The Carleton Case Part 17

Vaughan silently shook his head. He was indeed looking miserably, and when he took a chair, he sat bolt upright on its edge, leaning forward nervously when he spoke. "No," he said, "it's worse than that, Mr.

Carleton; a whole lot worse. It's something that's been troubling me for a long time now, until finally I've made up my mind that the only thing for me to do is to come straight to you with it, and tell you the whole story. And that's why I'm here."

At once Carleton shoved books and papers aside, as if the better to prepare himself for proper attention to Vaughan's words. He looked at his visitor with an air of friendly concern. "Anything that I can do--"

he murmured. "You know, of course, that you may count on me. Anything in my power--"

Vaughan nodded abruptly. "Thank you," he said hastily and a little grimly, "it's not a favor that I've come for. I'm going to do you a bad turn, I'm afraid. Going to do everybody a bad turn, as far as that goes.

But it can't be helped. I've got to go ahead, and that's all there is to it."

Henry Carleton eyed him narrowly, but without speaking, and Vaughan, looking up, as if eager to have his task over, with sudden resolve, began. "It's about Satterlee," he said, "you remember how things happened out here that night, of course. I guess we all do. Jack went up-stairs to bed, you remember, and you and c.u.mmings went off to play billiards. I was on the piazza with Rose, and stayed there until you came down to tell her that it was getting late. Then, after she went up-stairs, you told me that you were going for a short walk, and I said I believed I'd go to my room. Well, I didn't. I don't know why. I started to go in, and then--the night was so fine; I had so much that was pleasant to think about--somehow I couldn't stand the idea of going into the house, and instead I took a stroll around the grounds."

He stopped for a moment. Henry Carleton, gazing intently at him, gave no sign from his expression that he was experiencing any emotion beyond that of the keenest interest and attention. Only his eyes, in the shadow, had lost their customary benevolent expression, narrowing until their look was keen, alert; the look of a man put quickly on his guard.

And as Vaughan still kept silence, it chanced that Carleton was the first again to speak. "Well," he queried impatiently, "and what then?"

Vaughan drew a quick breath. "This," he cried hastily, almost recklessly, "this. I walked down toward Satterlee's cottage, and I saw what happened there. Satterlee didn't fall from any rock. He was murdered. And I saw it all."

Henry Carleton did not start. There was no cry of surprise, no single word, even. Only, as Vaughan had finished, on a sudden his eyes dilated strangely; his lips parted a trifle; for a moment, without breathing, without animation, it seemed as if the man's whole being hung poised motionless, suspended. So great the surprise, so great the shock, that one, not knowing, might almost have believed himself to be looking upon the man who had done the deed. "Murdered?" he at last repeated dully, "You saw it? Murdered?"--there was a moment's silence, and then, all at once seeming to recover himself, he leaned forward in his chair. "By whom?" he cried sharply, with just a note of menace in his tone, "By whom?"

On Vaughan's part there was no further hesitation. He had gone too far for that. Yet his face was drawn and distorted with pain as in a tone so low that Carleton could scarcely hear, he uttered the single word, "Jack."

And this time the added shock was too great. Henry Carleton started visibly, the most intense emotion showing in every line of his face.

"Jack?" he gasped, "Jack?"

In silence Vaughan bowed his head, hardly able to look on the anguish which his words had caused. "Jack," he muttered again, under his breath.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Henry Carleton started visibly.--Page 292]

There was a silence, tense, pregnant. Once Vaughan, slowly raising his head, had started to speak, and Henry Carleton had instantly lifted a hand to enjoin silence. "Wait a minute!" he commanded. Evidently he was striving to recollect. Then presently he spoke again. "Nonsense," he cried, "I remember perfectly now. That was the night that Jack said he felt tired; he went to his room early to smoke a pipe, and then turn in.

Jack murder Satterlee! Why, nonsense, man! You're dreaming. You're not in your right mind. Jack and Satterlee were always good friends, and Mrs. Satterlee, too. No, no. Jack to murder any one is nonsensical enough; but Jack to murder Satterlee--impossible--simply impossible!"

Stubbornly Vaughan shook his head. "I wish to G.o.d it were," he answered, with deep feeling. "It sounds wild enough, I know, but it's true, for all that. Every word. And one thing you've just said--" he hesitated, and stopped, then unwillingly enough continued, "one thing, I'm afraid, goes a long ways toward explaining, and that is that Jack was such good friends with Mrs. Satterlee. I'm afraid that was the beginning of everything."

Carleton's face was pale, and his voice, when he spoke, was hoa.r.s.e with emotion. "G.o.d, Vaughan," he said, "this is terrible," and then, with a quick return to his former manner, "no, no, I can't believe it yet. Tell me what you saw. Not what you imagined or conjectured. Just what you saw--actually saw with your own eyes."

"There isn't very much to tell," Vaughan answered. "I just happened to walk that way, for no reason whatsoever. Just by chance; I might have gone any other way as well. And finally I came out on the top of a little hill--no, not a hill exactly; more like a cliff--and from there I could see across to Satterlee's house. And while I stood there, I saw a man--Satterlee--come across the drive, and up the back way, and go in.

Then, in a minute, I heard a noise up-stairs, and some one cry out; and then, a minute after that, Jack rushed out of the house, with Satterlee after him--and suddenly Satterlee took to running queer and wide and in a circle, with his head all held pitched to one side--ah, it was ghastly to see him--and then he came straight for the rock where I was standing, and all at once his legs seemed to go out from under him, and he sprawled right out on the gravel on his face, and lay there. I turned faint for a minute, I think, and the next thing I recall was looking down again, and there was Jack trying to lift Satterlee up, and when he scratched a match his hands were all over blood, and Satterlee's face--oh, I've dreamed it all fifty times since--he was dead then, I suppose. His head hung limp, I remember, and then--it was cowardly, of course, and all that, but the whole thing was so unexpected--so like a d.a.m.nable kind of a nightmare, somehow--and Jack, you know--why, it was too much for me. I just turned, and made off, and never stopped till I'd got back safe into my room again. And that's all."

Henry Carleton sat silent, engrossed in thought. Almost he seemed to be oblivious of Vaughan's presence. "It couldn't be," he muttered, at last, as though incredulous still, "it couldn't be. Jack!" he paused, only to repeat the name again. Then he shook his head. "Never," he said with decision, "he would have told everything. You saw wrong, Arthur. You didn't see Jack."

Something in the older man's att.i.tude of continued disbelief seemed to have the effect of nettling Vaughan. "How many times," he said, with a note of irritation in his tone, "must I repeat it? I tell you I _know_.

Can't a man trust his own eyes? It _was_ Jack. There's no room for doubt at all. Don't you suppose--" his voice rose with the strain of all that he had been through--"don't you suppose that I'd have jumped at any chance to clear him? Don't you suppose that if there'd been the faintest shadow of a doubt in his favor, I'd have stretched it to the breaking point to see him go free. No, there's no question. It was Jack. Why he did it, or how he did it, you can conjecture, if you wish, but one thing is plain. Murder Tom Satterlee he did."

His tone rang true. At last, in spite of himself, Carleton appeared unwillingly to be convinced. Again he pondered. "Then he perjured himself at the inquest?" he said quickly at last.

Vaughan nodded. "He perjured himself at the inquest," he a.s.sented.

"And you?" asked Carleton, again, "you perjured yourself too?"

"I perjured myself too," Vaughan answered. "There were plenty of other reasons, of course; reasons that you can imagine. It wasn't just a case of Jack alone. There was a lot else to think of besides. We talked it over as well as we could--Jack and I. We thought of you. We thought of Rose--and of me. We thought of the Carleton name. The disgrace of it all. We only had a quarter of an hour, at the most--and we lied, deliberately and consciously lied."

He looked up, instantly amazed at the look on Carleton's face, for Carleton was gazing at him as if he could scarcely believe his ears--as if this piece of news, for some reason, came as something more unexpected than all the rest. "You talked it over with Jack?" he said, "talked it over with Jack, and Jack thought of me--and the family name.

Upon my word, Arthur, I believe one of us is mad."

Vaughan stared at him, uncomprehending. "I don't see why you say that,"

he returned. "What was there more natural? Or do you mean Jack wasn't sincere when he put that forward as a reason? I've thought of that, but I don't believe it now. Just think how we should feel if instead of sitting here and theorizing about it, we knew that the facts were really public property. Do you wonder that we stopped to consider everything?

Do you wonder that we decided as we did? But we were wrong--all wrong--I knew it, really, all the time. To tell what I saw--that was the only honest thing to do. I lied, and now I'm going to try to make amends. I'm going to tell the truth, no matter what comes. It's the only way."

Impatiently Henry Carleton shook his head. "I don't agree with you, in the least," he said quickly. "I think you decided rightly. I should have done the same. And right or wrong, you've made your choice. Why alter it now? It would make the scandal of the day."

"I know it," Vaughan desperately a.s.sented, "I know it will. But anything's better than having things go on as they are now. I can't look people in the face. I've been miserable. I thought I knew what it was to be badly off before, but poverty, and bad luck, and failure--what are they, anyway? What do they amount to? Nothing. But a thing like this on your conscience. Why, a man's better dead. He can't live with it, day and night. He _can't_; that's all. I know. He's got to tell, or go crazy; it isn't to be endured."

Without making answer, Henry Carleton rose, and walked over to the window, standing precisely as he had stood before Vaughan's coming, gazing out into the blackness of the night. Then he turned. "Wait here,"

he said peremptorily. "I've got to get to the bottom of this, or you won't be the one to lose your senses. Wait here. I'll be back in half an hour, at the very latest."

Sudden conjecture dawned in Vaughan's eyes. "You're going--" he began, and then paused.

Henry Carleton completed the sentence for him. "I'm going to see Mrs.

Satterlee," he answered. "I refuse to credit your story, Arthur, or what you say Jack admits, unless she corroborates your tale of what happened that night. It all depends on her."

He turned to leave the room, then paused a moment, and again turned to Vaughan. "Have you told Jack," he asked, "just what you propose to do?"

Vaughan shook his head. "I haven't seen Jack," he answered, "since the morning after it happened. To tell the truth, I've taken pains not to see him. I couldn't bear to. The whole thing got on my nerves. It seemed to change him so. And about this part of it, I haven't seen him, either.

I couldn't. To go to a man, and read him his death-warrant. I couldn't.

I thought I'd come to you."

Carleton nodded. "I think you've done wisely," he said, "if this can all be true, I must see Jack myself first. It becomes a family matter then.

Well, I must go. Wait here for me, please. I won't be long."

For perhaps twenty minutes Vaughan sat alone in the library, his mind, after the long strain of all he had undergone, singularly torpid.

Mechanically he found himself counting the squares on a rug near the table; three rows of six--three rows of five--eighteen, fifteen, thirty-three. Over and over again he did this until at last he pulled himself up short with a start. And then he heard footsteps ascending; and Henry Carleton hastily reentered the room, his face stern and set.

For an instant, as Vaughan rose, the two men stood confronting each other. "Well?" Vaughan asked, though reading the answer to his question in the other's eyes.

Carleton nodded. In the lamplight his face looked ten years older. He spoke but two words. "It's true," he said.

CHAPTER XVI

THE FAMILY NAME

"Reputation, reputation, reputation!"

_Shakespeare._

It was long past closing time at Henry Carleton's. Every one, from the oldest clerk to the smallest office boy, had long since gone home. For three hours, almost, the two men had had the office to themselves. A long, bitter battle of words it had been, all the stored-up brood of evil pa.s.sions, hatred and envy, anger and fear, as with the bursting of some festering sore, had surged, foul and horrible, into the clear light of the open day.

Henry Carleton sat at his desk, but not in his usual att.i.tude of calm composure, leaning back in his chair, the acknowledged lord and master of his little world, envied by all men who came to see him, to buy or sell, bargain and haggle, plot and plan. This Henry Carleton was a strangely different man. Wearily enough he leaned forward in his chair, his head propped on one hand, while in the other the pencil which ordinarily never moved but to some purpose, to jot down some pregnant list of facts or figures, now moved over the blank surface of the paper in little aimless scrawls and circles; fit index, perhaps, to its owner's strange confusion of brain--a man for once troubled, wavering and irresolute, well-nigh, at times, despairing, yet still seeking feverishly the solution of the puzzle, making desperate hunt for the missing key.