The Leavenworth Case Part 42

"Then who-" I began, and stopped, lost in the dark vista that was opening before me.

"Who? Why, who but the one whose past deceit and present necessity demanded his death as a relief? Who but the beautiful, money-loving, man-deceiving G.o.ddess--"

I leaped to my feet in my sudden horror and repugnance. "Do not mention the name! You are wrong; but do not speak the name."

"Excuse me," said he; "but it will have to be spoken many times, and we may as well begin here and now-who then but Mary Leavenworth; or, if you like it better, Mrs. Henry Clavering? Are you so much surprised? It has been my thought from the beginning."

XXVI. MR. GRYCE EXPLAINS HIMSELF

"Sits the wind in that corner?"

-Much Ado about Nothing.

I DO not propose to enter into a description of the mingled feelings aroused in me by this announcement. As a drowning man is said to live over in one terrible instant the events of a lifetime, so each word uttered in my hearing by Mary, from her first introduction to me in her own room, on the morning of the inquest, to our final conversation on the night of Mr. Clavering's call, swept in one wild phantasmagoria through my brain, leaving me aghast at the signification which her whole conduct seemed to acquire from the lurid light which now fell upon it.

"I perceive that I have pulled down an avalanche of doubts about your ears," exclaimed my companion from the height of his calm superiority. "You never thought of this possibility, then, yourself?"

"Do not ask me what I have thought. I only know I will never believe your suspicions true. That, however much Mary may have been benefited by her uncle's death, she never had a hand in it; actual hand, I mean."

"And what makes you so sure of this?"

"And what makes you so sure of the contrary? It is for you to prove, not for me to prove her innocence."

"Ah," said Mr. Gryce, in his slow, sarcastic way, "you recollect that principle of law, do you? If I remember rightly, you have not always been so punctilious in regarding it, or wis.h.i.+ng to have it regarded, when the question was whether Mr. Clavering was the a.s.sa.s.sin or not."

"But he is a man. It does not seem so dreadful to accuse a man of a crime. But a woman! and such a woman! I cannot listen to it; it is horrible. Nothing short of absolute confession on her part will ever make me believe Mary Leavenworth, or any other woman, committed this deed. It was too cruel, too deliberate, too--"

"Read the criminal records," broke in Mr. Gryce.

But I was obstinate. "I do not care for the criminal records. All the criminal records in the world would never make me believe Eleanore perpetrated this crime, nor will I be less generous towards her cousin Mary Leavenworth is a faulty woman, but not a guilty one."

"You are more lenient in your judgment of her than her cousin was, it appears."

"I do not understand you," I muttered, feeling a new and yet more fearful light breaking upon me.

"What! have you forgotten, in the hurry of these late events, the sentence of accusation which we overheard uttered between these ladies on the morning of the inquest?"

"No, but--"

"You believed it to have been spoken by Mary to Eleanore?"

"Of course; didn't you?"

Oh, the smile which crossed Mr. Gryce's face! "Scarcely. I left that baby-play for you. I thought one was enough to follow on that tack."

The light, the light that was breaking upon me! "And do you mean to say it was Eleanore who was speaking at that time? That I have been laboring all these weeks under a terrible mistake, and that you could have righted me with a word, and did not?"

"Well, as to that, I had a purpose in letting you follow your own lead for a while. In the first place, I was not sure myself which spoke; though I had but little doubt about the matter. The voices are, as you must have noticed, very much alike, while the att.i.tudes in which we found them upon entering were such as to be explainable equally by the supposition that Mary was in the act of launching a denunciation, or in that of repelling one. So that, while I did not hesitate myself as to the true explanation of the scene before me, I was pleased to find you accept a contrary one; as in this way both theories had a chance of being tested; as was right in a case of so much mystery. You accordingly took up the affair with one idea for your starting-point, and I with another. You saw every fact as it developed through the medium of Mary's belief in Eleanore's guilt, and I through the opposite. And what has been the result? With you, doubt, contradiction, constant unsettlement, and unwarranted resorts to strange sources for reconcilement between appearances and your own convictions; with me, growing a.s.surance, and a belief which each and every development so far has but served to strengthen and make more probable."

Again that wild panorama of events, looks, and words swept before me. Mary's reiterated a.s.sertions of her cousin's innocence, Eleanore's att.i.tude of lofty silence in regard to certain matters which might be considered by her as pointing towards the murderer.

"Your theory must be the correct one," I finally admitted; "it was undoubtedly Eleanore who spoke. She believes in Mary's guilt, and I have been blind, indeed, not to have seen it from the first."

"If Eleanore Leavenworth believes in her cousin's criminality, she must have some good reasons for doing so."

I was obliged to admit that too. "She did not conceal in her bosom that telltale key,-found who knows where?-and destroy, or seek to destroy, it and the letter which introduced her cousin to the public as the unprincipled destroyer of a trusting man's peace, for nothing."

"No, no."

"And yet you, a stranger, a young man who have never seen Mary Leavenworth in any other light than that in which her coquettish nature sought to display itself, presume to say she is innocent, in the face of the att.i.tude maintained from the first by her cousin!"

"But," said I, in my great unwillingness to accept his conclusions, "Eleanore Leavenworth is but mortal. She may have been mistaken in her inferences. She has never stated what her suspicion was founded upon; nor can we know what basis she has for maintaining the att.i.tude you speak of. Clavering is as likely as Mary to be the a.s.sa.s.sin, for all we know, and possibly for all she knows."

"You seem to be almost superst.i.tious in your belief in Clavering's guilt."

I recoiled. Was I? Could it be that Mr. Harwell's fanciful conviction in regard to this man had in any way influenced me to the detriment of my better judgment?

"And you may be right," Mr. Gryce went on. "I do not pretend to be set in my notions. Future investigation may succeed in fixing something upon him; though I hardly think it likely. His behavior as the secret husband of a woman possessing motives for the commission of a crime has been too consistent throughout."

"All except his leaving her."

"No exception at all; for he hasn't left her."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that, instead of leaving the country, Mr. Clavering has only made pretence of doing so. That, in place of dragging himself off to Europe at her command, he has only changed his lodgings, and can now be found, not only in a house opposite to hers, but in the window of that house, where he sits day after day watching who goes in and out of her front door."

I remembered his parting injunction to me, in that memorable interview we had in my office, and saw myself compelled to put a new construction upon it.

"But I was a.s.sured at the Hoffman House that he had sailed for Europe, and myself saw the man who professes to have driven him to the steamer."

"Just so."

"And Mr. Clavering returned to the city after that?"

"In another carriage, and to another house."

"And you tell me that man is all right?"

"No; I only say there isn't the shadow of evidence against him as the person who shot Mr. Leavenworth."

Rising, I paced the floor, and for a few minutes silence fell between us. But the clock, striking, recalled me to the necessity of the hour, and, turning, I asked Mr. Gryce what he proposed to do now.

"There is but one thing I can do," said he.

"And that is?"