第81章 XXIII WORDS IN THE NIGHT(5)

"Then you had no knowledge of the contract she had entered into while a school-girl?"

"Not in the least. Another woman, and not myself, had been her confidante; a woman who has since died. No intimation of her first unfortunate marriage had ever reached me till Mr. Jeffrey rushed in upon me that Tuesday morning with her dreadful confession on his lips."

The district attorney, who did not seem quite satisfied on a certain point passed over by the major, now took the opportunity of saying:

"You assure us that you had no idea that this once lighthearted sister of yours meditated suicide when she left you?"

"And I repeat it, sir."

"Then why did you immediately go to Mr. Jeffrey's drawer, where you could have no business, unless it was to see if she had taken his pistol with her?"

Miss Tuttle's head fell and a soft flush broke through the pallor of her cheek.

"Because I was thinking of him. Because I was terrified for him.

He had left the house the morning before in a half-maddened condition and had not come back to sleep or eat since. I did not know what a man so outraged in every sacred feeling of love and honor might be tempted to do. I thought of suicide. I remembered the old house and how he had said, 'I don't believe her. I don't believe she ever did so cold-blooded an act, or that any such dreadful machinery is in that house. I never shall believe it till I have seen and handled it myself. It is a nightmare, Cora. We are insane.' I thought of this, sirs, and when I went into her room, to change the place of the little note in the book, I went to his bureau drawer, not to look for the pistol - I did not think of that then, - but to see if the keys of the Moore house were still there. I knew that they were kept in this drawer, for I had been present in the room when they were brought in after the wedding. I had also been short-sighted enough to conclude that if they were gone it was he who had taken them. They were gone, and that was why I flew immediately from the house to the old place in Waverley Avenue. I was concerned for Mr. Jeffrey! I feared to find him there, demented or dead"

"But you had no key."

"No. Mr. Jeffrey had taken one of them and my sister the other.

But the lack of a key or even of a light - for the missing candles were not taken by me* - could not keep me at home after I was once convinced that he had gone to this dreadful house. If I could not get in I could at least hammer at the door or rouse the neighbors. Something must be done. I did not think what; I merely flew."

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*We afterwards found that these candles were never delivered at the house at all; that they had been placed in the wrong basket and left in a neighboring kitchen.

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"Did you know that the house had two keys?"

"Not then."

"But your sister did?"

"Probably."

"And finding the only key, as you supposed, gone, you flew to the Moore house?"

"Immediately."

"And now what else?"

"I found the door unlocked."

"That was done by Mrs. Jeffrey?"

"Yes, but I did not think of her then."

"And you went in?"

"Yes; it was all dark, but I felt my way till I came to the gilded pillars."

"Why did you go there?"

"Because I felt - I knew - if he were anywhere in that house he would be there!"

"And why did you stop?"

Her voice rose above its usual quiet pitch in shrill protest:

"You know! you know! I heard a pistol-shot from within, then a fall. I don't remember anything else. They say I went wandering about town. Perhaps I did; it is all a blank to me - everything is a blank till the policeman said that my sister was dead and I learned for the first time that the shot I had heard in the Moore house was not the signal of his death, but hers. Had I been myself when at that library door," she added, after a moment of silence, "I would have rushed in at the sound of that shot and have received my sister's dying breath"