The Affair Next Door (19 page)

This was another of their exaggerated expressions, but I was so anxious
to hear what they had to tell, I let it pass. So instead of rebuking
them, I asked where their brother had been arrested, and found it had
been at his rooms and in presence of themselves and Franklin. So I
inquired further and learned that, so far as they knew, nothing had been
discovered beyond what had come out at the inquest except that Howard's
trunks had been found packed, as if he had been making preparations for
a journey when interrupted by the dreadful event which had put him into
the hands of the police. As there was a certain significance in this,
the girls seemed almost as much impressed by it as I was, but we did not
discuss it long, for I suddenly changed my manner, and taking them both
by the hand, asked if they could keep a secret.

"Secret?" they gasped.

"Yes, a secret. You are not the girls I should confide in ordinarily;
but this trouble has sobered you."

"O, we can do anything," began Isabella; and "Only try us," murmured
Caroline.

But knowing the volubility of the one and the weakness of the other, I
shook my head at their promises, and merely tried to impress them with
the fact that their brother's safety depended upon their discretion. At
which they looked very determined for poppets, and squeezed my hands so
tightly that I wished I had left off some of my rings before engaging in
this interview.

When they were quiet again and ready to listen I told them my plans.
They were surprised, of course, and wondered how I could do anything
towards finding out the real murderer of their sister-in-law; but seeing
how resolved I looked, changed their tone and avowed with much feeling
their perfect confidence in me and in the success of anything I might
undertake.

This was encouraging, and ignoring their momentary distrust, I proceeded
to say:

"But for me to be successful in this matter, no one must know my
interest in it. You must pay me no visits, give me no confidences, nor,
if you can help it, mention my name before
any one
, not even before
your father and brother. So much for precautionary measures, my dears;
and now for the active ones. I have no curiosity, as I think you must
see, but I shall have to ask you a few questions which under other
circumstances would savor more or less of impertinence. Had your
sister-in-law any special admirers among the other sex?"

"Oh," protested Caroline, shrinking back, while Isabella's eyes grew
round as a frightened child's. "None that we ever heard of. She wasn't
that kind of a woman, was she, Belle? It wasn't for any such reason
papa didn't like her."

"No, no,
that
would have been too dreadful. It was her family we
objected to, that's all."

"Well, well," I apologized, tapping their hands reassuringly, "I only
asked—let me now say—from curiosity, though I have not a particle of
that quality, I assure you."

"Did you think—did you have any idea—" faltered Caroline, "that—"

"Never mind," I interrupted. "You must let my words go in one ear and
out of the other after you have answered them. I wish"—here I assumed a
brisk air—"that I could go through your parlors again before every
trace of the crime perpetrated there has been removed."

"Why, you can," replied Isabella.

"There is no one in them now," added Caroline, "Franklin went out just
before we left."

At which I blandly rose, and following their leadership, soon found
myself once again in the Van Burnam mansion.

My first glance upon re-entering the parlors was naturally directed
towards the spot where the tragedy had taken place. The cabinet had been
replaced and the shelves set back upon it; but the latter were empty,
and neither on them nor on the adjacent mantel-piece did I see the
clock. This set me thinking, and I made up my mind to have another look
at that clock. By dint of judicious questions I found that it had been
carried into the third room, where we soon found it lying on a shelf of
the same closet where the hat had been discovered by Mr. Gryce. Franklin
had put it there, fearing that the sight of it might affect Howard, and
from the fact that the hands stood as I had left them, I gathered that
neither he nor any of the family had discovered that it was in running
condition.

Assured of this, I astonished them by requesting to have it taken down
and set up on the table, which they had no sooner done than it started
to tick just as it had done under my hand a few nights before.

The girls, greatly startled, surveyed each other wonderingly.

"Why, it's going!" cried Caroline.

"Who could have wound it!" marvelled Isabella.

"Hark!" I cried. The clock had begun to strike.

It gave forth five clear notes.

"Well, it's a mystery!" Isabella exclaimed. Then seeing no astonishment
in my face, she added: "Did you know about this, Miss Butterworth?"

"My dear girls," I hastened to say, with all the impressiveness
characteristic of me in my more serious moments. "I do not expect you to
ask me for any information I do not volunteer. This is hard, I know; but
some day I will be perfectly frank with you. Are you willing to accept
my aid on these terms?"

"O yes," they gasped, but they looked not a little disappointed.

"And now," said I, "leave the clock where it is, and when your brother
comes home, show it to him, and say that having the curiosity to examine
it you were surprised to find it going, and that you had left it there
for him to see. He will be surprised also, and as a consequence will
question first you and then the police to find out who wound it. If they
acknowledge having done it, you must notify me at once, for that's what
I want to know. Do you understand, Caroline? And, Isabella, do you feel
that you can go through all this without dropping a word concerning me
and my interest in this matter?"

Of course they answered yes, and of course it was with so much
effusiveness that I was obliged to remind them that they must keep a
check on their enthusiasm, and also to suggest that they should not come
to my house or send me any notes, but simply a blank card, signifying:
"No one knows who wound the clock."

"How delightfully mysterious!" cried Isabella. And with this girlish
exclamation our talk in regard to the clock closed.

The next object that attracted our attention was a paper-covered novel I
discovered on a side-table in the same room.

"Whose is this?" I asked.

"Not mine."

"Not mine."

"Yet it was published this summer," I remarked.

They stared at me astonished, and Isabella caught up the book. It was
one of those summer publications intended mainly for railroad
distribution, and while neither ragged nor soiled, bore evidence of
having been read.

"Let me take it," said I.

Isabella at once passed it into my hands.

"Does your brother smoke?" I asked.

"Which brother?"

"Either of them."

"Franklin sometimes, but Howard, never. It disagrees with him, I
believe."

"There is a faint odor of tobacco about these pages. Can it have been
brought here by Franklin?"

"O no, he never reads novels, not such novels as this, at all events. He
loses a lot of pleasure, we think."

I turned the pages over. The latter ones were so fresh I could almost
put my finger on the spot where the reader had left off. Feeling like a
bloodhound who has just run upon a trail, I returned the book to
Caroline, with the injunction to put it away; adding, as I saw her air
of hesitation: "If your brother Franklin misses it, it will show that he
brought it here, and then I shall have no further interest in it." Which
seemed to satisfy her, for she put it away at once on a high shelf.

Perceiving nothing else in these rooms of a suggestive character, I led
the way into the hall. There I had a new idea.

"Which of you was the first to go through the rooms upstairs?" I
inquired.

"Both of us," answered Isabella. "We came together. Why do you ask, Miss
Butterworth?"

"I was wondering if you found everything in order there?"

"We did not notice anything wrong, did we, Caroline? Do you think that
the—the person who committed that awful crime went
up-stairs
? I
couldn't sleep a wink if I thought so."

"Nor I," Caroline put in. "O, don't say that he went up-stairs, Miss
Butterworth!"

"I do not know it," I rejoined.

"But you asked—"

"And I ask again. Wasn't there some little thing out of its usual
place? I was up in your front chamber after water for a minute, but I
didn't touch anything but the mug."

"We missed the mug, but—O Caroline, the pin-cushion! Do you suppose
Miss Butterworth means the pin-cushion?"

I started. Did she refer to the one I had picked up from the floor and
placed on a side-table?

"What about the pin-cushion?" I asked.

"O nothing, but we did not know what to make of its being on the table.
You see, we had a little pin-cushion shaped like a tomato which always
hung at the side of our bureau. It was tied to one of the brackets and
was never taken off; Caroline having a fancy for it because it kept her
favorite black pins out of the reach of the neighbor's children when
they came here. Well, this cushion, this sacred cushion which none of us
dared touch, was found by us on a little table by the door, with the
ribbon hanging from it by which it had been tied to the bureau. Some one
had pulled it off, and very roughly too, for the ribbon was all ragged
and torn. But there is nothing in a little thing like that to interest
you, is there, Miss Butterworth?"

"No," said I, not relating my part in the affair; "not if our neighbor's
children were the marauders."

"But none of them came in for days before we left."

"Are there pins in the cushion?"

"When we found it, do you mean? No."

I did not remember seeing any, but one cannot always trust to one's
memory.

"But you had left pins in it?"

"Possibly, I don't remember. Why should I remember such a thing as
that?"

I thought to myself, "I would know whether I left pins on my pin-cushion
or not," but every one is not as methodical as I am, more's the pity.

"Have you anywhere about you a pin like those you keep on that cushion?"
I inquired of Caroline.

She felt at her belt and neck and shook her head.

"I may have upstairs," she replied.

"Then get me one." But before she could start, I pulled her back. "Did
either of you sleep in that room last night?"

"No, we were going to," answered Isabella, "but afterwards Caroline took
a freak to sleep in one of the rooms on the third floor. She said she
wanted to get away from the parlors as far as possible."

"Then I should like a peep at the one overhead."

The wrenching of the pin-cushion from its place had given me an idea.

They looked at me wistfully as they turned to mount the stairs, but I
did not enlighten them further. What would an idea be worth shared by
them!

Their father undoubtedly lay in the back room, for they moved very
softly around the head of the stairs, but once in front they let their
tongues run loose again. I, who cared nothing for their babble when it
contained no information, walked slowly about the room and finally
stopped before the bed.

It had a fresh look, and I at once asked them if it had been lately made
up. They assured me that it had not, saying that they always kept their
beds spread during their absence, as they did so hate to enter a room
disfigured by bare mattresses.

I could have read them a lecture on the niceties of housekeeping, but I
refrained; instead of that I pointed to a little dent in the smooth
surface of the bed nearest the door.

"Did either of you two make that?" I asked.

They shook their heads in amazement.

"What is there in that?" began Caroline; but I motioned her to bring me
the little cushion, which she no sooner did than I laid it in the little
dent, which it fitted to a nicety.

"You wonderful old thing!" exclaimed Caroline. "How ever did you
think—"

But I stopped her enthusiasm with a look. I may be wonderful, but I am
not old, and it is time they knew it.

"Mr.
Gryce
is
old
," said I; and lifting the cushion, I placed it on
a perfectly smooth portion of the bed. "Now take it up," said I, when,
lo! a second dent similar to the first.

"You see where that cushion has lain before being placed on the table,"
I remarked, and reminding Caroline of the pin I wanted, I took my leave
and returned to my own house, leaving behind me two girls as much filled
with astonishment as the giddiness of their pates would allow.

I felt that I had made an advance. It was a small one, no doubt, but it
was an advance. It would not do to rest there, however, or to draw
definite conclusions from what I had seen without further facts to guide
me. Mrs. Boppert could supply these facts, or so I believed. Accordingly
I decided to visit Mrs. Boppert.

Not knowing whether Mr. Gryce had thought it best to put a watch over my
movements, but taking it for granted that it would be like him to do so,
I made a couple of formal calls on the avenue before I started eastward.
I had learned Mrs. Boppert's address before leaving home, but I did not
ride directly to the tenement where she lived. I chose, instead, to get
out at a little fancy store I saw in the neighborhood.

It was a curious place. I never saw so many or such variety of things in
one small spot in my life, but I did not waste any time upon this quaint
interior, but stepped immediately up to the good woman I saw leaning
over the counter.

"Do you know a Mrs. Boppert who lives at 803?" I asked.