The Woman in the Alcove Read online

  VI. SUSPENSE

  To relate the full experiences of the next few days would be to encumbermy narrative with unnecessary detail.

  I did not see Mr. Durand again. My uncle, so amenable in most matters,proved Inexorable on this point. Till Mr. Durand's good name should berestored by the coroner's verdict, or such evidence brought to lightas should effectually place him beyond all suspicion, I was to hold nocommunication with him of any sort whatever. I remember the very wordswith which my uncle ended the one exhaustive conversation we had on thesubject. They were these:

  "You have fully expressed to Mr. Durand your entire confidence In hisInnocence. That must suffice him for the present. If he Is the honestgentleman you think him, It will."

  As uncle seldom asserted himself, and as he is very much in earnest whenhe does, I made no attempt to combat this resolution, especially as itmet the approval of my better judgment. But though my power to conveysympathy fell thus under a yoke, my thoughts and feelings remainedfree, and these were all consecrated to the man struggling under animputation, the disgrace and humiliation of which he was but poorlyprepared, by his former easy life of social and business prosperity, tomeet.

  For Mr. Durand, in spite of the few facts which came up from time totime in confirmation of his story, continued to be almost universallyregarded as a suspect.

  This seemed to me very unjust. What if no other clue offered--no otherclue, I mean, recognized as such by police or public! Was he not tohave the benefit of whatever threw a doubt on his own culpability? Forinstance, that splash of blood on his shirt-front, which I had seen, andthe shape of which I knew! Why did not the fact that it was a splashand not a spatter (and spatter it would have been had it spurted there,instead of falling from above, as he stated), count for more in theminds of those whose business it was to probe into the very heart ofthis crime? To me, it told such a tale of innocence that I wondered howa man like the inspector could pass over it. But later I understood. Asingle word enlightened me. The stain, it was true, was In the form ofa splash and not a spurt, but a splash would have been the result of adrop falling from the reeking end of the stiletto, whether it dislodgeditself early or late. And what was there to prove that this drop had notfallen at the instant the stiletto was being thrust Into the lantern,instead of after the escape of the criminal, and the entrance of anotherman?

  But the mystery of the broken coffee-cups! For that no explanationseemed to be forthcoming.

  And the still unsolved one of the written warning found in the murderedwoman's hand--a warning which had been deciphered to read: "Be warned! Hemeans to be at the ball! Expect trouble if--" Was that to be looked uponas directed against a man who, from the nature of his projected attempt,would take no one into his confidence?

  Then the stiletto--a photographic reproduction of which was in all thepapers--was that the kind of instrument which a plain New York gentlemanwould be likely to use In a crime of this nature? It was a marked andunique article, capable, as one would think, of being easily traced toits owner. Had it been claimed by Mr. Ramsdell, had it been recognizedas one of the many works of art scattered about the highly-decoratedalcove, its employment as a means of death would have gone only to provethe possibly unpremeditated nature of the crime, and so been valuelessas the basis of an argument in favor of Mr. Durand's innocence. But Mr.Ramsdell had disclaimed from the first all knowledge of it, consequentlyone could but feel justified in asking whether a man of Mr. Durand'sjudgment would choose such an extraordinary weapon in meditating sostartling a crime which from its nature and circumstance could not failto attract the attention of the whole civilized world.

  Another argument, advanced by himself and subscribed to by all hisfriends, was this: That a dealer in precious stones would be the lastman to seek by any unlawful means to possess so conspicuous a jewel. Forhe, better than any one else, would know the impossibility of disposingof a gem of this distinction in any market short of the Orient. To whichthe unanswerable reply was made that no one attributed to him any suchfolly; that if he had planned to possess himself of this great diamond,it was for the purpose of eliminating it from competition with the onehe had procured for Mr. Smythe; an argument, certainly, which drove usback on the only plea we had at our command--his hitherto unblemishedreputation and the confidence which was felt In him by those who knewhim.

  But the one circumstance which affected me most at the time, and whichundoubtedly was the source of the greatest confusion to all minds,whether official or otherwise, was the unexpected confirmation byexperts of Mr. Grey's opinion in regard to the diamond. His name wasnot used, indeed it had been kept out of the papers with the greatestunanimity, but the hint he had given the inspector at Mr. Ramsdell'sball had been acted upon and, the proper tests having been made, thestone, for which so many believed a life to have been risked and anothertaken, was declared to be an imitation, fine and successful beyond allparallel, but still an imitation, of the great and renowned gem whichhad passed through Tiffany's hands a twelve-month before: a decisionwhich fell like a thunderbolt on all such as had seen the diamondblazing in unapproachable brilliancy on the breast of the unhappy Mrs.Fairbrother only an hour or two before her death.

  On me the effect was such that for days I lived in a dream, a conditionthat, nevertheless, did not prevent me from starting a certain littleinquiry of my own, of which more hereafter.

  Here let me say that I did not share the general confusion on thistopic. I had my own theory, both as to the cause of this substitutionand the moment when it was made. But the time had not yet come for me toadvance it. I could only stand back and listen to the suppositions airedby the press, suppositions which fomented so much private discussionthat ere long the one question most frequently heard in this connectionwas not who struck the blow which killed Mrs. Fairbrother (this was aquestion which some seemed to think settled), but whose juggling handhad palmed off the paste for the diamond, and how and when and where hadthe jugglery taken place?

  Opinions on this point were, as I have said, many and various. Somefixed upon the moment of exchange as that very critical and hardlyappreciable one elapsing between the murder and Mr. Durand's appearanceupon the scene. This theory, I need not say, was advanced by such asbelieved that while he was not guilty of Mrs. Fairbrother's murder, liehad been guilty of taking advantage of the same to rob the body of what,in the terror and excitement of the moment, he evidently took to be hergreat gem. To others, among whom were many eyewitnesses of the event,it appeared to be a conceded fact that this substitution had been madeprior to the ball and with Mrs. Fairbrother's full cognizance. Theeffectual way in which she had wielded her fan between the glitteringornament on her breast and the inquisitive glances constantly leveledupon it might at the time have been due to coquetry, but to them itlooked much more like an expression of fear lest the deception in whichshe was indulging should be discovered. No one fixed the time where Idid; but then, no one but myself had watched the scene with the eyes oflove; besides, and this must be remembered, most people, among whomI ventured to count the police officials, were mainly interested inproving Mr. Durand guilty, while I, with contrary mind, was bent onestablishing such facts as confirmed the explanations he had beenpleased to give us, explanations which necessitated a conviction, onMrs. Fairbrother's part, of the great value of the jewel she wore, andthe consequent advisability of ridding herself of it temporarily, if,as so many believed, the full letter of the warning should read: "Bewarned, he means to be at the ball. Expect trouble if you are foundwearing the great diamond."

  True, she may herself have been deceived concerning it. Unconsciously toherself, she may have been the victim of a daring fraud on the part ofsome hanger-on who had access to her jewels, but, as no such evidencehad yet come to life, as she had no recognized, or, so far as could belearned, secret lover or dishonest dependent; and, moreover, as no gemof such unusual value was known to have been offered within the year,here or abroad, in public or private market, I could not bring myself tocredit this as
sumption; possibly because I was so ignorant as to creditanother, and a different one,--one which you have already seen growing inmy mind, and which, presumptuous as it was, kept my courage from failingthrough all those dreadful days of enforced waiting and suspense. For Iwas determined not to intrude my suggestions, valuable as I consideredthem, till all hope was gone of his being righted by the judgmentof those who would not lightly endure the interference of such aninsignificant mote in the great scheme of justice as myself.

  The inquest, which might be trusted to bring out all these doubtfulpoints, had been delayed in anticipation of Mr. Fairbrother's return.His testimony could not but prove valuable, if not in fixing thecriminal, at least in settling the moot point as to whether the stone,which the estranged wife had carried away with her on leaving thehouse, had been the genuine one returned to him from Tiffany's or thewell-known imitation now in the hands of the police. He had been locatedsomewhere in the mountains of lower Colorado, but, strange to say, Ithad been found impossible to enter into direct communication with him;nor was it known whether he was aware as yet of his wife's tragic death.So affairs went slowly in New York and the case seemed to come to astandstill, when public opinion was suddenly reawakened and a moredefinite turn given to the whole matter by a despatch from Santa Feto the Associated Press. This despatch was to the effect that AbnerFairbrother had passed through that city some three days before on hisway to his new mining camp, the Placide; that he then showed symptoms ofpneumonia, and from advices since received might be regarded as a verysick man.

  Ill,--well, that explained matters. His silence, which many had takenfor indifference, was that of a man physically disabled and unfit forexertion of any kind. Ill,--a tragic circumstance which roused endlessconjecture. Was he aware, or was he not aware, of his wife's death? Hadhe been taken ill before or after he left Colorado for New Mexico? Washe suffering mainly from shock, or, as would appear from his complaint,from a too rapid change of climate?

  The whole country seethed with excitement, and my poor littleunthought-of, insignificant self burned with impatience, which onlythose who have been subjected to a like suspense can properly estimate.Would the proceedings which were awaited with so much anxiety be furtherdelayed? Would Mr. Durand remain indefinitely in durance and under sucha cloud of disgrace as would kill some men and might kill him? Should Ibe called upon to endure still longer the suffering which this entailedupon me, when I thought I knew?

  But fortune was less obdurate than I feared. Next morning a telegraphicstatement from Santa Fe settled one of the points of this great dispute,a statement which you will find detailed at more length in the followingcommunication, which appeared a few days later in one of our mostenterprising journals.

  It was from a resident correspondent in New Mexico, and was written, asthe editor was careful to say, for his own eyes and not for the public.He had ventured, however, to give It in full, knowing the great interestwhich this whole subject had for his readers.