Part 14 (1/2)
”Do you guess my thought?” he whispered. ”Look at me and tell me if you guess my thought.”
The lawyer hesitated, eying well the trembling lip, the changing color, the wide-open, deeply flushed eyes so near his own; then with a slow smile of extraordinary subtlety, if not of comprehension, answered in a barely audible murmur:
”I think I do. I may be mad, but I think I do.”
The other sank back with a sigh charged with what the lawyer interpreted as relief. Mr. Harper reseated himself, and for a moment neither looked at the other, and neither spoke; it would almost seem as if neither breathed. Then, as a bird, deceived by the silence, hopped to the window sill and began its cheep, ”cheep,” Mr. Ransom broke the spell by saying in low but studiously business-like tones:
”Have you thought it worth while to study the ground under her window or anywhere else for footprints? It might not be amiss; what do you think about it?”
”Let us go,” readily acquiesced the lawyer, rising to his feet with an honest show of alacrity; ”after which I must telegraph to New York. I was expected back to-day.”
”I know it; but your duties there will keep; these here cannot. Your hand on the promise that you will respect my secret till--well, till I can a.s.sure you that my intuitions are devoid of any real basis.”
The lawyer's palm met his; then they started to go out; but before they had pa.s.sed the door, Mr. Ransom came back, and lifting the comb from the table he put it in his pocket. As he did this, his eye flashed sidewise on the other. There were strange hints and presentiments in it which brought the color to the usually imperturbable lawyer's cheek.
In going out they pa.s.sed the office-door. A dozen men were hanging about, smoking and talking. Among them was a countryman who had just swallowed, open-mouthed, the story of the past night's tragedy. He was now speaking out his own mind concerning it, and this is what these two heard him say as they went by:
”Do you know what strikes me as mighty strange? That they should clear that stone of the name of Anitra just in time to put Georgian's in its place. I call that peculiar, I do.”
The lawyer and the husband exchanged a glance.
”Mrs. Ransom had a deep mind,” the lawyer remarked, as the door slammed behind them. ”She apparently thought of everything.”
Ransom, directing a look down the street towards the factories and the roaring mill-stream, uttered a shuddering sigh.
”They are still searching,” said he. ”But they will never find her. They will never find her.”
The lawyer pulled him away.
”That's because they search the water. We will search the land.”
”That's half water, too; but it cannot hide every clew. You have eyes for the imperceptible; use them, Mr. Harper, use them.”
”I will; but this is a detective's work. Do not expect too much from me.”
”I expect nothing. I do not dare to. Let us tread very softly, that is all, and be careful to talk low, if we have anything to say.”
By this time they had rounded the corner of the house and entered a narrow walk, flagged with brick, which connected the s.p.a.ce in front with the rear offices and garden. This walk ran close to the walls which were broken on this side by an ell projecting in the direction of the mill-stream. It was from the roof of this ell that Anitra declared Georgian to have slipped and fallen.
Their first care was to glance up at the roof. It was a sloping one and Anitra's story seemed credible enough when they noted how much easier it would be to drop upon it from the little balcony overhead than to traverse the roof itself and reach the ground beneath without slipping.
But as they looked longer, each face betrayed doubt. The descent from the balcony was easy enough, but how about the pa.s.sage from Georgian's window to the balcony? This latter was confined to the one window, and was surrounded by an ornamental bal.u.s.trade, high enough to offer a decided obstacle to the adventurous person endeavoring to leap upon it from the adjoining window-ledge. However, this leap, made in the dark and under circ.u.mstances inducing the utmost recklessness, might look practical enough from the window-ledge itself, and Mr. Harper, making a remark to this effect, proposed that they should examine the ground rather than the house for evidences of Mrs. Ransom's slip and fall as related by Anitra.
The only spot where they could hope to find such was in the one short stretch--the width of the ell--underlying the edge of the sloping roof.
But this spot was all flagged, as I have already said, and when their eyes strayed beyond it to the untilled fields, stretching between them and the great rock at the verge of the waterfall from which she was supposed to have taken her fatal leap, it was to find them as unproductive of evidence as the brick walk itself. Not one pair of feet but many had pa.s.sed that way since early morning. The ground showed a ma.s.s of impressions of all sizes and shapes, amid which it would have been impossible for them, without the necessary experience, to have followed up the flight of any one person. They had come to their task too late.
”Futile,” decided the lawyer. ”There is no use in our going that way.”
And he turned to look again at the ground in their immediate vicinity. As he did so, his eye lighted on the triangular spot where the ell met the side of the house under the kitchen windows. Here there was no flagging, the walk taking a diagonal course from the corner of the ell to the kitchen door.
”What are those?” he asked, pointing to two oblong impressions br.i.m.m.i.n.g with water which disfigured the center of this small plot.