Cynthia Wakeham's Money Part 8

It was now Edgar's turn to ask a question.

"You say she lives there alone? You mean with servants, doubtless?"

"Oh, yes, she has a servant. But I did not say she lived there alone; I said she and her sister."

Edgar was silent.

"Her sister does not go out, either, they say."

"No? What does it all mean?"

"That is what _I_ want to know."

"Not go out? Emma!"

"Do you remember _Emma_?"

"Yes, she is younger than Hermione."

"And what kind of a girl is _she_?"

"Don't ask me, Frank. I have no talent for describing beautiful women."

"She is beautiful, then?"

"If her sister is, yes."

"You mean _she_ has no scar." It was softly said, almost reverently.

"No, she has no scar."

Frank shook his head.

"The scar appeals to me, Edgar."

Edgar smiled, but it was not naturally. The constraint in his manner had increased rather than diminished, and he seemed anxious to start upon the round of calls he had purposed to make.

"You must excuse me," said he, "I shall have to be off. You are coming back to-morrow?"

"If business does not detain me."

"You will find me in my new office by that time. I have rented the small brown house you must have noticed on the main street. Come there, and if you do not mind bachelor housekeeping, stay with me while you remain in town. I shall have a good cook, you may be sure, and as for a room, the north chamber has already been set apart for you."

Frank's face softened and he grasped the doctor's hand.

"That's good of you; it looks as if you expected me to need it."

"Have you not a Harriet Smith to find?"

Frank shrugged his shoulders. "I see that you understand lawyers."

Frank rode down to the depot with Jerry. As he pa.s.sed Miss Cavanagh's house he was startled to perceive a youthful figure bending over the flower-beds on the inner side of the wall. "She is not so pretty by daylight," was his first thought. But at that moment she raised her head, and with a warm thrill he recognized the fact that it was not Hermione, but the sister he was looking at.

It gave him something to think of, for this sister was not without her attractions, though they were less brilliant and also less marred than those of the sad and stately Hermione.

When he arrived at his office his first inquiry was if anything had been heard from Flatbush, and upon being told to the contrary he immediately started for that place. He found the house a scene of some tumult.

Notwithstanding the fact that the poor woman still lay unburied, the parlors and lower hall were filled with people, who stared at the walls and rapped with wary but eager knuckles on the various lintels and cas.e.m.e.nts. Whispers of a treasure having been found beneath the boards of the flooring had reached the ear of the public, and the greatest curiosity had been raised in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of those who up to this day had looked upon the house as a worm-eaten structure fit only for the shelter of dogs.

Mr. d.i.c.key was in a room above, and to him Frank immediately hastened.

"Well," said he, "what news?"

"Ah," cried the jovial witness, coming forward, "glad to see you. Have you found the heirs?"

"Not yet," rejoined Frank. "Have you had any trouble? I thought I saw a police-officer below."

"Yes, we had to have some one with authority here. Even Huckins agreed to that; he is afraid the house will be run away with, I think. Did you see what a crowd has a.s.sembled in the parlors? We let them in so that Huckins won't seem to be the sole object of suspicion; but he really is, you know. He gave me plenty to do that night."

"He did, did he?"

"Yes; you had scarcely gone before he began his tactics. First he led me very politely to a room where there was a bed; then he brought me a bottle of the vilest rum you ever drank; and then he sat down to be affable. While he talked I was at ease, but when he finally got up and said he would try to get a s.n.a.t.c.h of sleep I grew suspicious, and stopped drinking the rum and set myself to listening. He went directly to a room not far from me and shut himself in. He had no light, but in a few minutes I heard him strike a match, and then another and another.

'He is searching under the boards for more treasure,' thought I, and creeping into the next room I was fortunate enough to come upon a closet so old and with such big cracks in its part.i.tion that I was enabled to look through them into the place where he was. The sight that met my eye was startling. He was, as I conjectured, peering under the boards, which he had ripped up early in the evening; and as he had only the light of a match to aid him, I would catch quick glimpses of his eager, peering face and then lose the sight of it in sudden darkness till the gleam of another match came to show it up again. He crouched upon the floor and crept along the whole length of the board, thrusting in his arm to right and left, while the sweat oozed on his forehead and fell in large drops into the long, narrow hollow beneath him. At last he seemed to grow wild with repeated disappointments, and, starting up, stood looking about him at the four surrounding walls, as if demanding them to give up their secrets. Then the match went out, and I heard him stamp his foot with rage before proceeding to put back the boards and shift them into place.

Then there came silence, during which I crept on tiptoe to the place I had left, judging that he would soon leave his room and return to see if I had been watching him.

"The box was on the bed, and throwing myself beside it, I grasped it with one arm and hid my face with the other, and as I lay there I soon became conscious of his presence, and I knew he was looking from me to the box, and weighing the question as to whether I was sleeping sound enough for him to risk a blow. But I did not stir, though I almost expected a sudden crash on my head, and in another moment he crept away, awed possibly by my superior strength, for I am a much bigger man than he, as you must see. When I thought him gone I dropped my arm and looked up. The room was in total darkness. Bounding to my feet I followed him through the halls and came upon him in the room of death. He had the lamp in his hand, and he was standing over his sister with an awful look on his face.

"'Where have you hidden it?' he hissed to the senseless form before him.

'That box is not all you had. Where are the bonds and the stocks, and the money I helped you to save?'

"He was so absorbed he did not see me. He stooped by the bed and ran his hand along under the mattresses; then he lifted the pillows and looked under the bed. Then he rose and trod gingerly over the floor, as if to see if any of the boards were loose, and peered into the empty closet, and felt with wary hand up and down the mantel sides. At last his eyes fell on the clock, and he was about to lift his hand to it when I said:

"'The clock is all right; you needn't set it; see, it just agrees with my watch!'

"What a face he turned to me! I tell you it is no fun to meet such eyes in an empty house at one o'clock at night; and if you hadn't told me the police would be within call I should have been sick enough of my job, I can tell you. As it was, I drew back a foot or two and hugged the box a little more tightly, while he, with a coward's bravado, stepped after me and whispered below his breath:

"'You are making yourself too much at home here. If I want to stop the clock, now that my sister is dead, what is that to you? You have no respect for a house in mourning, and I am free to tell you so.'

"To this tirade I naturally made no answer, and he turned again to the clock. But just as I was asking myself whether I should stop him or let him go on with his peerings and pokings, the bell rang loudly below. It was a welcome interruption to me, but it made him very angry. However, he went down and welcomed, as decently as he knew how, a woman who had been sent to his a.s.sistance by Miss Thompson, evidently thinking that it was time he made some effort to regain my good opinion by avoiding all further cause for suspicion.

"At all events, he gave me no more trouble that night, nor since, though the way he haunts the door of that room and the looks he casts inside at the clock are enough to make one's blood run cold. Do you think there are any papers hidden there?"

"I have no doubt of it," returned Frank. "Do you remember that the old woman's last words were, 'The clock! the clock!' As soon as I can appeal to the Surrogate I shall have that piece of furniture examined."

"I shall be mortally interested in knowing what you find there,"

commented Mr. d.i.c.key. "If the property comes to much, won't Miss Thompson and I get something out of it for our trouble?"

"No doubt," said Frank.