in that—and not at
all of what might happen. I am not starring myself for any of this;
but I am not blaming myself. I couldn’t help it any more than I could
help it if a boat capsized and chucked me into rapids that I hadn’t
strength to swim.
The first inkling of my intelligence returned when I heard Irene croak
something about Uncle Thaddeus. I turned to look at Grandfather, just
in time to see him loosen his hold on the foot of the bed and slip
down into a heap on the floor.
Again, don’t be frightened. Grandfather is all right now—or, at least,
as nearly all right as he could be after having had a second shock of
the sort. He won’t stay in bed; and he is declaring that it was all
nonsense for us to have sent for Dr. Joe. Just the same, I’ll be glad
to see Dr. Joe put in an appearance here. He’s antiseptic, that’s what
he is. I wish to the Lord he had been here during the fracas yesterday
evening.
I am not needing to tell you what seeing Grandfather go under did to
us. Even Dong Lee, who had come up with the others, went clear
balmy—pushing us away from Grandfather, or trying to, and chattering.
Olympe revived, and contributed more than her share to the bedlam.
I’ll not attempt to describe it; I couldn’t, anyway. But when I tell
you that, after we’d got Grandfather to the sofa he lay there, looking
as if he were dead, and that we could not get his heartbeats, and
thought that he was dead, or dying, you will understand why we were
not attending to anyone or anything else. You’ll understand why, until
Grandfather’s ruddiness began to seep back into his cheeks, and his
eyes were opened and he was talking to us, reassuring us, we did not
give a damn if a whole regiment of murderers were marching, slowly,
away from the house. They’d had time to, right enough. It was
half-past seven before Chris began his declamation about this being
the same thing over again, and his rhetorical questions about what
were we doing, and where was the murderer, and so forth—all
pyrotechnical rather than practical.
Grandfather, by this time, was sitting up on the sofa with one arm
around Lucy and one around Aunt Gracia, both of whom, unromantically,
were hiccoughing convulsively. As I looked at them, I had a bright
idea. They—all of us—needed police protection.
I stated this idea, and, also, that I was going right then to ride to
Quilterville and get Gus Wildoch and a deputy or two. I started off on
the run. Grandfather called to me.
“My boy,” he said, when I had come back into Olympe’s room, “you said
that you were going to tell the sheriff what had happened here. Do you
know what has happened here? Does anyone know? I do not.”
If I looked as I felt, I looked like two fools.
“We heard a revolver shot,” Grandfather said. “We came to this room
and found that Olympe had, again, fainted. The similarity of this
circumstance with that of tragedy proved too much for my strength, I
am ashamed to say. Olympe, my dear, did you happen to discharge a
revolver by mistake?”
Olympe pulled herself up higher on her pillows, drew her pretty
old-rose wrapper about her shoulders, perked up her famous chin, and
made it known to all present that she had never yet fired a revolver
on any account, either by mistake or purposely, and that, she trusted
she never should. In the midst of death, as it were, Olympe is a
gentlewoman. She had just passed through a most terrible experience,
and still she found space to resent with dignity what she considered
an implication of rowdyism from Grandfather.
Grandfather apologized, and asked her if she had any memory at all of
anything that had happened before she had fainted.
I believe that we all thought she wouldn’t have. Thank the Lord she
did have! It took her a long time to tell it, but what she told was
this:
Right after I left her she had got out of bed and locked her door. She
had gone immediately back to bed. She was lying there, annoyed because
she had forgotten to take her drops while she had been up. She reached
for her wrapper, on the foot of her bed, preparatory to rising again,
and, just as she did so, she heard a noise at the cupola window—the
one I had purposely left open from the top. She turned, and looked
across the room toward it. She saw a man, wearing a bright red mask,
slowly pushing open her window. She tried to scream, but her throat
had closed. She tried to move. She could not. She said that the
sensation was precisely the same as one experiences during nightmares.
She closed her eyes. She made an effort for prayer. She felt that she
was suffocating. She could hear the window being raised slowly, inch
by inch. Something, she said, seemed to break in her mind. She
thought, “This is what death means.” That was the last thing she knew
until she opened her eyes and saw us all gathered around Grandfather
on the sofa. She thought that the man in the red mask had come into
her room and killed Grandfather.
That was all she could tell us. She had not heard the shot fired. It
was enough to tell Gus. A man, wearing a red mask, had climbed to the
porch roof and into Olympe’s room, through her window. He had fired
one shot, and had escaped.
I asked Grandfather if I might go, now, to Quilterville. He said for
me to use my own judgment.
Here’s a hot one on me, Judy. While I was saddling Tuesday’s Child, I
had a queer feeling, which I did not entirely recognize. About a
quarter of a mile down the road, it introduced itself to me. I was
scared. Rather definitely scared, and this time for my own skin. The
moon was not up, yet, and there were enough clouds to keep the
starlight from being showy. I took the short cut through the oaks, and
every falling leaf or creaking branch was the guy in the red mask
taking aim at me. Out in the open again, he bounded ahead of me like a
pebble skipped over water. And once, disguised as a ball of
tumbleweed, he rose up and slew me. For the first time it occurred to
me that something more potent than Irene’s yelping might have kept
Chris from starting off, alone, to Quilterville the night Father was
killed.
My fear wasn’t based on altogether faulty reasoning. The man had forty
minutes’ head start on me. If he needed a better start than that, and
didn’t want the county people on his trail for a while, the smartest
thing he could have done would have been to pop me off on the way.
Number Twenty-six, eastbound, goes through Quilterville at three
o’clock in the morning. If he had been planning to catch it, he
wouldn’t have wanted any advance notices. Evidently, though, he had
not made any such plans (I think we have given him too much credit for
smart planning), because I got into town sound in wind and limb.
Gus Wildoch had gone to bed; and, since he’d had a few drinks too many
before he had got there, he was rather nasty. Seemed to think that Q 2
was entirely too troublesome. Also, he appeared to be annoyed because
Olympe had not been killed, and unable to discover why I had wakened
him for any other reason. When he further discovered that, so far as I
knew, we had not been robbed, he washed his hands of the whole
circumstance until morning.
I rode over to Al Raddy’s and got him to come down and open up the
station so that I could send a telegram to Dr. Joe. Then I borrowed
Al’s gun and rode home again. I was well over my scare by the time I’d
got back to the ranch, but I can’t say the same for Chris.
He indulged in one of his beautiful tempers when he let me in through
the front door and saw that I had come alone. We had a sweet passage,
in which he said my failure to bring help was about what he might have
expected from me. I made some would-be clever retorts, and was getting
pretty hot, when I saw that Chris was using his rage to cover his
fright. I came off my perch and asked him whether they had made any
alarming discoveries while I had been gone. His reply was worthy of
Olympe.
“Alarming enough,” Chris said, “to make us certain that no one’s life
is safe on this place until we find the man who is, apparently, bent
on destroying the Quilter family.”
III
After I had left the ranch to go to Quilterville, Grandfather, Chris,
and Aunt Gracia had made another thorough investigation of the house.
The bedroom doors were all locked again on the outside, as they had
been locked on the night that Father was killed. Again, too, the same
doors had been left unlocked—that is, the attic and the bathroom
doors. Father’s door, this time, had been locked, and Olympe’s locked
door had been unlocked and left open. (That door unlocked would seem
to indicate that the fellow had rushed out of it into the hall. But,
there is this: the instant we heard the shot, all of us, except Irene
and Chris who came up the front stairway, ran straight up the back
stairway and into the upper hall. Would he have run out to meet us?
Olympe’s door is at the far end of the hall from the attic door.) The
seven keys were on Olympe’s bedside table, as they had been on
Father’s bedside table.
The rope, the same old clothes-line, which had been returned to the
attic, was on the floor in Olympe’s room. It was not tied around the
leg of the bed, nor around anything. It was lying there, in a loose
coil, near the foot of the bed.
The bullet from the gun had gone into the wall, about three feet above
Olympe’s pillows. Evidently, he had aimed at her; but his shot had
gone wild.
Nothing was out of place in Olympe’s room. Exactly as it had been in
Father’s room—not a chair seemed to have been moved, not a drawer
opened.
Lying on the floor, directly beneath the open cupola window, was a
mask, large enough to cover a man’s entire face, cut roughly out of
bright red satin. So, in spite of my surety, it would seem, now, that
undoubtedly “red mask” were the words that Father had said to Irene
before he died.
Now, to see what we can do with all this. First, the locked doors:
There could be, has been, endless speculation about those locked
doors. But, finally, they seem to come to but two hypotheses. Either
the fellow is up to something of which, as yet, not one of us has
begun to get an inkling; or else he is a raving maniac, and his very
lack of purpose is what is throwing us all so completely off the
scent, and also what is saving him.
I am strong for the second theory—that this is the work of a maniac. A
smart man might have locked us all in our rooms that first night. No
man, in his senses, would have run the risk of being out in the hall
long enough to lock all the doors of the vacant rooms last evening. He
had had to collect the keys from the inside of the doors again, and he
had had to do it after he had come into Olympe’s room through the
window. If he knew anything, he must have known that no one was in any
of those rooms he so carefully locked. But he repeated, exactly, his
first performance; even to leaving the bathroom and attic doors
unlocked, and the door of his victim’s room standing open.
From first to last, that rope business has seemed the work of a
lunatic. This final move of lugging the thing into Olympe’s room, and
leaving it there, unattached to anything, is the crowning lunacy.
It doesn’t take a maniac, I suppose, to miss his aim. But firing as
high as three feet above his mark, when Olympe was lying there
unconscious and motionless, seems rather wild for sanity.
Nothing being disturbed in either room appears to establish the fact
that the fellow’s one motive is cold-blooded murder. As Aunt Gracia
said at the inquest, we could grant that Father might have had an
enemy. But unless we decide that this man has made up his mind to wipe
out the entire Quilter family, which, of course, could be the decision
of only a maniac, we cannot conceive of Olympe’s having the same
enemy—or any enemy, for that matter.
The mask is made of bright red satin. It is about twelve inches long
and ten inches wide. It has two small holes cut for the eyes. It has
strings, cut from the same satin, knotted into the sides. The strings
were tied together in the back, as they had been when he was wearing
it. He must then have pulled it off over his head and dropped it, by
mistake we assume, just before he got out of the window.
With the exception of Chris, we all believe, I think, that he did get
out of the window this time. It was a darn risky business, running
along that sloping roof to the rain spout, and getting hold of the
spout, under the eaves, on a night as dark as last night was. I
shouldn’t care to try it in the daytime. But this guy must be
something of a circus performer, because he not only had to get off
the roof, but he had also to get on it by means of the rain spout.
Chris and I have gone carefully over the porch possibilities. The
spout seems to be the one thing he could have used to climb on. The
old trellis, at the south end, has completely rotted and fallen to
pieces.
Perhaps here I would better give another line or two about the search
that Grandfather, Aunt Gracia, and Chris made of the house. They went
about it systematically. They did not forget the roof this time. The
three outside doors were all locked on the inside, as is usual now.
Every window downstairs was locked on the inside. The cellar doors
were locked. Chris and I made another thorough search of the place
after I got home last night. No one could have been hiding in the
house.
This is what Chris thinks queers my maniac contention: He insists that
it would take a keen mind to do exactly the same thing, twice, and
outwit us each time. Of course, any fool who was willing to risk his
neck could have made a clean getaway last night. After the snow
melted, we had another freeze, and the ground is so hard that we can’t
stamp our own footprints down into it. Escape, then, last
night—discounting again the distance from the porch roof to the
ground, and the dangers of the rain spout as a ladder—would have been
simple enough. We know, though, that he did not get away across the
roof that first night. We know that the snow was unmarked by any sort
of print. Consequently, Chris thinks that the fellow worked again last
night whatever foxy scheme he worked the first time. That is so
reasonable that I am more than half ashamed of myself for not
agreeing. The rope, the locked doors, and the red mask prove, surely,
that it was the same man both times.
The others are beginning to wonder, now, if we might have been
mistaken about footprints that first night; if we might have
overlooked a single line of them. Lucy, with her ingenious mind, has
suggested that he might have got away on stilts! I know that there
were no footprints. We have to stick to what we do know, or we shall
never get anywhere. Since the man did not get out of the house that
Monday night, he must have stayed in the house. Until last night, I
have been certain that, since he did not stay in hiding in the house
he stayed, as Aunt Gracia said, not in hiding. Or, to put it brashly,
he was one of us.
Last night every single one of us was in the dining room, sitting
around the table. Dong Lee was serving us. That settles it. It could
not have been one of us. Consequently, he did stay in hiding in the
house.
All this seems to grant him super-brains and sanity. But I believe it
is quite as reasonable to grant him a madman’s cunning and a fool’s
luck. When we find out what he did, where he went that first night,
I’ll bet ten acres of Q 2 that we’ll not find any deep scheming, any
genius job at the bottom of it. I’ll bet the same ten acres that we’ll
find something so simple that a child might have devised it, so
transparent that we’ve all looked straight through it without seeing
it. I feel, somehow, certain that the entire thing is right before us
for us to look at—if only we knew how to look. How to look seems to be
the question now rather than where to look. You know what a wizard
Aunt Gracia is when it comes to finding lost articles; and how she
always says it is because she never hunts, but always thinks. It is
thinking, now, and not peering under beds or into apple bins, that is
going to land us where we need to be. In spite of my smartness, I have
been trying to do some thinking that includes the trapdoor in the
attic; but I haven’t had a sensible result, as yet.
Both times we have given the fellow a good many minutes to use as he
pleased. But, since we are more or less civilized beings, not entirely
inured to tragedy, I suppose it is not wholly to our discredit that
our first impulses, on occasions of this sort, should be for something
other than an immediate pursuit of the criminal.
Gus and his brothers do not subscribe to such sentimentality. They
arrived, fully panoplied, about nine this morning and were at once
overcome with disgust to think we had given attention to Olympe and
Grandfather last night before we had started hue and cry. Nor did
Chris’s contention that he had gone straight to the window in Olympe’s
room, last night, and looked out of it, and seen nothing (the man
could have got to the cover of the lower porch by that time), help
much.
“Sure, I know,” Gus said. “Looking out of windows is all right. But
how long did you folks hang around and talk things over this time,
before you men thought of going out after the —— —— who did the
killing?”
Later, he relented to the extent of admitting that, since he
represented law and order in Quilter County, he supposed he’d try to
do what he could. He added, however, that considering all the
circumstances, and the time that had elapsed, he didn’t think we had a
right to expect him to do much.
Aunt Gracia suggested that she thought he should depute at least two
men to guard our house for a time.
Gus said, “Would you want them deputies to stay inside the house or
outside the house, Miss Quilter?”
Whether or not he was trying to be funny, I don’t know. I don’t much
care. It is relief, I guess. Now, since we all know that not one of us
could have had a hand in this, it doesn’t seem to matter, greatly,
what other people think.
The Wildochs had a talk with all of us—Grandfather was the spokesman,
of course—first thing. Then they milled about the place for an hour or
two, and made a great show of examining Olympe’s room. She is still in
bed, so we curbed their enthusiasms for detail as much as we could;
postponing, for instance, the minutia of digging the bullet out of the
wall. When they finally left, Gus said that he would see what he could
do about sending a couple of the boys out for a few days. No one has
come, as yet, so he must have seen that he could do nothing.
Don’t, for the Lord’s sake, Judy, go worrying about our safety. Unlike
Gus, we are able to do several things. Chris and I are both staying up
to-night, for all night. The happy practice of feeding Whatof and
Keeper in the kitchen shed has been discontinued. The house is locked
from cellar to attic. We are getting our fresh air from the fireplace
flues, and our strength is as—and so forth. No kidding, it makes a
difference.
I guess this tells it all for to-night. Except sorry, and so on, for
that fool letter I wrote to you yesterday. And, Judy, don’t forget
about sending for Lucy, pronto. If we do get the money from Father’s
insurance, I am going to try to think of some scheme for getting
Grandfather away for at least a few weeks. Lucy and Grandfather are
the only ones here whom I am worried much about. The others seem to be
coming through pretty well. Olympe, I am sure, will be all right as
soon as Uncle Phineas gets home. Thank fortune, when he comes this
time, he’ll be able to stay.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
CHAPTER XVIII
I
Thursday, October 18, 1900.
Dear Judy: You are a good kid, all right, but someway or other your
letters seem to rub me the wrong way. For gosh sakes, Jude, stop
telling me that I didn’t murder Father. If you keep on with that
line, I’ll think, as I thought for a while about Chris and Irene,
that you are protesting too much. After all, you can’t _know_ that
I didn’t do it, as you keep declaring with underlines. Nobody here
_knows_—anything. How can you know, away off there in Colorado?
It serves me right enough, for beginning this crazy, underhanded
business of writing to you. The nights were long, and I had to have
something to do, I guess, and the letters gave me a good excuse for
writing, as Olympe says, “at a time like this.” Funny, how we’ll find
excuses for ourselves. Funnier, how we’ll believe what we desire to
believe. I don’t know what right I have to the plural. No matter;
don’t stop, too long, to laugh over the humour I have just presented.
I have something much more amusing to give to you.
Olympe had supposed that Uncle Phineas would come with Dr. Joe from
Portland this afternoon. (Dr. Joe had been out of town and hadn’t got
my telegram until late Wednesday.) When Uncle Phineas did not come,
her fury propelled her from her bed and downstairs in her black
gown—by this time fully denuded of its festive colour.
At seven this evening, Lucy came to me and asked me to come upstairs
with her. She led me directly to Olympe’s room. Lucy is so choice,
that I am going to attempt to quote her, as nearly as I can.
“Neal,” said she, “I have something to tell to someone, and I have
decided that, just now, you are probably the best one of the family to
tell.”
Said I: “To tell what?”
Said Lucy: “To tell that I am very sure no man with a red mask came to
Olympe’s room on Tuesday night. Ever since I decided to be an author,
Grandfather has been training me to observe closely. Now, Neal dear,
will you please observe with me?”
She asked me to lie down on Olympe’s bed, where Olympe had been lying
on Tuesday night. She had the night lamp lighted and on the table as
it had been that night. She crossed the room, stood in front of the
window, and asked me whether I could see her white face.
I could not. The night lamp, shaded as it is, lights a small circle on
the bedside table, and lights nothing else.
I heard her open the window. “I am sitting in the window now,” she
said, “with the pane pulled down between you and me. Does the glass
make a difference? Can you see my white face?”
I could not.
“Then how,” she asked, “could Olympe have seen a man, and the bright
red mask, at this same time on Tuesday night? Now listen,” she went
on. “When I bang the window up hard, like this, you can hear it? But
can you hear it when I raise it slowly, like this, inch by inch?”
Since it made no sound whatever, I could not.
“You see,” Lucy stated, “Olympe said that the window being raised,
slowly, inch by inch, was what she heard to make her look toward it.
She kept on hearing it, raised inch by inch. I can’t hear it myself,
when I’m raising it slowly. You can’t hear it, over there. Olympe is,
really, a trifle deaf.”
Neal shines. Neal is brilliant. “Just the same, Lucy, we all of us
heard the shot. There is no arguing away from that.”
Lucy grows maternal. “Yes, Neal darling, of course. But, you know, I
think that Olympe fired the shot herself. You see, she always slept
with Uncle Phineas’s gun under her pillow when he was away from home.
She kept it unloaded—or meant to. But the cartridges for it are right
here in the commode drawer, where you found them the other night.
Olympe could have put just one of them into the gun, and got into bed,
and shot it off up there into the wall, where she knew it would stick
and not hurt anyone. Then she could have jabbed it back under her
pillow, and plumped right down into bed again. If we had searched for
a gun, this time, and we didn’t, none of us would have thought it odd
if we’d found the unloaded one under her pillow where she always kept
it.”
“At least not as odd,” I said, “as I think it is for you to accuse
Olympe of this. Why are you doing it, Lucy?”
“I’ll tell you my purpose in a minute or two,” Lucy said. “First, I
should like to get through with my thinking. I think that Olympe’s
reason for planning to do this was that Uncle Phineas went away and
left her alone, when she kept telling him she needed his protection.
Uncle Phineas, of course, will be shocked and remorseful when he finds
how nearly Olympe did come to being killed. And, too, you know, Neal,
Olympe has been sort of left out of things since Father was killed.
Being almost killed herself, gives her an entrée. We know that is the
way Olympe is made, and that she can’t help it at all—not any more
than she can help being rather dull.
“The mask was cut from one of Olympe’s old ball gowns that I used to
dress up in, in the attic. The trouble is, some little snips of it
were here in her work basket, and some threads of it were still caught
in her dull scissors. I thought it wise to look, because Sherlock
Holmes was always making such important discoveries with bits of
tweed, you know. Now, I think, I can tell you my purpose. I want you
to explain to Olympe, Neal. She must be explained to, and I think it
would be much better taste for you to do the explaining than for me,
at my age, to attempt it.”
“Explain—what, Lucy?” I was shocked at the way I croaked it.
“But, Neal! You must explain to her that the man jumped quite heavily
into the room from the window. That he came gliding across the floor,
and stooped to glare, or peer, or some such thing, at her, beneath the
lamp. That she took one horror-stricken glance at the frightful eyes,
burning through the holes in the red mask, and, as he made a cruel,
menacing sound, and seemed to reach for his gun, she fainted dead
away. I have cleaned all the scraps out of her work basket, of course.
“You must be very careful, darling. It will be difficult. But it is
necessary, now that Olympe has left her room, that she should not tell
that story of hers outside the family circle. She had planned it so
nicely, she thought, to have it all exactly like the other time. She
even stole out in the hall, after you had left her, and locked all the
doors. I think she must have brought the rope from the attic in the
afternoon, and hidden it in Father’s room. Then she had only to dash
in there, and carry it into her room. She must have hurried to get
things all arranged and play the whole scene in so short a time. Poor
Olympe—it must be sad for anyone to have to be as important to herself
as Olympe is. You do understand, don’t you, Neal, that being an
actress is really an affliction of Olympe’s, like Panys Gummer’s short
leg?”
I told Lucy I understood that. What I did not understand, I went on to
say, was how a little girl, who could think through a thing as
intricate as this could possibly have been frightened by a silly story
about Archie Biggil hiding in locked trunks.
Lucy said: “I only pretended to believe in that story. I thought if
you could possibly think that I was afraid of Archie Biggil it would
be so much better than for you to know the truth. Neal, dear, you have
seemed to need comfort of late.”
I asked her if she would please consider that I had been comforted,
and tell me, if she knew, what she had been afraid of.
“Why, Neal,” she said, “I was afraid of Olympe, of course.”
II
She left me wordless. I must have looked my need for comfort, however,
for Lucy hastened with it.
“Darling,” she said, “that was my mere physical fear. It wasn’t by any
means as uncomfortable as my unphysical fear that outsiders might
discover the truth; but it made me more of a baby. I was especially
afraid after I had laughed at Olympe, that evening. But, of course, I
have had to be a little afraid from the first. And the Archie Biggil
story made it worse. When Olympe told me that, I knew. Even Olympe,
you see, Neal, couldn’t have credited that Archie Biggil story.”
“Lucy,” I managed to question, “are you saying that you believe Olympe
murdered Father?”
“Yes,” she answered, in that direct way of hers, “that is what I
believe. I am sure, of course, that Olympe didn’t mean to do it. I
think she went into Father’s room with Uncle Phineas’s gun that night,
and that she thought the gun was unloaded. When she got into Father’s
room, she acted one of her scenes for him. I think she must have been
trying to make him promise that he would not consent to Christopher’s
selling the ranch. Christopher might not have sold if Father had
opposed it strongly enough. Olympe was worried about the poorhouse,
you know. So I think she went to Father to play like she was very,
very brave—probably she had Charlotte Corday in mind, or some other
fearless lady. Yes, Neal, I know it is very silly. But, you see,
Olympe lives in this very silly world that she makes for herself—I
mean, really lives in it all the time.
“I fancy, when she took the revolver from her dress, that Father just
lay there and laughed at her. You know what laughing does to Olympe.
You saw her the other night, when I laughed. And so, quite carried
away with her acting, as she does get, you know, she pulled the
trigger of the gun. She never thought that it would—but it did—go off.
She must have been dreadfully shocked and frightened. She ran
straightway back to her room, and fainted.
“Of course, she’d have had to be a little crazy ever to have begun any
of that—or to think she could point a revolver at Father and get a
promise. And I thought such a horrible accident might have made her a
little more crazy. And I thought—I’m afraid this is not clear
thinking, though—that suppose she’d suspect I had guessed the truth.
And I know, Neal, this was silly of me; but I couldn’t keep from being
afraid she might play another scene, and have another accident.”
Why, I asked, if Olympe had had no idea of using her gun, if she had
thought that it was unloaded, had she locked us all in our rooms
before she had gone into Father’s room?
“I think,” Lucy answered, “that she didn’t. I think that, when Irene
came upstairs and found Christopher had locked her out, it vexed her
so much that she slipped along the hall and locked all the doors—just
to make trouble in the morning. You know, she told me herself that she
locked the stairway doors to show Christopher that two could play at
that lock-out game.”
“Do you think, Lucy, that Irene could have opened all of our doors,
removed the keys, and locked us in without our hearing her?”
“I think she could have with all of us but Grandfather. If Grandfather
had heard someone fumbling at his door, he would have supposed it was
some one of the family, and, while he might have called a question, he
might not have. If he had thought some one of us was trying to do
something or other to his door without disturbing him, it would be
just like Grandfather to be too courteous to let us know he had been
disturbed.”
“And you believe that Grandfather would lie about it, afterwards?”
“That is wrong of you, Neal. But I do think that Grandfather might be
generous rather than just. Since he didn’t know that it was Irene who
took his key, he might think it more generous not to say that he
suspected her. Since Grandfather would die, as you know, to save the
Quilter honour, surely he would keep silent to save it.”
“All right. How did the keys get into Father’s room?”
“Perhaps Irene had them with her, in her wrapper pocket, when she came
back upstairs after she heard the shot.”
“And why did she, from the very start, lie about locking the doors?”
“I thought,” Lucy said, “that she didn’t like to confess she had been
the one to lock us all in. Everyone seemed to think that whoever had
locked us in had committed the murder.”
“All right. Can you answer this? When Irene locked us all in our
rooms, wouldn’t she have locked Olympe in her room, too?”
“She might have locked Olympe in Father’s room.”
“Only,” I protested, “when Irene opened Father’s door to get his key,
wouldn’t Olympe and Father both have seen her?”
“If Father’s key had not been in the keyhole,” Lucy answered, “Irene
might have heard voices in his room, and not have opened the door. She
might have locked it with one of the keys she already had.”
“Very well. You have locked Father’s door. How did Olympe get out of
it, after the shooting, and into her own locked room again?”
“If Father’s key had been in some handy place, she might have used it
to unlock the door, and to open her own door, and to lock her own door
after her, again. Or, Olympe, when she went into Father’s room, might
have turned the key in the lock. It would have made a gesture, and a
speech. She might have held the key in her hand, and have shown it to
Father, and told him that, until she had his promise, neither of them
could leave that room. Irene’s locking was just naughtiness. If
Father’s door had been locked on the inside, she wouldn’t have
bothered about it. She’d have locked the others and gone on
downstairs.”
“And the rope, hanging out of the open window?”
Judy, on the square, I fully expected the kid to have some logical,
well-thought-out explanation of the rope. I have spared you a
description of my own mental processes during this interview with our
little twelve-year-old sister. I have assumed that your imagination
would be more competent than my powers of description. Well, thank the
Lord, the baby stuck at the rope.
“Could it be,” she questioned, “that Olympe had threatened to hang
herself out of the window with the rope?”
“Or to hang Father?” I suggested.
“I know,” she agreed, and blushed, “that is bad. That is allowing my
literary imagination to run away with my logic. No, Neal, I can’t
explain the rope. There is a chance that Father had wanted to get
someone into the house that night, and had fixed it to help him in.
Grandfather has told me about other incidents, that life allows such
coincidences—I mean as Father having fixed the rope on the same night
that he was shot by accident—but that literature does not. This is
life—so that might be. Or it might be that Father had lowered
something out of the window that night; something heavy that would
have pulled the bed a bit. If he had done so before the snow was on
the ground, whoever was below to receive it could have taken it and
walked right away, or wheeled it in a barrow, and the snow would have
covered any footprints or barrow tracks.”
“And Father, who had gone to all that trouble for secrecy, would have
lowered his treasure chest out of the window, and have gone back to
bed, leaving the window wide open for the wind to blow over him, and
the rope dangling to be seen?”
Lucy argued: “The rope couldn’t have been seen until morning. Father
might have had some reason for leaving it as it was for a few hours.
Perhaps someone was going to send something up again—and couldn’t when
he realized that the snow would show the footprints in the morning.
Father would have closed the window. But Olympe might have opened it,
at the last minute. She might have thought she’d throw the gun out of
it. And then, when she saw the snow, and realized how a black gun
would show in the white snow, changed her mind.”
“By the way, Lucy, why did Father say ‘red mask’ to Irene?”
“If he did say it, I think he said it to save Olympe. He’d wish to,
you know. He’d have been sure that Olympe did not mean to shoot him.”
“Have you decided what heavy thing it was that Father lowered out of
the window, and to whom he lowered it?”
“I had thought,” Lucy answered, “that you might know that. I had
thought it might have something to do with the secret you and Uncle
Phineas have been keeping together. I thought Uncle Phineas, since no
one knew where he was the night Father was killed, might have been
under Father’s window.”
As it happens, Judy, that is utter idiocy. Ruled out. A good many
persons know exactly where Uncle Phineas was that night. We shall all
know it, before long now. I told Lucy this. She remarked that she was
glad.
I told her, next, that this mistake of hers should be a lesson to her
concerning how easily mistakes could be made in matters of this sort.
(That sounds like me and my heavy platitudinous, pedagogic style. Odd,
the continuation of Lucy’s devotion.)
She asked me what other mistakes she had made.
I explained to her that, though she had worked her problem neatly, she
had not got the right answer because she had left out an important
equation—the human equation. I asked her, if Olympe had actually
planned to go through with such a scene in Father’s room, what her
first thought would have been.
“To dress up for the part,” said Lucy. “But I decided that she had
undressed, again, before we found her in her outing-flannel
nightgown.”
“Very well,” I said. “But examine this. Would Olympe leave Father,
mortally wounded, run to her room, get out of her costume, hang it in
the closet—it was not strewn about her room—put on her nightgown, take
the gun again into her hand, and fall in a dead faint on the floor?
Not only would she have done all that, but also could she have done
all that before she fainted?”
“I should think,” said Lucy, “since she did miss meeting Irene in the
hall, there’d have been plenty of time, after that.”
“Narrow it down,” I insisted. “Would Olympe, if she had shot Father by
mistake, have left him alone to suffer and die? Remember, Lucy, that
in spite of her artificiality, Olympe is a good woman.”
“Do you mean,” Lucy gasped, “that Olympe shot Father on purpose?”
“I mean,” I said, “you little nonny, you, that Olympe did not shoot
Father at all. I mean, that it has been wrong of you to think these
thoughts.”
“Doubtless,” she sighed, in that seldom-used, grown-up manner of hers.
“But I have decided that I must have a wicked personality. I have
broken all the rules of conduct Grandfather gave to me. But at least,
Neal, I am logical.”
I told her that if deciding one of the family was a murderer, or, at
best, a brutal beast of a coward, and that all the rest of the family
were scamps and liars was an evidence of logic, she was logical right
enough.
“Whom have I accused of lying?” she asked.
“Begin with Chris. He said, under oath, that he did not lock Irene out
of their room that night.”
“I didn’t hear him say it. But, even so, I’d call that a very light
lie—a lie that any gentleman should be willing to use to get a lady
out of serious trouble, especially since the lady was his wife.”
“And what serious trouble was Irene in?”
“But, Neal, she was the only one of the family who was locked out in
the hall.”
“Lucy,” I questioned, “whom have you been talking to?”
“Really, only to myself,” she said. “But I’ve pretended to be talking
to Sherlock Holmes. I have been Dr. Watson for days now—whenever I
have felt at all up to it. It is an excellent way to clear one’s mind,
Neal. Why don’t you try it, dear?”
I told her that I didn’t care for the sort of clear brain that could
clean out a good woman’s character in a swoop and leave a bad woman, a
woman rotten to the core. I asked her if the second affair had not
come up, how long she had planned to keep this mad belief of hers,
that Olympe had done the murder, a secret?
“I had meant,” she replied, “to keep it forever. It seemed best. You’d
think, Neal, that keeping it would have been quite easy. No. It hasn’t
been.”
You’ll hate me for this, Judy, I suppose. It was beastly of me, I
know. But I’d thought that Lucy needed a lesson. And—why not be
honest?—I love the working of the kid’s mind. I am as proud as a
parent when I get a peek at the way it goes. But that final little,
“No. It hasn’t been,” of hers, got the best of me.
I told her then what I should have told her in the beginning, and what
she had had no opportunity to know without being told, since she was
not at the inquest: That the bullet, which Dr. Joe had removed from
Father’s body, had been fired from a .38 Colt’s of fairly recent make.
That Uncle Phineas’s old Colt’s was a .32 calibre. That he left it at
home, now, when he went on prospecting trips, because he had the new
.38 that he bought a couple of years ago when Father and Grandfather
bought theirs of that man who came around on a bicycle taking orders
for them.
“Was the kind he sold the kind that killed darling Father?” Lucy
questioned.
“Yes. And every man who has a gun in three counties has one of them.
We can’t get far with that; but far enough to prove that a .38 bullet
cannot be fired from a .32 gun.”
“I had thought,” Lucy said, “that Uncle Phineas went to the city. You
and I telegraphed there.”
I told her that before long now she’d know where Uncle Phineas had
been; and, until she did know, it would be more polite to stop
guessing about it.
“I only meant,” she explained, “that, if Uncle Phineas had gone to
Portland, and not prospecting, he probably wouldn’t have taken his new
.38 Colt’s with him.”
For a wonder, I understood what she meant. It proves again, plainly,
my contention that guns, ropes, coal oil, and their ilk are worthless,
worse than worthless, when it comes to finding the truth in a case of
this sort.
“Very well, Lucy,” I said. “If you can believe, after having known
Olympe all your life, that she would run away from Father, whom she
really loved, when he was lying there with blood streaming from his
breast, dying—run away, hide a gun so that it could never be found,
get out of her clothes, and the rest of it, with no thought of
anything but saving herself—it wouldn’t help you much to tell you that
Uncle Phineas did have his gun with him, his .38 Colt’s, on that trip.
I took it out of his valise myself, when I helped him to unpack.”
Lucy looked at me, drew in a long breath, and burst into tears. For a
moment I thought they were tears of relief. Not so.
“It was so much better,” she sobbed, “to think that Olympe did it by
accident. None of the rest of us could have done it by accident. And,
besides, nothing is real to Olympe. Neal—Neal—— See, now—the rest of
us!”
She said it, Judy. The rest of us. The more I think of it, the more I
am certain that Lucy is right, absolutely right, about Olympe’s little
drama of Tuesday evening. It is all perfectly evident. But I do not
believe that Olympe staged it either to spite Uncle Phineas or to get
the centre of the stage. I know that she is too good a woman to have
yielded to the temptation for no better reasons than these. I think
that she thought the act would do just what it did do, for me at
least. That it would remove suspicion from every member of our
household.
Damn it all, Jude! Why didn’t I think of something of the sort? Why
didn’t any other one of us? Do you get the irony of it? Olympe, the
one person here on the ranch—I suppose we should have to except Irene,
also—who would have bungled it hopelessly was the one person who
thought of the scheme. If Chris, or Aunt Gracia, or I had possessed
wits for the conception, we’d have had wits for carrying it through
convincingly.
I don’t know whether or not I have been the one fool of the household.
If any of the others have doubted Olympe’s story, they have not
betrayed their doubt by the flicker of an eyelash. Though, of course,
Grandfather doubted it from the beginning. His first question, I am
sure I told you, was whether Olympe had discharged a revolver by
accident. That, too, explains his reluctance to having me ride
immediately to Quilterville. Also, when the county bunch arrived,
Grandfather had them come directly to his room. He said that Olympe
was in no condition to be troubled with questions. You see, he wished
to tell Olympe’s story for her. And when I heard him telling it, “Mrs.
Quilter was aroused from her sleep, on Tuesday evening, by hearing a
noise in her room. She opened her eyes and saw a man creeping toward
her; a man whose face appeared to be covered with the red mask we have
since found. She fainted from terror——” I merely thought that he had
been too much fuddled at the time to get Olympe’s story entirely as to
detail.
It seems to me, now, that Chris did flash an odd glance while
Grandfather was telling Olympe’s story. If I am right about that, it
might easily mean that Chris thought as I thought concerning
Grandfather’s befuddlement. Because I have dreaded it, I suppose, I
have imagined, once or twice, that Grandfather was getting less keen
here of late. He is not. This proves it. Or, if he is, he could lose
about half of his intelligence and still give us all cards and spades.
This, then, Judy, so far as I am concerned, is the end of it. We are
back where we began, the night of Father’s murder. I am through. I am
not writing any more of these Mr. Micawber epistles. I don’t know who
the murderer is. I don’t want to know. You don’t know. I don’t want
you to know. So, no more brain storms, no more nervous palpitations,
no more fake jubilations, and but one more apology—sorry, Jude, that I
ever began any of this rot—from,
Your loving brother,
Neal.
CHAPTER XIX
I
Saturday, October 20, 1900.
Dear Judy: I have what two weeks ago would have been mighty good news
for you and for us all. Uncle Phineas got home this afternoon with
$45,000 marked in his bank book. That is, you understand, he had
deposited a check for $45,000 in the Portland bank.
When he went prospecting down into Malheur County last June, he went
into the old placer-mining region. He located a quartz mine there. He
came home in August, and went straight on to Portland to try to
interest some Eastern capitalists, who were there at that time, in the
mine. He succeeded. And, finally, in late September, he got two big
bugs to go down to Malheur County with him to inspect the property.
They were coming out, on their way back to Portland to draw up the
papers and close the deal, when Uncle Phineas heard what had happened
here on Monday night, October the eighth. He came straight home, as
you know. But he made an engagement to meet the men in Portland,
toward the end of the week. This is his reason for going back to the
city this last time. Everything went through without a hitch. Uncle
Phineas banked the $45,000.
So, you see, all is smooth sailing from now on. With that amount, we
can bring the ranch through with flying banners, or I am a fool. Yes,
I know. But I am not a fool where ranching, and nothing else, is
concerned. Though when I realize what Father could have done, if he’d
had half such an opportunity as this, it makes me meek. Also, it makes
me pretty sore at Uncle Phineas. If it hadn’t been for his darn
foolishness, I’d have had a chance to know something, at least, about
how Father would have planned to go ahead with such an amount of
capital: how he would have expended it; saved it; what mortgages he
would have paid. As it is, I am in the dark with a case of cold feet
at the notion of so much money to be handled.
On the square, Judy, I hated this doggone secrecy of Uncle Phineas’s
from the beginning. When he came home last summer, he told me about
the location of the mine, what the ore had assayed, the accessibility
to the railroad and to water. It sounded so good that, in spite of
myself, and in spite of past experiences and even—shall I say—in spite
of Uncle Phineas, I had to believe in the future of the thing.
I was strong for telling the rest of the family, or at least some of
the rest of them, right then. He would not have it. He had used me as
a safety valve, because he had to confide or explode; but he would not
tell another soul. He insisted, rightly enough, on the difference
between locating a gold mine and getting a red cent out of it. On the
score of not building up the family’s hopes, only to dash them, he did
have a fair excuse for keeping quiet and for requiring that I should.
But I knew, and he knew, that at any other time in the history of Q 2
Ranch, he would have come shouting in with the big news, and allowed
us all to have what fun we could out of the hoping and planning—you
know how it has always been. No, sir, it was not fear of disappointing
the family that made Uncle Phineas swear me to secrecy.
It is a crumby thing to say, but, from the night she came here, Uncle
Phineas has hated Irene. He always liked Chris better than he liked
any of us, you know; so a mixture of Mother, Beatrice, and Griselda
would not have satisfied him for his precious boy. Admittedly, Irene
possessed no such combination of perfections. He was—and is, I
suppose—convinced that Irene had roped his cloyingly innocent nephew
by foul means. He thought all he had to do was to free Chris from the
lasso of propinquity, and then the infatuation would instantly end. He
tried to toll him off to Nome. When he had to give over that plan, he
decided that Irene, if she saw no chance of getting away from Q 2 with
Chris, would pick up some day and leave without him. He never for a
moment believed that Chris would sell the place. His point, all along,
was to save Chris. Mine, when I got mixed up with some mucky ideas of
the same sort, was to save the ranch.
Well, Uncle Phineas has saved the ranch. So I guess it is rotten of me
to start quibbling about his methods. If he did make rather a bad
mistake, he was more than paid out for it by the fiddle-de-dee effect
of his triumph this evening. His announcement, with his display of the
bank book, was the forlornest victory I have ever witnessed.
We are a sentimental herd, and there is no getting away from it. When
Uncle Phineas flashed the $45,000 on us, there wasn’t one of us,
except Irene, I suppose, who thought of anything but what that money,
or a tenth of it, would have meant to Father these last few years.
He sprang it on us just after we’d sat down to supper. We received it
as we might have received an announcement that he had had his
photograph taken; and we passed the bank book from hand to hand as we
might have passed the picture, though rather more quietly.
Of course, I had been more or less expecting it. Though I was not
prepared for any such sum as that. He had told me he was going to hold
out for $45,000; but I had $15,000 fixed in my mind as the highest
figure. One does, you know, always divide by at least three when it
comes to Uncle Phineas and his affairs. Still, since I had been
primed, I don’t know why I should have been so dumb. I might have
sounded forth a glad cry or two, it would seem, but I did not.
Lucy was the first to speak. She remarked: “Dear me! An enormous
amount of money. Money was bothering all of us—wasn’t it—only a few
weeks ago?”
Chris replied by shoving back his chair, rising, and walking out of
the room. Irene ran after him. Olympe burst into real tears. Aunt
Gracia ran to Grandfather and put her arm around his shoulders.
“Don’t you understand, Father,” she said, “Uncle Phineas has brought
us a fortune? All our money worries are over now. You must be glad,
dear. You must be glad!”
So take the “good news,” Judy. In spite of the neat blue figures in
the little leather book, I think none of us has quite got hold of the
idea as yet. Except—funny, how often I have to make this
exception—except, then, Irene. She has got Chris at their packing
already—but a far from sunny, rather new Christopher, who snaps at
one, and is surly, and who says that he will pack, if she likes her
things put away in trunks, but that he is not leaving Q 2 for a while.
Olympe is having a difficult time. She is torn between remorse for
having accused Uncle Phineas of iniquities, widely assorted from
neglect to infidelity, and anger at him for having kept the secret
from her for so long a time.
Poor Aunt Gracia seems to be in a trance. When you consider how hard
it is to think up excuses and decent motives for mere mortals, you can
imagine what a task it must be to have to find them for Omnipotence.
You understand? If Father had to die, on the very night of October
eighth, death would have been so much easier for him if he could have
known that he was leaving us all, and Q 2, safe. So, until Aunt
Gracia’s faith reconciles this seeming brutality with some obscure
justice, she is bound, I fear, to have a bad few days.
Grandfather has received the glad tidings by going straight to his
bed. Aunt Gracia seems seriously concerned about him. But I know
Grandfather, by this time. After weathering the past twelve days, as
he has, he won’t allow what, after all, is good fortune, to down him
now.
Uncle Phineas put my name in the pot when he made this deposit. In the
future, I am to write checks with the elders. I’ll celebrate by making
my first one out to you, and enclosing it in this letter. Thank the
Lord you can stop worrying about expenses. If you haven’t plenty of
room for Lucy, where you and Greg are now, find a larger, more
comfortable place. Or, if there is anything at all that will make you
happier—get it.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
II
Tuesday, October 23, 1900.
Dear Judy: Bless your heart for the letter that came to-day. None of
the folks see my hand in it. They are all a bit worried, in spite of
your denials, for fear Greg may be not so well. But, to the last man,
they are relieved beyond measure at the prospect of getting Lucy away
from this damnable, suspicion-ridden hole that used to be Q 2 Ranch,
and safely with you.
It is being no end good for Lucy. The notion that Judy-pudy needs her
has chirked her chin up almost to its erstwhile snobby slant. She
drank milk at dinner for the first time in ages. I knew why—strength
for efficiency. She is as busy as six bunnies getting her washing
done, and her clothes in order, and preparing “presents” for you and
Greg.
We’ll get her off on Thursday, I think. I’ll send you full details
about trains in a telegram on the day she leaves here. For gosh
sakes, Judy, don’t let there be any slip up about meeting her. I hate
like thunder to have to allow the kid to make the trip alone. If
Grandfather were only in a little better shape, I’d bring her, or
Aunt Gracia might. If Chris and Irene had any definite date for
departure, we’d have her wait for them. But, since Chris—and quite
rightly—doesn’t care to leave Q 2 until Grandfather is out of bed, I
suppose we’d better send Lucy along.
If, by Thursday, Grandfather should be up again as, in spite of Dr.
Joe’s pessimism, I rather think he may be, I’ll hop the train and
escort Lucy to Denver. Or, if he seems well out of the woods, by
to-morrow or the next day, we may have Lucy wait and go with Chris and
Irene. Don’t worry, if I have to wire that she is coming alone. I’ll
make friends with the conductor, and endow the porter.
Thank you, dear, for helping out.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
III
Wednesday, October 24, 1900.
Dear Judy: If I weren’t sure it would make things worse instead of
better, I should devote the first page of this letter to an
alphabetical classification of Neal Quilter, beginning with ass,
bounder, cad, dunce—it is remarkably easy—and ending with wise-guy,
yap, and zany.
This, of course, as a direct result of your ten-page letter, which
came to-day, in answer to my letter about the coroner’s inquest. The
entire plan of writing to you, as I did write, could have been
conceived only by an idiot—and the sound, fury, and significance have
been fittingly evinced.
Your attitude is the one reasonable attitude. I deserve every bit of
the big-sisterly sweetness, sympathy, reassurance, and comfort that
you are so determined to lavish upon me. I deserve it all; but I am
afraid that I can’t endure much more of it. Jude, we have to cry
quits.
I do not, and I never did, suspect Aunt Gracia nor Chris. Whatever
brain storm I had, has passed. I know, with no further need of
reassurance, that I am an innocent little lad. For gosh sakes, then,
Jude—stop it! I am not fool enough to ask you to forget what I have
written; but, if you can, forgive it; and, because you must, ignore
it.
In answer to your question, do as you think best about telling Lucy
that I have told you the truth. I have no right, and no particular
desire, to burden you with keeping your knowledge a secret from Lucy.
But I certainly do advise that you girls think of the affair as little
as possible; that you two spend no time in putting your heads together
and puzzling. It is a doggone unhealthy occupation, even for a man.
The less you kids think about it and talk about it, the better.
Dr. Joe—he came out again on Sunday—got word to-day from Mr. Ward that
the insurance people have decided to fight our claim on the grounds of
suicide. They base their lying contention on the supposition that the
Quilters, unwilling to have a suicide in their family, eager to
collect, illegally, a large sum of money, would have banded together
to dispose of the weapon, and to make the death seem to have been
murder. Mr. Ward wishes to fight it through to a finish. He says that
they are a rotten, one-horse, almost one-man, shyster outfit, with no
standing, and they should be shown up and forced out of business. He
says that the absence of powder burns proves, conclusively, that the
gun had been fired from a distance of at least five or six feet.
Again, bother ropes, and masks, and coal oil, and powder burns—or the
lack of them. I know that Father would not kill himself. I do not know
how they could tell whether or not there were powder burns, underneath
all that blood—— There I go again. Sorry.
What I began to say was, that this decision of the company’s puts us
in a nasty position. The Scylla of allowing them to get away with
their filthy claims, and the Charybdis of dragging the thing through
the courts, and of seeming eager to make Father’s death a paying
proposition.
We’ll do nothing until Grandfather is able to give us his best advice.
At present, Dr. Joe and Uncle Phineas are all for fighting the thing
through. Chris is, or seems to be, on the fence with Olympe and Irene;
Aunt Gracia and I are strong for dropping it, here and now.
Grandfather is not coming along as well as I wish he might. I think
that it is mostly a general letting down and relaxation, after shock.
The money sort of gave him an opportunity to rest. However,
Grandfather is much hurt because Uncle Phineas had not told him about
the mine, or asked his advice about any of the dealings.
Uncle Phineas tried to get square by explaining that he was afraid
Irene and Chris might have the same ability he—Uncle Phineas—had for
turning daydreams into realities. In that case, had they known that a
gold mine was in the offing, they might have hied them to New York on
the strength of their knowledge.
This helped not at all. Grandfather inquired why Uncle Phineas thought
that he would go directly to Irene and Christopher and inform them. He
went on to say that, in all his life, he had never betrayed a secret.
His voice fairly shook as he all but dared any one of us to mention
one instance of his having repeated the most trivial thing that had
been told him in confidence. He said that, at eighty years of age, the
discovery that his own brother dared not trust him with a minor
confidence was an immitigably painful revelation. Sound enough, sane
enough, just enough; but from Grandfather, at this time, rather
thoroughly appalling.
Aside from Grandfather, the rest of us are doing fairly well. The
money assuages a lot. And the thought of getting Lucy away from this
hellish place is a comfort. According to present plans, she is to
leave to-morrow. But you will have my telegram about that long before
you have this letter.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
IV
Thursday, October 25, 1900.
Dear Judy: I hope you won’t think that I am in the throes of another
brain storm, when you get the two almost identical telegrams about
Lucy’s departure and arrival. After I had sent the first, I remembered
the time the telegram we sent to Chris had miscarried. So I thought
I’d play safe, and send another.
It was darn crumby business, starting Lucy off alone on the train
to-day. Nothing but the thought of Grandfather, lying there in his
darkened room at home, kept me from hopping the train at the last
minute and going with her.
Grandfather is not pulling through as fast as I thought he would. He
was able to talk to me for a while this morning, though Dr. Joe keeps
time on us. Grandfather asked me, straight, about the insurance. I
told him how things stood. He advised, strongly, that we drop the
claim. He said that no one, now, including the insurance people
themselves, believed for an instant that Father’s death was a suicide.
But, he said, by the time we had aired the affair in court, and had
allowed those scoundrels to present their dishonest evidence, there
was no way of telling what some people might come to believe. He said
that Father’s honour needed no defence, and that we would make none.
He added that no retort we could offer would carry the dignity of
non-retort.
I can hardly say how thankful I am for this decision from Grandfather.
To start yowling and yapping for insurance money would seem to be the
final, filthy flourish. Thank the Lord that Uncle Phineas has made it
possible for us to drop it. Or, I guess, I should say that Chris has
made it possible for us to drop it.
After Grandfather and I had talked this morning, he insisted upon
seeing Chris this afternoon. Chris, strangely, or naïvely, told me all
this himself. Grandfather put it up to him whether we should fight for
the insurance money or not. He said that, unless Chris would give him
his solemn promise that never again, under any conditions, would he
consider selling the ranch, we should have to go to suit for the
money. Grandfather’s position was, that though now we are in bonanza,
if every few years we had to meet the same proposition we had to meet
when Chris came home this spring, we’d need, and we should have to
attempt to get, every red cent we could put our hands on. Chris
promised like a shot. Judging from Chris’s account of the interview,
Grandfather made a very impressive, almost but not quite Biblical
ceremony of receiving the promise.
So that is off our minds. Chris never would break a promise. He’d have
smashed us to bits by selling us out; but he’d never so much as trifle
with the pretty knickknack of his own punctiliousness. I am darn glad
of it. Why I should be beefing about it, I don’t know.
This small check I am enclosing is to be used, exclusively, for the
funny little fleshpots you and Lucy delight in. I fear I have been
remiss about sending messages to Greg; but I am certain that you have
been delivering, promptly, all the pleasant things I should have said.
I am better than that. I am certain that Greg would know that I meant
them, whether I had sent them or not. I am a mucker with messages—but
you know how I feel about Greg.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
V
Saturday, October 27, 1900.
Dear Judy: Thank you for the telegram that came this evening. I went
to Quilterville about five and hung around over there for three hours
waiting for it. If people’s bumps of sympathy were developed in
proportion to their bumps of curiosity, living would be a more
tolerable project. Not, Lord knows, that I bid for sympathy, or want
it—that is, unless sympathy might be expressed by decent silence.
No matter. It is great to know that Lucy is safe with you. That, with
the news of Greg’s improving health, is the best bit I have had for
many moons.
Grandfather seems about the same. I know that he will come through all
right; but Dr. Joe is worried. His staying right on here proves that
he is, more than anything he says.
Tell Lucy I’d like a lot of letters from her, and long ones, and that
I shall not be critical. The place, with you girls gone, is like a day
with the morning missing. How is that from your unpoetical, but most
loving brother,
Neal.
VI
Monday, November 12, 1900.
Dear Judy and Lucy: Aunt Gracia tells me that you two are worrying
because I have not written to you since Grandfather’s death. I am
sorry to have worried you. I should have written.
We are all fairly well here. The weather is cold, but sunny. Chris and
Irene are leaving for New York to-morrow.
If I can get Steve Roftus to take the job of running the ranch for a
year or two, I am planning to enter Oregon Agricultural College in
February. We know that Steve is looking for a job, since Justin sold;
but whether we can get him for what we can pay, I don’t know. We’ll go
fairly high, because he is the best man in the county, and, now, more
than ever before, I feel that I must have more adequate knowledge.
Getting Steve was Grandfather’s suggestion. I had the last talk with
him that anyone had. Two hours on the night of the thirtieth. As I
suppose the others have told you, that was the night before he died.
My best regards to Greg.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
CHAPTER XX
I
Lynn MacDonald’s reaching fingertips touched smooth wood. She glanced
at the page in her hand. After all, it was the ending; fiction could
scarcely have improved upon it. What was it that Lucy had said in one
of her letters—something about life permitting where literature
refused? She returned the page in her hand to its fraying creases and
its envelope. “Poor loving brother Neal,” she murmured, and shook her
head, and for a relaxing second drooped with a sigh.
She straightened, stood, jerking impatiently at stiffness, walked
across the room to her bookshelves, and stooped to the row of fat
encyclopedias. “Har to Hur,” she pulled from the shelf, and added “Sai
to Shu” to it.
A knock, demand nicely moderated by deference, tapped on her door.
“Shall I have your car brought around, Miss MacDonald, or shall I
order your breakfast?”
“Sai to Shu” sprawled on the floor. Miss MacDonald said: “Heavens on
earth! What time is it?”
“It is seven o’clock, Miss MacDonald. I came early this morning.”
“But, but,” stuttered the crime analyst, “the charwoman hasn’t been
in. She didn’t come in, last night. I was going home whenever she
came. How stupid!”
“I am sorry, Miss MacDonald. I met her as I was leaving last evening,
and warned her not to disturb you.”
Miss Kingsbury, surely an intentionally impudent fanfare of warm
water, sudsy with soap and bath salts, of pinking cold showers, of
vigorous Turkish towels, of stiff toothbrushes pungent with creamy
paste, of tingling scalps, of the benison of eye cups, of the rewards
of rest, sanity, and intelligent living, rescued “Sai to Shu” from the
floor.
“May I find something for you in this, Miss MacDonald?”
“Put it in its place, if you will. I have finished with it.”
“Har to Hur” stopped a gap in the shelves.
“And now, please, do telephone to the garage for my car.”
Fingers, brisk with weariness, folded letters and slipped them into
tired old envelopes. Grapefruit, coffee, bacon and eggs. Naughty Uncle
Phineas; Olympe with a lifted chin. A bath—first of all, a bath.
Lovely Aunt Gracia. Handsome Gibson man, Chris. Coffee, and a
crunching roll, and coffee. Your loving brother, Neal. Poor
supersentimentalist, fighting mere homely sentiment—poor, loving
brother Neal. Blue-eyed, blonde and fuzzy Stanlaws lady. Love, and
Lucy. Pansy-faced children of Reginald Birch. A very warm bath, and
green bath salts. Grandfather. Pan——
“They are sending your car at once. May I help you with these, Miss
MacDonald?”
“Thank you. And lock them in the safe, if you will.”
A list of the notes she had begun to make in case, toward the end,
things should go astray.
1. Accident
Neal blamed.
2. Richard _offers_ to exchange rooms with Irene.
After accident.
3. Baptism.
4. Murder committed after missionaries and Chinaman had
left the ranch.
5. Dying words.
Red mask.
6. Locked doors. Unlocked doors.
Keys under lamp.
7. Rope.
Bed moved.
8. Olympe’s revolver, .32 Colt’s.
9. Revolver used for murder, .38 Colt’s.
Absurd, all of it. She tore the paper into bits and tossed them into
her wastebasket.
“And now, please, Miss Kingsbury, get this hotel on the telephone—here
is the card—and make an appointment for me with a Dr. Joseph Elm who
is staying there. This afternoon—let me see; yes, for three o’clock.”
II
Dr. Joseph Elm failed, wretchedly, with his attempt to put a smile
across the trouble of his face.
Lynn MacDonald insisted, “But the lady, Olympe, is dead, Dr. Elm?”
He nodded at some woebegone thing a mile or two away in the distance.
“Then, why won’t that do? Lucy worked it out very cleverly. A .32
calibre Colt’s. A .38 calibre. You falsified about the size of the
bullet to save Olympe? No one will remember. Yours was the only
testimony concerning the size of the bullet. It does leave us with the
rope, of course; but the rope may easily remain mysterious in the
light of your confession. Surely caring about this thing as you care,
you are not going to be thwarted because of one helpful lie?”
Dr. Elm’s broad chest rose high, fell deep. “Look; what do I care
about a lie, one way or the other? I can do it all right. Easy.
Trouble is, when it comes to lies, I’ve been kind of choosey about
them. I can lie as well as my neighbour; but I like to like my lies.
There is something about this one that—that kind of stirs my fur. I
don’t know. Olympe was a nice lady, and a good friend of mine. Well,
of course, if that’s the best we can do, we’ll do it—or try to.”
“I am sorry, Dr. Elm, to disappoint you. That did seem the most usable
theory. But, since you dislike it so much, let me think. A case
against Irene——”
“No! Look. Irene’s alive—she’s got babies.”
“I meant, of course, merely that she should have got rid of the gun,
after suicide. But you won’t have that, either—not suicide, of course.
Olympe would do so well—— But it has to be an outsider, is that it?
The snow is going to make it difficult, frightfully difficult, to be
convincing.”
“I was wondering, Miss MacDonald. Now suppose you could come up with
me to Q 2. We’d work you in as a close, warm friend of Lucy’s. You
said you’d like to know her. The folks would be right glad to have you
as a guest. And money doesn’t matter to them; anything you’d care to
ask, they’d care to double——”
“No, Dr. Elm. There’d be no purpose in that. I can think as well here
in my office as I could think there. I’ll do my best, I promise you.
Perhaps I may have some inspiration, later, about the outsider. After
all, when one tries, there is almost nothing that one can’t do with
circumstantial evidence, except to prove any theory that is founded
upon it.”
“I thought, maybe,” Dr. Elm persisted, “that the folks at the ranch
could give you some bits of evidence that weren’t in the letters.
Trouble is, I got another wire from Judy this morning. I ’phoned her
last night—but she couldn’t talk. Neal isn’t getting any better.
Jehoshaphat, what wouldn’t I give for the truth!”
Lynn MacDonald’s pleasant features twisted. “The—truth! But, Dr. Elm,
you of all people know the truth. You have read the letters.”
Dr. Elm merely grasped more tightly the arms of his chair; but Lynn
MacDonald drew back, and widened her eyes and dipped her chin to a
question.
“Look. We need a fresh start, my girl. A straight one, this time. Do
you mean to say that you know the truth about who murdered Dick
Quilter?”
“Dr. Elm, do you mean to sit there, glaring at me, and tell me that
you—you of all people on earth—don’t know who killed Dick Quilter?
Don’t know, and do need me to tell you?”
“God bless my soul to glory! Are you trying to say that you think I
did it?”
Her laugh winged out, but its flight was short. “I am sorry, Dr. Elm.
Forgive me.”
“Certainly. Certainly. Don’t mention it. But when you get all good and
ready—— You see, I’m roasted nicely; I’m all ready to turn, and take
up and eat.”
“I am sorry. I——”
“Look. Do you know who murdered Dick Quilter?”
“I do, Dr. Elm. That is, I know it as well as anything can be known
that has not been accurately proved. However, I think we can get the
proof, the positive proof, later.”
“Who did murder Dick Quilter?”
“Dr. Elm, since you really don’t know, and since I have to tell you, I
believe I would better begin at the very start, if you don’t mind. For
one thing, perhaps your ignorance has taken a bit from my surety. Will
you answer a question or two for me, first?”
“Do you mean that Olympe Quilter really did murder her nephew? By Gad,
I don’t believe it!”
“See here, Dr. Elm. I told you that I thought I knew the truth. I told
you that I had no proofs. Now your ignorance has changed certain
aspects of the case. If you will furnish me with the proofs I need—not
all of them, the end must come later, with a confession, but with some
of them—and if your proofs fit my theory, I’ll tell you what I have
decided. If your proofs should happen to ruin my theory—I’ll not tell
you. That is positive, Dr. Elm. And, though you will hate me, you
should be grateful to me for it.
“Now then: Has Neal Quilter recently fallen in love?”
“Heavens, yes, if you want to know. And if three years can be called
recent. Fine, good, strong woman. She loves him. He loves her. Plenty
of money, plenty of interests in common, plenty of time for babies,
plenty of everything, and nothing but this fool notion of Neal’s is
keeping them apart.”
“Good! Now, then: what was the nature of the disease from which
Richard Quilter was suffering?”
“You know, it said in the letters, chronic stomach trouble.”
“Is that all you are willing to give me, Dr. Elm?”
“Look. Isn’t that enough? You’d think so, if you’d ever had it.”
“You are asking for the truth from me, Dr. Elm. And yet you won’t give
it to me. Was Richard Quilter’s trouble cancer? And did you promise
him, because of—what was it—‘ten generations of clean-bodied men and
women’ never to let any of his family know that this was, or would
have been, the cause of his death?”
“Adeno carcinoma of the liver. Lot of people thought it could be
inherited in those days. We didn’t want to scare the children—that was
it, chiefly: afraid of marrying; afraid of babies. It was better
untold.”
“Your autopsy, performed largely in the interest of science,
completely verified your original diagnosis, Dr. Elm?”
“Yes. I was cold-blooded. We didn’t have the X-rays in those days.”
“No, no. I understand. The medicine you gave him contained a strong
opiate of some sort, of course. Had he taken any of it that night, or
could you tell, from the autopsy?”
“I could tell. He had not taken a drop of it.”
“Good. Now, then: about the footprints——”
“I don’t know one dang thing about any footprints. I thought there
weren’t any.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. You see, the letters made such a point of
the absence of footprints that, while I was reading, last night, I
thought rather fancifully to myself of the disclosures as footprints.
Step by step, almost from the first one of Lucy’s letters, the whole
thing was so absolutely evident, the intangible footprints were so
sure and so straight, that an unimportant thing like actual footprints
in the snow being necessary for a solution seemed—well, perfectly
absurd.”
Dr. Elm said, “‘Sands of time.’ McGuffey, I guess. All the poetry I
ever knew I got from McGuffey, ‘Make our lives sublime, and departing,
leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.’”
“Precisely,” said Lynn MacDonald.
“Now,” said Dr. Elm, “that’s over with. Who murdered Dick Quilter?”
CHAPTER XXI
I
A gray kitten batted the tip end of a fern flowing green to the tiles
of the sunroom’s floor, leaped three feet, killed an inch of fringe on
the rug, toppled flat, waved coral set paws, and purred.
Dr. Elm snapped alluring fingers and said: “Puss? Puss? Puss? Look,
Judy, I didn’t think you’d take it like this. I don’t think this is
the right way for you to take it, my girl.”
Judith loosed tightened lips to tremble words. “Only—— I can’t believe
it, Dr. Joe. I mean—— How could Neal possibly have forgotten?”
“It is easier to say, maybe, how could Neal, being Neal, possibly have
remembered? Of course though, Judy, we aren’t dead certain and can’t
be, for a while, that Neal did forget. That part of it was Miss
MacDonald’s one and only piece of guesswork. Jehoshaphat, though, I
hope she was right about it!”
“Yes. If she is right about—the other, I suppose we have to hope for
that, too.”
“She is right, Judy. There is no getting away from what she called her
footprints. They walk right through the letters, making a path so
plain it looks to me, now, like nobody but a fool could have missed
it. Lucy’s second letter to you makes the first track. Maybe it would
take a crime analyst to discover it; but, in the third letter, the
path starts off, good and deep, and follows straight along through
Neal’s last letter to you—not a misstep, not a detour, not a doubt.
Soon as we can find time, we’ll go through them, if you want to, and
trace them along. I thought I could tell you all the points—but I must
have missed some, if you aren’t convinced.”
“I am. I have to be. Except—Neal’s forgetting.”
“Look, Judy. I don’t need to tell you about the findings of modern
psychology. You understand it better than I do. But would you like to
kind of whittle through Neal’s case with me, the way Miss MacDonald
explained it—smart as a whip, that girl is—to kind of refresh your
memory and help you understand about Neal?”
“I wish we might, Dr. Joe. You are wrong about my understanding the
new psychology. I don’t understand it very well. I never have.”
“No; and who does? I shouldn’t have said ‘understand’—I should have
said ‘believe in,’ maybe, or some such thing. We don’t understand
gravitation, or love, or sin, or electricity, or—much of anything. But
we believe in them because we’ve been forced to.
“Well, to begin with, Miss MacDonald says that Neal is a
supersentimentalist. That’s why he has always fought sentimentality to
the last ditch, and derided it. He knew how extra-sentimental he was,
and he was ashamed of it; hated it like he’d have hated a club-foot;
inferiority complex right there, to use the jargon, to begin with.
What Neal should have done was to have married real young, as Dick
did. Then he’d have had a nice conventional outlet for his floods of
sentiment—love of his wife and babies. That’s a lot different from
loving his aunties and uncles and sisters. He didn’t marry. And, along
in mid-adolescence, a doggone unfortunate thing happened.
“He got the idea of marriage muddled up in his mind with all the
distress and fear and self-humiliation that had ever come to him.
Never had a worry in his life—I mean a real, serious one—until Chris
came home, and the woman Chris had married started all the distress
about selling Q 2. Too sentimental, too loyal, to blame Chris—or even
Chris’s wife—blame it on marriage. You know, Lucy quotes him as saying
a blameless young man and a pleasant girl married will make a curse or
a crime. Then, Chris and Irene were hugging and kissing and loving and
being as sentimental, here, there, and everywhere, as they darned
pleased. Neal was jealous—though he didn’t know it, of course—so that
made him hate marriage (their liberty), and himself, worse than ever.
“Look. Who let him out of his locked room that night and directed him
to Dick’s room, where he found Dick killed? The woman Chris had
married. Who made a fool of him with her fake murder business? The
woman Phineas had married. Further back: What caused his father to
kill a man? (That went awful hard with Neal, and I knew it, at the
time.) The man your Aunt Gracia was going to marry. Blame any of the
folks? Same as I said before—too loyal, too sentimental. Lots easier
to blame marriage. Marriage, you see this, Judy, mixed up with the
dark experiences of his life; mixed up with murder, grief, despair,
fear, self-disgust. Look—a firm resolve never to have any truck with
marriage. Or, if you like it better, a marriage complex. About as easy
for a loving, sentimental lad like Neal to endure, as a boil on the
end of his nose.
“It didn’t look so pretty, and he knew it. He stopped talking about
it, soon as he got a little older, and hoped folks wouldn’t notice it.
Before long, he stopped looking cross-eyed, so’s he could see it
himself. He began to look—well, crooked, out of the sides of his eyes
so’s he couldn’t see it at all. Got the habit of looking crooked.
Forgot the boil; and it was a relief, you can bet on that. Here I am,
though—that’s what always happens to me when I try to do fancy work
with my words—with a boil on Neal’s nose, when I want a complex
against marriage stored away in his mind’s dark chambers and
forgotten. Stowed right next on the shelf to the secret he had to
keep; the secret that smashed his life to chips for a while—the secret
he’d like to forget, but couldn’t. So far so good, Judy?”
“Yes——”
“So far so bad would be more like it, I guess. Well, here on the
ranch, giving his heart to it, giving his energy and his time to it,
having you Quilter women to compare with the women he met, making them
look pretty small, Neal didn’t have much of a fight with this marriage
complex until Mrs. Ursula Thornton showed up. (Maybe I should have
told you that Miss MacDonald went at all this a little differently
from what I have. She began this analysis of Neal and his complexes
about sixteen or seventeen years farther back than I have. Freud, you
know. But that always seemed like drawing a pretty long bow, to me.)
Anyway, Ursula wasn’t so much unlike your mother, Judy, nor so much
unlike you girls. She came about as close to being a Quilter as she
could come without having been born into the family: beautiful, smart,
good—all the attributes. Neal loved her on the dot. She loved him. No
use beating around the bush—that’s what happened.
“Fine and dandy? Look; not so you could notice. Here comes the
marriage complex. Let’s turn it into the boil again on the end of his
nose. Neal can’t see it any longer. Eyes are set for looking crooked,
the other way. Neal has plumb forgot he had it. What’s the trouble
then? It’s still there—that’s the trouble. It’s been there, all these
years, growing bigger and meaner all the time.
“Marriage means to Neal, by this time, murder, disgrace, terror,
humiliation. Will he accept it? He will not. Who would? Will he get
around it? He will, if he can. Will he admit that he doesn’t want to
marry the woman he loves? Lord bless us—he can’t. He doesn’t know it.
You can’t admit something you don’t know. What’s he going to do,
then?”
Judith said: “Make a substitution. Put an unreal reason for his
refusal to marry in the place of the real reason?”
“That’s it. Next job for Neal is to find the substitute. Substitutes,
in cases of this kind, aren’t always so doggone easy to find. Neal had
his, right at hand. All he needed to do was to tinker it some, and it
was in good shape for use. I mean the secret that had been burdening
him, torturing the living soul out of him for years. He didn’t want
that secret, Judy. He never had wanted it. Look, here’s what happened.
“Up bobs Mr. Modern Devil, alias repressions, and just as sly and
wicked as the old-fashioned red one with horns and a tail. Up he comes
from modern hell, our subconscious minds—just as black and rotten a
region as the old brimstone-and-fire affair—and he says, ‘Leave it to
me.’
“‘That secret,’ says Mr. Modern Devil, ‘isn’t any use to us. Turn it
into a reason for your not marrying, and make it of some account.’
“Easy enough for Neal to do. He’d had the idea in his mind, anyway,
since 1900. Look. Here we have it. ‘A man who murdered his own father
is not fit to marry. I murdered my own father. I am not fit to marry.’
Slick? Good reason for avoiding marriage. And, Neal being Neal, the
supersentimentalist, the secret revised into a form that seems,
anyhow, a little easier to bear.
“Just one thing is the matter now. It is a nasty, poisonous mess, this
work of Neal’s personal devil. A sane mind can’t function with a mess
of that kind in it, any more than a healthy stomach could function,
properly, with a dish of poisonous toadstools in its middle. But,
thank the Lord—or, maybe, Miss MacDonald—we’ve got the antidote to
feed Neal: The truth.”
“He won’t take it, Dr. Joe. He scorns, hates modern psychology.”
“Sure he does. Why wouldn’t he? He’s afraid of it—scared to death of
it.”
“Yes, I know. But, if he won’t take it, what are we going to do?”
“Remember how the ads used to read in pre-prohibition days? ‘A few
drops in his coffee. Taste not detectable.’ Look, Judy. I mean we can
tell Neal the truth without labelling it psychology, can’t we? The
truth is all he needs. Truth, in these cases, is the catharsis—the
cure. Miss MacDonald kind of held out for an absolute verbal
acknowledgment. She says that will be by a long shot the best. But I
know, darn well, that, even if we can’t get the acknowledgment from
him in words, it will be all right if we can get him to make it to
himself. Yes, and there’s a lot of stuff about reëducation after
freeing the repression. But I’ll bet you that, if Neal has the truth,
Ursula will do for the reëducation.
“Look, though, Judy. We’ll have to be real delicate about feeding him
the truth. I’d suggest sort of oozing it into him. We don’t want to
gag him with it, and choke him to death. I told Miss MacDonald not to
worry about that for a minute. Tact, I told her, was your middle name.
I knew you could manage it fine.”
“I?”—a mouse of a word, caught in a trap and squeaking.
“How do you mean, Judy?”
“Dr. Joe, dear Dr. Joe—I can’t. Won’t you?”
“Oh, now, bless my soul to glory, Judy——”
“Please, Dr. Joe? You’re a man, you’re——”
“Hold on there, Judy! Yes? Look. Just about a minute you’d have been
talking baby talk, or worse, if I hadn’t stopped you. I never trust a
woman when she starts by telling me I’m a man. Flatterer. No, but,
Judy, I’ll try this, if you want me to. Sure I will. I think you’d do
it better than I would; but, if you don’t think so, I’ll try——
Hezekiah and the egg, you know.”
“Dr. Joe— Dr. Joe, you’re—you’re——”
“Don’t say it, Judy. Don’t you do it.”
“Divine.”
“All right. Just for that, now, I’m going to send you a bill.”
II
Dr. Elm gave a stiffening shake to the newspaper, and reread the
recipe for hot-water pie crust. The clock on the mantel spun three
cool, silver threads, and a black and red spark from the fire beneath
them spit out on the polished floor. Dr. Elm rose, kicked the spark to
the hearth, fumbled in his pocket for a cigar, bit the end of it, and
returned it to his pocket.
“’Lo, Neal.”
“Hel-lo, Dr. Joe! This is fine. I didn’t know you’d come. Judy just
now ’phoned down to me, and I rode right up. Great to see you here
again. Did you have a pleasant trip to San Francisco?”
“No. Not so very. I went for my health, you know.”
“I didn’t know! What’s the trouble, man?”
“I’m getting along, Neal. Getting pretty old. I’ve been thinking, here
lately, that I’ll likely be shuffling along and out of here before
many months.”
“Rubbish, Dr. Joe! You’re fit as a fiddle. How come?”
Dr. Elm returned to the wing chair and sank heavily into it with a
slow, showy sigh. Neal curved an arm on the mantel and frowned at the
fire.
“Sit down, boy. You’ll burn your clothes—that fire is popping like
corn. Besides, if you can spare me a few minutes, I’d like to have a
little talk with you. I’ve got to ask kind of a favour of you, Neal. I
hate it worse than hell—but I can’t see any way out of it.”
“Yes, you bet. But you couldn’t ask a favour of me, Dr. Joe—not to
save your life. Anything I could do for you would be a favour to me,
and you know it. So cut the favour stuff, and go ahead from there.”
“That’s nice of you, Neal. I certainly appreciate it a lot. But——
Well, no matter now. Anything I’ve got to say will hold over all
right. Kind of a shame to bother you—— I expect you’d like to hear
about my trip? We’ll let the other ride, for the present——”
“Dr. Joe! For the love of Pete, what did I say? See here, man—put it
any way you care to put it. But, for God’s sake, if I can help you——”
“That’s all right. That’s all right, boy. You didn’t say anything.
No—just changed my old fool mind, that’s all.”
“But you can’t do it, Dr. Joe. You can’t get away with it—not with me.
What is it? Money? You’ve attended this entire family for half a
century, and you’ve never seen the colour of Quilter money yet——”
“No, no, Neal. Not money. No, it’s more serious than that. Funny, how
precious our old, miserable, tag-end years get to us, when we feel the
last of them approaching.”
“See here, Dr. Joe. You’re the best friend I have on earth—the best
friend any Quilter has. Now, a minute ago, you began to tell me what I
could do—what you’d allow me to do. Then I made some cursed, damn-fool
break and spoiled it all. I’m not going to sleep to-night until you
and I get this thing straight.”
“No, Neal, you didn’t make any break. I just looked at you, and I
thought you didn’t look so well yourself. And this—this request of
mine wasn’t going to be pleasant for you, boy. I just thought I’d
better let up on it, maybe, till you got a little more fit yourself.
Look. It will keep——”
“Not on your life it won’t keep. I was never sounder than I am right
now. Of course, I’ve been a little worried here of late—one thing and
another, you know how it goes—but physically I’m as tough and healthy
as a Q 2 heifer.”
“That’s what I meant, Neal. I thought you looked kind of worried, or
something. No time to be bothering you with my troubles——”
“Only that I suppose the knowledge that you are in trouble, and that
you won’t give me a chance to help you—if I could—would be a more
serious trouble, worry, than any other I could have.”
“Well, of course, if you put it that way, Neal. Look. What do you know
about this new-fangled psychology stuff?”
“Not a doggone thing. And I’d like to know less. Chris shoves it at
me, now and then: conscious, subconscious, complexes, dreams. Dreams,
if you please. Rot, all of it, from beginning to end!”
“Yes? Well, I expect you’re right. It always had a phoney sound to me.
But what I was wondering about it, was this: Could worry, kind of
linked up with a guilty conscience, just sort of get the best of a man
of my age? That’s the way I feel, boy. Bless my soul to glory, I feel
like if I couldn’t rid myself of this eternal load of worry, get
things straightened out for myself, and get away from under it, I feel
like it would pound me right down into my grave. I can’t sleep any
more. I can’t eat. I can’t get anything out of a good cigar. I thought
maybe a trip away would fix me up a little. Got worse. Just now, Neal,
you said I couldn’t ask a favour of you to save my life. Well, that’s
about what I’m doing. Look. I’m asking this favour, hoping that it
will give me a new lease on life. I wouldn’t ask you, Neal, if I knew
anyone else on God’s green footstool to ask——”
“Wouldn’t? Well, if you say it, I guess I deserve it.”
“No, no. You got me wrong there. I’d sooner ask help of you than of
any other living man, except—about this one thing. It is the most
painful thing in your life, boy. That’s the damn trouble about
bringing it up to you.”
“You must mean, then, that it has something to do with—1900.”
“That’s about the size of it, Neal. I killed Dick.”
“That’s a damn lie! And you know it!”
“Take it easy, boy, if you can. I’m sorry. I knew I shouldn’t unburden
on you. We’ll drop it. Let well enough alone. Pull the bell there,
will you? I’d like a glass of water. I get these kind of rushing,
dizzy spells———”
“Dr. Joe, listen. I——”
“That’s all right, boy. I knew better than to tell you, but——”
“In the name of God, where did you get this mad idea? You weren’t here
on the ranch. You were in Portland, more than two hundred miles away.”
“That’s what I said at the time. I had to say it. Neal, listen a
minute, if you can, before you jump down my throat. It wasn’t
cold-blooded murder. It was——I did it for Dick. I did it because he
begged and prayed me to. I did it because he threatened, a threat he
meant to keep and I knew it, that if I wouldn’t do it for him, he’d
ask—well, somebody else, who would.”
Neal said, “A pitcher of water, please,” to two white-trousered legs,
and they vanished.
“You see, my boy, your father’s ailment was cancer. He knew it, and I
knew it. He took my promise not to tell. When he was shot, he had
maybe three months of life ahead of him—maybe not so long. Three
months of slow agony. He wasn’t afraid of them. No. He was afraid of
losing Q 2 for his family and his children and their children. He
wouldn’t have been afraid of that, either—not the way he was afraid—if
he had been going to live to see you all through. But he wasn’t going
to live; and there were old people, and his sister, and his three
children and an invalid boy all going to be left to shift for
themselves, and nothing to shift with. He gave into Chris about
selling, not because of any false pride—never knew a Quilter yet who
had an ounce of it—but because he knew he wouldn’t be alive another
six months to keep Chris from selling. Chris was a good boy, and he’s
been getting better ever since; but, right then, anybody with a lick
of sense knew that it was a question of now or later with Chris. Dick
knew; but he had to be certain sure of it. You’re right, this weather
is——”
Neal said, “All right, Gee Sing. Thanks. Skip.”
“Yes, as I was saying, Dick needed to know, and he found out—if Chris
didn’t sell in October, he’d sell in December.
“Now your father, Neal, was your grandfather’s own son. He’d been
brought up on your grandfather’s philosophy. Schiller, you know, and
his realistic pantheism; his insistence on sacrificing the individual
to the species. (Seems to me that I remember your grandfather was
making a new translation of Schiller, just about that time.) And Hume,
with his insistence that no act that was useful could possibly be
criminal. Dick believed these principles with all his soul. His death,
by accident, would be useful—damn useful. It would give his folks
money to hold on to Q 2, and to provide, not only for them, but for
all future generations of Quilters. If Chris had sold Q 2 in 1900,
he’d have sold a lot more than the ranch. Some of the folks here said
that, at the time. Dick hated like thunder to think of the old people
in poverty; he hated to think of you as a farm hand; of Greg and Judy
having to surrender in Colorado; of Lucy’s genius winding up by
ringing a school bell at nine every morning.
“These, and other things—including whether or not the Quilter family
was worth saving—were the things he had to balance against cheating an
insurance company that had cheated him. (He didn’t balance his death.
He was dying, and a quick, easy death was a mercy and a blessing.)
Greatest good for the greatest number—that weighed heavily. It was a
shyster company, cheating right and left, wherever it could. Dick
decided to sacrifice the company’s exchequer—you know how impersonal
companies seem—to the good of the species, Quilter.
“Of course I know that some men would rather see their families sink
into want, would rather die a lingering, suffering death and leave
their old folks on the grater of poverty, and their children’s futures
unprovided for, than to work a graft on a darn rotten insurance
company. Some men would. I don’t honestly know whether or not I’m glad
that Dick, Thaddeus Quilter’s son, wouldn’t. But it is true, anyway.
He wouldn’t. And he believed, ‘No act that is useful can possibly be
criminal.’
“Thinking the thing over and over, as I have, sometimes I’ve wondered
if the old gentleman could, maybe, have anyway guessed the truth. You
know how fine and flip he kept up through it all. Olympe’s fake play
bowled him over, for a few minutes, but he was up again and at it
within the hour. Right at the head of things, managing, like he always
had. Yes, fine and flip until your Uncle Phineas came home with the
money for the mine. Took to his bed that night, and never got up
again. It almost seemed as if that was what knocked him out—the
uselessness of Dick’s and my planning; the uselessness of what we’d
done. Like the uselessness of it, maybe, had turned it into a crime.
“Planning? We certainly planned. Yes, but here I’m putting myself into
it too soon. Before he ever said a word to me about it, Dick tried to
arrange an accidental death for himself. You remember—when the wagon
tongue broke while he was driving a skittish team over Quilter
Mountain? Scared the living pie out of him when he got home and found
that, if he had succeeded, you’d been blamed and would have blamed
yourself to your dying day. He made up his mind, then and there, that
he’d play safe with the next attempt. It wasn’t as easy to do as you
might think. Drowning, for instance? Suicide for sure. No, he had to
have it fixed so that the death could be proved, positively, to have
been accidental. Neal? Neal, my boy, are you listening to me?”
“I’m listening.”
“Excuse me. I kind of thought you’d dropped off to sleep, or
something. Mind if I keep along with the story? Well, after the
Quilter Mountain accident, Dick found, too, how your Aunt Gracia was
going to feel about his dying in sin—or not in a state of grace, I
guess she put it. He knew that a sudden shocking death was going to be
pretty hard on the family for a while. If he could make it even a mite
easier for any one of you, he was going to do it. He did. Went and got
himself baptized as a Siloamite. You know, without my telling you,
what that meant to your auntie, especially those last weeks before she
died.
“Well, Dick planned alone, and we planned together. By Gad, Neal, but
we tried. We thought that we had everything fixed slick from beginning
to end. Every single member of the family locked tight in their rooms.
Dick got the keys that afternoon, and did the locking himself that
night. (Damn hard luck about Irene being locked out. Jehoshaphat, but
that was a bad one!) He left all the other doors in the house unlocked
to make getting in and out seem easy. But he thought that the rope was
the best bet of all to prove an outsider. Dick fixed the rope himself,
and moved the bed, so’s it would look for certain that the criminal
had got out of the window, down the rope and clean away.
“He thought that Chris would climb out of the window in his room,
sooner or later, and come along the roof, and get into his room and
see the keys—Dick had put them there in plain sight—and let the others
out of their locked rooms.
“When Irene, instead of Chris, came running into his room, Dick used
his last breath to save me—and the family. He looked toward the open
window and said, or tried to, that a man wearing a red mask had got
away. I’ve wondered how he happened to say red. Maybe the colour on
his nightshirt made him think of it. Maybe he thought some poor devil
might be found with a black mask—but a red mask never would be found.
I don’t know.
“You see, boy, how it was? Planned and planned for, everything fixed.
And then the damn snow came and ruined it all, ruined the whole works
from beginning to end. First time in a quarter century that Quilter
County had had snow in October. Snow isn’t noisy. Dick in his bed, I
in my hiding place—we had no notion of the snow. We’d planned it all
for earlier, too; but Dick would have it that we wait until the
missionaries and Dong Lee were out of the house. Suspicion wouldn’t
touch a Quilter. But a religious fanatic, or a Chinaman, they’d be
something else again.
“That’s the end of it, I guess, Neal. No matter, much, about things
from then on. This is what is killing me, boy. That all these years
I’ve been coming a coward and a hypocrite among you folks, taking your
friendship, and all that, and never daring to own up. Of course, I’m
bound to stick up for myself and say that, sometimes, it still seems
to me that I didn’t do such an awful thing. It was hard, Neal—it was
damn, damn hard; but Dick begged and prayed me to. And, of course, as
the movies say, I’ve paid. Yes, I’ve paid—paid through the teeth. And
now, when I’m getting old——”
“Dr. Joe, would you mind a lot, just—keeping still for a minute or
two? Sorry. I’ve got to think. I’ve got to think.”
In the hall a door banged, and an oak log in the fire broke down into
its coals. A rill of laughter came coursing through the room, pursued
by a little girl with red cheeks and a green frock. She caught her
step and dipped to a courtesy. “How-do-you-do, Dr. Joe? I didn’t know
that you were here. I’m very glad to see you. I was looking for
Mother, Uncle Neal.”
Neal said, “I haven’t seen Lucy for two hours.”
“It is rather important. Baby Thad keeps saying, ‘Wee’ and it sounds
as if he were speaking French.”
Dr. Elm said, “Have you told your father?”
“Father is engrossed, enraptured. It was he who sent me for Mother.
Oh, there’s Christopher, home from Quilterville so soon. Coo-ee——
Chris?”
A sleek, yellow-haired boy parted the curtains. “What-ho, child? Why,
how-do-you-do, Dr. Joe? Glad to see you. Did you drive over in your
new Chaptler? Dad is going to give me a sport model Ford for my
birthday. I’ve left off smoking. Makes me hungry all the time. If
you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll raid the kitchen. You’re invited,
Delidah. Coming?”
“By Gad, Neal,” Dr. Elm said, when another door had trapped the
chatter and the laughter, “I can’t even enjoy the kids, any more. It
is killing me, and I wish it would—if it would make haste about it. I
can’t eat. I can’t sleep——”
“Wait a minute. Shall we go up to my room? Would you as soon? It’s
more private there. I—— I’ve something to tell you, Dr. Joe. Explain.
Shall we go up?”
The hall was full of sunshine. Out from the living room, the first
bars of Schumann’s _Abendlied_ came softly, but with certainty.
Neal paused for a moment on the stairway. “That’s Judy,” he said. “She
plays Schumann well. Ursula plays him better.”
III
Dr. Elm pressed his elbows into the table and rubbed his smooth pink
baldness in the palms of his hands. He said: “That’s good of you,
Neal. It’s mighty good of you, and I appreciate it. But, of course,
you couldn’t expect me to believe that I’d up and—forget, or whatever
you call it, about the most tragic experience of my life. No. Men lie
to themselves; but they lie in their own favour. They don’t make
mistakes, as you’ve been saying—not about whether or not they killed a
friend.”
“Listen, man! I’ve listened to you. You’ve got to listen to me. Yes,
you’ve got to do a damn sight more than listen. You’ve got to believe
me. I know. And I’ll tell you how I know.
“In a way it makes it more incredible; but, get this, Dr. Joe, I’m
under oath. I’m telling you God’s own truth. I am swearing to you
that, for the past two years or more, until about half an hour
ago—somewhere along in your talk to me—I have thought exactly the same
thing about myself. I am swearing to you, Dr. Joe—swearing,
remember—that I’ve done what you’ve done, and what you declare it is
impossible for men to do. I have forgotten; that is, I’ve got things
all twisted. I thought, and I believed—as you believe about
yourself—that I killed Father; I myself. If it is necessary, to
convince you, I’ll drag Judy into this. I’d rather not; but I will, to
get you straightened out. I told Judy, here about two weeks ago, that
I had killed Father.”
“Now, now, Neal. You and Judy——”
“Damn it! I’m not a liar. We won’t get any place if you keep this up.
I’ve known for years that my mind and my senses played tricks on me.
You must have had similar experiences? Try to remember. Haven’t you
been fooled, by yourself, before this, on less important matters?”
“Yes. Yes, I have. I imagine most men have. But that’s everyday,
come-along business.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I know this. My case was a lot worse than yours is.
I had had all the facts, the same as you had them, and from the same
source—I’m positive of that. You remembered most of the facts. I had
forgotten every last one of them. I’d forgotten that Father planned
his own death. I was in a lot worse condition than yours, because I’d
got so addled that I thought I stepped into Father’s room that night
and shot him—just as any other brute of a murderer might have done—to
gain something for myself. I’d forgotten that Father had cancer. I’d
forgotten every damn thing, but that Monday night and Irene—with blood
on her wrapper.
“Do I know how to sympathize with you? Say! Do I? I’ve been living in
hell here, for the last few years. I’ve been getting worse all the
time. Lord, but it’s queer—the things men’s minds will do! Night after
night I’ve walked this floor fighting suicide. You remembered the
extenuations. I forgot every damn thing. If this hadn’t come up
to-day—I don’t know. I was about as near crazy as a man could get, and
stay sane.”
Dr. Elm puffed out a long-drawn breath. “Hot,” he said, “up here. Too
hot. Bless my soul to glory if I can understand you, Neal. You thought
you’d done it, you say, until I told you that I had. Look. Now you
seem to be saying that you know I didn’t. No. No, you’re too deep for
me.”
“I thought I had done it—I’m a fool with words—I thought I had done it
until you talked to me. Until I heard you explaining—much as I had had
it explained to me twenty-eight years ago. I could hear the very words
I had heard before; see the gestures; feel the—horror? shock? Well,
whatever I felt, then, it was pretty bad. Word for word this
afternoon, all of it over again: Father’s illness; his plan to save
the ranch and the family; his accident; the change of rooms on account
of distance; his baptism; the waiting for the missionaries to leave——
I’d heard it all before, Dr. Joe, as you’d heard it and at about the
same time, twenty-eight years ago. The rope to mislead us. All of us
locked in our rooms. The mistake about Irene. And then—I guess the
real tragedy—the snow. Good God, what the sight of that impossible
October snow must have meant! How, in the name of suffering, could I
have forgotten? How could I have heard it all explained—and forgotten
it! But I did. I had. That’s that. And so have you.”
“Look, Neal. I’m wondering whether there could be something in this
new psychology, after all? If we could dig the explanations of our
tricky minds, as you say, out of it, maybe?”
“Lord, no! Nothing like that. It is altogether different—sexy stuff,
dreams, gosh knows what all; offensive and silly. No, this is plain
common sense. All this amounts to, I guess, is a lapse of memory. The
strangest part of it is that both of us, you and I, should have had
the same lapse—brain storm used to be the word. But we have had
it—that’s evident. And, again, that’s that. After all, it is another
proof of how even the best friends can be strangers. Here we’ve been,
living in hells of our own devising, when any time in the past years,
if we’d got together and talked, we’d probably have set each other
free—got the truth, as we have to-day.
“You mean—— You think you have the truth, Neal?”
“Think? I know I have. Gosh, I can’t get over it. Queerest experience
I have ever heard of a man having. And then, on top of that,
discovering that my best friend has had exactly the same experience.”
“Do you mean, when you say you have the truth, that you know who
killed Dick? You say you know I didn’t do it. All right. If I didn’t
do it, who did?”
“Look at it this way. Father made his plan. He needed help. He had to
have sure, competent help. He needed a cool head and a steady hand. He
needed a pile of courage—before and after. He needed self-command and
discretion. He needed someone who was willing to sacrifice his peace
of mind for all his remaining years, and to sacrifice a problematical
eternity, for the sake of the Quilter family He needed all the
virtues, and one small saving grace of sin. Who, then, would he have
told of his cancer, and have turned to for his help?”
“Your Aunt Gracia?”
“No. I hoped you’d see it. You haven’t? That puts it up to me. He’d
want me to tell you. He wasn’t afraid to load his gun and carry it
next door into Father’s room that night and—back again to his own
room. He wasn’t afraid, at the end, to tell me. I mean, Dr.
Joe—Grandfather.”
The End
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
This transcription follows the text of 1929 edition published by
Doubleday, Doran & Co. However, the following are believed to be
unambiguous errors in the text, and have been corrected:
* “Four hundred” was changed to “Five hundred” to match the context
(Chapter I).
* “Galvestion” was changed to “Galveston” (Chapter IX).
* “with out little” was changed to “with our little” (Chapter XVIII).
* “by hear-” was changed to “by hearing” (Chapter XVIII).
* “realties” was changed to “realities” (Chapter XIX).
* Four occurrences of mismatched quotation marks have been repaired.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOOTPRINTS ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
