III.
THE UNFINISHED LETTER

Faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy head now.

– Merry Wives of Windsor.

"WOULD there be any indiscretion in my asking who that young lady is?" inquired Mr. Byrd of Mr. Ferris, as, after ascertaining that the stricken sufferer still breathed, they stood together in a distant corner of the dining-room.

"No," returned the other, in a low tone, with a glance in the direction of the lawyer, who was just re-entering the house, after an unsuccessful effort to rejoin the person of whom they were speaking. "She is a Miss Dare, a young lady much admired in this town, and believed by many to be on the verge of matrimony with – " He nodded toward Mr. Orcutt, and discreetly forbore to finish the sentence.

"Ah!" exclaimed the youthful detective, "I understand." And he cast a look of suddenly awakened interest at the man who, up to this time, he had merely regarded as a more than usually acute criminal lawyer.

He saw a small, fair, alert man, of some forty years of age, of a good carriage, easy manner, and refined cast of countenance, overshadowed now by a secret anxiety he vainly tried to conceal. He was not as handsome as Coroner Tredwell, nor as well built as Mr. Ferris, yet he was, without doubt, the most striking-looking man in the room, and, to the masculine eyes of the detective, seemed at first glance to be a person to win the admiration, if not the affection, of women.

"She appears to take a great interest in this affair," he ventured again, looking back at Mr. Ferris.

"Yes, that is woman's way," replied the other, lightly, without any hint of secret feeling or curiosity. "Besides, she is an inscrutable girl, always surprising you by her emotions – or by her lack of them," he added, dismissing the topic with a wave of his hand.

"Which is also woman's way," remarked Mr. Byrd, retiring into his shell, from which he had momentarily thrust his head.

"Does it not strike you that there are rather more persons present than are necessary for the purposes of justice?" asked the lawyer, now coming forward with a look of rather pointed significance at the youthful stranger.

Mr. Ferris at once spoke up. "Mr. Orcutt," said he, "let me introduce to you Mr. Byrd, of New York. He is a member of the police force, and has been rendering me assistance in the case just adjourned."

"A detective!" repeated the other, eying the young man with a critical eye. "It is a pity, sir," he finally observed, "that your present duties will not allow you to render service to justice in this case of mysterious assault." And with a bow of more kindness than Mr. Byrd had reason to look for, he went slowly back to his former place near the door that hid the suffering woman from sight.

However kindly expressed, Mr. Byrd felt that he had received his dismissal, and was about to withdraw, when the coroner, who had been absent from their midst for the last few minutes, approached them from the foot of the stairs, and tapped the detective on the arm.

"I want you," said he.

Mr. Byrd bowed, and with a glance toward the District Attorney, who returned him a nod of approval, went quickly out with the coroner.

"I hear you are a detective," observed the latter, taking him up stairs into a room which he carefully locked behind them. "A detective on the spot in a case like this is valuable; are you willing to assume the duties of your profession and act for justice in this matter?"

"Dr. Tredwell," returned the young man, instantly conscious of a vague, inward shrinking from meddling further in the affair, "I am not at present master of my proceedings. To say nothing of the obedience I owe my superiors at home, I am just now engaged in assisting Mr. Ferris in the somewhat pressing matter now before the court, and do not know whether it would meet with his approval to have me mix up matters in this way."

"Mr. Ferris is a reasonable man," said the coroner. "If his consent is all that is necessary – "

"But it is not, sir. I must have orders from New York."

"Oh, as to that, I will telegraph at once."

But still the young man hesitated, lounging in his easy way against the table by which he had taken his stand.

"Dr. Tredwell," he suggested, "you must have men in this town amply able to manage such a matter as this. A woman struck in broad daylight and a man already taken up on suspicion! 'Tis simple, surely; intricate measures are not wanted here."

"So you still think it is the tramp that struck her?" quoth the coroner, a trifle baffled by the other's careless manner.

"I still think it was not the man who sat in court all the morning and held me fascinated by his eye."

"Ah, he held you fascinated, did he?" repeated the other, a trifle suspiciously.

"Well, that is," Mr. Byrd allowed, with the least perceptible loss of his easy bearing, "he made me look at him more than once. A wandering eye always attracts me, and his wandered constantly."

"Humph! and you are sure he was in the court every minute of the morning?"

"There must be other witnesses who can testify to that," answered the detective, with the perceptible irritation of one weary of a subject which he feels he has already amply discussed.

"Well," declared the other, dropping his eyes from the young man's countenance to a sheet of paper he was holding in his hand, "whatever rôle this humpback has played in the tragedy now occupying us, whether he be a wizard, a secret accomplice, a fool who cannot keep his own secret, or a traitor who cannot preserve that of his tools, this affair, as you call it, is not likely to prove the simple matter you seem to consider it. The victim, if not her townsfolk, knew she possessed an enemy, and this half-finished letter which I have found on her table, raises the question whether a common tramp, with no motive but that of theft or brutal revenge, was the one to meditate the fatal blow, even if he were the one to deal it."

A perceptible light flickered into the eyes of Mr. Byrd, and he glanced with a new but unmistakable interest at the letter, though he failed to put out his hand for it, even though the coroner held it toward him.

"Thank you," said he; "but if I do not take the case, it would be better for me not to meddle any further with it."

"But you are going to take it," insisted the other, with temper, his anxiety to secure this man's services increasing with the opposition he so unaccountably received. "The officers at the detective bureau in New York are not going to send another man up here when there is already one on the spot. And a man from New York I am determined to have. A crime like this shall not go unpunished in this town, whatever it may do in a great city like yours. We don't have so many murder cases that we need to stint ourselves in the luxury of professional assistance."

"But," protested the young man, still determined to hold back, whatever arguments might be employed or inducements offered him, "how do you know I am the man for your work? We have many sorts and kinds of detectives in our bureau. Some for one kind of business, some for another; the following up of a criminal is not mine."

"What, then, is yours?" asked the coroner, not yielding a jot of his determination.

The detective was silent.

"Read the letter," persisted Dr. Tredwell, shrewdly conscious that if once the young man's professional instinct was aroused, all the puerile objections which influenced him would immediately vanish.

There was no resisting that air of command. Taking the letter in his hand, the young man read:

"Dear Emily: – I don't know why I sit down to write to you to-day. I have plenty to do, and morning is no time for indulging in sentimentalities; but I feel strangely lonely and strangely anxious. Nothing goes just to my mind, and somehow the many causes for secret fear which I have always had, assume an undue prominence in my mind. It is always so when I am not quite well. In vain I reason with myself, saying that respectable people do not lightly enter into crime. But there are so many to whom my death would be more than welcome, that I constantly see myself in the act of being – "

"Struck, shot, murdered," suggested Dr. Tredwell, perceiving the young man's eye lingering over the broken sentence.

"The words are not there," remonstrated Mr. Byrd; but the tone of his voice showed that his professional complacency had been disturbed at last.

The other did not answer, but waited with the wisdom of the trapper who sees the quarry nosing round the toils.

"There is evidently some family mystery," the young man continued, glancing again at the letter. "But," he remarked, "Mr. Orcutt is a good friend of hers, and can probably tell us what it all means."

"Very likely," the other admitted, "if we choose to ask him."

Quick as lightning the young man's glance flashed to the coroner's face.

"You would rather not put the question to him?" he inquired.

"No. As he is the lawyer who, in all probability, will be employed by the criminal in this case, I am sure he would rather not be mixed up in any preliminary investigation of the affair."

The young man's eye did not waver. He appeared to take a secret resolve.

"Has it not struck you," he insinuated, "that Mr. Orcutt might have other reasons for not wishing to give any expression of opinion in regard to it?"

The surprise in the coroner's eye was his best answer.

"No," he rejoined.

Mr. Byrd at once resumed all his old nonchalance.

"The young lady who was here appeared to show such agitated interest in this horrible crime, I thought that, in kindness to her, he might wish to keep out of the affair as much as possible."

"Miss Dare? Bless your heart, she would not restrict him in any way. Her interest in the matter is purely one of curiosity. It has been carried, perhaps, to a somewhat unusual length for a woman of her position and breeding. But that is all, I assure you. Miss Dare's eccentricities are well known in this town."

"Then the diamond ring was really hers?" Mr. Byrd was about to inquire, but stopped; something in his memory of this beautiful woman made it impossible for him to disturb the confidence of the coroner in her behalf, at least while his own doubts were so vague and shadowy.

The coroner, however, observed the young detective's hesitation, and smiled.

"Are you thinking of Miss Dare as having any thing to do with this shocking affair?" he asked.

Mr. Byrd shook his head, but could not hide the flush that stole up over his forehead.

The coroner actually laughed, a low, soft, decorous laugh, but none the less one of decided amusement. "Your line is not in the direction of spotting criminals, I must allow," said he. "Why, Miss Dare is not only as irreproachable a young lady as we have in this town, but she is a perfect stranger to this woman and all her concerns. I doubt if she even knew her name till to-day."

A laugh is often more potent than argument. The face of the detective lighted up, and he looked very manly and very handsome as he returned the letter to the coroner, saying, with a sweep of his hand as if he tossed an unworthy doubt away forever:

"Well, I do not wish to appear obstinate. If this woman dies, and the inquest fails to reveal who her assailant is, I will apply to New York for leave to work up the case; that is, if you continue to desire my assistance. Meanwhile – "

"You will keep your eyes open," intimated the coroner, taking back the letter and putting it carefully away in his breast-pocket. "And now, mum!"

Mr. Byrd bowed, and they went together down the stairs.

It was by this time made certain that the dying woman was destined to linger on for some hours. She was completely unconscious, and her breath barely lifted the clothes that lay over the slowly laboring breast; but such vitality as there was held its own with scarcely perceptible change, and the doctor thought it might be midnight before the solemn struggle would end. "In the meantime, expect nothing," he exclaimed; "she has said her last word. What remains will be a mere sinking into the eternal sleep."