Melvin L. Severy

“ I dreamed last night that I came back from the dead, and heard my avenger ask you to be his wife. You refused, and at your ingratitude my restless soul returned to torment everlasting. Swear to me, Gwen, that you’ll deny him nothing, nothing, nothing!’ I promised him, and he seemed much reassured. ‘I am satisfied,’ he said, ‘and now can die in peace, for you are an anomaly, Gwen,—a woman who fully knows the nature of a covenant,’ and he put his arm about me, and drew me to him. His fierceness had subsided as quickly as it had appeared, and he was now all tenderness. ”

“ Every person present knew perfectly well that no human being could have entered or left the Darrow parlour without certain discovery, yet here was a man, apparently in his right mind, who soberly asserted that he had used a hypodermic syringe. Maitland and Godin alone seemed cool and collected. Throughout all Latour’s testimony, M. Godin watched the witness with a burning concentration. It seemed as if the great detective meant to bore through Latour’s gaze down to the most secret depths of his soul. ”

“ John Darrow was murdered and the prisoner, M. Gustave Latour, has confessed that he did the deed. When a man denies the commission of a crime we do not feel bound to consider his testimony of any particular value; but when, on the other hand, a prisoner accused of so heinous a crime as murder responds to the indictment, ‘I am guilty,’ we instinctively feel impelled to believe his testimony. Why is this? Why do we doubt his word when he asserts his innocence and accept it when he acknowledges his guilt? I will tell you. It is all a question of motive. ”

“ Even as you have been true to yourself, I swear by the love I still bear you to deliver your message to Darrow Sahib and to no other human being. I shall commit your words at once to writing that nothing may be lost through the failure of my memory.”
She reached her hand out feebly to me, and never shall I forget the look of gratitude which accompanied its tremulous pressure as she murmured: “After John, Moro, you are dearest. I shall not try to thank you. May the ineffable peace which you bring my aching heart return a thousand-fold into your own. Farewell. Ragobah may return at any moment. ”

“ But if it overthrow those conclusions for which I have given my life?’ he gasps. ‘My generalisation is firmly established in the minds of all—all but myself—no one will ever chance upon this particular experiment, and it may not disprove my theory after all; better, much better, that the floor there keep the secret of it all both from me and from others!’ But even as he says this to himself he has taken a new tube from the rack and crawled—ten years older for that last ten minutes—to his chemical case. The life-long habit of truth is so strong in him that self-interest cannot submerge it. ”

“ This I knew to have been Gwen’s state since her father’s death, and all my attempts to bring about a healthful reaction had hitherto been futile. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that even the transient interest she had evinced was hailed by me with delight as the beginning of that healthful reaction for which I had so long sought. When a human bark in the full tide of life is suddenly dashed upon the rocks of despair the wreckage is strewn far and wide, and it is with no little difficulty that enough can be rescued to serve in the rebuilding of even the smallest of craft. ”

“ I shall meet death as I have stated—I am sure of it—and no man will see the blow given. Remember, as I loved that Indian maiden with a passion which death has not chilled, so I loathe my rival with a hatred infinite and all-consuming; for, somehow, I know that demon crushed out the life of my fragile lotus-flower. He will work his will upon me, but if his cunning enable him to escape the gallows, my soul, if there be a conscious hereafter, will never rest in peace. ”

“ If, as I am inclined to believe, thinking a great deal of a person is much the same thing as thinking of a person a great deal, I must have adored her.
One night, about a fortnight after Maitland’s change of abode, I found Alice in a terrible state of excitement upon my arrival home. She met me at the door, and said Gwen needed my attention at once. I did not stop to hear further particulars, but hastened to the sitting-room, where Gwen lay upon the lounge. She was in a stupor from which it seemed impossible to arouse her. ”

“ Darrow was murdered he sat in the centre of his parlour, surrounded by his daughter and invited guests. Will you tell the Court how you entered and left this room without detection?
Again the witness hesitated and looked irresolutely, almost tremblingly, about him, but seemed finally to steady himself, as it were, upon Godin’s glance. It’s a strange thing how the directness and intense earnestness of a strong man will pull the vacillation of a weak one into line with it, even as great ships draw lesser ones into their wakes. The excited audience hung breathlessly upon Latour’s utterance. ”

“ Her elasticity was gone and every effort a visible burden to her. I knew the consciousness of her loss was as a dull, heavy weight bearing her down, and I knew, too, that she could not marshal her will to resist it,—that, in fact, she really didn’t care, so tired was she of it all. Experience had taught me how the dull, heavy ache of a great loss will press upon the consciousness with the regular, persistent, relentless throb of a loaded wheel and eat out one’s life with the slow certainty of a cancer. ”

“ At just that time he was looking at Gwen with tender, solicitous sympathy written in every feature, and that doubtless suggested my thought.
Mr. Allen was even more ordinary than Mr. Osborne in manner and appearance. I do not presume to judge his real merits, for I did not notice him sufficiently to properly portray him to you, even if I had the gift of description, which I think you will admit I have not. He lives in my memory only as a something tall, spare, coarse of texture, red, hairy, and redolent of poor tobacco.
How different men are! (Of course women are all alike!) ”

“ I was roughly aroused from my reflections by Rama Ragobah.
“Come, Sahib,” he said, as his thick lips curled sneeringly, “suppose you try your spells upon me? You will never have a better chance than now to show your power,” and again he made a slight movement toward me with the gleaming knife. The moon, low down upon the horizon, sent a broad beam of light into the entrance of the cave and over the head and shoulders of the Indian. ”

“ Our fear of death varies with our desire for life. Dulled by a great grief, she did not so very much care what became of her. The future’s burden was heavy, and if it were necessary she now put it down, there would still be a sense of relief. As this thought passed like a shadow over her consciousness she felt herself irresistibly attracted to the awful face before her. Her assailant’s gaze seemed to have wound itself about her own till she could not disentangle it. ”

“ As you see I hurt my foot, and poor Darrow Sahib slipped and fell headlong into the well in the little cave. As it has no bottom I could not, of course, get the Sahib out, and so was obliged to return, as best I could, alone.” As he finished this heartless lie, every word of which he knew was a poisoned dart, Lona fell fainting upon the floor. Kandia raised her gently, expecting to find her dead, but was able at length to revive her. The first words she said were directed to Ragobah in a voice devoid of passion or reproach,—of everything in fact save an unutterable weariness. ”

“ From England I sailed to New York, reaching America penniless and in ill health. Things not going to my liking in New York, I came to Boston and took up my old callings of gambler and detective. It was at this time that I saw John Darrow’s curious notice in the newspaper, offering, in the event of his murder, a most liberal reward to anyone who would bring the assassin to justice.
“Mon Dieu! How I needed money. I would have bartered my soul for a tithe of that amount. It was the old, old story, only new in Eden. Ah! but how I loved her! She must have money, money, always money! ”

“ For a long time Maitland did not speak, and I forbore to break the silence. At last he said: “Let us hope, if the supposed assassin be taken, the discovery may be made by someone worthy the name of man—someone who will not permit you to sacrifice either yourself or your money.” Gwen glanced at him quickly, for his voice was strangely heavy and inelastic, and an unmistakable gloom had settled upon him. ”

“ Yet thou lovest, loving ghost, And thy fierce parent flame thyself snuffed out Scarce later than the dark’ning of the fire Thou gav’st to be eternal vestal of Thine Antony’s spirit. Thou didst love and die Of love; let, therefore, no light tongue, brazen In censure, say that nothing in thy life Became thee like the leaving it. The cloth From which humanity is cut is woven of The warp and woof of circumstance, and all Are much alike. We spring from out the mantle, Earth, And hide at last beneath it; in the interim Our acts are less of us than it. ”

“ I paused here, and Maitland went on somewhat dubiously: “Yes, it’s not hard to locate such a woman. She makes her presence as clearly felt among a million of her sex as does a grain of fuchsine in a hogshead of water. If, with a few ounces of this, Tyndall could colour Lake Geneva, so with Gwen Darrow one might, such is the power of the ideal, change the ethical status of a continent.” ”

“ When I am gone you will know why I am now so sure—I cannot tell you now, it would only ‘—here he stopped short, and, turning abruptly to me, said with a fierceness entirely alien to his disposition: ‘Hatred is foreign to my nature, but I hate that man with a perfect hell of loathing! Have I been a kind father to you, Gwen? If so, promise me ‘—and he seized me by the wrist—’ promise me if I’m murdered—I may as well say when I’m murdered—you will look upon the man who brings my assassin to justice—the thought that he may escape is damning—as your dearest friend on earth! ”

“ It was nearly a year after the affair on Malabar Hill before I had the heart to return with your mother to Bombay. I had thought all emotion forever dead within me, but, ah! how little do we understand ourselves. Twelve months had not passed, and already I was conscious of a vague ache—a feeling that something, I scarcely knew what, had gone wrong, so terribly wrong! ”

“ When I went back to Gwen I was in no better frame of mind than when I left her. Here were two people so determined to be miserable in spite of everything and everybody that I sought Jeannette by way of counter-irritant for my wounded sympathy.
Ah, Jeannette! Jeannette! to this day the sound of your sweet name is like a flash of colour to the eye. You were a bachelor’s first and last love, and he will never forget you.
CHAPTER V All human things cease—some end. Happy are they who can spring the hard and brittle bar of experience into a bow of promise. ”

“ She had never known anyone by the name of Weltz. This was just what I had expected. The man for whom we are searching is shrewd almost beyond belief, and if we succeed in finding him it will not, we may be assured, be the result of any bungling on his part.
“I have now told you all I have learned, or rather all that is sufficiently definite to communicate—it is not much, yet it is a clue and may serve to give our hope a new lease of life. What do you think of it, Miss Darrow?”
“I think what you have learned,” Gwen replied, “will be of the utmost importance. ”

“ She had been the most anxious of us all to see her father’s murderer brought to justice, and now, when through the efforts of M. Godin, a man stood all but convicted of the crime, she was pleased to hear Maitland, whose efforts to track Latour she had applauded in no equivocal way, say that he should spare no pains to give the suspect every possible chance to prove his innocence. There was certainly a reason, whatever it might have been, for Gwen’s attitude in this matter, for that young woman was exceptionally rational in all things. ”

“ When Osborne would make some thoughtless remark fraught with bitterness for Gwen, such an expression of pain would flit across M. Godin’s fine face as one occasionally sees in those highly organised and sympathetic natures,—-usually found among women if a doctor’s experience may be trusted,—which catch the throb of another’s hurt, even as adjacent strings strive to sing each other’s songs. ”

“ It raised him bodily off his feet, and hurled him backward out of the cave, where he lay motionless. He was now in my power. I seized his knife and bent over him. Words cannot express the hatred, the loathing I felt for him then and always. Between me and the light of my happiness he had ever stood, an impenetrable black mass. Twice had he sought my life, yet now, when he was in my power, I could not plunge his weapon into his heart. Would it not be just, I thought, to drag him into the cave, and hurl him down the abyss he had intended for me? Yes; he certainly merited it ”

“ We perchance Do wrong thee, Isis; for that coward, History, Who binds in death his object’s jaw and then Besmuts her name, hath crossed his focus in Another age, and paled his spreading figment from Our sight. Thou art so far back toward The primal autocrat whose wish, hyena-like, Was his religion, that, appearing as thou dost On an horizon new flushed in the first Uncertain ray of Altruism, thou seem’st More ghost than human. ”

“ There at the window stood a beautiful young girl just on the verge of womanhood. Her frank blue eyes met mine with the utmost candour as I passed by her so that she should be between Maitland and me, and thus unable to elude us, whichever way she turned upon leaving the window. We had previously planned how we should shadow our quarry, one on each side of the street in order not to attract attention, but these tactics seemed to be entirely unnecessary, for the young lady did not have the slightest suspicion that anyone could be in the least interested in her movements. ”

“ The Dalmatia had steamed into New York at eleven o’clock on the morning of the 24th day of April with a broken screw!
Imagine my amazement! The net of circumstantial evidence wound around Ragobah seemed to be such as to leave no possibility of escape, and yet, the very first effort made to draw it tighter about him had resulted in his walking, with the utmost ease, right through its meshes! There is no gainsaying such an alibi, and I am, therefore, forced to acknowledge that Rama Ragobah could not, by any possibility, have murdered John Darrow. ”

“ The man who thinks he is dying may be spleeny, but the man who says he is spleeny is, of the two, the one more likely to be dying.
“See here, old man,” I began, “don’t you get to thinking that when you hide your own head in the sand no one can see the colour of your feathers. You might as well try to cover up Bunker Hill Monument with a wisp of straw. Don’t you suppose I know you love Gwen Darrow? That’s what’s the matter with you.” ”

“ They do best understand themselves Who trust themselves the least; as they are wisest Who, for their safety, thank more the open sea Than pilot will. Oh, Egypt’s self-born Isis! Ought we to fasten in thy memory the fangs Of unalloyed distrust? We know how little Better is History’s page than leaf whereat the ink Is thrown. Nor yet should we forget how much The nearer thou than we didst come to The rough-hewn corner-stone of Time. We know Thy practised love enfolded Antony ”

“ I took pains that no act, word, or look should escape me. This show of affection surprised me, and I remember the thought flashed through my mind, “What inconsistent beings we all are! Here is a man apparently capable of a causeless and cold-blooded assassination of a harmless old man. You would say such a murderer must be hopelessly selfish and brutal, amenable to none of the better sentiments of mankind, and yet it needs but a casual glance to see how his whole life is bound up in the young girl before him.” ”

“ Maitland had written us a few lines from New York telling us the result of his analysis, and ended by saying:
There is no doubt that Mr. Darrow died of poison injected into the blood through the slight wound in the throat. This wound was not deep, and seemed to have been torn rather than cut in the flesh. What sort of weapon or projectile produced that wound is a question of the utmost importance, shrouded in the deepest of mysteries. Once this point is settled, however, its very uniqueness will be greatly in our favour. ”

“ Those words of hatred had been as a torch illumining the gloom of my despair, for they had shown me that my existence was not altogether barren and unproductive. The life which has known the heaven of true love cannot be called a failure. There is no wall so high, no distance so great, no separation so complete as to defy the ineffable commerce of two loving hearts! Lona, then, was still mine, despite all obstacles. ”