 | CHAPTER XX.
A HEROINE VANISHED The Wetherel affair |  |
20. CHAPTER XX.
A HEROINE VANISHED
The supposition that Edward could have committed this horrible crime
Mrs. Dinneford instantaneously rejected with all the strength of her kindly nature,
not seeking to argue upon it in any manner, even to herself, and not replying
a word to Mr. Sweet, but simply shaking her head in strenuous negation.
“Oh, I dare say it was burglars,” nodded the ex-policeman, preferring that
she should so believe and so persuade others, inasmuch as that would leave the
field clearer to his own researches, which, as he trusted, would be gainful in
lucre. “I only wanted to warn you not to say anything that might make
trouble for decent folks. Anybody can see what burglars might expect to get
out of that paper. Ransom money; that's the idea.”
At this moment Alice, who had gone up stairs to finish her dressing, came
rushing down with a cry of, “Mother, where is Nestoria? She didn't sleep in
her room.”
“Girl missing?” eagerly demanded Mr. Sweet. “Servant girl? No!
What, not the young lady? Well, here's a start.”
“She was a dear, sweet friend of ours,” answered Mrs. Dinneford, hardly
has become of her. We must look for her at once.”
“That's so,” was the positive and energetic opinion of Mr. Sweet. “Little
golden-haired young lady, ain't it? I'll set a gang a-going right away.”
He was fully in his element now; here was an opportunity to use his bygone
experience and show his special ability; and he began upon his task with
something like the gleeful eagerness of a hound starting out on a hunt; indeed,
he might be described as frisking and gambolling, at least in spirit. It was
not humanity which made him so alert, for the unsympathetic fact was that he
did not care a sixpence about the safety of the missing girl, his sole motive of
action being his acquired instinct for pointing and tracking. With harassing
and almost abominable cheerfulness he organized a searching party of men
and boys, formed it in an extended loose line after the fashion of skirmishers,
and caused it to beat through every wood and thicket in the vicinity. Meantime
he himself trotted rapidly along the shore, looking behind every rock and
bush and tuft of reeds, examining the sand of the beach for footprints, and
scanning the surface of the harbor for floating objects. A careful search of an
hour or so only revealed the fact that Nestoria was not in the neighborhood.
But Mr. Sweet was not yet at his wit's end. Bouncing into a “sharpy,”
he skimmed across the bay to Lighthouse Point, landed near the house where
Edward and his friends had lodged, lurked about it until he discovered Mr.
Brown alone, and inquired whether young Wetherel wanted to go a-fishing.
Mr. Brown, who was a small, knurly, grizzled man of fifty, with wrinkles
of chronic discontent about his mouth and nose, replied in an aggrieved, disobliging
tone, “He don't live here.”
“Why, yes he does,” insisted Sweet. “You've got three boarders, hain't
you?”
“No, I hain't,” was the unsocial, surly answer of Brown, meanwhile surveying
his visitor offensively.
“Well, I'll be blowed if you hain't had three,” retorted Sweet, with some
excitement. “What's the matter? Have they quit without settlin'?”
Having aired his temper enough to sweeten it a little, Mr. Brown now
gave what information he had to give, tossing it surlily at Sweet over his
shoulder.
“Yes, they've quit. I expected 'em to stay a month, and they only stayed a week.”
“Oh, that's the row, is it?” observed the ex-policeman. “I don't call that
handsome.”
“The foreigner went three days ago, and the others the next day,” continued
Brown. “Did they owe you anything?”
“Yes,” said Sweet, which was a fib; but he was anxious to conceal the
true motives of his early voyage; and he actually put back to his own side of
the harbor without telling Brown the news.
On reaching Sea Lodge he drew the chambermaid on one side and whispered
to her in a confidential manner, “So the young lady eloped with the rich
nephew, did she?”
“Deary me!” exclaimed the amazed woman. “Did she? Well, they
was engaged, that's a fact. Well, if that isn't most awful! And his poor uncle
dead in the house!”
“Yes, shocking coincidence, wasn't it?” mumbled Sweet, and withdrew
himself from her to meditate. He saw it all now: the young man and young
will and killed the old gentleman.
“But what bloody nonsense!” said Mr. Sweet to himself. “They've made
the whole thing as plain as a pikestaff. I don't believe a million can git him
off. There'll be a big reward, sure, and I shall have a good chance for it,” was
his concluding reflection.
Having formed his theory of the tragedy, the ex-policeman commenced
looking for evidence to support it. The facts were scanty: there was the mangled
body of the victim, and that was pretty much all; so that Mr. Sweet once
remarked to himself, “If it wasn't for the corpse, I'd be ready to swear there
hadn't been any murder.”
Not a strange footprint had been discovered around the house, and not an
article indicative of the assassin had been left in it. The fatal blow had been
dealt with a small hatchet, but this primitive weapon belonged on the premises,
and had been seen the evening before in the Judge's study, he having
made use of it, in his self-helpful way, to nail up a bookshelf. The manner in
which the assault had been executed was necessarily a matter of loose and variable
guesswork. Mr. Sweet's prevailing opinion was that the old man had
fallen asleep in his chair; that the criminal had crept up behind him and attempted
to seize money or papers from off the table; that the slumberer had
awakened and instinctively seized the intruder, and that then the blow had
been delivered.
“And no regular hand would 'a hit such a lick as that,” reasoned Mr
Sweet. “A regular hand don't draw blood when he can help it. A regular
hand would 'a choked the old man a little, or stunned him with the hammer
end of the hatchet, and taken the money and vamosed. It was a greenhorn
that did this job, and it was a greenhorn that the old man knew, so that he had
to kill or be shown up. Then there's the will gone; that's a note of the first
importance; that p'ints, that does. I did think for a minute that professionals
might 'a taken it to bleed the heirs; but, come to consider it, that game would
be too almighty risky; professionals wouldn't try it on. The business was
done by some man that wanted to destroy the will and keep the old gentleman
from making another. And who's the man? The nephew! That's the way I
see it.”
It must be understood that we are following up Mr. Sweet's cogitations
thus closely because he represents the current popular opinion of the moment.
While he supposed that he was alone in suspecting Edward Wetherel of the
crime, his opinion had already become public property. Nor was the supposition
dispelled when the young man appeared at Sea Lodge during the day,
and hurried at once to view the body. Grim eyes watched him with boding
curiosity, and noted with a terrible sort of satisfaction that he was singularly
pallid and tremulous, and that after one brief, speechless gaze at his mangled
relative, he recoiled with a shudder and hastily left the room. The only result
of his appearance on the spot was that Mr. Sweet was obliged to abandon
one of his suppositions.
“Of course he wouldn't quit,” argued that gentleman to himself. “I did
think for a while that he and the girl might 'a cut off together. But that would
'a made things altogether too plain and easy. He hangs around and plays the
innocent game. Of course he would. But it won't save him. He shows his
guilt in his face, and he's a goner, sure.”
One incomprehensible circumstance, however, kept Mr. Sweet on the secsaw
of perplexity.
“Where's the girl?” he repeatedly queried. “That's what gits me. Did
she do it? She's from foreign parts, I understand, and probably didn't have
much of a bringin' up. Sposin' now the feller got the girl into the job, how
would that work? The old man is asleep, and the girl begins to fumble round
for the will, and the old man wakes up and grabs her, and she gits scared and
hits him. But then what was the use of startin' out to steal the will unless she
meant to finish him and stop his makin' another? And would a girl like that
be able to screw her courage up to such a bustin' old job? I guess not. It was
the feller that did it, I'll bet my pile on it.”
But Mr. Sweet was destined to go through many changes in his opinions
concerning the tragedy. During the day he learned from indisputable witnesses
that Edward Wetherel had passed the whole of the previous night in
New Haven, keeping up till near morning a farewell “spree” of a boisterous
nature with his friend Wolverton.
“It was the girl that did it,” declared the ex-policeman on learning these
facts. “She did it, but she did it in the nephew's interest, and very likely at
his request. She did it, and she meant to do it, and then she cut and run. We
never shall git to the bottom of this case till we find that girl.”
Mr. Sweet, however, had scarcely installed himself comfortably in this conclusion,
when he was ousted from it by a new discovery. He found a certain
Tom Higgs, the keeper of a little oyster shop on the New Haven road, who
was ready to swear that during the evening of the murder he had seen a man
of young Wetherel's appearance pass his lair in the direction of Sea Lodge.
Flatly contradicted as this story was by the New Haven alibi, the ex-policeman
could not help hailing it with vague credence, and thus dropped back
once more into a suspicion of Edward. In this undecided state we must for
the present leave him, merely adding that the public mind was quite as much
bewildered as his, and that the coroner's jury found a verdict of murder by the
hand of some person unknown, so that the Wetherel tragedy might be said to
have already taken on the shape of a mystery.
Let us now return to Edward Wetherel. After that brief glance of his at
the murdered Judge, he had hastened up stairs to visit Mrs. Dinneford and
Alice. They were in a room by themselves; the mother, prostrated by that
reaction which follows violent excitement, was in tears; the daughter, her face
swollen with crying, was talking garrulously, still putting piteous questions
about the death scene. At sight of the grief and agitation of the two women
the young fellow's nerves gave way, and, throwing himself upon a sofa and
hiding his face, he sobbed violently.
“Isn't it horrible, Edward?” gasped Alice. “Oh, wasn't it horrible for
him to die so!”
“Oh, horrible, horrible, horrible!” he repeated in a shuddering tone.
His emotion was so violent, and to Mrs. Dinneford its violence was so unexpected,
that she looked at him with surprise and alarm. Could it be that
the hotel-keeper was right, and that Edward was in some way guilty of his
uncle's blood, and that this perturbation was remorse? For a few seconds
the frightful suggestion was so mighty that she fought helplessly against it, as
a sleeper struggles with a nightmare. But the next utterance of the young fellow
turned her kindly and charitable soul from suspicion to hope.
“I seemed to see it all at once,” said he. “All at once I saw just what a
brute and fool I had been.”
Mrs. Dinneford lifted her eyes to heaven; here was a little comfort amid
great trouble; perhaps Edward would be better than he had been.
“And poor Nestoria!” Alice babbled on. “Poor little Nestoria! What
has become of her? What do you think, Edward?”
“Why, what has become of her?” demanded the young man, springing to
his feet. “Nobody has told me anything. What has happened?”
Then came the story of the strange disappearance of the girl, and the fruit
less search for her.
“I must go and look for her,” said Edward, and hurried out of the room
with a face almost too pale to belong to a living man.
| CHAPTER XX.
A HEROINE VANISHED The Wetherel affair | |