The Chief Legatee Part 15

"Guess you didn't hear anything said about another lady I am interested in. No talk down your way of a strange young woman seen anywhere on the highway or about any of the houses between here and the Landing?"

"Jerusha! I did hear a neighbor of mine say somethin' about a stranger gal he saw this very mornin'. Met her down by Beardsley's. She was goin'

through the mud on foot as lively as you please. Asked him the way to the Ferry. He noticed her because she was pretty and spoke in such a nice way--just like a city gal," he said. "Is it any one from this hotel?"

added the fellow with a wondering look. "If so, she walked a mile before daylight in mud up to her ankles. A girl of powerful grit that! with a mighty good reason for catching the train."

"Oh! there's an early train then?" asked the lawyer, ignoring the other's question with unmoved good-humor. "One, I mean, before the 10:50 express?"

"Yes, sir, or so I've heard. I never took it. Folks don't from here, except they're in an awful hurry. Will y'er say who the young woman is?

Not--not--"

"We don't know who she is," quietly objected the lawyer. "And you don't know who she is either," he severely added, holding the yawping countryman with his eye. "If you're the man I think you, you'll not talk about her unless you're asked by the constable or some one you are bound to answer. And what's more, you'll earn a five-dollar bill by going back the road you've come and bringing here, without any talk or fuss, the man you were just telling us about. I want to have a talk with him, but I don't want any one but you and him to know this. You can tell him it's worth money, if he don't want to come. Do you understand?"

"You bet," chuckled the grinning lad. "A five-dollar bill is mighty clearing to the mind, sir. But must I turn right back before going on to the hotel and hearing the news?"

"We'll help you turn the cart," grimly suggested Mr. Harper. "Get up there, Dobbin, or whatever your name is. Here, Ransom, lend a hand!"

There was nothing for the fellow to do but to accept the help proffered, and turn his cart. With one longing look towards the hotel he jerked at the rein and shouted at the horse, which, after a few feeble efforts, pulled the cart about and started off again in the desired direction.

"Sooner done, sooner paid," shouted the lawyer, as lad and cart went jolting off. "Remember to ask for Lawyer Harper when you come back. I won't be far from the office."

The fellow nodded; gave one grinning look back and whipped up his nag.

The lawyer and Ransom eyed one another. "It's only a possibility,"

emphasized the former. "Don't lay too much stress upon it."

"Let us speak plainly," urged Ransom. "Mr. Harper, are you sure that you know just what my thought is?"

"The time has not come for discussing that question. Let us defer it.

There is a fact to be settled first."

"Whether the girl--"

"No; this! Whether your wife could have jumped from her window to the balcony, as Anitra said. It did not look feasible from below, but as I then remarked to you, our opinion may change when we consider it from above. Will you go up-stairs with me to your wife's room?"

"I will go anywhere and do anything you please, so that we learn the exact truth. But spare me the curiosity of these people. The crowd on this side is increasing."

"We will go in by the kitchen door. Some one there will show us the way up-stairs."

And in this manner they entered; not escaping entirely all curious looks, for human nature is human nature, whether in the kitchen or parlor.

In the hall above Mr. Ransom took the precedence. As they neared the fatal room he motioned the lawyer to wait till he could ascertain if Miss Hazen would be disturbed by their intrusion. The door, which had been broken in between the two rooms, could not have been put back very securely, and he dreaded incommoding her. He was gone but a minute.

Almost as soon as the lawyer started to follow him, he could be seen beckoning from poor Georgian's door.

"Miss Hazen is asleep," whispered Ransom, as the other drew near. "We can look about this room with impunity."

They both entered and the lawyer crossed at once to the window.

"Your wife could never have taken the leap ascribed to her by the woman you call Anitra," he declared, after a minute's careful scrutiny of the conditions. "The bal.u.s.trade of the adjoining balcony is not only in the way, but the distance is at least five feet from the extreme end of this window-ledge. A woman accustomed to a life of adventure or to the feats of a gymnasium might do it, but not a lady of Mrs. Ransom's habits. If your wife made her way from this room to the balcony outside her sister's window, she did it by means of the communicating door."

"But the door was found locked on this side. There is the key in the lock now."

"You are sure of this?"

"I was the first one to call attention to it."

"Then," began the lawyer judicially, but stopped as he noted the peculiar eagerness of Ransom's expression, and turned his attention instead to the interior of the room and the various articles belonging to Mrs. Ransom which were to be seen in it. "The dress your wife wore when she signed her will," he remarked, pointing to the light green gown hanging on the inside of the door by which they had entered.

Ransom stepped up to it, but did not touch it. He could see her as she looked in this gown in her memorable pa.s.sage through the hall the evening before, and, recalling her expression, wondered if they yet understood the nature of her purpose and the determination which gave it such extraordinary vigor.

Mr. Harper called his attention to two other articles of dress hanging in another part of the room. These were her long gray rain-coat and the hat and veil she had worn on the train.

"She went out bare-headed and in the plain serge dress in which she arrived," remarked Mr. Harper with a side glance at Ransom. "I wonder if the girl met on the highway was without hat and dressed in black serge."

Ransom was silent.

"Anitra's hat is below and here is Mrs. Ransom's. She who escaped from this house last night went out bare-headed," repeated the lawyer.

Mr. Ransom, moving aside to avoid the probing of the other's eye, merely remarked:

"You noticed my wife's dress very particularly it seems. It was of serge, you say."

"Yes. I am learned in stuffs. I remarked it when she got into the coach, possibly because I was struck by its simplicity and conventional make.

There was no tr.i.m.m.i.n.g on the bottom, only st.i.tching. Her sister's was just like it. They had the look of being ready-made."

"But Anitra had no rain-coat. I remember that her shoulders were wet when she came in from the lane."

"No, she had no protection but her blouse, black like her dress. I presume that her hot blood resented every kind of wrap."

Again that sidelong glance from his keen eye. "She wore a checked silk handkerchief about her neck--the one she afterwards put over her head."

"You were on the same train with my wife and sister-in-law," Ransom now said. "Did you sit near them? Converse with them, that is, with Mrs.

Ransom?"

"I have no reason for deceiving you in that regard," replied Mr. Harper.

"I did not come up from New York on the same train they did. They must have come up in the morning, for when I arrived at the place they call the Ferry, I saw them standing on the hotel steps ready to step into the coach. I spoke to Mrs. Ransom then, but only a word. My grip-sack had been put under the driver's seat, and I saw that I was expected to ride with him, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather. Mrs. Ransom saw it too and possibly my natural hesitation, for she turned to me after she had seen her sister safely ensconced inside, and said something about her regret at having subjected me to such inconvenience, but did not offer to make room for me in the body of the coach, though there was room enough if the other had been the quiet lady she was herself. But she was not, and possibly this was Mrs. Ransom's excuse for her apparent lack of consideration for me. Before we reached the point where the lane cuts in, I became aware of some disturbance behind me, and when we really got there, I heard first the coach door opening, then your wife's voice, raised in entreaty to the driver, calling on him to stop before her sister jumped out and hurt herself. 'She is deaf and very wild' was all the explanation she gave after Miss Hazen had leaped into the wet road and darted from sight into what looked to me, in the darkness, like a tangled ma.s.s of bushes. Then she said something about her having had hard work to keep her still till we got this far; but that she was sure she would find her way to the hotel, and that we mustn't bother ourselves about it for she wasn't going to; Anitra and she had run this road too many times when they were children. That is all I have to tell of my intercourse with these ladies prior to our appearance at the hotel. I think it right for me to clear the slate, Ransom. Who knows what we may wish to write upon it next?"

A slight s.h.i.+ver on Ransom's part was the sole answer he gave to this innuendo; then both settled themselves to work, the eyes of either flas.h.i.+ng hither and thither from one small object to another, in this seemingly deserted room. In the momentary silence which followed, the even breathing of the woman in the adjoining room could be distinctly heard. It seemed to affect Mr. Ransom deeply, though he strove hard to maintain the business-like att.i.tude he had a.s.sumed from the beginning of this unofficial examination.

"She has confided nothing more to you since your return from the river bank?" suggested the lawyer.

"No."

The word came sharply, considering Mr. Ransom's usual manner. The lawyer showed surprise but no resentment, and turned his attention to the bag both had noted lying open on two chairs.

"Nothing equivocal here," he declared, after a moment's careful scrutiny of its remaining contents. "The only comment I should make in regard to what I find here is that all the articles are less carefully chosen than you would expect from one of your wife's fondness for fine appointments."

"They were collected in a hurry and possibly by telephone," returned the unhappy husband, after a shrinking glance into the bag. "The ones she provided in antic.i.p.ation of her wedding are at the hotel in New York. In the trunks and bags there you will find articles as elegant as you could wish." Here he turned to the dresser, and pointed to the various objects grouped upon it.

"These show that she arranged herself with care for her meeting with you last night. How did she appear at that interview? Natural?"