Part 6 (1/2)
”How many?”
”Three or four, I think.”
”Since the will was made, then?”
”And dealing with Ellen. About the will----”
”Let us finish with the peddler.”
”He had blue eyes and drove a cart painted green. n.o.body had ever seen him in the neighborhood before, till he came selling vegetables and potted plants. His last visit was made on Friday.”
”Not Sat.u.r.day, the day of the fire?”
”Miss Wesner, who is very observing, has not seen him since Friday.”
”Not as a peddler,” said s.h.a.garach, sotto voce. ”Now as to the will. You wish to say that Floyd has told you of his uncle's desire to make him sole heir and his own aversion to the responsibilities of so large a property.”
”Does he practice clairvoyance?” asked Emily of herself.
”Robert is no lover of money,” she said. ”To allege avarice against him as a motive is monstrous.”
”Avarice, Miss Barlow? To love money is not avarice. Men grow to their opportunities. Without opportunities they wither and without money today there is no opportunity.”
”The artist--does his genius gain or lose when it is gilded?” replied Emily, who felt a match even for s.h.a.garach in the defense of her lover.
”The artist--ah, he is not of the world! Gold might well be to him an inc.u.mbrance. But to the worker among men it is the key to a thousand coffers.”
There was deep feeling in these words of the criminal lawyer. Emily wondered if there might not have been a past of poverty, perhaps of spiritual aspiration and disappointment in his life, all subdued to the present indomitable aim at fortune and reputation.
”The refusal was a folly, a stripling's fatal blunder--yet a blunder of which not three men in our city are capable. Let us leave the will. It may reappear in its proper sequence. No suspicious character was seen loitering about or leaving the house on Sat.u.r.day?”
”My inquiries have been limited to Miss Wesner.”
”Aronson!”
The young man reappeared as before.
”Make thorough inquiry this evening in the neighborhood of the Arnold house, rear and front, for a stranger seen loitering about the premises or issuing from them on Sat.u.r.day afternoon.”
”Yes, Miss Barlow, I have a theory,” resumed s.h.a.garach, turning to Emily again. He folded his arms and looked at her steadfastly, yet as though his gaze were fixed on something beyond.
”I see your lover's photograph in your eyes--mild blue eyes, but touchstones of integrity, hard to deceive. He impresses me well. His story, moreover, bears a somewhat uncommon voucher. It is true because of its improbability. How improbable that any man would refuse a gift of $10,000,000! How improbable that any man, not a sleep-walker, would wander through the streets of a city without any record of his sensuous impressions!”
”But----”
”The improbability of the story demonstrates its truth. Men lie, women lie, children lie. Have you watched a band of girls playing at the imitation of school? How cunningly the teacher feigns anger, the pupils naughtiness and sad repentance. Have you observed the plausibility in the inventions of toddling babes to escape imminent chastis.e.m.e.nt? Falsehood is a normal faculty and equipped with its protective armor, plausibility. Your friend's story is too preposterous to be untrue.”
Emily was bewildered by these rapid paradoxes.
”I congratulate you upon your friends.h.i.+p with so unusual a specimen of our kind, the man who cannot or will not lie. But I should not like to present his defense on such grounds to twelve of his fellow-creatures, normal in that respect. Fortunately we are not driven to that extreme refuge.
”The material for a theory is meager; the chain shows many gaps. But I find no evidence that Floyd attempted to get rid of the servant, Bertha. A child, meditating this crime, would not have neglected so obvious a precaution. Her continued absence was only an opportune accident. Her re-entrance would have resulted in his discovery. The point is pivotal.
”I find that a favorite house dog was left in the room to be sacrificed--a needless cruelty if the incendiary were his master, a necessary precaution if he were a stranger whose actions the animal would have understood and whom he would have followed to the street.”
”But would Sire have allowed a stranger even to enter the study?”
”True; but between strangers and friends there is a middle category consisting of persons whom we may call acquaintances. Into these three degrees we are divided by dogkind. It was not a stranger or he would have been attacked. He had no friends left but Bertha, Ellen and Floyd. The dog was drowsing on the mat. The man who entered was an acquaintance.
”Who was this man? We have a few items of his description. Some one known to the dog, familiar with the premises and interested in the destruction of the doc.u.ment of which that house, that room and that safe were the triple-barred shrine. An expert criminal could have destroyed the safe without detection, but the incendiary was an amateur, and such an act would require time. There was no time, not an instant. The executor was to arrive that afternoon. McCausland started right. The Harmon building was destroyed and seven lives sacrificed in order that Benjamin Arnold's will might be irrevocably canceled. Who benefited by its destruction?
”The professor had desired to make Robert Floyd his sole heir, in other words, to disinherit Harry Arnold!”
s.h.a.garach's monologue had reached its climax. The name of the other cousin came out like the ring of a hammer. He waited, as if yielding Emily an opportunity to object, but as she sat pa.s.sive and expectant, he went on, his arms still folded, and his glowing eyes evincing deep absorption in the problem he was elucidating.
”Harry Arnold was in disfavor, then. The drafting of the will must have been communicated to him, but probably not its items. The mere fact, however, was ominous. It might mean the loss of a fortune. One of the servants was dressing 'uncommonly rich' of late. The wherewithal came to her as payment for conveying to Harry Arnold all she could pick up about the will. It may not have been pleasant news.
”It was from Mrs. Arnold McCausland first learned of the will. It was Harry Arnold who hastened to advertise a reward of $5,000--McCausland's fee if----”
”As to the fee,” said Emily.
”I understand; the legacy of $20,000 amply protects me.”
Emily was uncertain whether or not s.h.a.garach meant to demand the whole $20,000 for his services.
”I find that the flies were about the honey pot. Mrs. Arnold's carriage drove up about 3 o'clock. The executor was to call that afternoon. Revelation could not be long delayed. The plot was desperately formed, favored by circ.u.mstance and executed by Harry Arnold and his accomplices.”
”But Harry Arnold has been ill, Mr. s.h.a.garach.”
”The name of his physician?”
”I believe, Dr. Whipple, the pathologist. You suspect Harry, then, of the crime?”
”I have not studied him yet. This is only an alternative theory. You see how easily it could have been constructed in your friend's behalf.
”Mungovan, the discharged coachman, has not yet been found. The strange peddler may prove a confederate. You will send Bertha to me. She is the central witness. Is Floyd in jail?”
”Yes,” said Emily, sadly; ”but a permit----”
”I shall not need one. I am his counsel.”
Emily descended the creaking stairway and rode home with a certain new elation, such as we sometimes feel after contact with some electric character, some grand reservoir of human vitality. Meyer s.h.a.garach meanwhile began pacing up and down, occasionally speaking to himself sotto voce.
A criminal lawyer, but with the head of an imperial chancellor.
What was known of this rare man's history? About thirty years before he was born in a small town on the upper Nile, a descendant of those mighty Jewish families whose expulsion impoverished Spain, while spreading her tongue throughout the orient, even beyond the Turcoman deserts to the unvisited cities of Khiva and Merv. Languages were his birthright, as naturally and almost as numerously as the digits on his hands. In his youth his father had wandered to America--refuge of all wild, strange spirits of the earth--and died, leaving a widow and a son. The boy had been visionary, unpractical--a white blackbird among his tribe. For years he had struggled to support his mother, first as an attorney's drudge, then as a scribbler. There was no market for his wares. Then by a sudden wrench, showing the vise-like strength of his will, he had burst the bubble of his early hopes and chosen for his profession that of all professions which requires the most thorough subjection of the sentiments. It was six years since he had first rented the obscure quarters he now occupied, the same where, as a lad, he had sighed away many hours of distasteful toil.