The Filigree Ball Part 22

The coroner introduced a fresh topic.

"What can you tell us about the interview you had with you sister prior to her going out on the night of her death?"

"Very little, except that it differed entirely from what is generally supposed. She did not come to my room for conversation but simply to tell me that she had an engagement. She was in an excited mood but said nothing to alarm me. She even laughed when she left me; perhaps to put me off my guard, perhaps because she was no longer responsible."

"Did she know that Mr. Jeffrey had visited you earlier in the day?

Did she make any allusion to it, I mean?"

"None at all. She shrugged her shoulders when I asked if she was well, and antic.i.p.ated all further questions by running from the room.

She was always capricious in her ways and never more so than at that moment. Would to G.o.d that it had been different! Would to G.o.d that she had shown herself to be a suffering woman! Then I might have reached her heart and this tragedy would have been averted."

The coroner favored the witness with a look of respect, perhaps because his next question must necessarily be cruel.

"Is that all you have to say concerning this important visit, the last you held with your sister before her death?"

"No, sir, there is something else, something which I should like to relate to this jury. When she came into my room, she held in her hand a white ribbon; that is, she held the two ends of a long satin ribbon which seemed to come from her pocket. Handing those two ends to me, she asked me to tie them about her wrist. 'A knot under and a bow on top,' she said, 'so that it can not slip off.' As this was something I had often been called on to do for her, I showed no hesitation in complying with her request. Indeed, I felt none. I thought it was her fan or her bouquet she held concealed in the folds of her dress, but it proved to be--Gentlemen, you know what. I pray that you will not oblige me to mention it."

It was such a stroke as no lawyer would have advised her to make,--I heard afterward that she had refused the offices of a dozen lawyers who had proffered her their services. But uttered as it was with a n.o.ble air and a certain dignified serenity, it had a great effect upon those about her and turned in a moment the wavering tide of favor in her direction.

The coroner, who doubtless was perfectly acquainted with the explanation with which she had provided herself, but who perhaps did not look for it to antedate his attack, bowed in quiet acknowledgment of her request and then immediately proceeded to ignore it.

"I should be glad to spare you," said he, "but I do not find it possible. You knew that Mr. Jeffrey had a pistol?"

"I did."

"That it was kept in their apartment?"

"Yes."

"In the upper drawer of a certain bureau?"

"Yes."

"Now, Miss Tuttle, will you tell us why you went to that drawer--if you did go to that drawer--immediately after Mrs. Jeffrey left the house?"

She had probably felt this question coming, not only since the coroner began to speak but ever since the evidence elicited from Loretta proved that her visit to this drawer had been secretly observed. Yet she had no answer ready.

"I did not go for the pistol," she finally declared. But she did not say what she had gone for, and the coroner did not press her.

Again the tide swung back.

She seemed to feel the change but did not show it in the way naturally looked for. Instead of growing perturbed or openly depressed she bloomed into greater beauty and confronted with steadier eye, not us, but the men she instinctively faced as the tide of her fortunes began to lower. Did the coroner perceive this and recognize at last both the measure of her attractions and the power they were likely to carry with them? Perhaps, for his voice took an acrid note as he declared:

"You had another errand in that room?"

She let her head droop just a trifle.

"Alas!" she murmured.

"You went to the book-shelves and took out a book with a peculiar cover, a cover which Mr. Jeffrey has already recognized as that of the book in which he found a certain note."

"You have said it," she faltered.

"Did you take such a book out?"

"I did."

"For what purpose, Miss Tuttle?"

She had meant to answer quickly. But some consideration made her hesitate and the words were long in coming; when she did speak, it was to say:

"My sister asked another favor of me after I had tied the ribbon.

Pausing in her pa.s.sage to the door, she informed me in a tone quite in keeping with her whole manner, that she had left a note for her husband in the book they were reading together. Her reason for doing this, she said, was the very natural one of wis.h.i.+ng him to come upon it by chance, but as she had placed it in the front of the book instead of in the back where they were reading, she was afraid that he would fail to find it. Would I be so good as to take it out for her and insert it again somewhere near the end? She was in a hurry or she would return and do it herself. As she and Mr.

Jeffrey had parted in anger, I hailed with joy this evidence of her desire for a reconciliation, and it was in obedience to her request, the singularity of which did not strike me as forcibly then as now, that I went to the shelves in her room and took down the book."

"And did you find the note where she said?"

"Yes, and put it in toward the end of the story."

"Nothing more? Did you read the note?"

"It was folded," was Miss Tuttle's quiet answer. Certainly this woman was a thoroughbred or else she was an adept in deception such as few of us had ever encountered. The gentleness of her manner, the easy tone, the quiet eyes, eyes in whose dark depths great pa.s.sions were visible, but pa.s.sions that were under the control of an equally forcible will, made her a puzzle to all men's minds; but it was a fascinating puzzle that awoke a species of awe in those who attempted to understand her. To all appearances she was the unlikeliest woman possible to cherish criminal intents, yet her answers were rather clever than convincing, unless you allowed yourself to be swayed by the look of her beautiful face or the music of her rich, sad voice.

"You did not remain before these book-shelves long?" observed the coroner.

"You have a witness who knows more about that than I do," she suggested; and doubtless aware of the temerity of this reply, waited with unmoved countenance, but with a visibly bounding breast, for what would doubtless prove a fresh attack.

It was a violent one and of a character she was least fitted to meet.

Taking up the box I have so often mentioned, the coroner drew away the ribbon lying on top and disclosed the pistol. In a moment her hands were over her ears.

"Why do you do that?" he asked. "Did you think I was going to discharge it?"

She smiled pitifully as she let her hands fall again.

"I have a dread of firearms," she explained. "I always have had.

Now they are simply terrible to me, and this one--"

"I understand," said the coroner, with a slight glance in the direction of Durbin. They had evidently planned this test together on the strength of an idea suggested to Durbin by her former action when the memory of this shot was recalled to her.

"Your horror seems to lie in the direction of the noise they make,"

continued her inexorable interlocutor. "One would say you had heard this pistol discharged."

Instantly a complete breaking-up of her hitherto well maintained composure altered her whole aspect and she vehemently cried:

"I did, I did. I was on Waverley Avenue that night, and I heard the shot which in all probability ended my sister's life. I walked farther than I intended; I strolled into the street which had such bitter memories for us and I heard--No, I was not in search of my sister. I had not a.s.sociated my sister's going out with any intention of visiting this house; I was merely troubled in mind and anxious and--and--"

She had overrated her strength or her cleverness. She found herself unable to finish the sentence, and so did not try. She had been led by the impulse of the moment farther than she had intended, and, aghast at her own imprudence, paused with her first perceptible loss of courage before the yawning gulf opening before her.