The House of the Whispering Pines

"Immediately?"

"As soon as I could. I don't know what you mean by immediately."

"Didn't you stop at the stable?"

A pause, during which more than one person present sat breathless. These questions were what might be expected from Mr. Fox in cross-examination. They seemed totally unsuited to a direct examination at the hands of his own counsel. What did such an innovation mean?

"Yes, I stopped at the stable."

"What to do?"

"To look at the horses."

"Why?"

"One of them had gone lame. I wanted to see his condition."

"Was it the grey mare?"

Had the defence changed places with the prosecution? It looked like it; and Arthur looked as if he considered Mr. Moffat guilty of the unheard of, inexplainable act, of cross-examining his own witness. The situation was too tempting for Mr. Fox to resist calling additional attention to it. With an assumption of extreme consideration, he leaned forward and muttered under his breath to his nearest colleague, but still loud enough for those about him to hear:

"The prisoner must know that he is not bound to answer questions when such answers tend to criminate him.".

A lightning glance, shot in his direction, was the eloquent advocate's sole reply.

But Arthur, nettled into speaking, answered the question put him, in a loud, quick tone: "It was not the grey mare; but I went up to the grey mare before going out; I patted her and bade her be a good girl."

"Where was she then?"

"Where she belonged—in her stall."

The tones had sunk; so had the previously lifted head; he no longer commanded universal sympathy or credence. The effect of his former avowals was almost gone.

Yet Mr. Moffat could smile. As I noticed this, and recognised the satisfaction it evinced, my heart went down, in great trouble. This esteemed advocate, the hero of a hundred cases, was not afraid to have it known that Arthur had harnessed that mare; he even wanted it known. Why? There could be but one answer to that—or, so I thought, at the moment. The next, I did not know what to think; for he failed to pursue this subject, and simply asked Arthur if, upon leaving, he had locked the stable-door.

"Yes—no,—I don't remember," was the bungling, and greatly confused reply.

Mr. Moffat glanced at the jury, the smile still on his lips. Did he wish to impress that body with the embarrassment of his client?

"Relate what followed. I am sure the jury will be glad to hear your story from your own lips."

"It's a beastly one, but if I've got to tell it, here it is: I went straight down to Cuthbert Road and across the fields to the club-house. I had not taken the key to the front door, because I knew of a window I could shake loose. I did this and went immediately down to the wine-vault. I used an electric torch of my own for light. I pulled out several bottles, and carried them up into the kitchen, meaning to light the gas, kindle a fire, and have a good time generally. But I soon found that I must do without light if I stayed there. The meter had been taken out; and to drink by the flash of an electric torch was anything but a pleasing prospect. Besides—" here he flashed at his counsel a glance, which for a moment took that gentleman aback—"I had heard certain vague sounds in the house which alarmed me, as well as roused my curiosity. Choosing the bottle I liked best, I went to investigate these sounds."

Mr. Moffat started. His witness was having his revenge. Kept in ignorance of his counsel's plan of defence, he was evidently advancing testimony new to that counsel. I had not thought the lad so subtle, and quaked in secret contemplation of the consequences. So did some others; but the interest was intense. He had heard sounds—he acknowledged it. But what sounds?

Observing the excitement he had caused, and gratified, perhaps, that he had succeeded in driving that faint but unwelcome smile from Mr. Moffat's lips, Arthur hastened to add:

"But I did not complete my investigations. Arrived at the top of the stairs, I heard what drove me from the house at once. It was my sister's voice—Adelaide's. She was in the building, and I stood almost on a level with her, with a bottle in my pocket. It did not take me a minute to clamber through the window. I did not stop to wonder, or ask why she was there, or to whom she was speaking. I just fled and made my way as well as I could across the golf-links to a little hotel on Cuthbert Road, where I had been once before. There I emptied my bottle, and was so overcome by it that I did not return home till noon the next day. It was on the way to the Hill that I was told of the awful occurrence which had taken place in the club-house after I had left it. That sobered me. I have been sober ever since."

Mr. Moffat's smile came back. One might have said that he had been rather pleased than otherwise by the introduction of this unexpected testimony.

But I doubt if any one but myself witnessed this evidence of good-humour on his part. Arthur's attitude and Arthur's manner had drawn all eyes to himself. As the last words I have recorded left his lips, he had raised his head and confronted the jury with a straightforward gaze. The sturdiness and immobility of his aspect were impressive, in spite of his plain features and the still unmistakable signs of long cherished discontent and habitual dissipation. He had struck bottom with his feet, and there he would stand,—or so I thought as I levelled my own glances at him.

But I had not fully sounded all of Alonzo Moffat's resources. That inscrutable lawyer and not-easily-to-be-understood man seemed determined to mar every good impression his unfortunate client managed to make.

Ignoring the new facts just given, undoubtedly thinking that they would be amply sifted in the coming cross-examination, he drew the attention of the prisoner to himself by the following question:

"Will you tell us again how many bottles of wine you took from the club-house?"

"One. No—I'm not sure about that—I'm not sure of anything. I had only one when at the inn in Cuthbert Road."

"You remember but one?"

"I had but one. One was enough. I had trouble in carrying that."

"Was the ground slippery?"

"It was snowy and it was uneven. I stumbled more than once in crossing the links."

"Mr. Cumberland, is there anything you would like to say in your own defence before I close this examination?"

The prisoner thus appealed to, let his eye rest for a moment on the judge, then on the jury, and finally on one little white face lifted from the crowd before him as if to meet and absorb his look. Then he straightened himself, and in a quiet and perfectly natural voice, uttered these simple words:

"Nothing but this: I am innocent."

XXVI

THE SYLLABLE OF DOOM

I alitOn a great ship lightning-split,And speeded hither on the sighOf one who gave an enemyHis plank, then plunged aside to die.Prometheus Unbound.

Recess followed. Clifton and I had the opportunity of exchanging a few words. He was voluble; I was reticent. I felt obliged to hide from him the true cause of the deep agitation under which I was labouring. Attached as he was to me, keenly as he must have felt my anomalous position, he was too full of Moffat's unwarrantable introduction of testimony damaging to his client, to think or talk of anything else.

"He has laid him open to attack on every side. Fox has but to follow his lead, and the thing is done. Poor Arthur may be guilty, but he certainly should have every chance a careful lawyer could give him. You can see—he makes it very evident—that he has no further use for Moffat. I wonder under whose advice he chose him for his counsel. I have never thought much of Moffat, myself. He wins his cases but—"

"He will win this," I muttered.

Clifton started; looked at me very closely for a minute, paled a little—I fear that I was very pale myself—but did not ask the question rising to his lips.

"There is method in the madness of a man like that," I pursued with a gloom I could not entirely conceal. "He has come upon some evidence which he has not even communicated to his client. At least, I fear so. We must be prepared for any untoward event." Then, noticing Clifton's alarm and wishing to confine it within safe bounds, I added: "I feel that I am almost as much on trial as Arthur himself. Naturally I am anxious at the appearance of anything I do not understand."

Clifton frowned. We were quite alone. Leaning forward, he touched my arm.

"Elwood," said he, "you've not been quite open with me."

I smiled. If half the bitterness and sorrow in my heart went into that smile, it must have been a sad and bitter one indeed.

"You have a right to reproach me," said I, "but not wholly. I did not deceive you in essentials. You may still believe me as guiltless of Adelaide's violent death as a man can be who drove her and hers into misery which death alone could end."

"I will believe it," he muttered, "I must." And he dropped the subject, as he made me see, forever.

I drew a deep breath of relief. I had come very near to revealing my secret.

When we returned to the court-room, we found it already packed with a very subdued and breathless crowd. It differed somewhat from the one which had faced us in the morning; but Ella and her parents were there and many others of the acknowledged friends of the accused and of his family.

He, himself, wore the heavy and dogged air which became him least. Physically refreshed, he carried himself boldly, but it was a boldness which convinced me that any talk he may have had with his lawyer, had been no more productive of comfort than the one I had held with mine.

As he took the witness chair, and prepared to meet the cross-examination of the district attorney, a solemn hush settled upon the room. Would the coming ordeal rob his brow of its present effrontery, or would he continue to bear himself with the same surly dignity, which, misunderstood as it was, produced its own effect, and at certain moments seemed to shake even the confidence of Mr. Fox, settled as he seemed to be in his belief in the integrity of his cause and the rights of the prosecution.

Shaken or not, his attack was stern, swift, and to the point.

"Was the visit you made to the wine-vault on the evening of the second of

December, the first one you had ever paid there?"

"No; I had been there once before. But I always paid for my depredations," he added, proudly.

"The categorical answer, Mr. Cumberland. Anything else is superfluous."

Arthur's lip curled, but only for an instant; and nothing could have exceeded the impassiveness of his manner as Mr. Fox went on.

"Then you knew the way?"

"Perfectly."

"And the lock?"

"Sufficiently well to open it without difficulty."

"How long do you think you were in entering the house and procuring these bottles?"

"I cannot say. I have no means of knowing; I never thought of looking at my watch."

"Not when you started? Not when you left Cuthbert Road?"

"No, sir."

"But you know when you left the club-house to go back?"

"Only by this—it had not yet begun to snow. I'm told that the first flakes fell that night at ten minutes to eleven. I was on the golf-links when this happened. You can fix the time yourself. Pardon me," he added, with decided ill-grace as he met Mr. Fox's frown. "I forgot your injunction."

Mr. Fox smiled an acrid smile, as he asked: "Whereabouts on the golf-links? They extend for some distance, you remember."

"They are six hundred yards across from first tee to the third hole, which is the nearest one to Cuthbert Road," Arthur particularised. "I was—no, I can't tell you just where I was at that moment. It was a good ways from the house. The snow came on very fiercely. For a little while I could not see my way."

"How, not see your way?"

"The snow flew into my eyes."

"Crossing the links?"

"Yes, sir, crossing the links."

"But the storm came from the west. It should have beaten against your back."

"Back or front, it bothered me. I could not get on as fast as I wished."

Mr. Fox cast a look at the jury. Did they remember the testimony of the landlord that Mr. Cumberland's coat was as thickly plastered with snow on the front as it had been on the back. He seemed to gather that they did, for he went on at once to say:

"You are accustomed to the links? You have crossed them often?"

"Yes, I play golf there all summer."

"I'm not alluding to the times when you play. I mean to ask whether or not you had ever before crossed them directly to Cuthbert Road?"

"Yes, I had."

"In a storm?"

"No, not in a storm."

"How long did it take you that time to reach Cuthbert Road from The

Whispering Pines?"

Mr. Moffat bounded to his feet, but the prisoner had answered before he could speak.

"Just fifteen minutes."

"How came you to know the time so exactly?"

"Because that day I did look at my watch. I had an engagement in the lower town, and had only twenty minutes in which to keep it. I was on time."

Honest at the core. This boy was growing rapidly in my favour. But this frank but unwise answer was not pleasing to his counsel, who would have advised, no doubt, a more general and less precise reply. However, it had been made and Moffat was not a man to cry over spilled milk. He did not even wince when the district attorney proceeded to elicit from the prisoner that he was a good walker, not afraid in the least of snow-storms and had often walked, in the teeth of the gale twice that distance in less than half an hour. Now, as the storm that night had been at his back, and he was in a hurry to reach his destination, it was evidently incumbent upon him to explain how he had managed to use up the intervening time of forty minutes before entering the hotel at half-past eleven.

"Did you stop in the midst of the storm to take a drink?" asked the district attorney.

As the testimony of the landlord in Cuthbert Road had been explicit as to the fact of his having himself uncorked the bottle which the prisoner had brought into the hotel, Arthur could not plead yes. He must say no, and he did.

"I drank nothing; I was too busy thinking. I was so busy thinking I wandered all over those links."

"In the blinding snow?"

"Yes, in the snow. What did I care for the snow? I did not understand my sister being in the club-house. I did not like it; I was tempted at times to go back."

"And why didn't you?"

"Because I was more of a brute than a brother—because Cuthbert Road drew me in spite of myself—because—" He stopped with the first hint of emotion we had seen in him since the morning. "I did not know what was going on there or I should have gone back," he flashed out, with a defiant look at his counsel.

Again sympathy was with him. Mr. Fox had won but little in this first attempt. He seemed to realise this, and shifted his attack to a point more vulnerable.

"When you heard your sister's voice in the club-house, how did you think she had got into the building?"

"By means of the keys Ranelagh had left at the house."

"When, instead of taking the whole bunch, you took the one key you wanted from the ring, did you do so with any idea she might want to make use of the rest?"

"No, I never thought of it. I never thought of her at all."

"You took your one key, and let the rest lie?"

"You've said it."

"Was this before or after you put on your overcoat?"

"I'm not sure; after, I think. Yes, it was after; for I remember that I had a deuce of a time unbuttoning my coat to get at my trousers' pocket."

"You dropped this key into your trousers' pocket?"

"I did."

"Mr. Cumberland, let me ask you to fix your memory on the moments you spent in the hall. Did you put on your hat before you pocketed the key, or afterwards?"

"My hat? How can I tell? My mind wasn't on my hat. I don't know when I put it on."

"You absolutely do not remember?"

"No."

"Nor where you took it from?"

"No."

"Whether you saw the keys first, and then went for your hat; or having pocketed the key, waited—"

"I did not wait."

"Did not stand by the table thinking?"

"No, I was in too much of a hurry."

"So that you went straight out?"

"Yes, as quickly as I could."

The district attorney paused, to be sure of the attention of the jury. When he saw that every eye of that now thoroughly aroused body was on him, he proceeded to ask: "Does that mean immediately, or as soon as you could after you had made certain preparations, or held certain talk with some one you called, or who called to you?"

"I called to nobody. I—I went out immediately."

It was evident that he lied; evident, too, that he had little hope from his lie. Uneasiness was taking the place of confidence in his youthful, untried, undisciplined mind. Carmel had spoken to him in the hall—I guessed it then, I knew it afterward—and he thought to deceive this court and blindfold a jury, whose attention had been drawn to this point by his own counsel.

District Attorney Fox smiled. "How then did you get into the stable?"

"The stable! Oh, I had no trouble in getting into the stable."

"Was it unlocked?"

A slow flush broke over the prisoner's whole face. He saw where he had been landed and took a minute to pull himself together before he replied: "I had the key to that door, too. I got it out of the kitchen."

"You have not spoken of going into the kitchen."

"I have not spoken of coming downstairs."

"You went into the kitchen?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"When I first came down."

"That is not in accordance with your direct testimony. On the contrary, you said that on coming downstairs you went straight to the rack for your overcoat. Stenographer read what the prisoner said on this topic."

A rustling of leaves, distinctly to be heard in the deathlike silence of the room, was followed by the reading of this reply and answer:

"Yet you cannot say which of these two overcoats you put on when you left your home an hour or so after finishing your dinner?"

"I cannot. I was in no condition to notice. I was bent on going into town and, on coming downstairs, I went straight to the rack and pulled on the first things that offered."

The prisoner stood immobile but with a deepening line gathering on his brow until the last word fell. Then he said: "I forgot. I went for the key before I put on my overcoat. I wanted to see how the sick horse looked."

"Did you drop this key into your pocket, too?"

"No, I carried it into the hall."

"What did you do with it there?"

"I don't know. Put it on the table, I suppose."

"Don't you remember? There were other keys lying on this table. Don't you remember what you did with the one in your hand while you took the club-house key from the midst of Mr. Ranelagh's bunch?"

"I laid it on the table. I must have—there was no other place to put it."

"Laid it down by itself?"

"Yes."

"And took it up when you went out?"

"Of course."

"Carrying it straight to the stable?"

"Naturally."

"What did you do with it when you came out?"

"I left it in the stable-door."

"You did? What excuse have you to give for that?"

"None. I was reckless, and didn't care for anything—that's all."

"Yet you took several minutes, for all your hurry and your indifference, to get the stable key and look in at a horse that wasn't sick enough to keep your coachman home from a dance."

The prisoner was silent.

"You have no further explanation to give on this subject?"

"No. All fellows who love horses will understand."

The district attorney shrugged this answer away before he went on to say: "You have listened to Zadok Brown's testimony. When he returned at three, he found the stable-door locked, and the key hanging up on its usual nail in the kitchen. How do you account for this?"

"There are two ways."

"Mention them, if you please."

"Zadok had been to a dance, and may not have been quite clear as to what he saw. Or, finding the stable door open, may have blamed himself for the fact and sought to cover up his fault with a lie."

"Have you ever caught him in a lie?"

"No; but there's always a first time."

"You would impeach his testimony then?"

"No. You asked me how this discrepancy could be explained, and I have tried to show you."

"Mr. Cumberland, the grey mare was out that night; this has been amply proved."

"If you believe Zadok, yes."

"You have heard other testimony corroborative of this fact. She was seen on the club-house road that night, by a person amply qualified to identify her."

"So I've been told."

"The person driving this horse wore a hat, identified as an old one of yours, which hat was afterwards found at your house on a remote peg in a seldom-used closet. If you were not this person, how can you explain the use of your horse, the use of your clothes, the locking of the stable-door—which you declare yourself to have left open—and the hanging up of the key on its own nail?"

It was a crucial question—how crucial no one knew but our two selves. If he answered at all, he must compromise Carmel. I had no fear of his doing this, but I had great fear of what Ella might do if he let this implication stand and made no effort to exonerate himself by denying his presence in the cutter, and consequent return to the Cumberland home. The quick side glances I here observed cast in her direction by both father and mother, showed that she had made some impulsive demonstration visible to them, if not to others and fearful of the consequences if I did not make some effort to hold her in check, I kept my eyes in her direction, and so lost Arthur's look and the look of his counsel as he answered, with just the word I had expected—a short and dogged:

"I cannot explain."

It was my death warrant. I realised this even while I held Ella's eye with mine and smoothed my countenance to meet the anguish in hers, in the effort to hold her back for a few minutes longer till I could quite satisfy myself that Arthur's case was really lost and that I must speak or feel myself his murderer.

The gloom which followed this recognition of his inability, real or fancied, to explain away the most damning feature of the case against him, taken with his own contradictions and growing despondency, could not escape my eye, accustomed as I was to the habitual expression of most every person there. But it was not yet the impenetrable gloom presaging conviction; and directing Ella's gaze towards Mr. Moffat, who seemed but little disturbed either by Mr. Fox's satisfaction or the prisoner's open despair, I took heart of grace and waited for the district attorney's next move. It was a fatal one. I began to recognise this very soon, simple as was the subject he now introduced.

"When you went into the kitchen, Mr. Cumberland, to get the stable-door key, was the gas lit, or did you have to light it?"

"It—it was lit, I think."

"Don't you know?"

"It was lit, but turned low. I could see well enough."

"Why, then, didn't you take both keys?"

"Both keys?"

"You have said you went down town by the short cut through your neighbour's yard. That cut is guarded by a door, which was locked that night. You needed the key to that door more than the one to the stable. Why didn't you take it?"

"I—I did."

"You haven't said so."

"I—I took it when I took the other."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes; they both hung on one nail. I grabbed them both at the same time."

"It does not appear so in your testimony. You mentioned a key, not keys, in all your answers to my questions."

"There were two; I didn't weigh my words. I needed both and I took both."

"Which of the two hung foremost?"

"I didn't notice."

"You took both?"

"Yes, I took both."

"And went straight out with them?"

"Yes, to the stable."

"And then where?"

"Through the adjoining grounds downtown."

"You are sure you went through Mr. Fulton's grounds at this early hour in the evening?"

"I am positive."

"Was it not at a later hour, much later, a little before eleven instead of a little before nine?"

"No, sir. I was on the golf-links then."

"But some one drove into the stable."

"So you say."