The Leavenworth Case Part 55

"This envelope has a very crumpled appearance, as well as the letter itself. Were they so when you found them?"

"Yes, not only so, but doubled up as you see."

"Doubled up? You are sure of that? Folded, sealed, and then doubled up as if her body had rolled across it while alive?"

"Yes."

"No trickery about it? No look as if the thing had been insinuated there since her death?"

"Not at all. I should rather say that to every appearance she held it in her hand when she lay down, but turning over, dropped it and then laid upon it."

Mr. Gryce's eyes, which had been very bright, ominously clouded; evidently he had been disappointed in my answers, paying the letter down, he stood musing, but suddenly lifted it again, scrutinized the edges of the paper on which it was written, and, darting me a quick look, vanished with it into the shade of the window curtain. His manner was so peculiar, I involuntarily rose to follow; but he waved me back, saying:

"Amuse yourself with that box on the table, which you had such an ado over; see if it contains all we have a right to expect to find in it. I want to be by myself for a moment."

Subduing my astonishment, I proceeded to comply with his request, but scarcely had I lifted the lid of the box before me when he came hurrying back, flung the letter down on the table with an air of the greatest excitement, and cried:

"Did I say there had never been anything like it since the Lafarge affair? I tell you there has never been anything like it in any affair. It is the rummest case on record! Mr. Raymond," and his eyes, in his excitement, actually met mine for the first time in my experience of him, "prepare yourself for a disappointment. This pretended confession of Hannah's is a fraud!"

"A fraud?"

"Yes; fraud, forgery, what you will; the girl never wrote it."

Amazed, outraged almost, I bounded from my chair. "How do you know that?" I cried.

Bending forward, he put the letter into my hand. "Look at it," said he; "examine it closely. Now tell me what is the first thing you notice in regard to it?"

"Why, the first thing that strikes me, is that the words are printed, instead of written; something which might be expected from this girl, according to all accounts."

"Well?"

"That they are printed on the inside of a sheet of ordinary paper--"

"Ordinary paper?"

"Yes."

"That is, a sheet of commercial note of the ordinary quality."

"Of course."

"But is it?"

"Why, yes; I should say so."

"Look at the lines."

"What of them? Oh, I see, they run up close to the top of the page; evidently the scissors have been used here."

"In short, it is a large sheet, trimmed down to the size of commercial note?"

"Yes."

"And is that all you see?"

"All but the words."

"Don't you perceive what has been lost by means of this tr.i.m.m.i.n.g down?"

"No, unless you mean the manufacturer's stamp in the corner." Mr. Gryce's glance took meaning. "But I don't see why the loss of that should be deemed a matter of any importance."

"Don't you? Not when you consider that by it we seem to be deprived of all opportunity of tracing this sheet back to the quire of paper from which it was taken?"

"No."

"Humph! then you are more of an amateur than I thought you. Don't you see that, as Hannah could have had no motive for concealing where the paper came from on which she wrote her dying words, this sheet must have been prepared by some one else?"

"No," said I; "I cannot say that I see all that."

"Can't! Well then, answer me this. Why should Hannah, a girl about to commit suicide, care whether any clue was furnished, in her confession, to the actual desk, drawer, or quire of paper from which the sheet was taken, on which she wrote it?"

"She wouldn't."

"Yet especial pains have been taken to destroy that clue."

"But--"

"Then there is another thing. Read the confession itself, Mr. Raymond, and tell me what you gather from it."

"Why," said I, after complying, "that the girl, worn out with constant apprehension, has made up her mind to do away with herself, and that Henry Clavering--"

"Henry Clavering?"

The interrogation was put with so much meaning, I looked up. "Yes," said I.

"Ah, I didn't know that Mr. Clavering's name was mentioned there; excuse me."

"His name is not mentioned, but a description is given so strikingly in accordance--"

Here Mr. Gryce interrupted me. "Does it not seem a little surprising to you that a girl like Hannah should have stopped to describe a man she knew by name?"

I started; it was unnatural surely.

"You believe Mrs. Belden's story, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Consider her accurate in her relation of what took place here a year ago?"