AN UNEXPECTED ALLY

That night was a busy one for me; nevertheless I found time to send a message to Hope, in which I begged her to read no papers till she saw me, and, if possible, to keep herself in her own room.  To these hurried words I added the comforting assurance that the news I had to bring her would repay her for this display of self-control, and that I would not keep her waiting any longer than was necessary.  But it was fully ten o’clock before I was able to keep this promise, and I found her looking pale and worn.

“I have obeyed you,” she said, with an attempt at smiling as pitiful as it was ineffectual.  “What has happened?  Why did you not want me to see the papers or talk with Mrs. Penrhyn?”

“Because I wished to be the first to tell you the secret of Leighton Gillespie’s life.  It was not what was suggested to you by the discrepancies you observed between his character and life.  He is sane as any man, but ­” it was hard to proceed, with those eyes of unspeakable longing looking straight into mine ­“but he has had great sorrows to bear, great suspenses to endure, a deception to keep up, not altogether justifiable, perhaps, but yet one that was not without some excuse.  His wife ­Did you ever see his wife?”

“No,” she faltered.

“ ­Did not perish in that disaster of five years ago, as everyone supposed; and it was she ­”

“Oh!” came in a burst of sudden comprehension from Hope, as she sank down out of sight among the curtains by the window.  But the next moment she was standing again, crying in low tones in which I caught a note of immeasurable relief, “I thank God!  I thank God!” Then the sobs came.

I noticed that, once she had taken in this fact of his personal rectitude, all fear left her as to the truth of the more serious charge against him.  Even after I had explained to her how he came by the phial of poison, and how it was through his agency it came to be in his father’s house, no doubt came to mar her restored confidence in this her most cherished relative.  She even admitted that, now this one unexplainable point in his character had been made clear to her, she felt ready to meet any accusations which might be raised against him.  “Let them publish their suspicions!” she cried.  “He can bear them and so can I; for now that he has been proven a true man, nothing else much matters.  I may blush at hearing his name, ­it will be years, I think, before I shall overcome that, ­but it will be because I failed to see in his kindness to me the sympathetic interest of one whose heart has been made tender towards women by his wild longing after the wandering spirit whom he called his wife.”

Then she asked where I had placed Mille-fleurs (a name so natural to Millicent Gillespie that no other was ever suggested by her friends); and, having been told where, said she would like to sit beside her until the time came to lay her in the garden of that little home from which all shadow was now cleared away save that of chastened sorrow.

As this was what Leighton Gillespie secretly wished, I promised to accompany her to New Jersey, and then, taking this pure-hearted girl by the hand, I asked: 

“Have I performed my task well?”

Her answer was ­but that is my secret.  Small reason as it gave me for personal hope, I yet went from that house with my heart lightened of its heaviest load.

I did not read the papers myself that morning.  I had little heart for a reporter’s version of what had so thrilled me coming from Leighton’s own lips.  Merely satisfying myself that the latter was still in custody, I busied myself with what came up in my office, till the stroke of five released me to a free exercise of my own thoughts.

How much nearer were we to the solution of this mystery than we had been the morning following Mr. Gillespie’s death?  Not much; and while Hope and possibly myself felt that the band of suspicion had narrowed in its circle, and by the exclusion of Leighton, whom we could no longer look upon as guilty, left the question of culpability to be settled between the two remaining sons of the deceased stockbroker, to the world in general and to the readers of sensational journals which now flooded the city with accounts of the most sacred incidents of Leighton Gillespie’s past life he was still the man through whose agency the poison had entered the Gillespie house.  Nor could we fail to see that the feeling called out by these tales of his domestic infelicities and the wild search in which most of his life had been passed had its reverse side for those people who read all stories of disinterested affection with doubt, and place no more faith in true religion than if the few bright spots made in the universal history of mankind by acts of unselfish devotion had no basis in fact, and were as imaginary as the dreams of poet or romancer.

That Leighton Gillespie had not been released after his conference with the District Attorney was proof that his way was not as clear before him as I had hoped.  Yet I was positive that Mr. Gryce as well as Sweetwater shared my belief in his innocence; and while this was a comfort to me, I found my mind much exercised by the doubt as to what the next turn of the kaleidoscope would call up in this ever-changing case.

I had not seen Underhill in days, and I rather dreaded a chance meeting.  He did not like Leighton, and would be the first to throw contempt upon any mercy being shown him on account of his faithful attachment to his disreputable wife.  I seemed to hear the drawling query with which this favourite of the clubs would end any attempt I might make in this direction:  “And so you think it probable that a man ­a man, remember, with a child liable to flutter in and out of his room at all hours ­would leave a phial of deadly poison on his dresser and never think of it again?  Not much, old man.  If he laid it down there, which I doubt, he took it up again.  Don’t waste your sympathy on a cad.”

Yet I did; and to such an extent that I took a walk instead of going home and hearing these imaginary sentences uttered in articulated words.  I walked up Madison Avenue, and, coming upon a store which had a reputation for an extra fine brand of cigars, I went in to buy one.

Have you ever greatly desired an event which your common sense told you was most unlikely to happen, and then suddenly seen it wrought out before you in the most unforeseen manner and by the most ordinary of means?  From the first night of the tragedy with which these pages have been full, I had wished for an interview with the old butler, without witnesses, and as the result of a seeming chance.  But I had never seen my way clear to this; and now, in this place and in this unexpected manner, I came upon him buying fruit at a grocer’s counter.

I did not hesitate to approach him.

“How do you do, Hewson?” said I, with a kindly tap on his shoulder.

He turned slowly, gave me a look that was half an apology and half an appeal, then dropped his eyes.

“How do you do, sir?” said he.

“Been buying oranges for the family?” I went on.  “Startling news, this!  I mean the arrest of Mr. Gillespie’s second son.  I never thought of him as the guilty one, did you?”

The old butler did not break all up as I expected.  He only shook his head, and, taking up the bundle which had just been handed him, remarked: 

“We little know what’s in the mind of the babies we dandle in our arms,” and went feebly out.

I laid down a quarter, took a cigar from the case, forgot to light it, and sauntered into the street with it still in my hand.  I felt thoroughly discouraged, and walked down the avenue in a sort of black mist formed of my own doubts and Hewson’s calm acceptance of the guilt attributed to Leighton.  But suddenly I stopped, put the cigar in my pocket, and exclaimed in vehement contradiction of my own uneasy thoughts:  “Leighton Gillespie is as guiltless of his father’s death as of other charges which have been made against him.  I am ready to stake my own honour upon it,” and went immediately to my apartments, without stopping, as I usually did, at Underhill’s door.

I found a young man waiting for me in the vestibule.  He had evidently been standing there for some time, for he no sooner heard my step than he gave a bound forward with the eager cry: 

“It is I, sir, ­Sweetwater.”

He was a welcome visitor at that moment, and I was willing he should realise it.

“Come in; come in,” I urged.  “New developments, eh?  Mr. Gillespie released, perhaps, or ­”

“No,” was his disappointing response as the door closed behind us and he sank into the chair I pushed forward.  “Mr. Gillespie is still in detention and there are no new developments.  But another day must not pass without them.  I was witness to the sympathy you felt last night for the man who claimed the wretched being we saw before us for his wife; and, feeling a little soft-hearted towards him myself, I have come to ask you to lay your head with mine over this case in the hope that we two together may light upon some clue which will lead to his immediate enlargement.  For I cannot believe him guilty; I just cannot.  It was one of the others.  But which one?  I don’t mean to eat or sleep till I find out.”

“And Mr. Gryce?”

“He won’t bother.  Last night was too much for him, and he has gone home.  The field is clear, sir, quite clear; and I mean to profit by it.  Leighton Gillespie shall be freed in time to attend his wife’s funeral or I will give up the detective business and go back to the carpenter’s bench and my dear old mother in Sutherlandtown.”