The Chief Legatee Part 13

"You will get ill here; you are not used to the cold and the night air.

Come back to the house; Georgian would wish it."

The name roused him and he looked up. Their eyes met and a strange gleam--a shock, perhaps, of sympathetic feeling, flashed upon either face. The lawyer saw and instinctively retreated from out the circle of light cast by the lantern; but the men at the stream's edge heard nothing. The flash of something white had caught their eyes and one man was reaching for it.

"Georgian," came in astonished repet.i.tion from the bereaved man's lips.

"She would wish it," persisted the other with still deeper and more urgent meaning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A slight, dark form stole from the shadows and laid a hand on the stooping man's shoulder.]

Then in a whisper so penetrating that even Mr. Harper caught its least inflection through all the thunder of the waterfall, "She loved you."

Ah! the enchantment, the feminine persuasiveness, the heart-moving sincerity which breathed through that simple phrase! From lips so untutored, it seemed marvelous. Ransom was not insensible to its power, for he quivered under her hand and his eyes took on a look of wonder. But he made no attempt to answer, even by a sign. He seemed content for that one instant just to listen and to look.

The man hanging over the stream drew back his arm. He had been deceived by a bit of froth; some of it clung yet to his fingers.

"Come," entreated the girl, her face emerging softly into the light, as she stooped lower over the lantern. "Come!" she had taken him by the hand and was drawing him gently upward.

With a leap he was on his feet and had thrown her off. Some memory had come to make her entreaty hateful.

"No," he cried, "no! Here is my place and here will I stay. You are a stranger to me! You drove her to this act, and you shall not cajole me into forgetting it."

He had spoken loudly; not so much because he remembered her affliction, but because of the roar of the fall and his own overwhelming pa.s.sion. The result was that the lawyer caught every word; possibly the workers at the water-edge did also; for some of them quickly turned their heads. But she, though she stopped short in the spot where he had pushed her, gave no evidence of hearing his words or even of resenting his manner.

"Won't you come?" she falteringly pleaded, pointing towards the house with its twinkling lights. "You are cold; you are shuddering; they will do the searching who don't mind night or wet. Follow Anitra, Anitra who is so sorry."

"No!" he shouted. His tone, his look, were almost those of a madman. He even put out his hands towards her in repulsion. He seemed to cast her away. This gesture, if not his words, reached her understanding. The lawyer saw her sway, fling back her young head with its disheveled locks to the night, and fall moaning pitifully to the ground. Here she lay still, with the wet gra.s.s all about her and the last lingering drops of rain beating on her huddled form.

Mr. Harper started to raise her, for Ransom stood petrified. But no sooner had the lawyer made his presence known by this impetuous movement, than Ransom woke from his trance and, darting down, lifted the girl in his arms and began moving with her towards the house. As he pa.s.sed the lawyer he muttered between set teeth:

"She's caused me all my misery. But she looks too much like Georgian for me to see another man touch her. G.o.d will care for my poor darling's body."

CHAPTER XIV

A DETECTIVE'S WORK

Morning.

The living household was about its tasks for all the horror of the night before, and the still unrelieved suspense as to the fate of one of its members.

The maid, who had sat on watch in the upper hall for so many hours the evening before, was again at her post, but this time with her eye fixed only on one door, the door behind which slept the exhausted Anitra.

Ransom's room was empty; he was in the sitting-room below, closeted with the lawyer.

Some one had been there before them. The tray of bottles and gla.s.ses had been removed from the table, and in their place were to be seen a woman's damaged hat and a small tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb. Mr. Harper's hand was on the former, which was wound about with a wet veil.

"I think I recognize this," said he. "At least I have a distinct impression of having seen it before."

"It was picked up with the veil still on it near the entrance of the lane," explained Ransom.

"Then there can be no doubt that it is the hat Miss Hazen wore during her journey. She tossed it off the moment her foot touched the ground, and taking the shawl from her neck pulled it over her head instead. You remember that she had no hat on when they brought her in."

"I remember. This is Miss Hazen's hat without any doubt."

The lawyer eyed the speaker with curious interest. There was something in his tone that he did not understand.

"And this?" he ventured, laying a respectful finger on the comb.

"Found in the open field between the house and the mill-stream."

"Do you recognize it?"

"No. Georgian wore such combs, but I cannot absolutely say that this is hers."

"I can. You see this little gold work at the top? Well, I have an eye for such things and I noticed this comb in her hair last night. There were two of them just alike."

Instinctively the two men sat with their eyes fixed for a minute on this comb, then, equally instinctively, they both looked up and gazed at each other long and hard. It was the lawyer who first spoke.

"I think that we should have no further secrets between us," said he.

"Here is Mrs. Ransom's will. There is a name mentioned in it which I do not know. Perhaps you do." Here he laid the doc.u.ment on the table.

Mr. Ransom eyed it but did not take it up. Instead, he drew a crumpled paper from his own pocket and, handing it to the lawyer, said: "First, I should like you to read the letter which she left behind for me. My feelings as a husband would lead me to hold it as a sacred legacy from all eyes but my own; but there is a mystery hidden in it, a mystery which I must penetrate, and you are the only man who can a.s.sist me in doing so."

The lawyer, lowering his eyes to hide their own suspicious glint, opened the paper, and carefully read these lines:

"Forgive. My troubles are too much for me. I'm going to a place of rest, the only place and the only rest possible to one in my position.

I don't blame anybody. Least of all do I blame Anitra. It was not her fault that she was brought up rudely, or that she knows no restraint in love or in hate. Be kind to her for my sake, and if any one else claims her or offers to take her from you, resist them. I give her entirely to you. It's a more priceless gift than you think; much more priceless than the one which I take from you by my death. I could never have been happy with you; you could never have been happy with me. Fate stood between us; a darker and more inexorable fate than you, in your kindly experience of life, could imagine. Else, why do I plunge to my death with your ring on my finger and your love in my heart?

"Georgian."

"Ravings?" questioned Ransom hoa.r.s.ely, as Mr. Harper's eyes rose again to his face.

"It would seem so," a.s.sented the lawyer. "Yet there is intelligence in all the lines. And the will--read the will. There is no lack of intelligent purpose there; little as it accords with the feeling she exhibits here for her sister. She leaves her nothing; and does not even mention her name. Her personal belongings she bequeaths to you; but her realty, which comprises the bulk of her property I believe, she divides, somewhat unequally I own, between you and a man named Auchincloss. It is he I want to ask you about. Have you ever heard her speak of him?"

"Josiah Auchincloss of St. Louis, Missouri," read Mr. Ransom. "No, the name is new to me. Didn't she tell you anything about him when she gave you her instructions?"

"Not a word. She said, 'You will hear from him if ever this will is published. He has a right to the money and I entreat you to show your respect for me by seeing that he gets it without any unnecessary trouble.' That was all she said or would say. Your wife was a woman of powerful character, Mr. Ransom. My little arts counted for nothing in any difference of opinion between us."

"Auchincloss!" repeated Ransom. "Another unknown quant.i.ty in the problem of my poor girl's life. What a tangle! Do you wonder that I am overcome by it? Anitra--the so-called brother--and now this Auchincloss!"

"Right, Ransom, I share your confusion."

"Do you?" The words came very slowly, penetratingly. "Haven't you some idea--some strange, possibly half-formed notion or secret intuition which might afford some clew to this labyrinth? I have been told that lawyers have a knack of getting at the bottom of human conduct and affairs. You have had a wide experience; does it not suggest some answer to this problem which will harmonize all its discordant elements and make clear its various complications?"

Mr. Harper shook his head, but there was a restrained excitement in his manner which was not altogether the reflection of that which dominated Ransom, and the latter, observing it, leaned across the table till their faces almost touched.